North Atlantic Energy Security Act

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, the great pamphleteer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, famously characterized our Nation at its founding by asserting that in America the law is king. This sentiment has undergirded centuries of our Nation's political culture: The rule of law protects us from arbitrary government actions. It is what guarantees our liberties, it is what fosters our prosperity and our flourishing as a free people, and it is a source of our Republic's legitimacy. For as the Declaration of Independence teaches, governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

For these reasons, when drafting the Constitution, the Framers obligated the President to take care that our laws be faithfully executed, but they were careful not to give the President the authority to make or change the law on his own.

Our Nation's Founders knew, in the sage words of Montesquieu, that ``in all tyrannical governments . . . the right both of making and of enforcing the laws is vested in one and the same man, or . . . body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.''

To safeguard our liberties as the Constitution requires, the Constitution vests Federal legislative powers in the Congress--the House of Representatives and the Senate--which were designed to engage in a particularly thorough and deliberative legislative process. By ratifying the Constitution, the American people established this system as the supreme law of the land applying to all of us--including the President.

Despite these Constitutional foundations, President Obama has simply decided that he ``won't take no for an answer'' when Congress refuses to go along with his far left agenda. In direct opposition to our centuries-old system of legislation and the binding authority of the Constitution, the President has audaciously declared that ``when Congress won't act, I will.'' And he has followed up these threats with a variety of unilateral executive actions, many of which are flatly inconsistent with the law and the Constitution.

Over the past weeks and months I have come to the Senate floor to speak out about a series of specific instances that exemplified the brazen lawlessness of this administration. This pervasive and illegitimate outreach has come in many different forms. We have seen the President regulate contrary to the plain text of the law, simply ignoring the clear commands of duly enacted Federal statutes. For example, a hallmark of the President's so-called pen-and-phone strategy has been an Executive order forcing contractors to raise their minimum wage. He issued this directive despite the fact that a Federal statute already governs the minimum wage for Federal contractors.

Although a different statute gives the President some discretion in the area of Federal procurement, its plain language demands, as courts of law have upheld, that there be a sufficient nexus between the President's orders and the statute's stated goal of efficiency and economy in Federal procurement. President Obama's order increasing contractors' labor costs by hiking their minimum wage is thus wholly inconsistent with the law.

We have seen the Obama administration seek to rewrite existing law and thereby usurp Congress's legislative authority through the use of conditioned waivers. Consider how the Department of Education has issued waivers of No Child Left Behind's requirements to 43 of the 50 States and the District of Columbia.

Even when Democrats had large majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, President Obama refused to pursue legislative reauthorization of the statute to set realistic goals going forward. Apparently, he wanted to avoid spending his energies and political capital on a legislative process that might expose divisions within his own party or force him to compromise.

The President chose simply to establish an entirely different set of education policies by attaching his own conditions to the waivers that States need to receive Federal money. His administration has not been shy about enforcing conditions that bear little resemblance to provisions of the law itself.

The State of Washington learned this recently when it became the first to lose its waiver and much of its Federal funding primarily because it did not meet the administration's mandate for teacher and principal evaluation--a mandate that has no grounding in the actual statute.

We have seen President Obama and his subordinates stretch what lawful authorities the executive branch does have beyond recognition to advance its preferred policies. Take, for example, the Nation's drug laws, an area in which the Obama administration decided it disagrees with the criminal statutes on the books and wants to implement a different policy. The President has demonstrated an eagerness to do so unilaterally, no matter the governing Federal law, and no matter the broad and bipartisan support for sentencing reform in Congress. The administration's new clemency push for drug

offenders seeks to employ the President's specific constitutional power--one limited to relieve individual instances of injustice--to provide relief to large swaths of criminals who fit a few broad criteria. The President has also directed major changes over which Federal drug crimes are charged and at what level to do this. His administration has cited prosecutorial discretion--a limited authority derived from the power to adapt enforcement for an individual's specific circumstances--to implement what are, in fact, broad standards affecting thousands upon thousands of prosecutions.

Given the scope of these actions, compared to the Executive's narrowly tailored authorities, the administration's invocation of prosecutorial discretion and the clemency power have become transparent excuses to justify flouting existing Federal law.

We have seen President Obama claim the power to gut the law by unilaterally creating gaping enforcement carve-outs, thereby effectively rewriting policy set by legislation. Take immigration, an area in which many of us--myself included--support reform but which is currently governed by existing law. For years the Obama administration has advanced a growing number of enforcement carve-outs for increasingly expansive classes of illegal immigrants. First, it exempted those brought here as children, then veterans, then their families. Now the administration is contemplating excluding from the application of duly enacted immigration law anyone who has not committed serious felonies. While nearly everyone agrees that violent criminals should be our highest priority, the administration has gone much further and essentially declared its intention to make current immigration law a dead letter in virtually every other case.

We have seen the Obama administration openly ignore its statutory obligations without meaningful justification. Consider the President's decision to release the top five Taliban leaders in U.S. custody without notifying Congress, as required by Federal law. The administration's excuses for delaying notification could not stand up to scrutiny under the President's own rationales. Indeed, the administration's own statements demonstrate that it deliberately withheld advance notification of the release from Congress for the illegitimate purpose of minimizing congressional opposition.

We have seen some of the Obama administration's worst abuses of executive power in creating and implementing its signature legislative programs. In Dodd-Frank, for example, the administration created a new agency with unprecedented and unchecked power--no meaningful administrative controls on its power, no congressional control over its budget, and no effective judicial review of its far-reaching decisions.

And of course, any discussion of executive overreach by this administration must include ObamaCare. Back when the administration was writing that 2,000-plus page monstrosity, the bill's proponents argued that its length and complexity were necessary evils--that its many intricate parts were essential to achieving the bill's promised objectives.

The individual mandate, the employer mandate, the minimum coverage requirements, the cuts to Medicare Advantage, and the limits for subsidies to State-run exchanges--we were promised these provisions and others were both critical and carefully timed to expand coverage and rein in costs. Yet, when the time came to implement the law, the administration's tune changed. To justify violating a number of clear statutory mandates, the administration has mustered a weak and unconvincing hodgepodge of legal acrobatics--all for the purpose of allowing the administration to avoid enforcing the central provisions of its own signature law.

Consider some of these particularly egregious justifications: claiming that limited transition authority exercised by one agency justified another agency exerting that power even more broadly; or asserting that subjective impressions of excessive cost could justify a hardship exemption, when the statute specifically defines excessive costs in objective terms; or defining explicit, carefully timed deadlines written into the law by Congress, the timing of which is supposed to anchor the whole statutory scheme; or abusing a small pilot program to mitigate the law's vast cuts to Medicare Advantage; or simply ignoring a critical provision limiting how billions of dollars in tax subsidies are to be spent.

These are only a few examples of this administration's lawlessness in implementing ObamaCare. I could continue on about the significant legal concerns surrounding this administration's abusive handling of high- risk pools, its dubious actions involving the small business exchange, its sweetheart deals granting unauthorized exemptions for labor unions, and many other similarly problematic actions.

But the point is clear: Time and again, the Obama administration has flouted its constitutional responsibilities, exceeded its legitimate authority, ignored duly enacted law, and sought to escape any accountability for its unilateralism.

Today I have simply scratched the surface of the Obama administration's legally dubious actions. I could also discuss the way the administration is manipulating the Endangered Species Act to assert control over private property, or the EPA's many abuses: its existing source rule, its cross-State air pollution rule, its waters of the United States rule, and its CAFE standards. Or I could catalog the illegal actions of the President's appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the Federal Communications Commission.

In each of these areas, the Obama administration's executive overreach simply cannot stand--and it won't. The President is rightly facing increased scrutiny and criticism in a range of areas for his illegitimate approach. Over the past two weeks, the Supreme Court strongly rebuked the President's lawlessness in three key cases.

The Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA case involves one of the most controversial issues debated today: regulating carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to stop global warming. Americans and their elected representatives have been seriously debating whether and how to pursue that, just as we should when weighty matters of national policy are considered. Congress has considered various pieces of legislation over the years to grant Federal authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, most notably President Obama's 2009 cap-and-trade bill. Each time we have considered such legislation, the majority of us have made the careful choice that the purported benefits are not worth the undeniably massive costs: hundreds of thousands of jobs destroyed and gas and electricity prices sent soaring.

President Obama, though, told us again that he ``won't take no for an answer''--or, in other words, that he refuses to accept that the Constitution delegates to the people's representatives in Congress--and not to him alone--the power to make or change the law. Defying Congress and the law, he claimed authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions from powerplants. But the Clean Air Act plainly does not provide him that authority.

In attempting to provide a shred of legal justification for its actions, the Obama administration took a detailed provision of the law, complete with precise numerical thresholds, and unilaterally rewrote it through regulation to claim power Congress never, in fact, gave.

The Supreme Court rightly struck down the administration's abuse of authority in this instance, as it has done in past cases. But, unfortunately, such regulatory overreach has become so common in the Obama administration that Federal bureaucrats have become experts in manufacturing supposed legal authority out of thin air. And the courts are simply unable to keep up with the explosion of executive overreach by President Obama's administration.

Perhaps the most extreme example of such executive abuse was at issue in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case. Under the auspices of ObamaCare, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation requiring employers to pay for a full complement of birth control methods for every employee. The Obama administration applied this mandate to almost all employers--even those who run small, closely-held businesses and whose deeply-held religious beliefs conflict with the mandate.

Some media outlets have focused on the conflict between this latest ObamaCare abuse and the principles enshrined in the First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religion. Others have focused on the Obama administration's argument that corporations are not people--as if the particular form of how individuals organize themselves to do business somehow allows the Federal Government to trample their religious liberties.

But in all of the sound and the fury, a central point has been lost: The Hobby Lobby case was actually about a direct threat to the separation of powers. It pitted the Obama administration's unilateral mandate against a law passed by Congress.

In issuing this regulation, the Obama administration completely disregarded a duly enacted Federal statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which specifically bars such government infringement on Americans' right to exercise their religious beliefs. The ObamaCare contraception mandate flies in the face of the law's requirement that the government not substantially burden the exercise of religion unless it is the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government purpose. I know. I was the prime sponsor of that bill in the Senate, and I got my friend Senator Kennedy to go along with me. The President said it was one of the most important bills in history, that religious freedom may be the most important of all of our freedoms.

As a lead author of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it has been particularly frustrating to see the Justices of the Supreme Court wrongly criticized for supposedly limiting access to birth control. In reality, all the Court did was hold the Obama administration accountable to the law--specifically, a law that passed Congress with near unanimity and was signed by President Clinton, who lauded the law. I was there. I was on the south lawn when he signed that. So were many others.

In the NLRB v. Noel Canning case, by contrast, the administration violated one of the Constitution's central checks on Presidential power, the requirement that nominations of principal officers receive the advice and consent of the Senate except during the recess of the Senate.

Concern about Executive appointment abuse was on the minds of our Fathers when they devised the Senate's role in the process. Their fears were strikingly similar to what President Obama has sought to make reality: a radical set of National Labor Relations Board appointees who promised to tip the balance of the Board toward an extreme and divisive agenda and a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director nominee endowed with unprecedented power--no checks on his removal, no congressional control over his budget, and no effective judicial review of his actions.

But President Obama again proclaimed he would not take no for an answer and claimed the power to use the recess appointment power to install these four nominees, even though the Senate had completely different rules. But even the Department of Justice admitted that a 3- day adjournment was too short to give the President lawful authority to bypass the Senate.

Instead, the President audaciously claimed the power to decide that, in his opinion, our so-called pro forma sessions during this period did not count as sessions of the Senate, even though they had always counted, and the Senate should decide its own rules, and that has always been the rule around here.

Not only, as Hamilton explained in Federalist 69, did the Framers specifically deny our President the King's power to deem the legislature out of session, but during these sessions the Senate was fully capable of engaging in its business. In fact, during similar sessions the previous fall, the Senate had twice passed legislation that President Obama himself signed.

So extreme were the administration's arguments that the Supreme Court unanimously held President Obama's actions unconstitutional. In doing so, the Court confirmed that the Constitution does not create in the President an endlessly flexible power to bypass Congress when he happens to disagree with us--as if our advice-and-consent role were merely an inconvenience to be avoided, rather than the organizing principle of how the constitutional process is designed to work.

Taken together, these three cases represent a resounding victory for the rule of law and the Constitution over the President's unilateralism, and they are far from unique examples. The Court has ruled unanimously, by a vote of 9 to 0, against the Obama administration 20 times--20 times, 9 to zip. These include many significant cases, such as the Hosanna-Tabor case, in which the Obama administration tried to control a religious organization's hiring of its ministers; the Sackett case, in which the Obama administration tried to take away the lawful right to challenge unlawful EPA fines of up to $75,000 a day on a poor couple who were just trying to improve their property; and the Arizona case, in which the Obama administration tried to displace State law with mere Federal enforcement priorities.

But instead of taking these rebukes to heart, the President has doubled down on his go-it-alone attitude. He has vowed more Executive orders of questionable legality, he has reaffirmed his commitment to an extreme anti-energy agenda and a willingness to abuse his legal authorities to unleash an onslaught of new regulations, and he has used the mistrust he created by refusing to enforce existing immigration law to justify further nonenforcement.

President Obama's shameful defiance in the face of the Supreme Court's rulings means our fight against his lawless overreach has only just begun. While we should applaud the Court's recent decisions, we should also realize the limits of courtroom litigation to check executive branch abuse. Indeed, the Obama administration has gone to great lengths to shield its lawlessness from judicial review by surreptitiously crafting many of such actions to prevent any plaintiff from having legal standing to launch a challenge in court, by aggressively challenging the legitimacy of suits that have been filed, by significantly curtailing the availability of judicial review, and by brazenly packing the DC Circuit--the Nation's most important court for most regulatory cases--with compliant judges.

The Speaker of the House has announced plans to vote on a measure to authorize a lawsuit against President Obama for his unfaithful execution of the law. While I support the legislative branch using every tool at our disposal to hold this President accountable to his constitutional obligations, we should also be mindful of our decades- long fight to limit the judicial power to its proper role under the Constitution. We should not seek to replace one constitutional travesty--the lawlessness of this President--with another by breaking down the structural limits on the judicial power. On the other hand, the House may very well succeed because of the actions of this President because something has to be done to curtail these inappropriate, unilateral, illegal actions.

In the end, we cannot rely on the courts alone. With such a powerful and aggressive President, all of us must stand and fight back against this executive lawlessness. I urge all my colleagues--both Democratic and Republican--to use the rightful and legitimate constitutional authorities the Framers gave us to stand and resist the President's recklessness.

But whether blinded by partisan loyalty to the President or too inexperienced to understand this body from any other perspective than having a like-minded Senate majority and President, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have allowed--even facilitated--this administration's attempts to break down the constitutional checks on Executive power.

I urge them to change course. That is the tradition of some of the greatest Senators on both sides of the aisle--of Mike Mansfield, Howard Baker, and Robert Byrd. That is the purpose of the Constitution's division of powers, for as Madison counseled in Federalist 51, ``. . . the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others.''

If this body is to maintain a meaningful role in preserving liberty and prosperity, we must dutifully fulfill

our constitutional obligation of checking the President's unlawful attempts to assert illegitimate power.

I began my service here in 1977. Bob Byrd was the newly elected majority leader. R.C. Byrd was one of the alltime procedural experts in this body. He was a very strong personality. He would not be putting up with what this President is doing. He would not be putting up with the usurpation of the Senate's power or of the legislature's power, the Congress's power.

I call on my Democratic friends on the other side to start standing up. If they do not start standing up, I think the people are going to hold them accountable because these are separated powers and the legislative body is supposed to handle these matters and not some President unilaterally changing the law at his whimsy.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, the Senator from Minnesota was going to be recognized first. She is not in the Chamber, so I will go first and then we will get back in order.

I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 15 minutes.

Madam President, now that the results are in, I think it is time to talk again--as we did 5 years ago--about what is happening on what I consider to be the greatest failed foreign policy we have experienced.

When we look around the world and we see what happened and what is going on now--and this may be a narrow opinion--it is a result of the apology tour President Obama took immediately after becoming President of the United States.

I remember standing at this podium at that time and saying you don't go to the Muslim world and say: I will not make a speech until we have the Muslim Brotherhood coming with their required numbers. That was not good. This is a deviation from what we always stood for and that was certainly a slap in the face of our best friends in the Middle East, Israel.

Two weeks ago, three Israeli teenagers were found dead in shallow graves in a West Bank village, and it was such a tragedy, and, of course, reciprocity has taken place since then. Hamas has launched over 365 rockets indiscriminately into the Israeli civilian population. I have to say that when I look at some of the things we have worked on together with Israel--for example, the iron dome has performed very well during that period of time. Also, I will say that Prime Minister Netanyahu responded with some 700 or so airstrikes primarily using F- 16s and doing it very well. This started 5 years ago, and we have had unrest in that area ever since then.

The Israeli Defense Minister said this week: ``We are preparing for a battle

against Hamas which will not end within a few days.''

Obviously, I strongly support our greatest ally in the Middle East, and so often we do what we can to directly and indirectly continue that support. There has been unrest in Israel for the past 5 or 6 years.

We sent letters to the President some time ago regarding Iraq in 2013. We said when you leave Iraq, be sure to leave the intelligence and the logistics. You cannot just walk out. Yes, we have great trained fighters in the Iraqi security force, but they cannot be totally on their own. They needed to have ISR support. ISR is intelligence and reconnaissance. We have to learn a lesson from this so we don't make the same mistake in Afghanistan. But nonetheless, we did. So now Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists have returned and have overtaken key cities.

ISIS is the most terrifying terrorist group out there. They have taken over towns such as Mosul, Tikrit, Ramadi, and Fallujah.

I have a guy who works for me as a field representative in my State of Oklahoma. His name is Brian Hackler. Prior to the time he came to work for me, he was in the Marines. He was actually deployed twice to Fallujah. If you will remember, Fallujah was the closest thing we had to door-to-door combat like we had in World War II, and we lost a lot of lives.

When I called him, he had not yet heard that we lost Fallujah after they took it over. He actually physically cried. He said, the blood, the sweat, and the tears of all of my friends. He said, we had that secured, and we have now lost it.

We are doing everything we can now to rectify that situation. I am glad the Obama administration is doing what we asked them to do 2 years ago. While we will lose lives, hopefully we can keep the terrorists from having a safe haven in that area.

I am very much concerned about what has happened in Iraq. While the President continues his assessments, it leads me to wonder what the people in our embassy have been doing over there. We are empowering Russia and Iran to lead and become key influences in the region.

Iran reportedly has two battalions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, in Iraq. It is kind of funny. Right now a lot of people are saying Iran is our friend. Let's keep in mind that our intelligence determined quite a number of years ago that Iran will have the weapon and the delivery system for that weapon by 2015. Well, 2015 is on us now, so I think if anyone out there is naive enough to think we can depend on Iran to help our situation, they are sadly mistaken.

We have a very serious problem now in Iraq. While the United States has most recently provided some equipment intelligence, this is what we should have been doing and preparing for 2 years ago. Since January, Prime Minister Maliki has asked for help, and the President waited until it became a dire crisis.

Then there is Afghanistan. We know what is happening in Afghanistan. Currently the Presidential election in Afghanistan has taken place. The primary took place and the runoff took place, but the problem is it is obviously a sham. The election is not an honest, transparent election. I believe there is no greater threat that can be imposed on us than by allowing the people of Afghanistan to look at an election and find out it is a rigged election.

I will give an example. While we have not taken sides in this country between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, I personally would fall down on the side of Abdullah. It seems as though all of the real problems in that election ended up benefiting Ghani as opposed to Abdullah.

For example, in one province--it was Wardak Province--17,000 votes were cast in April. Now the runoff came along and 170,000 votes were cast. If you stop to think about it, that is mathematically impossible, so we know that is rigged. While everyone agrees that Ghani's support is in the rural areas, I would defy anyone to come down to the Senate floor and point out an election that has ever taken place where you have a much larger percentage of rural votes as opposed to urban votes. There is a logical reason--rural voters have to walk a long way to get to the polls and some voters can't get there as easily.

The results of the runoff: There was a 75-percent turnout from the rural areas as opposed to a 24-percent turnout in the urban areas. That couldn't happen. We have to have an audit. I think everybody agrees we have to have an audit, but it has to be a thorough and transparent audit. We have to be sure the Afghan people, when they determine the outcome of this election, know it was a legitimate election so they can rejoice in it.

I think most everyone knows a few hours ago Abdullah declared victory in spite of the fact that the first count I described showed him as losing.

We have this problem right now. It is a problem I hang on President Obama and his administration because we told them in advance what needed to be done to avoid this type of situation from happening.

We are now looking at a situation there that is one where we can act now and preclude something from happening there and is happening as we speak in Iraq.

Remember what took place in terms of the five Taliban terrorists who were released. We thought--and I felt all the time--that was a very controversial issue. A lot of people wanted to close Gitmo, and I have strong feelings against that. We need to have that facility and that resource, which I will explain in a moment.

When the President turned the five Taliban leaders loose--these were the most brutal and heinous of all the terrorists who were in Gitmo. There were five of them. When they found out, they were celebrating. One of the terrorists released was referred to as the toughest of all of them. One of the top people who was on the other side of the Taliban said in response to the release of the terrorists that this is the Taliban rejoicing that the President has turned loose five of the terrorists who were incarcerated in Gitmo. They said it is like putting 10,000 Taliban fighters into battle on the side of jihad. Now the Taliban have the right to lead them into the final moments before victory in Afghanistan.

We all knew the President should not have done it. Anticipating that the President was going to do this, the last bill we passed before the current one, which is on here, we put language in there anticipating that the President, in order to reach his goal and ultimately close Gitmo, might take some of the worst individuals and turn them loose. We put language in there from section 1035(d) of the Defense Authorization Act. He said the President had to notify us 30 days in advance if he was going to release or make any transfers from Gitmo. He blatantly broke that law and did not do it. Everyone was on our side in terms of why we should not let this, what they referred to as the ``Taliban dream team,'' be turned loose. Right now, supposedly, there is some kind of a deal made where they are in Qatar for a period of a year, but even if they were able to enforce that--stop and think about the theory behind this. The President is saying in essence we are going to turn you guys loose but you have to promise not to kill Americans for a period of a year. Because it says for 1 year they have to remain under some level of control by a country that hasn't even told us how they are going to do that. Consequently, I have no doubt they are free to go anywhere they want.

We had reviews conducted by the Department of Defense, Department of State, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the National Intelligence, and all the rest of them saying these five people are too dangerous to release. Leon Panetta, who was the Secretary of Defense at that time, made the same statement. He said these people are too dangerous, as did General Dunford. By the way, General Dunford, who is the commander in Afghanistan, was not even notified in advance this was going to take place.

So we have all of these circumstances that are going on right now. We have the law that was broken. My feeling has always been, as we are getting down midway into the President's second term, looking at what he is going to have for a legacy, one of his desired legacies would be to close Gitmo. He has talked about that for a long period of time. I think the American people have now caught on, because there is a poll on June 13 by Gallup that shows 66 percent of Americans oppose the closing of Gitmo. So this has changed now.

Why is it important? There is no place else anywhere in the world where we can put these enemy combatants. These guys are not criminals; they are enemy combatants. They are terrorists. And when the President came up with the original idea of putting them into our prison system, we had to go and make sure everyone was aware they are terrorists and not criminals. By definition, they teach other people to be terrorists. If there is anything we don't want in our prison system, it is for all of those criminals to learn how to become terrorists.

We have had Gitmo since 1903. It is one of the few good deals we have wherein we pay a little over $4,000 a year for that facility. We should stop and see the advantages we have in Gitmo as opposed to putting them someplace else where they can either get out through jail breaks, as has been happening, or if they were to be intermingled in the United States with our prison population.

One of the places, incidentally, that the President first wanted to send the Gitmo inmates was to Fort Sill in my State of Oklahoma. I went to Fort Sill and they said, We don't have the capability here to get this done. So what we want to do is--in fact, the lady who runs the facility at Fort Sill said, I don't know what it is that individuals don't understand. She said she had three deployments to Gitmo. It is the perfect institution for these people. They are well taken care of. The Red Cross and everyone who goes down there says, Yes, the health facilities are better than they have ever had before, the food is the best they have ever had. So it is a facility we need to continue to use.

Benghazi

Lastly, before I completely run out of time, I want to jump ahead a little bit and mention Benghazi. I think it is important for us to understand there are four people in our system who advise the President of the United States. We have the CIA Director who, at the time this happened in Benghazi, was John--anyway, the CIA Director; the Director of National Intelligence, that was James Clapper; the Secretary of Defense, who was Leon Panetta; and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dempsey. All of those people said they knew unequivocally, in Benghazi, when they bombed the annex, it was an organized terrorist activity. I think right now people are realizing that was the real issue. It is not who is responsible for it; it is the fact that we knew it was going to happen. Our Ambassador, who was killed, gave us ample warning for well over a month and a half before it took place that it was going to take place.

So I think we understand now why Gitmo is important and we understand the whole reason this is taking place. I am certainly hoping we can stick together and make sure we don't end up losing one of the most valuable facilities we have in this day of terrorists by having to close it down.

We have a serious problem. I think if there is anything we should learn from this, it is, No. 1, we have a valuable institution called Gitmo. No. 2, what is important is that we don't let happen this year what happened last year. Last year we didn't get the NDAA bill until December. If we had gone to December 31, there would not have been hazard pay and a number of bad things would have happened, but we ended up finally at the last minute getting it done. I have talked to both the majority and minority leaders about the advisability of bringing the NDAA to the floor of the Senate, and consequently we now have invited Members to send their amendments down. We have almost 100 amendments already on the floor. So I am hoping during the next week, we can come down with a specific date--hopefully before the August recess--where we can bring up the NDAA and let the people know who go over there risking their lives that we are going to be here to support them. We are going to be putting together an NDAA bill.

I know my time has expired. I will not suggest the absence of a quorum quite yet because no one has arrived.

Going back to Benghazi, everybody had the information on Benghazi. I neglected to mention we also had General Hamm come in and testify before us, again, that he was one of several who was fully aware of what happened.

With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

We are here today to talk about energy--energy for our country but also energy for our allies. This is a discussion not just about energy, it is about jobs, good-paying jobs. It is also about economic growth. It is about generating tax revenues to help reduce the debt and the deficit without raising taxes. It is about national security--not only our national security but also working with our closest friend and ally, Canada, as well as our allies in Europe, the European Union, and working to help countries such as the Ukraine that very much need energy supply from sources other than Russia.

With the current events going on in the Ukraine, it is very clear that we need to play a long-term game, a long-term strategy--deploy a long-term strategy when it comes to helping our allies, not only in terms of our national security but working with our allies to make them stronger, their strength, their national security. The national security of allies also contributes to our strength and our security here at home. So that is what we are here to talk about. We are here to talk about the North Atlantic Energy Security Act, legislation we are introducing today--myself, Senator Barrasso, Senator McCain, and Senator Murkowski.

I am going to take a few minutes to talk about energy production, transportation, and export in terms of building our energy future in this country and working with our allies. Senator Barrasso is here, and he will be talking about the specific legislation. Senator McCain will join us as well to talk about the national security issues and implications.

I will start with the first chart.

Very simply, what we want to do is continue to produce more energy in our Nation, in the heartland of our Nation and throughout our country. We want to transport that increased production to market. That includes not only markets domestically but also markets where we can export it to our friends and allies in the European Union, to the Ukraine, and to Japan. That is the simple equation we are working on. Again, it is about energy. It is about jobs. It is about a growing economy. It is very much about national security.

That gas is produced throughout our country, more and more all the time. Right now we produce 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year. We only use 26 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year, so we are already producing more than we consume, and that number is growing.

What happens when you produce more than you consume and you do not have a market for that gas? In places such as North Dakota, we are flaring off that gas. Right now, just in my State alone, we flare $1.5 million a day of natural gas--$1.5 million a day. That is natural gas that we need to capture, that we need to get in gathering systems, that we need to transport to markets, and we need markets for that gas. This is just common sense.

How do we move gas from North Dakota to places such as Ukraine, where there is much need for a market? Well, we need both interstate and intrastate pipeline systems. On this chart, you can see that the purple is the interstate. That is how we move gas across State lines. But we also need intrastate gathering systems. A lot of oil wells produce natural gas as a byproduct; other wells are just gas wells. But you need gathering systems, the blue systems that go to all those wells so that gas can be gathered, put in the interstate system, and moved to markets--markets throughout the United States and markets overseas.

As I said a minute ago, we produce 30 trillion cubic feet a year, States such as North Dakota, Wyoming, and many others. That number is growing. We produce 30 trillion cubic feet a year, but we only consume 26 trillion, so we are flaring off that gas.

We need markets. As we work to build those gathering systems and those interstate pipelines, how do we get markets? Well, we move that product to overseas as liquefied natural gas, LNG. It is cooled and condensed, put on ships, and moved to other markets--the European Union, Ukraine, Japan--by ship. But we need the LNG facilities to do it. We do not have them. So that is a problem, right? Well, it is, except we have many companies that are not only ready and willing but anxious to build the facilities. Here are 16 right here, 16 applications.

Of the 26 applications that are pending, many of them have been pending for over a year waiting to get approval from the Department of Energy and from the FERC. So here we are flaring off natural gas, as I showed a minute ago--$1.5 million a day in my State--flaring it off because we produce more than we consume. We need markets. These applications are just sitting there and have been for more than a year.

If they get approved, what happens? Let's take an example. Here is one by a company everybody has heard of--Exxon. Exxon has an application. As you can see here, they have had an application in for over a year waiting to get approved at Sabine Pass, TX, which is right down in that gulf area. They are ready, willing, and able to spend $10 billion right now, today, to build that facility.

Where are they going to move the gas? They are going to move it to the United Kingdom so it can go right into the European system. We will touch on that European system and how it gets to places such as the Ukraine in a minute. But if they can get approval--

I have already talked to their CEO, Mr. Rex Tillerson. He indicates that within 36 to 40 months of approval, they can be moving gas into the European markets. Does that sound realistic? It certainly does. Obviously that is a very large company with the capabilities to do what they say they are willing and want to do.

Here is another example. Here is Cheniere. Same place--Sabine Pass. This is one that did get approved. This is one that did get approval. They intend to be delivering gas into the European market by the middle of next year--middle of next year. So this is not something that is going to take forever to happen.

We not only have the fact that we can start moving natural gas over here in a very reasonable amount of time, but think of the impact on the markets in Europe and the impact on Russia and gas prices when they know it is coming.

I am going to ask Senator McCain to step in here. I mentioned a minute ago that application I showed you that is pending from Exxon. They want to move that natural gas to market right here in the UK.

What this chart shows is the pipeline network throughout Europe that will enable them to move that product throughout Europe and even into Eastern Europe, including places such as Ukraine.

Right now where is all that gas coming from? Russia, Gazprom. All these pipelines are coming down from Russia and providing that gas to the European countries, to the European Union, and to the Ukraine. Of course, that makes them dependent on Russia and that enables Russia to engage in the kind of activity we have seen and we can't always be reacting short term. We need a long-term strategy to break that hold.

Here are some of the numbers. This shows not only Ukraine but look at the impact on other NATO countries, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, 100 percent of their gas coming from Russia. Think of the leverage that gives Russia in this situation.

The last chart is the North Atlantic Energy Security Act. Quite simply, we are going to cut the redtape that is holding up production and infrastructure, we are going to reduce flaring, and we are going to expedite LNG to our friends and allies, to countries such as the European Union, to Ukraine, to Japan. We reduce the redtape that is holding up production. We are producing 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and we can produce a lot more, but we have to cut through the redtape. We also enhance and expand our ability to build the gathering systems that move that natural gas to market, and we allow export.

We have an expedited process so we can export that gas to the markets we need, to our friends, and to our allies. Again, this is about energy, but it is about creating jobs, it is about growing our economy, it is about the national security of our country and our allies, and it is about having a long-term strategy that works, not going from crisis to crisis.

With that, I turn to my colleague, the senior Senator from Arizona, to comment on some of the national security implications.

I thank the Senator from Arizona for his comments, his leadership, and for his willingness to work on this vitally important issue.

In terms of responding to his question: OK. What needs to happen--I wish to take a minute to give an overview of the legislation and then ask the Senator from Wyoming to comment in more detail.

As I said at the outset, and I actually have said several times, this is about more energy, it is about job creation, it is about growing the economy, and it is about national security.

It is also very much about environmental benefits. I showed you gas being flared off a well. This gas is just being flared.

Not only is that wasting a natural resource which we can capture and get value for, but when we capture that, we also create environmental benefits.

Nationally, we flare or vent, burn off, 212 billion cubic feet of gas a year--212 billion cubic feet of gas a year now being burned off.

Oh, boy. To convert it, it is billions, right, it is in the billions of dollars. I don't have the exact number, but it is a huge amount. It is $1.5 million a day in my State alone so the Senator can see we are talking billions of dollars. There are also tremendous environmental benefits as well.

But let's go to the legislation for a minute because I think this is responsive to the question asked by the Senator from Arizona about: OK. How do we make it happen?

The reality is we are producing the energy now, we can produce more, and this doesn't cost taxpayer money.

This creates revenues without raising taxes. This is going to create revenues to help address the debt and the deficit. This is enabling and empowering the private companies to make investments to create jobs, make investments to produce the energy.

Going back to this chart, Exxon wants to invest $10 billion today, creating thousands of jobs and a tremendous amount of revenue for the Federal Government to reduce the deficit and debt. It doesn't cost a penny. That is not what it is about. It is about streamlining the regulation, cutting the redtape. That means making sure we streamline and expedite the process to get wells approved. That is the first area of legislation that increases our production onshore. We can do it offshore as well. But we are talking about more production. As I say, we are already producing more than we consume.

Second, it is about building those gathering systems. It requires permits and approvals to build gathering systems, so we are not able to build those gathering systems. If you can't build a gathering system, what happens? You burn off the gas because you can't get it to market. So that process is being held up. Again, it is about cutting through the redtape, reducing the regulation and bureaucracy. It doesn't cost anything.

The final piece, the same thing--getting approval to export LNG. Right now there is one that has final approval from the DOE and FERC. There are 26 applications pending. One has final approval from the DOE--Department of Energy--and the FERC. Six have conditional approval and 26 are pending. It is as simple as getting the approvals and cutting through that redtape. This is not about spending taxpayer dollars; it is about generating revenues.

I would respond briefly to the Senator from Arizona and then turn to the Senator from Wyoming on that issue as well for more detail on the legislation. He has tremendous expertise in this area and has been working on it for a long time.

Clearly, it is a double win because not only are we no longer burning off or flaring that natural gas, but we are using natural gas, which is a very clean resource, for a whole range of energy uses, whether it is powering homes or many other uses. So it is a huge environmental win.

Absolutely an environmental win.

Madam President, I turn to the good Senator from Arizona for any final comments. Seeing that he doesn't have any, I thank him.

I also thank the good Senator from Wyoming and ask if there are any final comments he might have on the legislation. He has been an author of much of this legislation. I thank him for that tremendous work and for being part of this effort.

I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

We are here today to talk about energy--energy for our country but also energy for our allies. This is a discussion not just about energy, it is about jobs, good-paying jobs. It is also about economic growth. It is about generating tax revenues to help reduce the debt and the deficit without raising taxes. It is about national security--not only our national security but also working with our closest friend and ally, Canada, as well as our allies in Europe, the European Union, and working to help countries such as the Ukraine that very much need energy supply from sources other than Russia.

With the current events going on in the Ukraine, it is very clear that we need to play a long-term game, a long-term strategy--deploy a long-term strategy when it comes to helping our allies, not only in terms of our national security but working with our allies to make them stronger, their strength, their national security. The national security of allies also contributes to our strength and our security here at home. So that is what we are here to talk about. We are here to talk about the North Atlantic Energy Security Act, legislation we are introducing today--myself, Senator Barrasso, Senator McCain, and Senator Murkowski.

I am going to take a few minutes to talk about energy production, transportation, and export in terms of building our energy future in this country and working with our allies. Senator Barrasso is here, and he will be talking about the specific legislation. Senator McCain will join us as well to talk about the national security issues and implications.

I will start with the first chart.

Very simply, what we want to do is continue to produce more energy in our Nation, in the heartland of our Nation and throughout our country. We want to transport that increased production to market. That includes not only markets domestically but also markets where we can export it to our friends and allies in the European Union, to the Ukraine, and to Japan. That is the simple equation we are working on. Again, it is about energy. It is about jobs. It is about a growing economy. It is very much about national security.

That gas is produced throughout our country, more and more all the time. Right now we produce 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year. We only use 26 trillion cubic feet of natural gas a year, so we are already producing more than we consume, and that number is growing.

What happens when you produce more than you consume and you do not have a market for that gas? In places such as North Dakota, we are flaring off that gas. Right now, just in my State alone, we flare $1.5 million a day of natural gas--$1.5 million a day. That is natural gas that we need to capture, that we need to get in gathering systems, that we need to transport to markets, and we need markets for that gas. This is just common sense.

How do we move gas from North Dakota to places such as Ukraine, where there is much need for a market? Well, we need both interstate and intrastate pipeline systems. On this chart, you can see that the purple is the interstate. That is how we move gas across State lines. But we also need intrastate gathering systems. A lot of oil wells produce natural gas as a byproduct; other wells are just gas wells. But you need gathering systems, the blue systems that go to all those wells so that gas can be gathered, put in the interstate system, and moved to markets--markets throughout the United States and markets overseas.

As I said a minute ago, we produce 30 trillion cubic feet a year, States such as North Dakota, Wyoming, and many others. That number is growing. We produce 30 trillion cubic feet a year, but we only consume 26 trillion, so we are flaring off that gas.

We need markets. As we work to build those gathering systems and those interstate pipelines, how do we get markets? Well, we move that product to overseas as liquefied natural gas, LNG. It is cooled and condensed, put on ships, and moved to other markets--the European Union, Ukraine, Japan--by ship. But we need the LNG facilities to do it. We do not have them. So that is a problem, right? Well, it is, except we have many companies that are not only ready and willing but anxious to build the facilities. Here are 16 right here, 16 applications.

Of the 26 applications that are pending, many of them have been pending for over a year waiting to get approval from the Department of Energy and from the FERC. So here we are flaring off natural gas, as I showed a minute ago--$1.5 million a day in my State--flaring it off because we produce more than we consume. We need markets. These applications are just sitting there and have been for more than a year.

If they get approved, what happens? Let's take an example. Here is one by a company everybody has heard of--Exxon. Exxon has an application. As you can see here, they have had an application in for over a year waiting to get approved at Sabine Pass, TX, which is right down in that gulf area. They are ready, willing, and able to spend $10 billion right now, today, to build that facility.

Where are they going to move the gas? They are going to move it to the United Kingdom so it can go right into the European system. We will touch on that European system and how it gets to places such as the Ukraine in a minute. But if they can get approval--

I have already talked to their CEO, Mr. Rex Tillerson. He indicates that within 36 to 40 months of approval, they can be moving gas into the European markets. Does that sound realistic? It certainly does. Obviously that is a very large company with the capabilities to do what they say they are willing and want to do.

Here is another example. Here is Cheniere. Same place--Sabine Pass. This is one that did get approved. This is one that did get approval. They intend to be delivering gas into the European market by the middle of next year--middle of next year. So this is not something that is going to take forever to happen.

We not only have the fact that we can start moving natural gas over here in a very reasonable amount of time, but think of the impact on the markets in Europe and the impact on Russia and gas prices when they know it is coming.

I am going to ask Senator McCain to step in here. I mentioned a minute ago that application I showed you that is pending from Exxon. They want to move that natural gas to market right here in the UK.

What this chart shows is the pipeline network throughout Europe that will enable them to move that product throughout Europe and even into Eastern Europe, including places such as Ukraine.

Right now where is all that gas coming from? Russia, Gazprom. All these pipelines are coming down from Russia and providing that gas to the European countries, to the European Union, and to the Ukraine. Of course, that makes them dependent on Russia and that enables Russia to engage in the kind of activity we have seen and we can't always be reacting short term. We need a long-term strategy to break that hold.

Here are some of the numbers. This shows not only Ukraine but look at the impact on other NATO countries, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, 100 percent of their gas coming from Russia. Think of the leverage that gives Russia in this situation.

The last chart is the North Atlantic Energy Security Act. Quite simply, we are going to cut the redtape that is holding up production and infrastructure, we are going to reduce flaring, and we are going to expedite LNG to our friends and allies, to countries such as the European Union, to Ukraine, to Japan. We reduce the redtape that is holding up production. We are producing 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and we can produce a lot more, but we have to cut through the redtape. We also enhance and expand our ability to build the gathering systems that move that natural gas to market, and we allow export.

We have an expedited process so we can export that gas to the markets we need, to our friends, and to our allies. Again, this is about energy, but it is about creating jobs, it is about growing our economy, it is about the national security of our country and our allies, and it is about having a long-term strategy that works, not going from crisis to crisis.

With that, I turn to my colleague, the senior Senator from Arizona, to comment on some of the national security implications.

I thank the Senator from Arizona for his comments, his leadership, and for his willingness to work on this vitally important issue.

In terms of responding to his question: OK. What needs to happen--I wish to take a minute to give an overview of the legislation and then ask the Senator from Wyoming to comment in more detail.

As I said at the outset, and I actually have said several times, this is about more energy, it is about job creation, it is about growing the economy, and it is about national security.

It is also very much about environmental benefits. I showed you gas being flared off a well. This gas is just being flared.

Not only is that wasting a natural resource which we can capture and get value for, but when we capture that, we also create environmental benefits.

Nationally, we flare or vent, burn off, 212 billion cubic feet of gas a year--212 billion cubic feet of gas a year now being burned off.

Oh, boy. To convert it, it is billions, right, it is in the billions of dollars. I don't have the exact number, but it is a huge amount. It is $1.5 million a day in my State alone so the Senator can see we are talking billions of dollars. There are also tremendous environmental benefits as well.

But let's go to the legislation for a minute because I think this is responsive to the question asked by the Senator from Arizona about: OK. How do we make it happen?

The reality is we are producing the energy now, we can produce more, and this doesn't cost taxpayer money.

This creates revenues without raising taxes. This is going to create revenues to help address the debt and the deficit. This is enabling and empowering the private companies to make investments to create jobs, make investments to produce the energy.

Going back to this chart, Exxon wants to invest $10 billion today, creating thousands of jobs and a tremendous amount of revenue for the Federal Government to reduce the deficit and debt. It doesn't cost a penny. That is not what it is about. It is about streamlining the regulation, cutting the redtape. That means making sure we streamline and expedite the process to get wells approved. That is the first area of legislation that increases our production onshore. We can do it offshore as well. But we are talking about more production. As I say, we are already producing more than we consume.

Second, it is about building those gathering systems. It requires permits and approvals to build gathering systems, so we are not able to build those gathering systems. If you can't build a gathering system, what happens? You burn off the gas because you can't get it to market. So that process is being held up. Again, it is about cutting through the redtape, reducing the regulation and bureaucracy. It doesn't cost anything.

The final piece, the same thing--getting approval to export LNG. Right now there is one that has final approval from the DOE and FERC. There are 26 applications pending. One has final approval from the DOE--Department of Energy--and the FERC. Six have conditional approval and 26 are pending. It is as simple as getting the approvals and cutting through that redtape. This is not about spending taxpayer dollars; it is about generating revenues.

I would respond briefly to the Senator from Arizona and then turn to the Senator from Wyoming on that issue as well for more detail on the legislation. He has tremendous expertise in this area and has been working on it for a long time.

Clearly, it is a double win because not only are we no longer burning off or flaring that natural gas, but we are using natural gas, which is a very clean resource, for a whole range of energy uses, whether it is powering homes or many other uses. So it is a huge environmental win.

Absolutely an environmental win.

Madam President, I turn to the good Senator from Arizona for any final comments. Seeing that he doesn't have any, I thank him.

I also thank the good Senator from Wyoming and ask if there are any final comments he might have on the legislation. He has been an author of much of this legislation. I thank him for that tremendous work and for being part of this effort.

I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Virginia and appreciate his comments. He has a passion for this issue. It fits very well with what so many of us are trying to do in the Congress, which is to put in place policies that actually create more opportunities for our young people.

We are living through the weakest economic recovery we have had in this country since the Great Depression. I know we have seen some improvement recently in the job numbers, but in fact unemployment remains way too high. If we take into account folks who have dropped out of the workforce altogether as compared to 4 or 5 years ago, we have unemployment rates at over 10 percent.

Among young people coming out of school it is far higher. It is double digits, about 12 or 13 percent for 18 to 25 year olds, we are told. Again, the real numbers are worse than that when we take out the folks who have dropped out of the workforce altogether.

Our GDP growth, the growth of our economy, is too low. So there are a number of things we ought to do, in my view. One is, we have to deal with ensuring that we have a workforce that is trained for these 21st century jobs that are out there. We also need to reform our Tax Code. We need to put regulatory relief in place that is sensible. We need to do much more to take advantage of the energy resources we have in this country. We need to get back in the business of exporting and trade.

There are some things relatively quickly we could do to get the country back on track, but none is more important than having that workforce. Because we can have a great environment--which unfortunately we do not have now for many businesses because we have not created the climate for economic growth with good policy in Washington.

But if we had that--if we do not have the workers in this increasingly competitive global economy we are in, jobs will be created somewhere else. That is happening right now. It is happening partly because we do not have the skilled workers to be able to attract those jobs here, those businesses here, and to fill the jobs here in America.

Four and one-half million jobs are open right now, they say. That might surprise some people listening because they are thinking: Wow. I cannot get a job or my son or daughter cannot get a job or my neighbor cannot get a job. As I said, unemployment is high. Yet there are 4\1/2\ million jobs open. When we look at those jobs and what is available out there--and Senator Kaine talked some about this, a lot of them require skills that young people and workers who are shifting careers, maybe they have lost a job, are in their forties or fifties, skills they do not have.

So it is IT, it is high-tech jobs, it is health care jobs, it is bioscience jobs. Yes, it is manufacturing jobs. My own State of Ohio is a big manufacturing State. We are particularly sensitive to this. There are lots of manufacturers in Ohio who are saying: If we had the workers, we could add new jobs, new opportunities, grow this economy. The spinoff from that, all of the other jobs that are created through a successful manufacturing company that makes something is the backbone of our higher economy, international economy.

This is exciting for me to work with Senator Kaine and others who say: Let's take a piece of this, which is career and technical education, to encourage young people to get these skills, to be able to access these great jobs. Some of them, by the way, will do it right out of high school.

I was in Ohio on Monday. We had a roundtable on this. We had a bunch of employers there. We had some educators there. We had some students there. One was a senior in high school who is currently in career and technical school. For those who do not follow this closely, you probably are more familiar with the word ``vocational'' school, because that is typically what it has been called over the years. That is the same thing as the career and technical schools.

Again, Senator Kaine and I have cofounded this Career and Technical Education Caucus in the Senate over the last couple of months. We have a number of our colleagues now joining and so on. We are trying to raise this, let people know about this great opportunity out there.

This young man is a senior. He is going back to his high school and saying: You Guys are crazy not to do this CTE stuff because I am getting great skills, where I can get a great job, and I am getting college credit because they have one of those dual credit programs in this particular CTE program.

Then there were two students there who graduated earlier this year. They both have been in the CTE program. They both have been taking advantage of it to get the skills but also working part time as apprentices or interns--19 years old, two young men. Both of them are now out in the workforce, working for these manufacturers. One of their bosses was there, one of the executives from one of the small manufacturing companies.

These young men at 19 years old are making $50,000 a year. They have benefits on top of that. They have the opportunity now to run very sophisticated machines. Both of them started off learning as apprentices. Now they are both running machines. These machines are worth over $1 million apiece. These are in CNC machines. In one case it is a plastic injecting molding machine. It is very exciting. By the way, they now have been encouraged to go back to their high school and say: Hey, 4-year college or university, that is great if you want to do that, but here is another opportunity.

By the way, they may go back to school. They both have some credit where they could go back and maybe get an associate's degree or a 4- year degree or maybe a graduate engineering degree someday, but in the meantime they are providing the opportunities for these companies in Ohio to have skilled workers so they can compete globally. For them and their families, they are providing a tremendous opportunity, rather than graduating with a bunch of debt. The average debt is $20,000, $30,000 a year now. Instead of having debt, they are making money.

For the next 4 years, even if they are not promoted 0--0 which I think they will be, having met these two young men--that is $200,000 they are going to be making and spending and investing in our economy.

I am very excited about this opportunity to hold this up to say there is a way for us to help get this economy moving by helping to fill this skills gap. In Ohio alone, if you go on ohiomeansjobs.com right now, go on their Web site, you will see about 140,000 jobs open. Yet we have about 400,000 people out of work. If you look at these jobs, again, you will see a lot of them require skills that simply are not out there in the workforce now.

Help provide these skills and we are going to see some of these jobs get filled. That helps our economy, keeps businesses here, and expands businesses here. We did, as Senator Kaine said, just pass the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, so-called WIOA. I was very pleased about that. The House just passed it this week. The Senate passed it 2 weeks ago.

In that there is something called the CAREER Act that Senator Bennet and I have been promoting the last few years. We were able to include a number of our provisions in there to add more accountability, to add more performance measures to improve that legislation. I am happy that was done. That helps on retraining. That is critically important. We spend about $15 billion a year on that at the Federal Government level.

What we are talking about is starting with the career and technical education even before we get into the WIOA programs and the retraining money that is necessary when somebody loses a job and needs to move to another job. We are talking about young people coming up and having this opportunity. According to the U.S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ohio is gaining jobs in manufacturing. That is great news. But we also hear, in the latest skills gap report by the Manufacturing Institute, 74 percent of manufacturers are experiencing workforce shortages or skill deficiencies that keep them from expanding their plant and operations and improving productivity--74 percent.

We could be doing much more to close that skills gap. The legislation that Senator Kaine and I talked about that we are introducing today is a very important step toward that. It is going to help open opportunities for the next generation of workers by ensuring that they have these skills to participate in the 21st century economy.

We were talking a moment ago, some of us, about high school graduation rates. Unfortunately, we have unacceptably high numbers of people who do not graduate from high schools in this country. So there was a lot of discussion about postsecondary and so on. But we have a real problem: Our high school graduation rate is way too low. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 81 percent of high school dropouts say real-world learning opportunities would have kept them in school. That is interesting. The average high school graduation rate is now about 80 percent--way too low. In fact, it is closer to 50 percent in some of our great cities and in some of our poorer rural areas. But even 80 percent is the average--way too low for high school graduation.

But what they say is they would have been more likely to stay in school if they had real-world learning opportunities. That is why the graduation rates for kids involved in CTE--

I would ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

For kids in CTE concentrations, it is a 90-percent graduation rate. That is because they are getting that real-world experience. So I think a good place to start, again, is with this legislation we are introducing today. This is legislation that begins with reforms to the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. It needs to be reauthorized. The reauthorization ought to include these reforms that Senator Kaine and I have talked about.

This is the major source of Federal support for the development of CTE skills. It was last reauthorized in 2006. So it has to be modernized to meet the demands of this workforce today to ensure that students have access to these programs.

It does a few different things. Senator Kaine has talked about it. It requires a more rigorous CTE curriculum, requiring Perkins grant participants to incorporate key elements into the programs; that is, things such as academic and technical skill assessments to measure student achievement, making sure they are actually accomplishing what they are supposed to be based on industry standards, making sure the CTE curriculum is in alignment with whatever the local and regional needs are in the workforce, what the demands are. Employers are looking for kids who have specific skills. We have to be sure we are providing them.

It also increases flexibility for States and localities, allowing them to use these Perkins grant funds to establish academies such as the one Governor Kaine started when he was in Virginia.

It also improves the link between high school and postsecondary education to ease the attainment of industry-recognized credentials, licensing, apprenticeship, postsecondary certificates. We do a lot of that in Ohio, the dual credit programs I talked about earlier.

It promotes partnerships between local businesses, regional industries, and other community stakeholders to create pathways for students through more internships, service opportunities, and so on.

I believe this legislation is urgently needed, and we have to move forward with it. If we do, we are going to be able to provide more opportunity for our young people and more jobs in this country because we will be filling that skills gap and we will be able to have more young people who will able to have this experience, such as these two young men I met earlier this week, where they are able to go out on their own, get a good job, good benefits, help themselves and their family, and help create a stronger economy for all of us.

I thank my colleague from Virginia for his hard work on this legislation, and I look forward to working with him toward its passage.