Carl Levin National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, earlier there was a lot of discussion about the NDAA--the Defense authorization bill--and the very important provisions which are contained in that which will provide for our men and women who serve us so honorably. I concur with all who have spoken today about the importance and significance of this bill and why we should pass it and why we should pass it today.

An area of controversy that has certainly come up--and my colleague from Oklahoma has pointed it out very clearly--is the public lands package that has been attached to the NDAA. I will speak a little bit about where we are today and why we are dealing with this issue and why it is important that the Senate and Congress advance these public lands provisions for our country.

I had an opportunity to speak in greater detail yesterday, but I felt it was important to let colleagues know why we deal with public lands bills traditionally in a package.

The Presiding Officer comes from a Western State, but Hawaii does not have large portions of land held by the Federal Government.

In the 12 Western States, which includes Alaska--93 percent of the Federal lands that are held by this country are contained in these 12 Western States. What does it mean when you are a State like Alaska where some 68 percent of your lands are Federally held? What does it mean when you are a State like Nevada, where our majority leader is from, where 85 percent of your State is held in public lands? It means that when you want to do a conveyance, a conveyance doesn't come about just because you are able to get a real estate attorney and you have a transaction; it literally requires an act of Congress.

We are dealing with one provision in this public lands bill that Senator Franken, from Minnesota, has been working on. It is a conveyance of one acre of land that is currently held by USGS, and it is a conveyance to a school district. Most people around this country-- or certainly on this end of the country--would say: Wow, that really requires congressional action? That really requires a vote? That really requires the President to sign it into law? The answer is in the affirmative.

We have been processing, as a committee--on the Energy Committee and committees on the House side--public lands bills throughout this Congress. We have been working on some of these public lands measures not for months, not for years, but in several instances a decade. It has taken a decade to bring about some of these conveyances and these exchanges.

I believe it is important to set the record straight--for those who are suggesting that somehow or other this was conjured up in the dark of the night or that there has been no process for these bills--and let colleagues know about the procedural process that has led to its inclusion in the NDAA.

For the record, I will note that the process included not only the committees of jurisdiction for the lands bills but the committees who crafted the NDAA bill, leadership from both sides, and individual Members who all agreed to cobble together a package that was fair and balanced, bipartisan, bicameral, revenue neutral--which is exceptionally important--and also addresses the need for conservation on one end and economic development and jobs and prosperity on the other end. With this package of bills, one can see that compromise come together.

It has been noted that these public lands bills have nothing to do with defense authorization, but I will say that this is not without precedent. Adding lands to an NDAA bill has been done in the past. We have seen it in the past several NDAAs. What we did here was to amend the existing lands package within the House-passed NDAA--which is hardly out of balance or unusual.

As I said before, I would much rather have us move individual bills through the floor as we process them, but many Members have said to me: Well, your small lands transaction is important, but does it really rise to the level of occupying floor time? It is tough to win the undivided attention of the Senate on some of these measures.

Just because this issue doesn't rise to a level of keen interest in this body doesn't mean these issues are not critically important for individuals, communities, and States around our country, and so it is hard to put that together. But just because it is small or more localized or perhaps more parochial--like this one acre of land we are

trying to convey to this school district--doesn't mean we should disregard it or overlook it or not try to enact it because somehow or other it is not as important as the other things we do around here.

So knowing how valuable and precious floor time is around here, we worked together. We have been working together for months--again, in a bicameral and bipartisan way--to combine many of the bills that are in the package. The result of what we have in front of us is provisions that will help boost natural resources and community development while we are also advancing conservation. We are moving toward economic development in certain areas, creating jobs. We have opportunities in both Nevada and Arizona to create thousands of good-paying jobs and will increase our resources and our minerals security.

Other aspects of the bill focus on conservation. There are additional wilderness provisions that are in there, but again, as we attempt to achieve that balance, what we have in front of us is a good structure.

I want to make sure colleagues recognize that when we are discussing the concern my colleague from Oklahoma has raised, the concern he has so well articulated that within our National Park System we have a maintenance backlog that is awful--and in many cases it is overwhelming. To his credit, he has given keen attention to this maintenance backlog we have and has pressed us to do more to improve that situation. He put together a very considerable report that we are using in the energy committee to help build a series of necessary reforms that will be required to deal with our issues within the National Park Service. Thanks to Senator Coburn's good work on this issue, we will be able to see some true reforms.

I met yesterday afternoon with Director Jarvis in my office, and I made it clear to him as the head of Park Service that this is going to be an area on which we must be focused. Our national parks are a national treasure, but when we can't attend to their needs and ensure that they are maintained to the level that, as Americans, we all want, then we are failing on that.

He has a very good point when he says we need to be doing something about maintenance and backlog. I agree. We actually have a couple of provisions in this public lands bill that will help us with that, and one of them is the bill Senator Coburn has sponsored which will allow for donors to have discreet recognition within our parks. So if you want to give a private donation, there is a way for recognition. We also have a provision in here that will allow for minting of a coin, which again will help with private dollars. Those private pieces are very important, but we need to do more, we will do more, and my commitment is to help do that.

One of the things that I think are important to recognize with the park provisions that are included in title XXX is that it is critically important to recognize the local support these park provisions have that will encourage economic development, tourism, and recreation. The agreement includes five new national historic parks, and it transfers management of two existing Federal areas to the Park Service. All of the new historical parks have been formally studied and have been recommended for inclusion in the National Park System. They focus on specific historic sites of national significance.

Studies have also been done--and my colleague has referenced that--on potential additions to the National Park System. These study authorizations have previously passed the House under suspension or gone through the Senate by unanimous consent. Again, we are not trying to go through the backdoor. The study that has been conducted and the process that has taken place in both the House and Senate is to ensure that there is that local support and that this is not just something a Member wants to attach his or her name to, that this has local support, and that in turn will help us with some of the funding issues we are going to need to address for our park systems.

I wish to conclude my remarks quickly because Senator Flake was asked for a few minutes and I would like to defer to him. First, the issue has also come up about existing national heritage areas. I think it is important for colleagues to know that we do provide for limited extensions for existing heritage areas, but there are no new heritage areas that are created. I think it is important to recognize that when we talk about extensions, it is extensions of existing heritage sites.

So with that, if I may, I wish to yield to my colleague from Arizona, Senator Flake. We have been working not only with Senator Flake but with Senator McCain on a provision that will certainly not only benefit his State, but it will benefit the United States in terms of jobs, economic opportunity, and a mineral resource; namely, copper, that is extraordinarily important to us.

With that, I turn to Senator Flake.

I thank my colleague from Arizona. As he has pointed out, not only is this measure important to the State of Arizona, but the State of Nevada will also gain the benefit of being able to access copper resources in that region as well, bringing jobs and bringing a resource.

So contained in this package--and again a balanced package--we are talking about the Federal land conveyances for economic and community development. We have mentioned the opportunity for mineral production with two copper mines, one in Arizona, one in Nevada; an opportunity for increased timber production in my State. We will finally realize the obligation to settle the land claims with the Native people of the southeastern part of the State in

the Sealaska region, 40-some years after the promise for their lands conveyance. They are still awaiting their conveyance. This measure we have in front of us will not only fulfill that decades-old promise, but it will allow for a continuation of timber within their region, albeit very, very, very reduced.

But in order to move to that second growth transition the Forest Service is always talking about, we have to have an industry that is just staying alive, and this Sealaska lands provision will help with that. But it was also crafted in a way that took into account the concerns of the fisheries, the stewardship for other lands, placing additional lands in a conservation area--so again a key balance.

The other provisions that relate to our Federal lands and our ability to access them I think are important, making them productive. The provision allows for land management agencies with the needed authority to renew and process grazing permits and leases. This is a measure that my colleague from Wyoming and my colleague from New Mexico have been working on, and in terms of something that provides certainty to America's ranching community, this is so key, this is so important.

We also worked to expand the successful BLM permit streamlining program to boost oil and gas production from the Federal lands. So it is kind of the economic development piece, but the conservation piece I think is equally important. It does designate wilderness. It designates approximately 245,000 acres of wilderness in total. But I think what is important for colleagues to recognize is that just about half of those acres are already managed as if it were wilderness. In other words, they are in wilderness study areas or roadless areas. So again we looked at those measures where there was support at the local level, at the State level, represented by the Members of Congress who had worked over the years to gain the level of support for these provisions. There is no cram-down. There is no designation from the executive as to monument status. This is how the process is designed to work.

We also returned 26,000 total wilderness study areas to multiple use, again for greater activity on those lands.

We protect private property rights in all of our special land designations. There is no private property that can be condemned or acquisitions through eminent domain. Private activities taking place outside of the special land designation are not going to be precluded by such designations, and we have insured that there are no buffer zones or protective perimeters that would encroach on personal and public rights.

I have been asked about the impact on hunting and fishing on our public lands, because that is something that particularly those of us in the West care a great deal about. I have heard some concerns that there may be negative impacts. But I want to be clear that the wilderness bills in this agreement actually affirm the responsibility and the authority of the States for the management of fish and wildlife.

In the wilderness bills that we have in New Mexico and in Nevada, they have incorporated restating the law--this is section 302 of FLPMA--to provide assurances that the wilderness designations do not give the Secretaries any new authorities to close Federal lands to hunting, fishing or trapping that they don't already have.

So we have put in place protections again trying to find the balance between the conservation and the development, providing for access, ensuring that private rights are respected, ensuring that our opportunities for use and enjoyment as well as economic activity are preserved; trying to find a package that is balanced from the bicameral, bipartisan perspective, making sure we are not imposing costs; again, a revenue-neutral proposal. I think that is also worth stressing.

I have seen something out there that suggests there is an impact on direct spending from title XXX. The fact is it is revenue neutral over these next 10 years. We do not take anything from the Defense authorization perspective within this bill with this lands package. That was never the intent. It was not the design, and it will not impact that.

With that, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Madam President, I understand there is still 5 or 6 minutes remaining of my time. If there are other colleagues who would care to speak on the significance of title XXX of NDAA, natural resources, and the related provisions, I am certainly happy to yield to them.

I thank my colleagues who have come to the floor on both sides of the aisle to speak to some of the specifics that are contained within this bill because I think it helps to understand why we are at this late point in the calendar with a package of different bills focusing in different areas, whether it is a small land conveyance, whether it is the creation of a wilderness area that has come about through a great deal of compromise and collaboration, or whether it is a collaboration that will allow for economic opportunity through mineral development, timber harvest, or grazing opportunities. I think it does speak to the diversity of what we are dealing with, with so many of our public lands and the reality that they are different all over. It is very different in Alaska from what my friend in New Mexico experiences. The similarity we have is that we don't have the ability to do it on our own; we have to come to the Federal Government.

What will happen is, whether you are in New Mexico or whether you are in Alaska or points in between, you have local consensus emerge around an issue. They bring it to the State, and the State works with us at the Federal level, Members of the House and Members of the Senate. We continue to work this process. It usually is a very collaborative process.

Just because it is collaborative does not mean we agree on every issue. There is a great deal of give and take that goes on, because when you are talking about your public lands, every acre is precious to somebody. I know that full well in the legislation we have been working on, the See Alaska bill, for almost a decade now.

The fishermen have certain interests, those who harvest timber have certain interests, the conservationists have certain interests, the school district has certain interests. So how we build this takes time. But it seems as though the only place we do not get time is here on the Senate floor. We do not have the time allocated to us, nor do--I would be happy to spend hours and perhaps days discussing issues such as we have raised in this public lands bill. But I do not think most of my colleagues are interested in debating a reversionary clause for a parcel of land in downtown Anchorage that can be sold so they can have an opportunity, in Anchorage, to build something new there. It just does not rise to that level of immediacy and concern.

So, again, we do the best we can to try to be balanced, to try to put together something that works for all. It is a balancing act. It requires a level of finesse. If we were to have put together a package that was overly weighted towards new wilderness or new parks, not only would my constituents back home not support it, I could not support it. We have to work together on bill packages of this nature.

I want to recognize the good work of those on the energy committee who have worked with us to construct something that is good, balanced and fair. I will acknowledge my chairman of the energy committee, Senator Landrieu, who has worked with us to find that level of balance.

I do hope that as we look at a new Congress, we will be working together as colleagues to try to figure out a better path for the endgame for these smaller bills. I have been part of way too many lands packages now where we have the same debate: Why is it attached to this? Why are we doing this now? I would like to get us to a place where there was a more certain process so that Members knew their small conveyance bill, their small study, did not get caught up in end-of- session kind of madness, or caught up in things that distract from what it is that delegation has been attempting to do for that State, for that part of the country.

I would ask my colleagues--I have spoken with many on this side of the aisle as well as the Democratic side of the aisle--let's be working together to figure out how we can relieve this bottleneck, because I sincerely want to do that. But what we have in front of us today is our opportunity to bring some finality, to bring some conclusion, to bring some resolve to issues that have been outstanding for a considerable amount of time, as I mentioned, in several instances almost a full decade.

Let's clear the deck. Let's move this lands package on this NDAA bill so that next Congress we can begin with the many public lands bills that are still in the queue, that are still waiting for a process. But you can count on me to be working with my colleagues to ensure that we have a way forward that will be more expeditious than we have seen historically.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, after 36 years as a Member of the United States Senate, this is likely my last opportunity to address its Members as colleagues, and to address the people of my State as constituents, and to thank them for placing their trust in me.

The highest honor any citizen of a democracy can receive is to be elected to represent his or her fellow Americans to be their fiduciary.

To the Senate staff, including the floor staff, the Capitol Police, and those throughout the Capitol complex who work so hard to keep things here moving, thank you for your service and support for us through the long days and nights.

To my staff, thank you for your strong loyalty to the people of Michigan, to our Nation, and to me. And thank you for believing in public service. I am immensely proud of what the men and women who have worked on my staff for the last 36 years have helped to accomplish.

My staff back in Michigan has helped make communities across our State safer and more prosperous. Countless times they have helped individual constituents resolve an issue, making a real difference in thousands of lives.

The Armed Services Committee and Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--PSI--staffs have worked tirelessly through long hours and complex issues, sacrificing nights and weekends and vacations to help address the pressing issues of our Nation.

My personal office staff has been instrumental in addressing a breathtaking range of issues--from preserving our American auto industry, to making our tax system fairer, to protecting our irreplaceable Great Lakes, to making medicine available to fight addiction, and much, much more.

As to my mentor, my big brother Sandy, Congress is keeping the better half of ``Team Levin,'' as I retire to Michigan while Sandy remains in Congress.

To Barbara, my wife of 53 years, to our three daughters Kate, Laura, and Erica; to their husbands Howard, Daniel, and Rick; and to our six grandchildren, Bess and Samantha, Mark,

Noa, and Ben Levin, and Beatrice and Olivia Fernandez--thank you for your love and support, which has meant so much to me.

I have been asked many times if I am leaving the Senate out of frustration with gridlock. The answer is: No. My family and friends, and those of you with whom I serve, know how much I love the Senate and that I will love my work until the last day here, and that I will leave here with unabashed confidence in the Senate's ability to weather storms and to meet the Nation's needs.

I know firsthand the challenges before this Senate. I believe one of the greatest is the need to meet the fundamental economic challenge of this era: the growing gap in our society between a fortunate few and the vast majority of Americans whose fortunes have stagnated or fallen.

While I believe that the economists who tell us this inequality is holding back economic growth are right, this isn't just about economic data. It is about our Nation's heart and soul. This growing gulf between a fortunate few and a struggling many is a threat to the dream that has animated this Nation since its founding, the dream that hard work leads to a better life for us and for our children.

To restore the connection between hard work and greater opportunity, I hope the next Congress will act on many fronts, strengthening education and worker training programs, making greater investments in infrastructure and research that foster growth. And as I have said here many times, it should pay for these needed investments by closing egregious tax loopholes that serve no economic purpose, but enrich some of the wealthiest among us and our most profitable corporations.

Many foresee a continuation of polarization and partisanship in the Senate and say it is naive to suggest that the next Congress might come together, break out of gridlock, and accomplish great things. But I know the Senate can do better because I have seen it happen with my own eyes.

The Senate has indeed demonstrated, even in our own era, that bipartisanship is not extinct. The Senate Armed Services Committee has upheld a more than 50-year tradition of bipartisan cooperation to produce an annual Defense Authorization Act that advances the security of our Nation. I am grateful to the members of the U.S. military and their families for their selfless sense of duty. But I am also grateful for the way they have inspired us, year after year, to come together across lines of party and ideology to support them. They not only protect us, they unite us. Congress has come together over the years to make improvements in pay, benefits, and health care for the men and women of the military; to reform the way in which we buy the weapons they use to carry out their missions; to adopt policies to protect them from sexual assault; and to provide improved education benefits through a modern GI bill, and reform the way in which we care for our wounded warriors. We are training and equipping the militaries of nations under assault by extremists and religious fanatics so that those nations can depend more on themselves for their own security and less on America's sons and daughters.

We have passed a defense authorization bill to accomplish these things each year for more than half a century by laying aside partisan differences for the common good. We have never allowed disagreements over policy to interfere with our duty to our troops and their families, and I am deeply grateful to the many ranking Republican partners I have been fortunate to work with in that endeavor: people such as John McCain and John Warner and Jim Inhofe.

John McCain, my great friend, who has demonstrated extraordinary courage in war and in this Senate, will take the gavel of the Armed Services Committee, and my trusted wingman and friend Jack Reed will become ranking member. At a pivotal moment for the Senate and for this Nation, the Armed Services Committee will be in strong hands.

I have seen firsthand additional powerful evidence that the Senate can work together to meet the Nation's needs, and that is in the work of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--PSI--which I have been privileged to chair for 10 years, working with Republican partners--and I use the word partners advisedly--such as Tom Coburn, John McCain, and Susan Collins. Our subcommittee has exposed the tax avoidance schemes of some of the most powerful corporations and wealthiest individuals. We have shined a light on abusive credit card practices. We have investigated wasteful and ineffective government programs. We have confronted market manipulators and exposed conflicts of interest, mortgage fraud, and reckless schemes by some of the most powerful banks, schemes aided by some of the largest accounting and law firms. We have demonstrated how those activities helped bring our economy to its knees, destroying jobs, reducing the value of our homes, and damaging our neighborhoods. The work of PSI has helped lead to reforms that have strengthened our financial system and reduced credit card abuses.

The power of PSI lies in the in-depth work of our staffs, and in the willingness to confront powerful and entrenched interests. Like the Senate Armed Services Committee, PSI is strengthened by a dedication to bipartisanship and a respect for the rights of the Senate minority. We have recognized the danger of using investigative power for partisan or political purposes, and we have ensured that our great staffs, majority and minority, participate together in every investigation.

Indeed it is protection of the minority that is the singular hallmark of the Senate. The majority cannot always have its way. The Senate is more than just a place where the hot tea is cooled in the deliberative saucer that President Washington famously spoke of. Protections for the minority make the Senate more than just a place to slow things down; those protections make it a place where we work things out. It is those protections that force compromise that is essential to unifying and governing our country. Making progress in the Senate requires solutions that while they may not provide everyone with everything they want, are broadly accepted as in the common interest. When compromise is thwarted by ideological rigidity or by abuse of the rights that our rules afford us, the Senate can become paralyzed, unable to achieve the lofty task that the Founders set forth before us.

Polarization is exacerbated by forces outside this Chamber. For instance, we seem to make news more often these days by our responses in the corridors outside this Chamber to reporters questioning us about the latest breaking story or rumor than we do by debating or legislating inside this Chamber. The viral nature of information and disinformation and the expectation that public officials will be immediately responsive to every news flash with but a few seconds to think through the implications or consequences or pros and cons has led too often to less thoughtful discourse, and that has helped drive rhetorical wedges between us.

The incoming Senate has an opportunity to restore a greater measure of bipartisan compromise by revisiting one of the most contentious issues we face, one that we struggled with at the beginning of this Congress; that is, the Senate rules.

I believe the excessive use of the filibuster to obstruct confirmation of President Obama's nominees was damaging to the Senate and to the Nation. Any President--Democratic or Republican--should have the ability to choose his or her team. But the Senate majority eliminated obstructions to Presidential nominations through the use of the nuclear option, effectively accomplishing a rules change outside the rules, a method I could not support. In doing so, a precedent was established that the majority could effectively change the rules as it wished by overruling the Chair and the Parliamentarian. That precedent will not serve the country well in the future because it leaves the minority with no protection, diminishing the unique role of the Senate.

I hope the Senate next year considers reversing that precedent while simultaneously--and I emphasize simultaneously--amending the rules so as to assure the President's ability to fulfill his or her constitutional duties. Put simply, I believe the Senate should do the right thing in the right way. It

should amend the Senate rules, as provided for in the rules, to adopt the substance of the changes we made last year. I know my good friend Senator Lamar Alexander, who was part of the bipartisan Group of 8 who worked closely and successfully together on this issue in 2012, has proposed something similar. Such action by the Senate next year would be a welcome victory for comity and for compromise, and it would I hope represent a step back from a precedent that leads to effective rules changes by simple majority. It would be a step toward a better functioning Senate.

No leader alone, no single Senator, neither party by itself, can determine the Senate's course, but together the Members of this body can move the Senate forward and in doing so help move forward the Nation we all love. I will enjoy reading about the Senate's progress in the years ahead as Barbara and I are sitting on a Lake Michigan beach or showing the world to our grandchildren.

I thank the Chair, I thank my dear friends, the leaders of this body, and I see my brother sitting here, and I am not allowed to refer to my family in the Gallery, so I will not do that.

(Applause, Senators rising.)

Thank you.

I know that Senator Harkin is waiting to speak. Senator Harkin is truly one of the greatest Senators I have ever served with and Senator Harkin is one of the greatest people I have ever known. He, Ruth, Barb, and I have spent quality time, which is not always true for many of us in the Senate to have that opportunity.

I thank everyone. The words have meant so much to me and my family today.

I am going to join my family now. I know Tom will forgive me for not listening, but I will be reading what you say. You, Ruth, Barb, and I will have some more quality time together--perhaps not as much fun as being in the Senate, but we will make the best of it.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object.

I will not support the unanimous consent proposal of Senator Lee for several reasons. He may want to state his motion first before I give the reasons for objecting to it, but I will object and, if necessary at this point, I do object.

I have no objection to the Senator stating his purpose.

Madam President, the reasons that I object to the offering of the amendment at this time are several.

First, the amendment which Senator Lee asks consent to offer is not germane to the bill, it is not in order postcloture, and it would amend a statute of jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee relative to a subject not addressed in this bill.

Second, when we included a similar provision in our bill several years ago, the House objected and insisted the provision be dropped. So the inclusion of this provision would require, at the least, difficult discussions with the House when there is no time for such discussions.

When I voted for a similar provision which was offered several years ago, the language was somewhat different than it is now.

The bottom line is there is simply not enough time left before we adjourn to debate even a single amendment, and surely not a single amendment of this complexity, to vote on it, and to reconcile the provision, if it were adopted, with the House of Representatives and to pass the bill again in both Houses.

And those are the reasons for my objection.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I first thank my friend from Oklahoma, my partner as well in the Armed Services Committee. I have enjoyed the presence of the Presiding Officer on our committee, and I think she knows how well that committee works together, and Senator Inhofe and I guess both sides--both parties have worked very closely together for our troops. That is what this is all about is pulling together for our troops. They inspire us, they unify us, they protect us, and the least we owe them is a Defense authorization bill.

We haven't missed in 52 years. This would be the 53rd straight year that there would be a Defense authorization bill--coincidentally, the same number of years I have been married. So this may be the gift to my wife for our anniversary if we are done with this bill, if we finish it today.

This bill takes provisions critical to our national security, to the well-being of our men and women in uniform, to our retirees and their families. If we fail to enact this bill, the Department of Defense's statutory authority to pay combat pay, hardship duty pay, enlistment and reenlistment bonuses, incentive pays for critical specialties, assignment incentive pay, accession and retention bonuses for critical specialties, will expire on December 31. We cannot let that happen.

After that date, the statutory authority to provide combat pay to our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq will lapse. We cannot let that happen. We would lose some of our most highly skilled men and women with specialties that we vitally need. We cannot let that happen.

Not only would we be shortchanging our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, we would be denying our military services critical authorities they need to recruit and retain high-quality servicemembers, and to achieve their force-shaping objectives as they draw down their end strengths.

And there is more. If we fail to enact this bill, school districts all over the United States that rely on supplemental impact aid to help them educate military children would no longer receive that money. If we fail to enact this bill, the Department of Defense will not be able to begin construction on important new military construction projects in the coming year. That would mean our troops don't get the barracks, the ranges, the hospitals, the laboratories, and the other support facilities they need to support operational requirements, conduct training, and to maintain their equipment.

It would mean that military family housing will not receive needed upgrades, and that schools to educate the children of our servicemembers will not be built or modernized.

If we fail to enact this bill, we will not enact provisions that strengthen survivor benefits for disabled children of servicemembers and retirees. We would not then enact provisions addressing the employment of military spouses, job placement of veterans. That is an issue which the Presiding Officer knows an awful lot about, because she has been so directly involved in that and so many other issues.

We would then not be enacting provisions relative to military hazing, military suicides, post-traumatic stress disorder, and mental health problems in the military.

If we do not enact this bill, we would then enact none of the 20 provisions in this bill addressing the scourge of sexual assault in the military. We will not eliminate the good soldier defense which is eliminated in this bill, as it

should be. We would not give victims of sexual assault a voice in whether their case is prosecuted in military or civilian courts. They should have that voice. We would not give survivors of sexual assault the right to challenge court-martial rulings that violate their rights and to challenge them in the Court of Criminal Appeals. They should have that right.

If we don't pass this bill, we would not be strengthening the psychotherapist-patient privilege.

So this bill includes critical authorities for the Department of Defense. It provides essential support to our men and women in uniform, military retirees, and their families.

If either of the motions we are going to be voting on is adopted, this bill then will not pass and not become law, because it would then in one instance be open to amendments, and that could be endless because there are so many amendments that people would like to offer. I have gone into the reasons why we are in a position where that simply is not practical or possible.

We are asking our colleagues to allow this bill to come to a final passage today and become the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015.

Again, with thanks to all of our colleagues on the Armed Services Committee, thanks to my partner Senator Inhofe who has worked so closely, he and his staff, with myself and our staff.

I hope this would have an overwhelming vote and that we would not adopt any motion which would lead then to our not adopting this critically needed bill.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, before asking for the yeas and nays, I want to thank my friend again, Senator Inhofe, for mentioning our staff. John Peter has done such good work with all of our staffs. We put the names of our staffs in the Record a day or two ago and they deserve that and a lot more.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I will be very brief because I know we have some other things coming up before going on to the NDAA, and I will be standing here with my good friend and brother Carl at that time. I recall when I was first elected to the House of Representatives--it is hard for me to believe that was 28 years ago-- and I became good friends with a guy named Levin. It was not Carl. It was his brother. There was a real sincere, lovable attitude about him. I can remember talking over some of these sitting by him during some of the debate on very partisan things. I thought this guy is really neat. It is the kind of thing where you can't dislike him. Then I came over here 20 years ago, and there is another one. I have two major committees, Environment and Public Works and the Senate Armed Services Committee. I thought this is remarkable because while on occasion we will differ--I am talking about the chairman and me--and I am the ranking member of that committee--occasionally we will come up on an issue where we don't agree. On two occasions, last year and this year, we had to go into this process of the ``big four.'' That is where it gets contentious because at that point you have to come up with a bill. There was never a time that, yes, we have to give in. I don't know whether he gave in more than I gave in. But whatever it was, it all had to happen and it did happen and it happened because of Carl more than me.

Chairman Levin and I can both say the same thing, and people will hate me and they love him. I always wonder how you get by with doing that, but you do. He is a lovable guy whom I will sincerely miss and that relationship, and I hope you will be back often so you can be here to remind other people what a real statesman is.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry. It is my understanding that we were to begin at 12 o'clock for 3 hours until the first motion on the NDAA, and that would begin now, it looks like, about an hour late; is that correct?

Thank you, Mr. President. Before the Senator from Iowa leaves, let me make one comment. I look at him and all of those who are saying nice things about the Senator from Iowa--and I am from Iowa, so I can say this. My colleagues need to remember that even conservatives can love Tom Harkin. I think it is important for people to understand that.

I have to say that I have been to I think at least 10 of the airshows, and spending 90 percent of my time--my wife and his wife, the four of us together, because we are both pilots--sitting around and lying about airplanes, we got real close to each other.

I can say the same thing about my good friend Senator Sanders, and I have said this on the floor before: The two of you are two of my favorite in-the-heart liberals because you are not ashamed of it. You stand up--exactly what the Senator from Vermont just said. The things that I have seen you do, you have a big heart. You have your own philosophy. You are not a demagogue. You live your philosophy.

So I just want you to know there are a lot of Republicans who love Senator Harkin just as much as the liberals do. All right. Thank you.

We should have started with Senator Levin and myself kicking this off. I think we were a little bit late in starting, so Senator Levin is not here now. He will be here in about 30 minutes.

Let me make one comment about Senator Levin. I did so this morning. This person chairing these committees--and he has been through 16 of the NDAAs in the past, and no one else can say that. No other Member has ever done that. Over his 36 years of service, he has concentrated on his concern for the defense of America. This is interesting because as the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, he and I have worked together. We even participated in two of the events called the Big 4.

The Chair knows this, but some of my colleagues may not. When it comes time and the committees are unable to pass a bill, then the ranking member and the chairman of the House and the ranking member and the chairman of the Senate--the Big 4--get together and they draft a bill. That is what happened this year and last year.

Last year I was getting panicky because we didn't pass that bill until December 26. What would happen if we didn't, then it would be a crisis on December 31. So I want to say, Senator Levin, I have enjoyed--I regret we won't be able to have the same positions because, of course, Senator Levin is--such as our friend from Iowa--retiring after this term.

Let me mention the NDAA bill is the most important bill we do every year. I don't think anyone is ever going to debate that. We had the 52 consecutive years--and this is going to be the 53rd consecutive year we have been able to pass it. It seems as though each year it is always hard to do, because at the last minute there are other people who want to get things in the bill that were not there. But we have to keep in mind, in defense of the big-four approach to this, we passed this bill. We passed it out of the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 23. We have been wanting to get it on floor since May 23.

Senator Levin and I have come down countless times and begged our colleagues on the Democratic side and the Republican side to get their amendments down so we could consider their amendments. We had a lot of amendments that did come down. Of the amendments that came down, I am very proud to say that we incorporated almost all of them. Forty-seven of those amendments are a part of this bill. So it is not as if the amendments were considered.

I know some people who are opposed to this bill may come along later and say we didn't consider all the amendments. We considered almost all of them but adopted 47 of the amendments which is a record. In spite of the pushing for months on the NDAA--I don't know what the reasons were and I am not going to point the fingers, but we didn't get it on the floor--we have to do it at the last minute. I want to just say, in my heart I believe--I know the House wound up most of their business--but if we don't pass this bill, there is no other train leaving this station. There is no other way to do it, because in this bill, when people stop and think about it, there are some things I don't like about the bill. I have to admit that, but there are so many good things. If we go through December 31, and this is the reminder we have to have in our own minds, we have right now 1,779,343 enlisted personnel who are in service right now. They will lose their benefits if we don't pass this bill. I am talking about reenlistment bonuses.

I asked the chair, do you realize--I think he does but not many people do--just flight pay. There is a huge pilot shortage right now because the private sector is hiring them up and we are having a hard time keeping them. We have a flight pay incentive. That incentive would go way.

Does it mean anything? Yes. It is a $25,000 incentive, and it lasts for--it goes for 10 years each year. But if they wake up on January 1 and find out they don't have their flight pay incentive, how many of these existing warriors in the sky are going to drop out and go to work for one of the airlines? I don't know. But a lot of them will, I can assure you of that.

I think we need to remind people how much it costs to train a new one. Instead of a $25,000 bonus to reach the standards of the level of an F-22 pilot, it costs $17 million. Stop and think about the millions and millions of dollars that would be lost just from the flight pay. These things are happening.

A lot of good things are in this bill and some are controversial. The housing starts are in this bill--none of the housing starts. I am talking about military construction for our kids that are out there. One of the controversial areas is in Gitmo. This is one of the very few areas where Chairman Levin and I disagreed with each other. Gitmo is a resource that can't be replaced. He would be for closing it.

We are now keeping the restrictions we have right now and keeping it open for another year so we can look at it next year and spend more time on it.

We have the counterterrorism partnership funds, and so many of these things are in this bill that I think are very significant. We are supporting the needed Aircraft Modernization Program. You hear a lot about the F-35. The F-22 was terminated by the President and terminated 6 years ago. So

what we have in the fifth-generation aircraft, that is it, the F-35.

What we are doing is continuing with that modernization program, a controversial area. The support for ground support is the A-10. The A- 10 is probably the ugliest airplane in the sky, but you ask any of our troops on the ground what they want to see coming when they are in danger, it is the A-10. That is going to continue. There is not going to be one reduction in that.

I know the Armed Services Committee next year will look at that freshly and maybe make changes. AWACS, the President wanted to take seven of the AWACS planes out, and that would be 25 percent of the AWACS fleets. That is a great big plane that has a circle on the top that goes out and brings back information to save lives. That is there.

The authorizing the military construction of family housing projects that has been started, they would come to a stop without this bill. That means we would have paid the contractors. There are going to be breach-of-contract lawsuits and everything else.

I will only mention one other thing--the Russian-made rocket engines. A lot of people hear about that and they say: Why in the world, with all the problems with Putin, with what is going on in the Ukraine, around the world--I just got back from Lithuania, and I also went over to Ukraine. I am seeing things with our allies over there that they would ask the question: Why are you buying Russian-made rocket engines? We are, but those are being fazed out. We have directed the Secretary of Defense to develop a U.S. rocket to replace that rocket. That is going on right now.

By the way, I have to say this. I mentioned Ukraine. I can't tell you, when we look and see what is happening over there--I had a great experience. I was over there just 3 days before our elections. It happened to be 3 days after their elections. In the Ukraine, President Poroshenko was so proud, and he sat there and told me: In Ukraine, we have to get 5 percent of the vote to have a seat in Parliament. The Communists, for the first time in 96 years, didn't get 5 percent. So there will not be one Communist in Parliament in Ukraine. That is incredible. Those are our friends over there. They are the ones we need to keep our defense strong, and we directly address that in this bill.

I will only say one thing about the lands package. It is the most controversial part of this bill because it is something which has nothing to do with Defense. On the other hand, when we are in negotiations and there are some things that should not perhaps come in, in this forum, and I thought--I even characterized it as outrageous at the time that that was made part of this bill. I have to say this--any changes in the bill, by the way, are going to result in not having a bill, and all the things I just mentioned would happen. But I started reading some of these provisions from a conservative Republican's perspective, getting in and being able to produce and drill in some of the public lands, let some of our public lands rejoice in this revolution that we are having out there with shale. The ranchers in Oklahoma tell me the grazing rights issues that are in these land packages are good. I hear some people saying, well, there is something to do with a women's committee starting or something like that.

Let's keep in mind, I say to my fellow conservatives, that if Marsha Blackburn's bill that became a part of this bill--now, it shouldn't have happened, but nonetheless it did. It is so overriding we pass a bill and not allow something like that to actually kill the bill.

I would say we are still a nation at war right now. We will be back to discuss this further, and I do want to have an opportunity to respond to some of the critics of this bill. Keep in mind. This is the last opportunity we have before December 31--before January when we come back in--and on December 31 it would be a crisis. I say to my good friends on the left and on the right, we have to have the bill. This is the last bill we can pass.

I would like to recognize Senator Ayotte, the very courageous Senator who has been a major part of the provisions to this bill, and I will go so far as to say as the most active member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, we are getting close to having votes on amendments and final passage tonight, the most significant vote of the year each year.

For 52 consecutive years, we have passed the National Defense Authorization Act. In almost every year there has been a last-minute misunderstanding as to how these different provisions might affect something that has nothing to do with the defense of America.

In this case, there was--and procedurally I have disagreed with it. I have said several times that a land package was included on the bill. I have felt that once we have gone through the process of what has been referred to as the big four, we have ironed out the differences. There are a lot of things that I don't like, but there are more things that I do like. I daresay to Chairman Levin, he is in the same situation.

I have to say one more time that this chairman has been so incredibly fair to everyone.

We have to keep in mind that we passed this bill. After working on it for 4 months, we passed it to the floor from the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 23. There are a lot of things on here that we had. Of course, it went over and the House then passed their bill. They passed their bill actually on May 22; we passed it out of committee on May 23. The problem is, they were able to pass theirs on the floor; we were not. It is something we should have done a long time ago, and I am hoping that we learned a lesson from last year to this year, and we are not going to let this happen again.

So we have now before us a bill that does the necessary things in this most difficult time. I think most people would agree there has not been a time in our history where we have had more opposition from different parts of the world. I refer to the good old days of the Cold War with two superpowers--we are one, and the Soviet Union was the other one--and they were predictable. Mutually assured destruction meant something. If something happened, we could bomb them and they would do the same to us, and it is now all over. That is not the way it is anymore.

We have forces out there from North Korea and Iraq, and all these things are taking place at a time when--and I don't want to make people angry about what this President has done to the military, but we have virtually disarmed America. Our generals now are facing the possibility of sequestration. So the most important bill is now even more than just most important. It is a must-pass bill. It has to pass. If this doesn't pass, there is no other time we can take it up. Should December 31 get here, it would be an absolute disaster.

We right now have 1,779,343 enlisted personnel in the military. If we didn't pass a reauthorization bill, they would lose their benefits on December 31. I have talked about the benefit of that. I think everyone understands it, and it would be redundant to repeat it. But we can't have people making career decisions predicated on assumptions that they would have hazard pay, the assumption if they are pilots that they would have pilot pay; that critical skills like the SEALs would have bonuses, and then all of a sudden on December 31 we take them away.

We are not going to let that happen. We are going to pass this bill today. The concern I have is that any amendments on it would cause a problem that I think would be insurmountable. It would have to go back. They would have to recall the House and then come back, and timewise it can't happen.

So this is the last train leaving town. We have to have this for the sake of our men and women in uniform. If there is time remaining after the chairman makes his remarks, I will even comment on some specific parts of this bill in terms of how good this bill is and why it is necessary to pass.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, it is just about time for the vote. I want to mention something which hasn't been mentioned.

We have two really great Americans, one serving in the House and one serving in the Senate. We have been talking about Chairman Levin and how fair and open he has been. I think there is not a person of the 100 Members of the Senate who doesn't agree with that.

At the same time, we have Buck McKeon over in the House of Representatives. He is the chairman of the House committee that Carl Levin is the chair of over here. He also is retiring, and he has served for quite some time--not as long as Senator Levin.

Against their objections, we have named this bill the Carl Levin-Buck McKeon bill, so I want to make sure everyone recognizes that proper tribute has been made to the long hours and years and the hard work they have contributed.

This guy over here to my left has been through 16 of these. He has been working about 36 years, and I want to say he is deserving of that recognition.

I also want to mention two other people. One is the guy sitting next to me to my right, John Bonsell; the other is Pete Levine, sitting next to the chairman. Their job is to make us look good and make all this a reality, because it is a very complicated thing. It is a 24-hour-a-day work project. So I thank them for their effort. I know we are just talking about amendments right now and we will have a chance to maybe expand later on, but I think it needs to be said, and it needs to be said more than once.

I yield the floor. The hour is here.

Vote on Motion to Refer

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for up to 20 minutes as in morning business.

Madam President, it has been 22 days now since Hamas began its most recent campaign of terrorist attacks against the innocent citizens of Israel. Since the operation began, 32 tunnels have been uncovered that would have been used to attack Israel. On Saturday and Sunday--this past Saturday and Sunday alone--almost 100 rockets were fired at Israel. In the Gaza strip, since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge--that would have been July 8--there have been over 2,000 Hamas rockets fired into Israel, with Tel Aviv and Jerusalem both targets.

Israel has responded, as any nation protecting its people would, with air strikes and ground troops to silence these Hamas terrorists. Israelis are tough. I have to remind people all the time that since their independence back in the 1940s, they have been attacked--Israel has been attacked--six different times.

Remember how they were outnumbered in the Six-Day War in 1967. They won. They prevailed. Then again, the same thing in Yom Kippur--that was in 1973. Again, they prevailed. I have often kidded with them--I have told Prime Minister Netanyahu this, that the Israelis consider a fair fight being outnumbered two to one. So they are a great bunch of people. We have got to continue to support them.

The Hamas terrorists are not only killing Israelis; they are killing their own people too because they place their rocket launchers--we see this is happening, just yesterday we saw a picture of this--in the middle of their own population centers. We are talking in homes, in hospitals, in mosques. Like the cowards they are, they use civilians as human shields. Despite Israel's extensive precautionary behavior and measures to avoid collateral damage, casualties, unfortunately, have occurred. Hamas bears complete responsibility for the civilian deaths.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu said: Israel is using missile defense to protect our citizens, and Hamas is using their civilians to protect their missiles. To date, the Israeli missile defense system, called the Iron Dome, has

successfully intercepted over 400 Hamas rockets headed toward the populated areas in Israel. I was just in Israel last month. I visited the Iron Dome battery. You see, there has to be a place where they initiate these protective devices. Here they are over there. I was so impressed with the young Israeli troops who operate it in the southern city of Ashkelon. The same battery you see on TV every night intercepting Hamas rockets comes from the Gaza Strip, 13 kilometers away.

I have a picture here I want the Presiding Officer to look at. This beautiful young first lieutenant in the Israeli Army I met. She is the one in charge of the Ashkelon battery down there. She is doing her duty right now as we speak, bravely protecting her fellow citizens. Her name is Lee Shmulevitch. I salute her.

It gives people an idea of the commitment that is being made by the Israeli people and the successes they are having. As ranking member, which I am, of the Armed Services Committee, I am proud to say I have been a constant supporter of the Iron Dome, which we have done on a nonpartisan basis. We have put in the authorization for $175 million in this last authorization bill. Then we added another $176 million that would take care of not just the Iron Dome but also other systems that we have such as David's Sling and Arrow 3.

These are jointly developed by the United States and Israel. I think it is important that people understand. I have heard people say: Well, you are just sending all this stuff over from us to Israel. If that were true, it would be worth doing it anyway, because they are looking out after our interests. Those things which they are not able to do in the Middle East we would have to be doing with our equipment, with your young people.

This is not the case. They have a lot of brave people over there. In the case of the Iron Dome, of David's Sling, of Arrow 3, and of a lot of the UAVs, their technology is technology that we use. So it is not something that we are doing for them. We are doing it mutually for each other.

I think it is important also to note at this point that--and nobody seems to put this together--Hamas would not have the rockets and capability of trying to kill all of these Israelis if it were not for Israel's greatest threat, and that is the country of Iran. Quite frankly, I think Iran is the greatest threat to the United States also. A lot of people do not realize this, but back in 2007 our--at that time it was classified--Our intelligence said that by 2015, Iran would have the weapon and a delivery system. Well, that is only 6 months from now.

That has been reconfirmed in our unclassified intelligence starting in about 2010. So right now it is really Iran that is responsible for what Hamas has been able to do. I might ask the question: What is President Obama doing? His rush to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran has undermined years of bipartisan sanctions that were working. We have sanctions, not just by us but by European countries and other countries that have really brought Iran down--not to their knees, because they are still developing their weapons. But nonetheless, they were working.

As part of the President's agreement--this is what he is doing right now. His agreement is to reduce Iran's sanctions, as he announced in January. He has endorsed Iran's right to enrich uranium. So let's stop and think about it. This is a deal he has cut. He said: All right. We will pull off our sanctions so you will be able to receive the benefit of that. At the same time we are going to let you go ahead and continue to enrich uranium.

He has allowed Iran to keep 19,000 centrifuges while unlocking $7 billion in assets. These are assets that were held which they can now use to their benefit. He has just extended the deal by agreeing to provide Iran with an additional $2.8 billion in frozen assets. That brings the $7 billion up to almost $10 billion. While Iran is building a bomb, Obama is releasing sanctions.

I believe the Iranians are using negotiations to buy time as they are developing their nuclear weapon. Again, Netanyahu called the President's agreement a ``historic mistake'' that is making the world a much more dangerous place. History is going to prove that he is right. Obama should demand Iran dismantle its nuclear program, but he will not do it. We should reinstate full sanctions now and consider additional sanctions. But President Obama will not do it.

Does anyone really believe Iran is not involved with Hamas and its attacks?

Today, Obama is rewarding Iran by releasing more financial assets to Iran, funding that will be used to support more terrorism against Israel. There is little to show for the administration's reckless gamble for Israel. President Obama is negotiating with an Iranian regime that has repeatedly deceived us and concealed its nuclear program for over 2 decades.

I see nothing different in this deal. Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood, surrounded by terrorists who refuse to even acknowledge the Jewish state's right to exist. They need all the friends they can get. I keep hearing people talk about the two-state solution. The two- state solution between Hamas and Israel is kind of interesting because Hamas does not consider Israel to be a state. So how can you have a two-state solution if you only have one state? That is the situation.

That is why I want to salute the country of Egypt. There are some other friends that we have over there. I have been upset with some of the Members here in this body because they do not have an appreciation for what Egypt does and the part they play in the Middle East and their support for Israel. Let me tell you, this started a long time ago. The Camp David Accords was in 1979. In the Camp David Accords they made a deal with Israel. Now, you have to keep in mind that this was the military of Egypt. It is hard for people in this country to see that sometimes there is a difference between the administration in a country and the military.

So it is the military here that has said: We will be protecting Israel. We had, not too long ago, an effort from this body to try to stop the shipment of some F-16s that Egypt had already bought. Now, granted, that was back during President Morsi and his radical Muslim Brotherhood. But nonetheless, these were going not to him but to the military. The newly elected President Sisi has destroyed--he is working right along with the Israelis. He has been involved, and his people and his military, in destroying over 90 percent of the tunnels that are going from the Sinai to Gaza.

So I only mention this because those individuals who do not understand this might consider punishing Egypt. If you punish Egypt, you are punishing, to the same degree, Israel.

The turbulent times we face serve as a reminder why the United States and Israel have to continue to work together. The same enemies that threaten the existence of Israel also want to destroy America. Over the years the United States has greatly benefited from the cooperation with Israel on missile defense technologies. We have to continue that critical partnership. Israel is our most faithful ally, our most critical partner in the region, and acts as a roadblock against terrorism, terrorism that would be hitting the United States of America.

The United States stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel and supports its right to defend itself.

Since his first budget, President Obama has been degrading our military while also making the world more dangerous through an apologetic and reactive foreign policy of appeasement. I often quote Hiram Mann, who said:

No man escapes

When freedom fails,

The best men rot in filthy jails;

And they who cried: ``Appease, Appease!''

Are hanged by men they tried to please.

We have to get out of that system. We have to stand by Israel and hang tough with our best friend. We can't survive without them.

I often look back wistfully at the days of the Cold War. That was back when they had two superpowers in the world, the USSR and the United States. We knew what they had, and they knew what we had. We knew what their capacities were, they knew ours.

They had a system called MAD, mutually assured destruction. It meant: You shoot at you, we will shoot at you. You die, we all die, and everyone is happy.

That doesn't work anymore. Now we have these rogue elements out there

that are developing weapons that can wipe out an entire U.S. city. I am about not just the Middle East but about North Korea also.

So we are looking at the Middle East. We are looking at our only way of defending our allies there and working to stop the capabilities of countries such as Iran to have a weapon that would reach the United States of America. So we have to hang tough with our best friend Israel, and I pray that we do.

Mr. President, first, I thank my good friend, the chairman of the committee, Senator Levin.

It is true that we have worked so closely together--not just the two of us but our staffs directly, the minority and majority staff. It is rare that we have a difference of opinion. When we do, we sit down and work things out, debate, and get things done. So there is a reason, as Senator Levin said, that we have passed this bill for 52 consecutive years.

There are a lot of bills that hit the floor, and some are important, some are not. Some are more important to different Members than others. This is important to everybody. There is not one Senator here who doesn't want to pass a defense authorization bill. When Senator Levin mentioned that it passed by 25 to 1--we have been ready to go since that time. That is why we are encouraging people and have been encouraging people to bring amendments down.

Let me mention that I personally went--as did Senator Levin--to both the majority and the minority leader.

They said: Well, go ahead. You have our go-ahead to get these people to bring down their amendments.

This is very important. And I have to say that one of the problems we had last year was there are a lot of Republicans--and I am on the Republican side. A lot of Republicans had amendments that they didn't think were going to be able to get heard. Well, this is their chance to do that right now.

The count as of today is that 94 amendments have been filed. Of that, 73 are Democratic amendments and only 21 are Republican amendments. So I appeal now to the Republicans because what I don't want to happen is for us to come back and maybe go into some type of lameduck session and find ourselves in the same position we were in last year. Now is the time to preclude that from happening by getting their amendments down. I think we can do it. We have 4 or 5 weeks during this August recess for our staff to work on these. As the chairman said, a lot of these are going to be put together and are going to be accepted and be in the manager's amendment--but not unless Members get them down right now.

We know that right now we are probably in the most perilous situation we have ever been in as a country. I sometimes say that I look wistfully back to the days of the Cold War when we had two superpowers and we knew what they had and they knew what we had and we assured certain destruction if they did anything to us. Now there are places led by people with certainly questionable character and abilities. We have North Korea, Iran, and all these countries developing nuclear weapons. Our intelligence is good but not good enough to be able to know when it is going to come our way. So we have to be ready. That is the primary function of this committee.

We rely on all the people making our Nation safe right now, and they are looking at what we are doing. We need to take care of them in training, readiness, pay, benefits. These are things that are going to happen.

The other day the President came out with the OCO request for $59 billion. In there, he mentioned two programs that--frankly, I have never heard of--either one of them. One was $4 billion to go to the Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund, and the other was $1 billion for the European Reassurance Fund. I don't know what these are.

This is the forum we will use when we start debating the NDAA. It is going to be to get to all these programs that are new on the horizon, to see whether we really want to devote any of our scarce resources to some of these programs. We don't know. When we get the bill on the floor, we will know.

It is too important to our troops to do what we did last year. Not passing it will send a terrible signal to them. But I think it is more important to realize how close we came last year to not having the bill by December 31. If we didn't have it by December 31, just think of what would have happened. If we could not have corrected the situation, we would have had combat pay stopping. We would have had incentive pay for some of the doctors and all that come to a conclusion.

We also would have reenlistment bonuses. Looking at the some of our airmen who are flying sophisticated equipment, people don't realize that to train a new person to get to the level of an F-22 costs about $15 million. However, a reenlistment bonus is about $250,000.

So we look at what we can do by doing the right thing and passing the bill.

We have a lot of serious questions we need to debate on problems in Syria, as Senator McCain was talking about a few minutes ago, and Iraq and Ukraine and Afghanistan. That is why we need to have the NDAA tended to, hopefully as soon as we get back from this recess. The later we put it into the year to act, the more likely many of these provisions could be rolled into one massive Omnibus appropriations bill. We all know how that would play out. It would be rammed through the Senate without amendments and open debate. We want transparency. We want people to have an opportunity to bring their amendments out, and the more we can get between now and when we go into this recess, the more it can be worked out by the staff because they are going to be working all during the recess to get this done. We have all these people risking their lives on our behalf. They certainly deserve to have this bill in a well-thought-out manner.

Right before we came on, Senator Casey was talking about the Afghan women and girls, some of the real tragedies that are taking place right now over there. These are things, the language of which we can correct in this bill. So there is no reason to put it off. We don't want to go through what we went through last time, and now is the time to prepare for that, and all we have to do is get the amendments in. No one should complain later on in November or December about not being able to have their amendments heard if they are not out there right now, bringing their amendments now.

With that, it is my understanding that Senator McCain was going to participate in this plea we are making, but he has a statement he will be submitting for the Record.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

I want to take a moment to thank Carl Levin for his friendship. It has been previously noted that Carl is recognized as having perhaps the greatest intellect in the Senate. Carl has been, for so many years, a forceful fighter against waste in the military, and in recent years he has led the Senate in telling us it is absurd that large multinational corporations are able to avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes by storing their money in offshore tax savings.

He has been a leader on that and for those of us who are concerned about the needs of our kids and elderly and infrastructure, all of the terrible problems facing this country, this is an issue we have to focus on.

I think Senator Carl Levin has been a Senator's Senator. He has been a model of what a good Senator should be, and it is not surprising that people from all political persuasions will come to the floor to thank him for his service.

Senator Levin, thank you very much for your time.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am going to be brief. The truth is that the Senator we are honoring right now, Tom Harkin, will go down in history as one of the great Senators of this particular period in American history. Not many Senators, if any, have a list of enormous accomplishments anywhere close to what Senator Harkin has accomplished.

I would like to tell my colleagues a little story. It turns out that coincidentally, really, I have traveled with Senator Harkin to a number of places around the world as part of congressional delegations. Like most congressional delegations, we meet with the leadership of the country, the President and so forth. But what was interesting in traveling with Senator Harkin is wherever you go, he gets honored by ordinary people in those countries.

We went to Vietnam a number of years ago. Many people will not remember, but the truth is that one of the very first people ever to expose the terrible prison conditions that the South Vietnam Government had established was Tom Harkin. So we go there and we meet people who had been imprisoned in tiger cages, and they said: Senator Harkin, thank you very much for exposing those conditions and improving our lives.

There was a very emotional response.

Then I go with him to Ghana, and it turns out that in Ghana and in countries in Africa, Tom Harkin had been a leader in fighting against child labor. There were kids 8 or 9 years of age who should be in school who were out picking crops. And Tom Harkin, working with people all over the world, had a real impact on getting those kids into school.

We went to a school, a beautiful school which is partially funded by the U.S. Government. We have bright kids who are in school, and they were so proud of the assistance we had given them, where they were in school and not working in fields.

Then we go to Chile. We go to Chile and we meet with the President of Chile, all the dignitaries of Chile. Who knew this? We go to Chile, and Tom Harkin gets an award from the government.

In the very dark days of the Pinochet government, when the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was overthrown in a violent coup by Pinochet--with, unfortunately, the assistance of the U.S. Government--and people were rounded up and put into prison camps and tortured and killed, Tom Harkin goes knocking on the door to one of the prison camps. He goes knocking on the door-- pretty crazy, but that is what he did. He was met with soldiers with guns. But he exposed that particular prison camp and played a role in facilitating the ending of some of the more barbaric actions of the Pinochet government.

Those are three trips I made with him. That is about all. I am sure he has gone on other trips. That is a pretty good record, internationally.

Then, back home, in terms of disability issues, I can remember and others can remember that 30, 40, 50 years ago, families had kids born with disabilities, and often those kids were institutionalized, they were hidden, they were an embarrassment to the family. Something bad happened; there was a child with a disability--Down syndrome, whatever it may be. Think about the revolution that has taken place, the mainstreaming of those kids. I know in Vermont and all over this country, kids with disabilities who are sitting in classrooms right now, loved and respected by their fellow students, educating their fellow students, making them more human, more compassionate. I think many of us have been to high school graduations where people with disabilities get their diploma and people stand up and applaud those kids.

There has been a transformation of the culture in terms of how we deal with people with disabilities through the Americans with Disabilities Act. That didn't happen by accident. Tom Harkin wasn't the only person who did it, but he helped lead the effort here in the U.S. Congress to say that people with disabilities are part of the human community and we are going to treat them with the dignity they deserve.

Then we have all the other issues that people have talked about. Probably nobody in the Congress has been a stronger fighter for working people and organized labor than Tom Harkin.

I think people come here, regardless of political persuasion, to try to make a difference and do what they think is right. We disagree about what is right, but I think when we look at the list of accomplishments and the enormously hard work that has gone into those accomplishments, this man, Tom Harkin, will go down as one of the great Senators of our period.

Tom, thank you so much for all you have done.

Later today or tomorrow, we are going to be dealing with the $1 trillion omnibus bill, and I will explain why I will be firmly voting against that bill.

But before I do, I think it is important to put the budget in the broader context of what is happening in America. We can't look at a budget in the abstract; we have to see it in the context. The context is that right now most Americans understand the middle class of this country is disappearing.

Median family income has gone down by $5,000 since 1999. Today the median male worker is making $700 less in inflation-adjusted dollars than he made 41 years ago. The median female worker is making $1,300 less than she made 7 years ago. Meanwhile, while the middle class disappears and we have more people living in poverty than at almost any time in modern American history, the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. We have massive wealth inequality in America. One family, the Walton family, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. The top one-tenth of 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of the American people. Today, unbelievably, 95 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent and corporate profits are at an all-time high. That is the overall reality of what is going on with the American economy today. And in the midst of that, we have the budget. So let's talk a little about this $1 trillion budget and how it addresses or doesn't address the problems facing our country.

Are there good things in this budget? The answer is: Absolutely. I am chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, and I want to thank Chairman Mikulski and others for making sure that our VA gets the kind of budget they need. Included in that budget, by the way, is also a provision called advanced appropriations for the VA, which will mean that in the event of a government shutdown, veterans will still be able to get the disability benefits they desperately need. And there are other provisions in there that are very good.

But overall, if you look at the budget in the context of contemporary American society, this is simply not a good budget. Let me pick up three points where I have strong disagreements.

I think the vast majority of the American people understand that we have huge unmet needs in this country. I expect in the Chair's State of Virginia, in Vermont, and all over this country we all know our infrastructure is crumbling--our roads, bridges, water systems, wastewater plants. Our rail system is falling behind Europe, Japan, China. We have enormous work to be done. The American Society of Civil Engineers tells us we have to invest $3 trillion into rebuilding our infrastructure.

In terms of college, we know there are hundreds of thousands of bright young people who can't afford to go to college. Others are graduating school saddled forever with these terrible debts from college or graduate school.

This budget doesn't address those problems. It doesn't address the crisis of childcare, and the fact that in Vermont and around the country it is very hard for working-class families to get quality, affordable childcare.

But what this budget does do--people don't know it--roughly 60 percent of the budget goes to defense spending. It goes to defense spending. Sixty percent of the discretionary budget goes not to our kids, not to our elderly, not to students, not to working people, not to the infrastructure, not to all of the huge unmet needs we face as a country, but it goes to the military.

Does anyone here deny we need a strong military, a strong National Guard? I don't. We do. But sometimes, in tough times, you have to make tough decisions. And I think spending $554 billion on the military is too much.

I would point out, Mr. President, what I am sure you know; that it is clear--it has been admitted--that the military can't even audit itself. We don't even know effectively and appropriately how the military is spending its money. They do not even have the computer technology to tell us where they are spending.

What we also know is that cost overruns in the military are extraordinary. Time after time after time an agreement is reached about how much a weapons system will cost, and it turns out the contractor was just joking because there is a huge overrun. And then we have fraud. Fraud. Virtually every major military contractor has been involved in fraud resulting in either convictions or settlements with the government.

So we have folks here who last year were talking about cuts in nutrition programs, education, health care--you name it, programs that are life and death for working families--yet when it comes to the military, we can spend $554 billion. I think that is too much.

Second of all, when you look at the global economy and you look at our international partners, I find it interesting that every other major country on Earth provides health care for all of their people as a right except the United States; yet in terms of their defense spending, they are spending a heck of a lot less than we are. We are spending now almost--almost--as much as the entire rest of the world combined.

So I object in this bill to the significant amount of money being spent on the military, and I would have hoped

there would be more opposition to this large military expenditure.

The second point I want to make, and it has not gotten a whole lot of attention, is the impact this legislation will have on working people in terms of cuts in pensions. There are provisions in this bill, written in secret, which allow significant cuts in benefits for retirees who are members of multiemployer pension plans.

Let me quote from a recent Washington Post article regarding the change in this bill:

The change would alter 40 years of federal law and could

affect millions of workers, many of them part of a shrinking

corps of middle-income employees in businesses such as

trucking, construction and supermarkets.

Reuters mentions this:

The centerpiece is a provision that would open the door to

cutting current beneficiaries' benefits, a retirement policy

taboo and a potential disaster for retirees on fixed incomes.

What does that mean? When you go to work for a company, you get wages, you get benefits, but you also, in some cases, get a promise in terms of a pension--what you will get when you retire after 20 years, 30 years, 40 years of work. What this bill does is allow companies to renege on that promise. It is my understanding that, in some cases, the cuts in pensions could be draconian. I am talking about a 50-percent cut.

Imagine somebody who has worked his or her entire life, expects to retire with a certain level of income, and suddenly, after 20, 30, 40 years of work, wakes up in the morning and finds out that promise has been cut in half. Wow. That is awful. That is totally awful.

I remember back, as the American people do, that Wall Street--the CEOs of Wall Street--engaged in illegal and reckless behavior, which drove this economy into the worst recession in modern history, impacting millions and millions of people's lives. And what happened to Wall Street? Well, Congress bailed them out. Congress bailed out the folks on Wall Street whose criminal action caused the recession. Yet now we have working people who have done nothing wrong except work their entire lives--10, 20, 30 years--and through no fault of their own, they are not getting bailed out. They are going to see a 50- percent reduction in their pensions.

That is unacceptable and that opens--it just opens up a future in terms of pensions which I think is very frightening for the American people. So I can't support that provision as well.

The last point I want to make is getting back to Wall Street. In my very strong opinion, we have reached the stage with Wall Street where the major financial institutions are just too big, they are just too powerful. Anyone who thinks that Congress regulates Wall Street has got it backwards. The reality is that Wall Street, with their incredible wealth and lobbying capabilities and campaign contributions, regulates the United States Congress. You cannot see a better example of that than what is in this legislation.

This is the headline from a recent article in the New York Times: ``Banks' Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this article.

And let me quote from that article:

In a sign of Wall Street's resurgent influence in

Washington, Citigroup's recommendations were reflected in

more than 70 lines of the House committee's 85-line bill. Two

crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with

other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word.

In other words, it is not even Members of Congress writing these bills, it is Wall Street writing the bills and getting them into this legislation.

Now what does this legislation do? Well, we suffered the worst economic crisis since the 1930s because of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street. What Wall Street did is engage in absolutely reckless speculation, and then the chickens came home to roost. People could not pay back the debts they incurred on subprime mortgages, and the entire financial system of the United States of America and the world was on the verge of collapse. So Congress, a few years ago, passed Dodd-Frank. It didn't go anywhere near as far as I would go. I believe we should break up these major financial institutions. I don't believe you can control them. I don't believe you can regulate them. They regulate the Congress. But Dodd-Frank took some steps toward that, and there was one provision I will quote--section 716.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this section I am going to quote from.

This is the title of the provision, 716, that this bill repeals: ``Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailouts of Swaps Entities.''

Now to quote from that section:

(A) Prohibition on Federal Assistance--notwithstanding any

other provision of law (including regulations), no Federal

assistance may be provided to any swaps entity with respect

to any swap, security-based swap, or other activity of the

swaps entity.

That is what is being repealed. So Wall Street, as a result of the work of Citigroup and the other Wall Street companies, can now continue to engage in reckless derivatives speculation. And when they make a whole lot of money, they get richer. But when they lose money, because of the repeal of this provision, it is the taxpayers of this country who have to bail them out.

Does anybody--anybody--think that makes any sense at all? That is in this bill.

So for those reasons and more, I would hope very much that the Senate rejects this agreement and that we renegotiate. No one wants to see the government shut down, but we must negotiate an agreement that is much fairer to the American people and to the working families of our country.

With that, I yield the floor.

I yield to the Senator from Michigan.

About 10 minutes.

I rise to speak about a topic that we don't talk about enough, which is what is happening in Afghanistan with regard to women and girls.

I know the senior Senator from Arizona was speaking about Syria before I had recognition, and I am grateful to him for the work we have done together. He is working with me and others on the best way forward for us to have a constructive impact on what is happening, working to get more dollars and more efforts in the direction of supporting the well-vetted Syrian opposition. I am grateful to him for his compassion and his commitment on this issue, and we look forward to working with him going forward.

I rise today to talk about an issue that we don't focus on enough here and that is the outlook for Afghan women and the children who have grown up during the past 13 years of war in Afghanistan. Children all too often are the innocent victims of the conflict.

According to a recent report by the U.N. Secretary General to the Security Council in Afghanistan, child casualties increased by 30 percent between 2012 and 2013.

While reporting was limited by the security environment, there were at least 790 documented incidents in which 545 children were killed and 1,149 were injured. That is just a snapshot of the horror that so many children have suffered in Afghanistan. Armed opposition groups such as the Taliban are responsible for a majority of the recorded child casualties.

I have spoken on the floor a number of times about the substantial improvements that have been made in Afghanistan, with significant United States support. Our tax dollars, our people, and our government have helped enormously to get greater numbers of Afghan children, especially girls, into school. Where there were once only a few educational opportunities, now more than 8.3 million children are in school, boys and girls. By

one assessment, up to 40 percent of those 8.3 million children are girls.

The security situation and persistent Taliban aggression in Afghanistan continue to threaten this progress. According to the same U.N. report, there were at least 73 reported attacks on schools. In some especially horrifying incidents, improvised explosive devices--we know them as IEDs--were planted inside school premises. The American people should be proud of the sacrifices that have already been made by our fighting men and women and our diplomats who have served in Afghanistan and the progress--which I have just mentioned--that has been made. As the political transition approaches and we prepare for a full security transition, this issue merits continued focus.

In 2013 and 2014, I led a bipartisan effort with Senator Ayotte to include language in the National Defense Authorization Act that highlights the security issues Afghan women and girls face and promotes the recruitment and retention of women in the Afghan National Security Forces.

I focused on the issue because I believe the future of women and girls is critical, essential, to the stability of Afghanistan going forward and consequently our own national security interests in the region. According to the Institute for Inclusive Security: ``There is evidence that women in uniform are more likely than their male colleagues to de-escalate tensions and less likely to use excessive force.''

Some improvements have been made to recruit and retain women in the Afghan National Security Forces. For example, earlier this month, 51 women graduated from the Afghan National Police Academy. These women defy the Taliban's threats by serving as police officers.

During the elections earlier this year, female police officers and searchers helped secure polling stations for women, and their effect was tangible: significant turnout by female voters despite serious security threats.

Although significant progress has been made in women's rights and security, there are still far too many horrific incidents of violence against women and children.

I was particularly disturbed, as I know many women were, by an article that ran in the New York Times on July 19 entitled: ``Struggling to Keep Afghan Girl Safe After a Mullah is Accused of Rape.'' That is the name of the article dated July 19.

The article describes how a 10-year-old Afghan girl was raped by a mullah in a mosque. A local women's shelter took in the young girl after the attack to protect her from her own family, who were planning to carry out an honor killing. The activists at the shelter received death threats in addition to the threats to the girl.

Once the young girl recovered, she was returned to her family. However, as the article concludes: ``Those caring for the girl said she had been terribly homesick and wanted to return to her family, but no one had the heart to tell her they had been conspiring to kill her.''

To say that this story is heartbreaking doesn't begin to translate the horror of what some young girls have to face in Afghanistan and other parts of the world as well. Extremists will no doubt continue to threaten women leaders and target innocent children in an effort to terrorize the Afghan people during this transition. We should send an unequivocal message that the United States continues to stand with Afghan women and children and that we see them as an important part of building a stable and secure Afghanistan.

In an effort to honor the sacrifices of the American people and our service men and women, and to make sure those sacrifices are remembered, we have to make sure that we take steps in the Senate. I filed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, and I am grateful again for the work Senator Ayotte has done with me. We were joined most recently by several cosponsors, Senator Shaheen, Senator Warner, and Senator Boxer.

This amendment will address three main issues:

No. 1, continue to prioritize recruitment and retention of women in the Afghan National Security Forces.

No. 2. Support police units that are specially trained to work with female or adolescent victims and increase the number of female security officers specifically trained to address cases of gender-based violence. This would include ensuring Afghan National Police's Family Response Units have the necessary resources and are available to women across Afghanistan.

No. 3. Finally, emphasize the need to maintain the female searcher capabilities that were established in the April 2014 Presidential elections and for the 2015 parliamentary elections.

We must ensure that the gains made by Afghan women in every sector of society are preserved in a post-2014 Afghanistan. It is in our national security interests to help prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming a safe haven and training ground for international terrorism.

We have seen from the recent events in Iraq what happens after a security transition if some groups are marginalized. As we approach transition in Afghanistan, women and young people should not just be the target of Taliban violence; they should be full partners in building a stable Afghanistan.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I am especially grateful to the senior Senator from Connecticut for his words tonight and the challenge those words present to us. We are grateful for his efforts to stand for children.

I rise tonight to speak about children here in the United States. I spoke earlier about issues that related to women

and girls and children generally in Afghanistan. But I wanted to highlight a report that came out recently by one of the leading organizations in the country that charts the well-being of children over time and advocates on their behalf. The name of the organization that many here have heard of, I am sure, is the Annie E. Casey Foundation--no relation to me--a foundation that has made it its mission to advocate on behalf of children. We cannot be an effective advocate--none of us--unless we chart their progress and find out what is working. So I am going to briefly summarize tonight the findings of the 2014 Kids County Report by the Casey Foundation.

I have here at the lectern kind of a color-coded chart which I will not hold up because I do not have an enlarged version of it. I will not be able to have it printed in the Record.

I want to summarize it. Basically, what is in front of me is a summary of various categories that the Annie E. Casey Foundation has developed to chart the well-being of children. They separate the comparisons into four sections, and then they determine whether over time--whether it is over 4 or 5 years or over a longer period of time-- whether for children the indicators have worsened or improved. It is a very basic set of metrics.

The categories they track for children are the following four categories: first, economic well-being, and I will talk about some of the indicators there; second, education; third, health; and fourth, a category they call family and community.

The basic indicators for the entire United States--of course, they have a breakdown for how the children in every State are doing on those indicators. For example, in terms of what is getting better, we should highlight and note when there are improvements made. I think the fact that we have improvements on these indicators for children over time indicates that public policy matters, what happens here in the Congress matters, what happens across the country in nonprofit organizations and advocacy organizations that fight every day for children and say over and over again, as the advocates tell us, that children are not small adults--we need specific strategies for children, whether it is for health care or for early education or to make sure they get enough to eat or to protect them from predators. Whatever the issue, we have to have specific strategies for children.

Let's go through a couple of areas where there has been improvement-- not dramatic improvement, not enough improvement for us to say we have achieved a measure of success on one metric and we can move on.

In the area of education, just by way of example, eighth grade children--eighth graders not proficient in math, so it is kind of almost a negative indicator the way it is phrased. In 2005, across the United States, 72 percent of eighth graders were not proficient in math--a very high number, 72 percent. When they looked at it again in 2013, it was down to 66. So it has improved by 6 percentage points, but thankfully it is moving in the right direction. But we can't be satisfied with 66 percent of eighth graders not--not--proficient in math, but it is good news it is moving in the right direction.

Another bit of good news and maybe a more urgent issue in terms of what happens to very young children--in this case, low birth weight babies--there is an improvement there from 2005 to 2012. So over 7 years, the percentage of low birth weight babies, according to this data, has gotten better, but the unfortunate part is it only went from 8.2 percent to 8 percent--not much of an improvement but an improvement.

We have a long way to go in the greatest country in the world when we say that there has been an improvement but still 8 percent of babies are low birth weight. So there is an improvement, but there is a lot more work to do.

Maybe the best area indicator of improvement--and then I will move on to areas where there has been a worsening--children without health insurance. We hear a lot of discussion about health insurance, health care, and the Affordable Care Act in Congress, but in 2008 when that measurement was taken, 18 percent of children did not have health care. So in 2008 it was 10 percent, and as of 2012 it is down to 7 percent. So there is a substantial diminution or reduction in the number of children without health insurance. But if we do the math, 7 percent of the children of the country don't have health insurance. That is a big number. So it is getting better, substantially better, better than almost any other metric in terms of growth or progress, but we have to do a lot more to make sure that it is not 7 percent--that number should be zero--make sure that every child has health insurance. That has to be the goal, and that has to be what we are determined to achieve in the Senate.

I will go through a couple of areas that have worsened, but thankfully, of what is 16 categories, there are more improvement categories than worsening categories. Unfortunately, we have to go through some of the areas where it is worse.

One that is particularly disturbing is children in poverty. That has worsened between the years 2005 and 2012--19 percent in 2005 was the percentage of children in poverty. As of 2012 that went up to 23 percent. So prior to the great recession and then some time after the recession ended, the 2012 number was 23 percent. So that is a worsening number, and it should give us not just pause, but it should be an impetus to action to reduce that number--23 percent of the children in the country in poverty as of 2012. Children whose parents lack secure employment--that number got worse. Children living in households with high-housing-cost burden--that number got worse, unfortunately.

I will give two more, and then I will conclude my remarks. Children in single-parent families--that number got worse between 2005 and 2012. Finally, children living in high-poverty areas--that was measured over a different time period--2000 versus a time period between 2008 and 2012. That number got worse as well.

What this report indicates--and I won't go through the State numbers--is that first and foremost we have to keep records and we have to track progress. But it also indicates that even when there is an improving metric, when the numbers are getting better, say, for example, on low birth weight babies, that improvement is in many cases very slight and not nearly adequate or acceptable.

I think both on the worsening numbers and on the improvement numbers, it should be a call to action. I believe that if we are doing the right thing for our children, if we are living up to what the Scriptures tell us about justice, where the Scriptures talk about ``Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied,'' if we think of how we treat children as a measure or as an indicator of justice and our commitment to justice, we cannot say that these numbers are in any way acceptable, that our hunger and our thirst for that kind of justice cannot be satisfied with these numbers.

We should be committed to not just tracking and making marginal or incremental progress, we should be committed to the full measure of justice for our children.

Hubert Humphrey said--and he may have said it on this floor when he represented Minnesota--``It was once said that the moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.'' He said that was the moral test of a government.

So if we are talking about what Humphrey said about children in the dawn of their life, we have to reflect upon and be motivated by the findings of the Annie E. Casey Foundation report. It is one of those reports that remind us how we can improve when it comes to the well- being of our children, but it also reminds us and I think alarms us about areas where we have not improved and we have a ways to go.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I want to thank the senior Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe, for his leadership, along with Senator Levin, working hand in hand to get the Defense authorization done this year. This is so important. I know all of us would like to have a process where we can have an open amendment process here, but I know that Senator Levin and Senator Inhofe worked very hard. We had this ready to go a long time ago. I thank you for your work and your commitment on this, and I thank you for the way you and Senator Levin have run this committee in a respectful bipartisan manner.

As we look at the importance of the Defense authorization, making sure that we get this done before we go home, we have to understand with the threats we are facing around the world right now, now would not be the time for the first time in over 50-plus years not to pass the Defense authorization, given what it means to support for our men and women in uniform, their readiness, their equipment, the training, the support for their families, military construction, investment in technology that they need to keep us safe.

So I want to thank Senator Inhofe for his work on this. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Senator Levin, who is retiring this year, for being an incredible chairman of this committee. I have to say this has been one of the best experiences I have had since I have gotten to the Senate. I have been here for 4 years, and Senator Levin has conducted this committee and treated everyone with respect. He has gotten us all to work together, where almost every year we passed out the Defense authorization almost unanimously--how often does that happen--and most times unanimously in a divided Congress.

I wish Senator Levin the best, because he has been so knowledgeable and so committed to ensuring that our Nation is safe and committed to our men and women in uniform.

On a personal note, he has been so respectful to me and someone who I think has run the committee so very well and has served our country with such dignity and such dedication. I wish he and his wife Barbara the best in the future.

He is someone whom this body will miss. Certainly as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he has treated everyone on both sides of the aisle with incredible respect and given us opportunities to raise issues that are important to us. I think he is a model of how we should conduct ourselves. We can disagree with each other but still find ways in common ground where we can work together to get things done for the American people.

I come to the floor to discuss the Defense authorization and the provisions in it that are so important to not only my home State of New Hampshire but to the country and also to address some of the provisions I want us to keep an eye on as we go forward. With skill and courage, our men and women in uniform are doing their job. It is essential we do our job as well. In a time of war, we cannot neglect our constitutional duty to provide for the common defense.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee I have been privy to many briefings, as the Presiding Officer has, as a member of the committee about the threats facing our country and the needs of our men and women in uniform, the concerns we have of ensuring our troops are ready and that we are prepared to address potential threats to the country.

In this bill, my home State of New Hampshire, we are a State that is very dedicated to serving, just as the Presiding Officer's State of Virginia is very dedicated to serving. There are many provisions in this bill that I have introduced and supported that I am proud of that will make a difference to our national security and to our men and women in uniform.

I would like to talk about some of those provisions. In terms of supporting our troops and our families, it is very important that we pass this bill every year because it authorizes expiring benefits for our troops that if we don't reauthorize, they would expire, including dozens of specific special incentive pays for our troops and their

families, particularly those who are serving us overseas and facing great danger as we stand here today.

The Defense bill also authorizes more than one dozen provisions to enhance protections for victims of sexual assault and extends to the Secretary of the VA the authority to provide rehabilitation and vocational benefits to servicemembers with severe illnesses and injuries.

It also strengthens the Department of Defense's suicide prevention efforts. Unfortunately, suicide is happening to too many of those who have served our Nation and is an issue that we are so concerned about on a bipartisan basis.

The bill also authorizes $6.3 billion for needed military construction and family housing projects. Included among that authorization are military construction projects at Pease Air National Guard Base in New Hampshire to prepare for the arrival of the KC-46A, not to mention a very important energy conservation project at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The shipyard has continued to invest in energy conservation and to save taxpayer dollars while doing so, and I am pleased it is included in this bill.

The Defense bill also maintains critical close air support capability in the Air Force, which our troops need, in that it ensures that the Air Force cannot prematurely retire the A-10 aircraft in fiscal year 2015.

Having traveled to Afghanistan and hearing directly from the men on the ground, I know how important it is they have the very best air support to keep them safe.

The bill also authorizes continued funding for the Virginia Class 10- boat multiyear procurement program, including two in fiscal year 2015, which is very important because keeping the 10 boat multi-year production and procurement program on track--and I know the President shares this concern--will help achieve savings in excess of 15 percent, compared to purchasing only one per year. It makes cost sense, and we need to continue to invest in our attack submarine program.

With the help of the skilled workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, these submarines will protect vital shipping lanes and U.S. national security interests around the world for decades to come. With the administration's discussion of a shift to the Asia-Pacific and the importance of that area of the world to our economy and our interests, our attack submarine fleet is so critical in meeting our needs around the world.

These measures, which are included in this bill, will help ensure that Portsmouth and Pease will remain valuable national security assets. I am so proud of the members of our National Guard, everyone who serves at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and the incredible workers there who do the maintenance of our attack submarine fleet.

The bill also includes provisions of ``never contracting with the enemy'' legislation. This is legislation which I have previously introduced which has allowed our military to ensure that dollars don't flow to our enemies. So when we are contracting in places such as Afghanistan, we have given them tools to cut off contracts sooner to make sure the contracts aren't going to the wrong people.

This legislation will extend those authorities across the Federal Government, to USAID, and to the State Department to ensure that our taxpayer dollars don't go to people who are acting against our interests. So I appreciate USAID and the State Department working with me on this legislation, and I am very pleased it is included in these provisions.

These are a few of the positive examples of the importance of this Defense authorization bill. There are many other important provisions in this bill. That is why it is important that we get this done today or tomorrow.

There are two areas of issues that I want to address briefly which I am a little concerned about on this bill. As a Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee--and I am also married to a veteran--I plan to vote for this bill because of the positive components. But one of the areas with which I am concerned is that we are again looking at compensation and we are looking at housing allowances of our men and women in uniform. It reminds me a little bit--it is not an exact analogy--of when we had the budget agreement over 1 year ago. There was an adjustment made to the cost-of-living increases. It was a cut, really, in the military retirement of some of those who have served our country.

I was someone who came to the floor to reverse this reduction to the cost-of-living increases, which for some of our men and women in uniform, who had served so admirably, would have cost them up to $80,000 a year in their retirement. We are talking about enlisted people who worked so hard, and it would make such a big difference for them.

One of the reasons I came in that regard to fight against what was included in the budget agreement was because there seemed to be a disconnect.

That budget agreement made changes to civilian retirement but only prospectively to those who were just joining the retirement program. When it came to making the cuts to the military retirement and to their cost of living, it was affecting current recipients. So there seemed to be a disconnect. How could we ask those who have given the most--have sacrificed so much to defend us--to make a sacrifice when we were treating other civilian employees differently. I am pleased Congress reversed that.

What came out of that is that we need to have a greater understanding of the unique sacrifices our men and women in uniform make. The sacrifices they make are different than that of other workers--the traveling they do, the danger they face. Often their spouses can't have second careers because they are constantly moving.

Since 2000, collectively as a Congress, we worked hard to correct the pay-and-benefit structure for those who wear the uniform to close what was a 13.5-percent gap between the private sector and what our men and women in uniform were getting. We eliminated out-of-pocket housing expenses--that used to be 20 percent--and expanded health care for retired military personnel over the age of 65.

But as I look at the provisions of this bill, I don't want us to erode the work we have done to recognize our men and women in uniform and the positions and the danger they face. In this bill, generally, the dollar amounts associated with the provisions about which I am concerned are much smaller than those involved with the COLA debate earlier this year. Again, we are back looking toward our men and women in uniform in several areas.

These problematic provisions relate to the compensation and health benefits for our servicemembers and their families. More specifically, they relate to the basic allowance for housing or BAH, TRICARE pharmacy copays, and basic pay for our servicemembers.

BAH is currently designed to cover 100 percent of servicemembers' monthly housing costs. The BAH provision in this NDAA will allow the Secretary of Defense to reduce BAH payments so they only cover 99 percent of a servicemember's monthly housing costs.

Obviously, that is a small reduction. But it is the significance of the reduction I am concerned about. We can't keep going down this road, where we are trying to choose between military readiness and making sure our men and women in uniform have the compensation they need in terms of compensation and support for their families. That is why I am concerned about this provision.

In terms of pharmacy copays, while the Pentagon's budget request is important to understand, they requested a much greater increase in future years in copays than this body would accept--than the Armed Services committees would accept. The negotiated NDAA would still permit a $3 pharmacy copay increase for non-Active-Duty TRICARE beneficiaries who fill prescriptions outside of military treatment facilities.

Congress has worked hard to close the military-civilian pay gap, but this year's NDAA is once again only set to give our military a 1- percent pay raise for the second straight year.

I believe our military servicemembers deserve a higher pay raise. I will continue to push for that in the future, and I hope it is something we can work together on because we have to keep up with inflation for our men and women in uniform. It is very important.

One of the reasons it is important is that they are our greatest treasure. The reason we have such a wonderful

military--we can have the very best equipment, we can have the greatest technology--but the reason we have the best military in the world is because of our great men and women in uniform.

We can never lose sight of that. We can never lose sight of the importance of our all-volunteer force. As we look at where we are with defense spending, one thing that very much concerns me is the incoming impact of sequester again in 2016 and 2017. It is my hope this body will understand and work together in addressing sequester for our defense because I see us continuing to be in a situation where our military leaders come to us and ask us to take from the men and women in a way that is unacceptable because they are worried about sequester, they are worried about the readiness of our troops, and they are concerned they won't be able to provide the training and equipment our troops need to meet and face the threats around the world and to ensure that our men and women in uniform never become part of a hollow force.

The Presiding Officer serves on the Armed Services Committee with me. It is my hope as we look at this NDAA that we don't set a precedent where we are continuing to take from our military, that we continue to look to how we can work together to address sequester in the coming years, because there is a big disconnect of where we are now. If we impose the sequester in 2016 and 2017 with the threats we face around the world, with what our men and women need to address those threats to keep this country safe, what they deserve in terms of our support, given what we are asking them to do--they are the very best, and they go out and do it on our behalf every single day. It is my hope we can work together.

I have addressed these issues in my additional views to the 2015 Defense authorization, and it is my hope we will recognize the treasure that is our men and women in uniform going forward, that we will cut through the partisan politics, that we will address sequester, and that our men and women in uniform will know that we will continue to stand by them.

This Defense authorization is important, but it also prefaces the challenges we face coming forward in 2016 and 2017, which I believe we will not be able to fully meet unless we come together and address sequester.

We do need to get the Defense authorization done today. There are provisions that are very important for our national security. The issues I have addressed as concerns today I hope we aren't addressing them again next year. I hope we can correct them and make sure that we are giving the men and women in uniform a pay raise that is better than this year. I hope that together we can continue to work on a bipartisan basis in the Armed Services Committee, as Chairman Levin has championed, as Senator Inhofe, as the ranking member has done as well, and I look forward to doing that in the future.

I yield the floor.

Does the distinguished Senator from Utah seek recognition?

The Senator from Utah may proceed, if he wishes.

I will take approximately 20 minutes.

I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized after the Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch.

The distinguished Senator from Utah is one of the most distinguished and ablest lawyers ever to serve in this Senate, and his comments about the patent trolls and patent litigation are entitled to great weight.

I thoroughly agree with him that the use of these shell corporations is something we could and should act quickly to get rid of. I think the protection of an end user, such as a coffee shop or a florist or somebody who is not a competitor with a manufacturer or the patent holder, is something we could and should address. I think policing these often extortionate demand letters is something we could and should address. I look forward to working with the distinguished Senator in those areas.

I think when it comes to fee-shifting, that is a very significant step. The principle in the American system of justice that a party pays his or her own lawyer is so deeply engrained in our system of justice that it is actually known as the American rule. To depart from that is something that I think we should do only with a very--let's put it this way. It is a very grave step and I am not sure it is justified in this case. But certainly we could move on the bill that got rid of shell corporations, that protected end users, and that went after these demand letters, and get into conference and, with any luck, something could be done there. But I very much appreciate Senator Hatch's long and sincere interest in this issue.

Mr. President, I rise today for the 76th time to urge my colleagues that it is time for us to wake up to the growing threats of climate change. Not a single State remains unaffected by the unprecedented changes we are already seeing, driven by the excessive carbon pollution we continue to dump into our oceans and atmosphere.

Yet in Washington, our Republican colleagues either parrot the polluter line that climate change is just a hoax, or stay silent. No one will step forward.

It was not always this way. Environmental protection was once a top priority of the Republican Party. It seems remarkable now, but it is true. In the early 1970s, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act were all passed with broad bipartisan support and signed by a Republican President. In the 1980s and 1990s, bipartisan majorities voted to strengthen those laws, led by Rhode Island's Republican Senator, John Chafee, who served as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee and whose seat I now have the honor to hold.

Conservation and stewardship were once fundamental principles of American conservatism. From seminal thinkers of the conservative movement to great Republican leaders of the 20th century, the conservative ideal included a commitment to the interests of future generations. Today, under a relentless barrage of unlimited corporate spending in our elections, much and perhaps most of it by polluters, the interests of future generations have taken a backseat to the interests of the oil companies and coal barons.

The disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision let polluters cast their dark shadow over Republicans in Congress who might otherwise work with Democrats on curbing their carbon pollution.

Edmund Burke, an Irish-born member of the British Parliament, is considered by many the father of modern conservatism. Sir Winston Churchill called him ``a foremost apostle of liberty.'' Burke was a staunch defender of our American Colonies and his statue stands here in Washington today. His 1790 conservative manifesto, ``Reflections on the Revolution in France,'' cautioned that we are but ``temporary possessors'' of our society. If individuals are ``unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors or of what is due to their posterity,'' he wrote, ``no one generation could link with another. Men would become little better than flies of summer.''

In our case, flies of a carbon-fueled summer.

Russell Kirk was a distinguished scholar at the Heritage Foundation who none other than President Ronald Reagan dubbed ``the prophet of American conservatism.'' He wrote a 1970 piece for the Baltimore Sun: ``Conservation Activism Is a Healthy Sign.'' Kirk wrote: ``Nothing is more conservative than conservation.''

The noted essayist and Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry, known for what the American Conservative magazine called his ``unshakeable devotion to the land, to localism, and to the dignity of traditional life,'' wrote in 1993:

Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or

stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it

is the most horrid blasphemy.

Berry would also remind us in this Chamber that ``[w]hether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is a party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes.''

No figure in American history embodied the conservative value of conservation more than President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt resented the ``malefactors of wealth,'' as he called them, the timber and mining interests whose ``selfish and shortsighted greed seeks to exploit our natural resources in such fashion as to ruin them and thereby to leave our children and our children's children heirs only to an exhausted and impoverished inheritance.'' To Roosevelt, this great land of ours was the birthright of all Americans--past, present, and future--to be used, to be sure, in achieving our destiny, but not wasted.

He wrote to Congress in 1907:

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and

exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its

usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our

children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand

down to them.

That is a sentiment echoed by Republican Presidents throughout our history, including President Dwight Eisenhower, whose 1961 farewell address invoked this national legacy. Here is what he said:

As we peer into society's future, we--you and I, and our

government--must avoid the impulse to live only for today,

plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious

resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets

of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their

political and spiritual heritage.

Republican President Gerald Ford, who once worked actually as a National Park ranger, said this in 1975:

We have too long treated the natural world as an adversary

rather than as a life-sustaining gift from the Almighty. If

man has the genius to build, which he has, he must also have

the ability and the responsibility to preserve.

And, of course, no one is more revered by today's Republican Party than Ronald Reagan. His conservative credentials are unassailable and GOP candidates for elected office strive mightily to out-Reagan each other at every turn. In 1984, Reagan put this question to his fellow Republicans:

What is a conservative after all but one who conserves, one

who is committed to protecting and holding close the things

by which we live? . . . And we want to protect and conserve

the land on which we live--our countryside, our rivers and

mountains, our planes and meadows and forests. That is our

patrimony. That is what we leave to our children. And our

great moral responsibility is to leave it to them either as

we found it or better than we found it.

President Ronald Reagan's words would make him a fringe liberal candidate in today's extremist Republican Party.

In Congress, we have been boxed in by a barricade of special interest propaganda and we refuse to admit the plain evidence piling up before our eyes. We know with ever greater certainty what our carbon pollution is doing to the climate, what it is doing to our atmosphere, what it is doing to our oceans. And we know with ever greater certainty what that means for the planet and future generations. What do Republicans in Congress today have to say to our heirs, to our children and grandchildren?

``Catastrophic global warming is a hoax,'' says one of my Republican colleagues.

``It's not proven by any stretch of the imagination,'' says another.

A third dismisses the issue altogether, saying, ``A lot of this is condescending elitism.'' That is the voice of today's Republican Party.

But what does the next generation have to say back to these Republican voices of denial? More than half of young Republican voters said they would describe a politician who denies climate change is happening as ignorant, out of touch, or crazy--not my words, their words in the poll: ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. That is what the next generation says back to the Republican voices of denial.

Unfortunately, if one is a Republican in Congress today, it is more likely than not that one either holds that view or is afraid to say otherwise. According to one analysis, 58 percent of congressional Republicans in the 113th Congress have denied or questioned the overwhelming scientific consensus that the Earth's oceans and atmosphere are changing in unprecedented ways, driven by our carbon pollution. This includes, I am sad to report, every single Republican member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. And where there is not denial, there is silence.

Outside these barricaded walls, it is different. Outside Congress, more and more Republicans acknowledge the threat of climate change and call for responsible solutions. Former Members of Congress, free now from the polluters' thrall, implore their colleagues to return to their conservative principles. Former Representative Bob Inglis, for example, invokes the tenets of conservative economics. Here is his quote:

If you're a conservative, it is time to step forward and

engage in the climate and energy debate because we have the

answer--free enterprise. . . . Conservatives understand that

we must set the correct incentives, and this should include

internalizing pollution and other environmental costs in our

market system. We tax income but we don't tax emissions. It

makes sense to conservatives to take the tax off something we

want more of, income, and shift the tax to something we want

less of, emissions.

Sherwood Boehlert and Wayne Gilchrest, former Republican representatives from New York and Maryland, also argue for a market- based approach to reducing carbon pollution. Here is what they said:

We could slash our debt by making powerplants and oil

refineries pay for the carbon emissions that endanger our

health and environment. This policy would strengthen our

economy, lessen our dependence on foreign oil, keep our skies

clean, and raise a lot of revenue.

Top advisors to former Republican Presidents have joined the chorus. William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly, Christine Todd Whitman all headed the Environmental Protection Agency during Republican administrations. They all recently testified before the Environment and Public Works Committee that it is time to get serious about climate change. Here is how they put it in a New York Times op- ed. They wrote:

As administrators of the EPA under Presidents Richard M.

Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held

fast to common-sense conservative principles--protecting the

health of the American people, working with the best

technology available and trusting in the innovation of

American business and in the market to find the best

solutions for the least cost.

These former officials recognize both the wisdom of properly pricing carbon and the truculence of the opponents who stand in the way of progress. ``A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,'' they say--``the best path''--``but that is unachievable in the current political gridlock in Washington. . . .'' I would interject that political gridlock is the product of big-spending polluters who profit from the gridlock that they create. But let me continue with what the EPA Administrators said: ``But we must continue efforts to reduce the climate-altering pollutants that threaten our planet. The only uncertainty about our warming world,'' they wrote, ``is how bad the changes will get, and how soon. What is most clear is that there is no time to waste.'' Four Republican EPA Administrators.

One day folks are going to look back at this time and we are all going to be judged very harshly with all the dread power that history has to inflict on wrong. The polluters and their instruments will be judged harshly, and the Republican Party will be judged harshly for letting itself be led astray by polluters from its most basic conservative values. Unless they step up, Republicans will leave--to borrow language from Russell Kirk--``[t]he principle of real leadership ignored, the immortal objects of society forgotten, practical conservatism degenerated into mere laudation of private enterprise, economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests.'' That is about as good a description of where they are right now as I could muster, and it comes from the conservative Russell Kirk.

We cannot do this alone, not with the numbers that we have. Republicans and Democrats alike must approach this climate problem head on with the full conviction of our ideals, but working together, working in good faith, and working on a common platform of fact and common sense to protect the American people and our American economy from the looming effects of carbon pollution.

We must rise to our duty here and place our own natural resources, our own American international reputation, and our legacy to future American generations first, ahead of the poisonous influence of the polluters that so dominates this debate now.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.