Veterans Improved Access and Care Act of 2017

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I believe the American people should be deeply concerned about the vote the Senate took yesterday to invoke cloture; in effect, ending real debate and preventing the Senate from considering any amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization.

This isn't what is called regular order. This isn't how the Senate ought to operate. In fact, it is not even how the Senate has handled surveillance bills in the past. Even in the weeks after the horrendous attacks of 9/11, the Senate considered amendments to the PATRIOT Act. In 2008, when the Senate first considered section 702, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there were, in fact, amendments.

Now debate has been cut off, and no Senator--neither a Democrat nor a Republican--is going to be allowed to offer an amendment. What the country is going to be left with is a deeply flawed bill that, in a number of ways, is actually worse than current law.

I want to talk first about whose rights are at stake. We are talking primarily, at this part of my address, about Americans who talk to foreigners overseas--law-abiding Americans whose communications can get swept up under this law. They could be, for example, American businesspeople--perhaps somebody working for a tech company in Colorado or Oregon or perhaps somebody working for a steel company in the Midwest. These are American businesspeople--law-abiding people--talking to a foreign contact. They could be swept up under this law or we could be talking about first-, second-, or third-generation Americans talking to family and friends still overseas. Maybe they are catching up. Maybe they are talking about kids and grandkids. Maybe they are just talking about their hopes and aspirations, but they are still law-abiding Americans who could get swept up in this bill. We could be talking about American journalists covering foreign stories. We could be talking about U.S. servicemembers talking to foreign friends they made while deployed. Try to get your arms around that one.

I think it is particularly unfortunate because one of the things I am proudest of is I was able to ensure that Americans overseas-- servicemembers--would have their privacy rights protected. We have a law passed to do that.

I remember George W. Bush had reservations about that proposal I made to protect the privacy rights of our law-abiding servicemembers overseas. He originally said he might veto the bill. In the end, it was in his press release saying how great it was, and I think it was because nobody had really talked about the rights of these wonderful men and women who wear the uniform in the United States.

We did it right back when George W. Bush was President. We protected the privacy rights of our servicemembers overseas. Now we are talking about walking back the rights of those U.S. servicemembers if they are talking to foreign friends they made while deployed, and we could be talking about American teachers and researchers seeking information from foreigners.

Now this body isn't going to have a chance to even consider reforms that might protect the constitutional rights of these Americans--the businessperson, the servicemember, the first-, second-, or third- generation American immigrant--because what has happened is the Senate is being forced to vote on a reauthorization bill without any public discussion about any kind of alternatives. The one committee consideration--what is called a markup--occurred entirely in secret. That is public law being debated in secret.

Yesterday, the Senate discussed whether to cut off debate on a bill that authorizes vast, unchecked surveillance powers in less time than it takes to shop for the week's groceries. So now, with no amendments possible, there is not going to be a single opportunity for the public to see its representatives explain why they are supporting or why they are rejecting these key reforms.

You can only conclude from this that opponents of reforms were just scared. They were frightened. They just didn't want to have them debated in the open. They must be worried that the more Americans understand about the program--and the more they hear about commonsense, bipartisan proposals to fix it--the more the public is going to say we can do better. We can do better than the status quo because the public, once they have the benefit of a little transparency and a little open debate, what I have seen--and I just finished my 865th open-to-all town meeting at home in Oregon. Once you talk to folks at home about these issues, they understand that security and liberty aren't mutually exclusive; that sensible policies get you both and not-so-sensible policies and failure to look at the issues really get less of both.

My view is the Senate let down the American people yesterday. In my view, we have a solemn obligation to deliberate, to consider amendments, and to vote up or down. I think that is really what the Senate is all about.

One of the worst arguments for jamming this bill through without amendments was that somehow this law was going away. It just wouldn't be around. It was expiring.

First, Members who wanted to debate reforms were prepared to go to this floor many months ago. Nothing stood in the way of a floor debate last year. Even today, there is no reason to rush all this through. Absolutely nothing prevents the Congress from extending 702 authorities for a week or two to allow us to carry out our constitutional responsibilities. By the way, the Director of National Intelligence has said publicly and on the record that its authorities continue until April. I was stunned.

I had Senators on both sides of the aisle whom I like very much-- good, dedicated Senators--saying: Oh, my goodness, we have to act. If we don't act in the next few days, oh, my goodness, powerful tools we need to stop the terrorists--and I will not take a backseat to anybody in terms of stopping the terrorists--they are going to be gone. That is just not true.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article with the statement from the Office of National Intelligence, where the Director said on the record that its authorities would continue.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Despite yesterday's vote, I regret to have to say I am going to have to oppose this legislation's final passage. My view is, if this bill does not go forward now, it is possible to get Democrats and Republicans back to work together to ensure there is a meaningful debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate and that this is done with ample time to meet this window that the Office of National Intelligence has talked about publicly, but if that doesn't happen, the Senate has denied itself the opportunity to even attempt to fix this badly flawed bill.

This surveillance authority allows the government to sweep up some untold amount of law-abiding Americans' communications. The government says, of course, that its targets are terrorists, and this is about keeping Americans safe from terrorism. I don't take a backseat to anybody in terms of fighting terrorist threats.

Having served on the Intelligence Committee for some time now, I can tell all Members and the public there is no question that the terrorist threat is real and that there are significant numbers of people who represent a very real threat to the well-being of our country.

Now, if somebody says, We have to keep Americans safe from terrorism, I am all in. I would submit that I don't know of a single U.S. Senator--not 1 out of 100--who is not all in on this fight against terrorism, but that is not what the law says. The law says that, under section 702, the government can collect, without a warrant, the communications of foreigners ``to acquire foreign intelligence information.''

Here is how the law defines ``foreign intelligence information.'' It is information that relates to the conduct of the ``foreign affairs of the United States.'' That is just about any piece of information about a foreign country.

Who can the government target to get all of this information? Anybody ``expected to possess, receive, and/or is likely to communicate'' that information. So if you unpack that, you don't have to be a terrorist suspect or any kind of threat to the United States to be a target under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The government just has to think you know something the government wants to know.

That is why so many Americans--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--are worried about getting their private communications swept up. They are law-abiding people, as I have been saying-- servicemembers, businesspeople, Americans who, on a regular basis, talk to friends, families, and contacts overseas. They are worried because, based on what the law says, which I have just read, those foreigners could be the targets, and Americans' communications could be collected by the government.

Now, for years, I and other Members of the Congress--both Houses, both parties--tried to at least get an estimate of how many law-abiding Americans' communications have been getting swept up. As recently as April 2017, the Director of National Intelligence said the public was going to get some kind of estimate, but in June, the Director suddenly changed course and told the public and the Congress: You are not getting anything. What that means is no one knows the size of the database. Nobody knows how many Americans' private communications are sitting there, waiting to be searched and possibly used against those Americans.

Just yesterday, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was invoked by those opposing reforms, but what that Board had to say about the sheer volume of Americans' communications being swept up is actually, in their words, ``too much expansion in the collection of U.S. persons' communications or the uses to which those communications are put may push the program over the [constitutional] line.''

So here they were being cited, in effect, as supporters for the status quo when I just read you their concern about the status quo.

This is why today section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is an end-run on the Constitution, and it is what the Presiding Officer and other Members of this body--both Democrats and Republicans--have wanted to change.

This end-run is not just about the collection. It is that, after all the communications of our people are swept up, the government can go searching for individual Americans through all that data. They don't have to be suspected of anything. The government just has to decide on its own that your private communications might reveal some intelligence or some evidence of a crime, and like the collection of the communications, that search can take place without a warrant--no warrant on the collection of Americans' communications, no warrant on searching for individual Americans. This is a case of two wrongs certainly not making a right.

What the Senate did last night was prevent any debate on this basic constitutional question. The USA Rights Act, introduced by 15 Senators of both parties, would have required a warrant for those searches of Americans.

Our colleagues Senator Leahy and Senator Lee have legislation requiring a warrant--a Democrat and a Republican. Other Members have had their own proposals. None of them are going to get heard by the Senate.

We had a chance to consider amendments. We could have fixed the underlying bill, which doesn't require any warrants for any searches for Americans. Let me just repeat that. The underlying bill does not require any warrants for any searches for Americans--none, not in intelligence cases, not in criminal cases. Warrantless fishing expeditions for Americans can just go on and on and on.

The bill's so-called reform only applies to the government's access to the results of the searches, but it really doesn't even do that. It only kicks in if the government is already well down the road of investigating somebody.

This means the bill provides more rights to criminal suspects than to innocent Americans. Think about what that is going to mean in Texas or Oregon or North Carolina or anywhere else in the country. As I have described it, this bill provides more rights to criminal suspects than to innocent Americans.

It gets worse because the bill is even narrower than that. It imposes no limitations at all if the government determines the search relates to national security or to a criminal matter that has anything at all to do with national security. Why are opponents of reform happy now? Because their bill does nothing.

I went and read the Director of National Intelligence's statistics for 2016. The CIA and the National Security Agency conducted over 5,000 warrantless searches for Americans, according to this material. It doesn't include the FBI, whose searches are supposedly too numerous to even count. It doesn't include communications records, which number in the tens of thousands.

How many times does the government encounter a situation in which, under this bill, there would even be the possibility of needing a warrant? Exactly one--that is right--one among the thousands and thousands of warrantless searches for Americans. Even that is an overstatement because that one instance in 2016 could have occurred prior to a predicated investigation; in which case, it, too, would be exempt from warrant requirements.

Basically, this bill we will vote on provides an easy-to-read roadmap to the government to make sure it never has to get a warrant for anything. Meanwhile, the thousands of Americans subject to warrantless backdoor searches each year have no protections at all.

Had there been amendments, I think there would have been the familiar argument against requiring a warrant for searches of Americans' private communications. We would have heard that section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is necessary to connect the dots between suspects and terrorists.

Here is why that is misleading. Opponents of reform like to talk about a tip to the government that somebody is acting strange on a bridge. They say this is a situation where the government needs to go directly to reading the private communications of this person. That is just not how the Constitution works.

Think about it. Would you want the content of your private communications searched, accessed, and read just because somebody has a slight suspicion about you?

Here is the misleading part. Opponents of reform say that, unless the government searches for and reads the emails, it just can't connect the dots to the terrorists. That is just false. The government already has the authority to get this information and in a less intrusive way.

Some may remember just a few years ago there was a debate about ending metadata--the bulk collection of millions of phone records of law-abiding Americans. What remained at the end of that debate was the authority of the government to go get the phone and email records of anyone as long as the records were relevant to an investigation. If it is an emergency, the government can get those records immediately without having to go to the court first.

I want to emphasize that because it is something I have felt very strongly about. I wrote that section, section 102 of the USA Freedom Act, because I wanted to make sure it was clear in this debate about finding policies where security and liberty are mutually exclusive, where we have both, that the strongest possible message was sent; that if the government believes there is an emergency, the government can move immediately--immediately--to get the information it needs and then come back later and settle up with the court.

When I have the opportunity to be in the Oval Office, which I have had several times--it is a wonderful honor and privilege given by the people of Oregon to pursue these issues--I will say what I say to the President, not what the President says back because I think those are private communications of the President. At one point in this debate, I said to President Obama: If you and your staff feel the current emergency provisions are not adequate, if you think they are not strong enough, I want to know about it because I will work with you to make sure they do the job.

That is because when there is an emergency and the security and well- being of the American people is on the line, the government gets a chance to move quickly, come back, and settle later with the court. I have included that in essentially all the legislation that I have authored. This provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is what allows the government to connect the dots without going directly to the content of private communications. That is how our system is supposed to work. The government gets less intrusive information on Americans, using a lower standard, first.

But what if the government needs the content of communications urgently? What if the government sees an immediate threat and believes it has no choice but to read those communications right away? As I said, that is why we had the amendment that I have described in USA Freedom Act, and it is why we said in our amendment to section 702--in this proposal--that we would also have an emergency exception. Again, the USA Freedom Act has an emergency exception, and our reform to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has an emergency exception. In this case, under our proposal, in an emergency, the government can search for and read those communications immediately and seek a warrant later. Our proposal also includes other exceptions to the warrant requirement, such as a hostage situation, where a search might help save someone.

I bring this up only by way of saying that reformers have been very clear. When the government has an emergency that is defined by the government--not by somebody else who might conceivably not have all the information--what we did in the USA Freedom Act is what we are doing in section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is protecting the American people in an emergency.

Now, there are other facts about warrantless backdoor searches that opponents of a warrant requirement omit from public argument. For years after the original passage of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the CIA and the National Security Agency didn't have the authority to conduct these searches. What is more, the Bush administration never asked the FISA Court, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, for those authorities. The Bush administration didn't think it was a problem

that the CIA and the NSA couldn't conduct warrantless backdoor searches of Americans. But now people act like the warrantless searches are somehow inseparable from the broader program. They pretend that we really can't have an effective foreign intelligence collection program unless you just make sure you are violating the rights of Americans.

This week should have been an opportunity to discuss the facts of how this bill could have been improved. It should have been an opportunity to clarify that Americans don't have to choose between security and liberty. It should have been the Senate's chance to push back against scare tactics and fearmongering and to lay out for the public what the government does and doesn't need to protect us. Instead, we get a bill that isn't necessary for our security and does nothing to protect our liberty.

There are other important amendments that are not going to be considered. One relates to what is known as ``abouts'' collection, a process in which two innocent Americans could have their communications swept up if they just write an email referencing a foreign target. We are talking communications entirely among individuals who themselves are not targets and are, potentially, all Americans. The whole concept is just contrary to the Fourth Amendment. As the privacy board concluded, there was ``nothing comparable'' in the law.

``From a legal standpoint, under the 4th Amendment, the government may not, without a warrant, open and read letters sent through the mail in order to acquire those that contain particular information. Likewise, the government cannot listen to telephone conversations, without probable cause about one of the callers or about the telephone, in order to keep recordings of those conversations that contain particular content.''

That is the quote from the privacy board, and we sure heard on the floor sponsors of the status quo, in my view, suggest that the privacy board had a different view of what they were up to.

From a practical standpoint, this form of collection was so problematic that the government itself was forced to shut it down. Now, the underlying bill says: Go ahead and start it up, as long as you tell Congress. Congress has to be told anyway.

Based on the bill before us, if Congress does what it does best-- which is nothing--the government can just go ahead.

Again, I don't think that is what the public thinks the Senate should be about. If the government ever wants to get back into the business of this collection, it can come to the Congress and get it authorized. If their argument wins the day, so be it, but preemptively writing into black letter law this form of collection, sight unseen, means that this Senate is surrendering our constitutional responsibilities.

This is one of the examples, the ``abouts'' collection, which I mentioned, of why this bill actually is a retreat from current law. Congress has never approved ``abouts'' collection. It wasn't in the 2008 bill creating the law or the first reauthorization of section 702. It happened because of a secret interpretation of law, and most of Congress knew nothing about it. But now, for the first time, when the government itself has suspended it--largely because they know it had been abused--what we are doing is essentially setting up what amounts to a fast-track process to write it back into the law. It defines ``abouts'' collection broadly--broader even than the government--and it invites its resumption.

The Senate also is not going to get to consider an amendment limiting how information on Americans can be used against Americans. The bill allows unlimited secret use of section 702 information--all collected without a warrant--in any investigation or in any administrative or civil procedures against Americans. Now, Americans understand how the government can thoroughly disrupt their lives without ever charging them with a crime, particularly if they are doing it based on secret information.

But even when it comes to using 702 information as evidence in criminal proceedings against Americans, the bill provides no real protections. All the government needs is for the Attorney General to determine that the criminal proceedings relate to national security or involve a set of crimes that have nothing at all to do with national security. There is a catch-all category called ``transnational crime.'' Now, I have tried for some time to get the government to tell me what this ``transnational crime'' is. I haven't gotten much of a response. In any case, the underlying bill here specifically says that the Attorney General's decisions cannot be challenged in court.

So there you are. If the Attorney General decides that the crime you are being charged with somehow relates to national security or is a ``transnational crime,'' that decision by the Attorney General is really pretty much sacred. You can go to jail without ever being allowed to challenge the government's use of section 702 information against you--information obtained without a warrant and potentially uncovered as a result of warrantless searches specifically conducted to find your communications and communications about you.

The ways in which the government could potentially use this information, collected without a warrant to investigate and prosecute Americans and those in the United States, are limitless--immigration status, recreational drugs, back taxes. The list goes on and on. I don't think Americans think that is how the system is supposed to work. Is that what a warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance bill is supposed to do? I don't think so--immigration status, recreational drugs, back taxes--but this bill allows it.

The bill leaves in place other problems that affect our rights. One of them is the issue of what is called parallel construction. That is a lot of fancy legalese that says that, even if information against an American originally comes from section 702, if the government subsequently constructs a case from other collection, it never has to tell that American that it used section 702. My bill, with Senator Paul and 13 other Senators, would have fixed that.

The bill we are voting on shortly, without any debate on amendments, also leaves in place a big catch-22 that prevents anybody from ever challenging section 702 in court. Section 702 collection is secret, so almost no one can prove definitively that they personally were swept up. That means it is also almost impossible to get standing to go to court to challenge section 702. I am sure it pleases opponents of reform, but it means that section 702 isn't going to be part of any court review process where both sides of the adversarial system get heard.

Fixing this problem is not, as so many in the House misleadingly said, giving rights to terrorists. That was part of the fear-mongering that went on. This is simply saying that section 702 is not exempt from constitutional challenges that apply to every single Federal statute-- by the way, the hallmark of our constitutional system.

There are other problems that could have been fixed with amendments. I am particularly troubled by the fact that the underlying bill doesn't fix the problem of reverse targeting. This is where the government targets a foreigner overseas when it is really interested in collecting the communications of an American without a warrant. Right now, the law as written allows this collection to continue without a warrant, unless, in effect, the only purpose of the collection is to obtain the American's communications. My concern is that, if the government has even the slightest interest in the foreign target, it is not going to seek a warrant, regardless of the intensity of the government's interest in the American on the other end of the phone or the email. This could mean, again, frequent, ongoing searches of the American's communications. It could mean the use of the American's communications in investigations and criminal proceedings. There is a solution to this, and we proposed it; that is, if a significant purpose for targeting a foreigner is to get an American's communications, the government would need a warrant--pretty simple. I note that the Presiding Officer of the Senate is supportive of reforms and our bipartisan coalition. I very much appreciate that.

Just think about that. We had a solution to the fact that reverse targeting had been abused. We simply said, if a significant purpose of the government for targeting a foreigner is to get an

American's communications, the government would need a warrant--and, of course, we have an emergency exception in the bill as well.

The bill also doesn't prevent the government from directing service providers to modify or weaken encryption without any court oversight. I am telling you that this problem has been underappreciated. As we all know, there is an ongoing debate about whether the government should be able to mandate backdoor weaknesses in encryption. I believe this kind of authority is just a loser all around. I think Americans, if you weaken strong encryption, will be less safe. Certainly, parents who are concerned about a youngster don't want to weaken the protection in their smartphone for the tracker so they can keep tabs on their kids. If the government is allowed to mandate backdoor weaknesses in our products, I believe we will be less safe, we will have less liberty, and it will be a big loser for many of our high-skilled, high- wage companies.

I have already announced that, if there is any effort to weaken strong encryption, I will do everything in my power to block that legislation because it is a loser from a security standpoint, it is a loser from a liberty standpoint, and it will be bad news for a lot of our companies that pay good wages for the high skills of Americans, but even those who argue that the government should be able to mandate backdoor weaknesses in encryption assure us it is only going to happen if the court orders it. But under section 702, the government could direct a service provider to do that without any court awareness at all. And, of course, Congress might not know either.

Again, we would have liked to have fixed this here on the floor. The bipartisan legislation I have with Senator Paul requires that the FISA Court approve the kind of technical assistance the government is seeking from providers, which would also result in the Congress finding out. This bill we will be voting on soon doesn't do that. As a result, the court and the Congress could end up totally in the dark about an issue that I think is absolutely central to the security and well-being of our people in the 21st century.

The bill also provides no clarification on the question of whether section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act can be used to collect communications the government knows are entirely domestic. Put your arms around that. This law is called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and we can't even get a straight answer from the government's Director of National Intelligence about whether the law can be used to collect communications the government knows are entirely domestic.

When I first asked the head of national intelligence whether 702 provided this authority, he said in a public hearing: No. That would be against the law.

Then, apparently, he told folks in the news media that he was answering a different question than the one I asked.

Once again, I asked the Director of National Intelligence to answer the question I had asked, at which point he then wrote and said that the whole thing was classified.

This is the essence of what is secret law. I believe it is the kind of thing that erodes trust in the government and in the intelligence community specifically.

Had we been able to have a real debate, I would have offered an amendment that would, in effect, write in the black letter law what the head of national intelligence told me at first when I asked him ``Could FISA be used to collect wholly domestic communications?'' before all this George Orwell stuff. The head of national intelligence said: No, FISA could not be used to collect wholly personal communications. That answer would have reassured the American people.

After all of this back-and-forth and the bizarre situation where the Director of National Intelligence says the whole thing is classified after he has already given an answer in public, now the public isn't going to have an opportunity to see its representatives address this issue or take a position.

Supporters of the bill point to provisions related to oversight of section 702. Here is how inadequate those are. Yesterday, we again heard about the privacy board. Right now, the privacy board is restricted to reviewing counterterrorism programs. Most intelligence programs aren't neatly categorized that way. They are broader than that. And, of course, the effect on Americans' privacy has nothing to do with whether a collection program is about terrorism or anything else. This bill leaves in place completely arbitrary limits on the privacy board and their ability to oversee the country's intelligence programs.

The bill does not meaningfully strengthen the FISA Court in a way that I think is very basic. There are people with top security clearances who appear before the court and provide the only alternative view in what is otherwise basically the government's show. The FISA Court has often gone years without addressing serious legal and constitutional questions. Sometimes, the court never gets to them. Right now, these sort of friends of the court are only heard from when the court invites them. But imagine if these folks who have top security clearances were informed about what was going on and could raise issues with the court whenever they felt it was important. This would not hinder the FISA Court, but it would greatly improve the chance that the court would consider serious issues earlier. Once again, no reform.

There are also basic principles of transparency that are ignored in the bill. Right now, the CIA and the NSA are obligated to inform the public how many searches of Americans they conduct. The FBI is not. I don't see a good argument why Congress shouldn't change that. The American people deserve to know how often the CIA and the NSA conduct warrantless searches looking for information on them. They deserve to know how often the FBI does so, particularly because the FBI conducts searches for evidence of a crime as well as for intelligence.

I believe I have outlined the faults of the bill. This is not reform. It is not even business as usual; it is a retreat. It is, in fact, worse than just extending the program's business as usual because, for the first time, it writes into black letter law the problematic practices that I have outlined. There is not real oversight. There is not transparency. That is what the public demands. That is what I heard people asking for at the townhall meetings I held last weekend in Oregon. Americans still have a lot of unanswered questions about the program.

There are certainly many Members of Congress who share my concerns who have devoted much of their career to ensuring that Americans have security and liberty. I want to especially express my appreciation to Senators Paul and Lee. They have been tireless champions. Chairman Leahy has led on this critical matter for decades. Senator Heinrich, my seatmate on the Intelligence Committee, is one of this body's rising stars because he is willing to dig deeply into the issues. In the House, 183 Members voted for the most comprehensive section 702 reform bill, the House version of the USA RIGHTS Act. As we saw last night-- and the President of the Senate and I were involved in a lot of those deliberations down here in the well of the Senate--this was a very close vote.

A lot of people say: Well, the reformers are going to say their piece, and they are going to get 6, 8, 10 votes and the like.

I think, last night, we really brought home what I hear Americans say, Democrats, Republicans--by the way, many Independents--who have questions about the way the government works and want to see their liberties protected in a way that also keeps them safe, and a big group of Members in the other body. And last night, a big group of Senators said: What a quaint idea. Let's have the U.S. Senate be the U.S. Senate. Let's have a few amendments.

It was communicated to the leaders. I want to thank Senator Schumer for making it clear that he thought that some amendments would make this a better, fuller, and more complete debate. I think it is very unfortunate, with the fact that there are so many important issues here--it is an important bill. I hope people have seen that--having spent a lot of time on these issues over the years, I think we really need to have more time spent on this floor getting a chance to debate these issues, having Senators of both

parties work in good faith, work toward constructive solutions.

I think support for what we sought last night, which is a real debate and real solutions and actual amendments--I think more and more Americans are coming around to see that is the way to proceed because Americans aren't going to buy the idea that, well, we will just say you have to give up some of your liberty to have security. Ben Franklin said it very well: Anybody who gives up their liberty to have security doesn't really deserve either.

What we need are smart policies. That is why I talked about encryption. Strong encryption makes us safer. It also protects our liberty. That is why I outlined some of the deep flaws in this bill. I think this bill puts on fast track going back to ``abouts'' collection, where somebody is barely mentioned and, all of a sudden, the government is collecting the communication.

I will oppose final passage of this legislation. Nothing is preventing the Congress from getting this right. As I mentioned, the office of national intelligence--the Director of the relevant agency has said there is plenty of time for us to take this bill, have a few amendments, a real debate, and come up with a bill that better ensures that Americans are both safe and free.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, our Constitution starts out with three beautiful words: ``We the people.'' This was the whole mission statement for the development of our form of government--not a government that would deliver benefits by and for the privileged, not a government that would deliver decisions for the rich and the powerful, but for the people of the United States, for the best policy for the population of the United States, so that its citizens everywhere, of every stripe and every corner of the Nation, could have a foundation to thrive. But in 2017, the leadership of this body dedicated itself to a different mission. They dedicated themselves to the mission of government of, by, and for the powerful and the privileged.

I think it is worth reviewing some of those items that we have gone through in the course of this past year. Let's start by looking at the attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. My colleagues on the Republican side spent a whole year attacking this organization, which was set up to make sure that financial transactions are fair--a fair, square deal for ordinary Americans. We had seen all kinds of predatory practices in consumer loans. We had seen all kinds of predatory practices in auto loans. We certainly had seen them in home mortgages. In fact, the exploding interest rate mortgages and the triple option mortgages that were designed to deceive and bankrupt ordinary Americans turned the dream of homeownership into a nightmare.

Fortunately, in 2010 this body said: No more. We are going to set up an organization that can identify predatory practices as they develop and prevent them from being implemented.

It makes a lot of sense. It is very similar to an organization we have in the government that says: That appliance is dangerous and should never be sold; that toy is dangerous and should never be sold. In this case, it is this: That loan is predatory, deceptive and should never be marketed.

This assault on CFPB went on throughout the year, purely encapsulating government for the powerful, the rich, and the predatory over ordinary people. This has culminated at the end of the year in which President Trump has appointed an Acting Director to the CFPB who hates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and wants to dismantle it from the inside. In fact, that Director has called the organization a ``sick, sad joke.''

Just yesterday, he threw out the payday loan rule. Payday loans have interest rates of 300, 400, 500 percent interest. People have them, initially, and borrow $1,000. In a year, they owe $5,000. In another year, they owe $25,000. In another year, they owe $125,000. It is a vortex of debt that pulls families into bankruptcy, squeezes them for as long as it can, and then throws them out bankrupt. Many States have said this is outrageous. Many religious traditions have said this is unacceptable. People have seen the carnage it does in a society that has high-interest loans. These are not just high-interest loans of 25, 35, or 45 percent. No, it is 300 percent, 400 percent, or 500 percent.

Yesterday the Director of the organization set up to protect against predatory loans restored full power to allow these predatory loans to occur. That symbolizes the whole year of leadership in this body supporting the powerful and the privileged instead of the people of the United States of America.

Just a little while ago we had a vote in the body--a 50-50 vote that was broken by the Vice President, 51-50--that really does symbolize the powerful over the people. This is a case where there was a rule adopted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that said you have to have fairness in adjudicating consumer issues. Let's say, for example, a telephone company puts charges on your bill that you didn't authorize. Let's say, for example, a cable company proceeds to charge you a higher price than the contract called for and you want to dispute this, but currently if you seek to dispute it, you can't do so in a fair setting. Instead, it is a rigged system set up for the company and against the people, in which the company chooses the judge, in which the company pays the judge, and in which the company promises future business to the judge.

Who here in this Chamber really thinks they can get a fair decision when one party to a dispute chooses a judge, pays the judge, and promises the judge future business? That is the fair arbitration rule that was undone by this body choosing to weigh in during 2017 once again on the side of the powerful against ordinary people, choosing the system rigged against middle-class and ordinary Americans.

Let's turn to yet another decision for the powerful in 2017 over the people--net neutrality. People value the fairness of the internet. You decide you have an idea, and you want to set up a company. Maybe you want to offer a website that provides services to people who need home repairs. You know you are going to be competing against big, powerful actors who have other websites. But you decide: I have a different idea, a different innovation, and a different way of doing this would be better. Right now, until recently, you had the same ability to get the same speed on your pages, or your website, loading as the big player did so you could compete. But the Republican majority, team Trump, says: No, we want

to weigh in for the powerful over ordinary people. We want to give the powerful the ability to have those web pages put up on the computer screen really, really fast and stop the challengers--the little guy, the ordinary person who wants to compete--from being able to have the same speed so that the customer can only decide: Well, I better go to the established big player.

What could more symbolize the powerful over the people than the FCC, with the support of this administration--this Trump team for the powerful--choosing to wipe out net neutrality? I think we will have that issue revisited in 2018 when we have a Congressional Review Act that already 50 Senators in this body--49 Democrats, 1 Republican--have said they are ready to sponsor for the overturn of this act against ordinary people. At least 50 out of 100 are saying that on this issue they want to stand up for ordinary people against this 2017 reign of terror by the powerful and privileged over ordinary people. It is at least 50, but we are going to need 51. Isn't there one more Senator who will stand up for ordinary people?

Then, we have the Congressional Review Act attack on Planned Parenthood. This was a case where the administration and this Republican leadership and this Republican-led body said: We want to enable jurisdictions to divert funds away from a women's health organization, Planned Parenthood. They centered their argument around diminishing the number of abortions. Here is the fact. Family planning decreases abortions. So it has the contrary impact than what was stated by those who made that argument.

Here is another fact: 97 percent of the work of those organizations is about general women's health/reproductive services, not abortion--97 percent. This takes away screenings for all kinds of cancers, for all kinds of women's healthcare. Here we have the privileged and the powerful choosing to weigh in against the health of ordinary women across the United States. The list just goes on and on.

Let's turn to big, powerful mining companies brought to bear against ordinary people. This is simply the case of a rule which said that when you create a big mess with mountaintop removal mining, you have to fix it so that it doesn't contaminate the stream. This was a rule in which the people weighed in and said they wanted clean streams for the fish, where the ordinary people of America weighed in and said they wanted clean streams for fishing, where the ordinary people weighed in and said they wanted clean streams for their water supplies--but no. This body saw fit to weigh in for the rich and powerful, taking away those streams for the fish and the opportunity for fishing, taking away those clean streams for water in favor of the rich and powerful over the interests of the people of the United States.

This ``rich and powerful over the people'' has extended abroad, even beyond our borders. Equatorial Guinea, a country of Sub-Saharan Africa, has a massive wealth of oil. President Obiang of that country has been in power since 1979. That country has a per capita income of around--I believe it is $20,000, but most of the nation lives on less than $2 a day. Why is that? Why do ordinary people live on so little when the country has so much wealth? It is because the international oil companies have made their royalty payments to the leader of the country rather than to the treasury of the country.

Congress came along and said: Do you know what? We need transparency of these international transactions so that ordinary people overseas are not ripped off through these hidden transactions of paying off leaders who live extraordinary lives of luxury while their people suffer.

When I talk about suffering, who here can live on $2 a day? Who here can do that? It is a life-and-death issue, as 20 percent of the children in Equatorial Guinea--a country with this vast wealth--die before the age of 5 while the President and his Vice President own yachts worth $250 million. They have a $200 million mansion in Paris, and they have a $10 million car collection while people are dying because in 2017 this Chamber chose to support the powerful over the ordinary people of the world.

We see this in another environmental issue--the issue of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We have protected that decade after decade--a last great natural treasure, sacred Tribal land that is home to polar bears and brown bears and lynx and moose and Arctic foxes and seals. In fact, it is the calving ground where a herd of 160,000 porcupine caribou go to give birth. Yet we decided that Tribal land was not as important as the decision for the rich and powerful oil companies to be able to destroy that pristine area.

Let's turn, really, to what was one of the biggest issues of the powerful over the people in 2017, one in which this body facilitated the theft of a Supreme Court seat in order to maintain the Citizens United ruling that allows billionaires to flood our campaigns with cash in order to control this body--one of the most evident sources of corruption in the history of this country.

Finally, we had an opening for the Supreme Court in 2016, an opening that might have redressed this ``we the powerful'' decision over ``we the people.'' This body came forward, and the leadership said: We are not going to allow a debate on President Obama's nominee. We are not going to allow a vote.

They justified it because it was an election year. Yet, if you look through history, there is nothing in our history that supports that. Fifteen times before, we had openings on the Supreme Court during election years. Fifteen times before, we had debated. Fifteen times before, we had voted. Then again, it was dressed up as, maybe this is protecting the Constitution. Of course, the Constitution doesn't absolve us of our advice and consent responsibilities in the fourth year of a Presidency or in the eighth year of a Presidency.

The consummation of that theft was completed when this body voted to confirm the nomination of Neil Gorsuch last April--basically, an incredible act of irresponsibility, a failure to honor our advice and consent responsibility, an act which denigrated the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and certainly diminished the reputation of the Senate in honoring our pledge to honor the Constitution, including the constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent--all in order to keep billionaires' money in campaigns throughout this country. If that is not the powerful over the people in 2017, what is?

That is not the end of it. In 2017, the Republican leadership of this body brought us five different efforts to wipe out healthcare for 20 to 30 million people. Now, I didn't hear the Senators who were supporting this say they wanted to give up healthcare for themselves--oh, no. They wanted to keep that, but they were very comfortable in advocating for a bill to wipe out healthcare for 20 to 30 million Americans. There you have it--the powerful against the people.

Then we have the tax heist--the most recent of the powerful over the people. Add up the provisions for the wealthy. Now, remember, this tax bill was advertised as a middle-class tax cut for the middle class, but what did we have? We had the provision to eliminate the dynasty loophole, which allows the richest Americans to pass on their dynasties to the next generation without their ever paying capital gains, at a cost of $83 billion. We had a change in the tax brackets for the wealthiest Americans in the hundreds of billions of dollars. We had the eliminating of the alternative minimum tax--$40 billion or so--for the wealthiest Americans. We had the reducing of corporate taxes, the benefits of which largely go to the big stockholders--the richest Americans. We had the sweetheart rate for passthrough corporations that bolstered the value of that, helping out the richest Americans.

If you add it up, one after another after another of the provisions, all told, probably about $2 trillion has been given to the richest Americans by the so-called middle-class tax cuts--not $2 trillion for the middle class, not $2 trillion for the struggling bottom third of America's families, not $2 trillion for helping to diminish the size of our classrooms in K-12 and to improve teacher training, not $2 trillion dedicated to wiping out the high cost of college, not $2 trillion dedicated to

healthcare and our clinics, not $2 trillion dedicated to infrastructure, creating jobs, and building a better economy for the future. No. This is $2 trillion to the richest Americans to increase wealth inequality, to increase income inequality.

How much is $2 trillion? Can you even get your hands around that number? Divide it by the number of Americans--men, women, and children. That is $6,000 for every man, woman, and child in America that this body, under this Republican leadership, decided to give to the wealthiest Americans rather than to make available for the foundation for our families--education, healthcare, good jobs, improved infrastructure.

That kind of wraps up 10 items from throughout 2017. This body constantly ignored the mission of our Constitution--our ``we the people'' mission--and chose instead to be the government of, by, and for the powerful.

How about we have a new year's resolution for 2018 in which we decide to actually honor the Constitution, the vision of the Constitution, and address the needs of America and the foundation under which families may thrive, that of good jobs, education, and healthcare in 2018. Then we would be doing our job, and then we would be honoring our Constitution.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

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

Mr. President, last week, the House voted to reauthorize for a period of 6 years section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--a vital tool in tracking foreign terrorists abroad. Last night, we had a very important vote in this Chamber, a cloture vote, which will allow us to proceed to a final vote on this legislation perhaps as early as tomorrow morning.

Congress enacted section 702 in 2008 in direct response to the enduring threats to the country being posed by radical Islamic extremism and the ever-expanding use of the internet and social media by terrorists and foreign operatives. The law authorizes the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of National Intelligence to conduct surveillance on foreigners who are outside of the United States so that the U.S. Government can effectively acquire that intelligence information. As the Director of National Intelligence and many others have stated--former FBI Director James Comey is another one--section 702 is the crown jewel of our foreign intelligence collection and a critical weapon in the defense of our Nation.

The law expires this Friday--that is right, just 2 days from now--so the clock is ticking. I am glad the Senate took the first step last evening, and I trust my colleagues will soon make sure the law is reauthorized so that the U.S. Government can continue to collect information that is vital to the protection of the Nation.

Because the law requires targets of section 702 to be foreign citizens outside the United States, those targets are not covered by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Clearly, people who are inside the country, American citizens, are all protected by the Fourth Amendment, but not foreigners, under Supreme Court precedent. Because of that, the government isn't required to obtain a warrant before initiating surveillance. That is where the misconceptions and confusion start to arise, and I want to talk a little bit more about that.

Despite the strong bipartisan vote in support of section 702 in the House of Representatives last week and the strong bipartisan support for the provision here in the Senate, some critics want to delay reauthorization and engage in a never-ending lamentation about the demise of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment, of course, is a guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. Again, that applies to American citizens, not to foreigners abroad. But these critics have mischaracterized the aims of the many Republican and Democratic proponents of this law, and frankly their concerns are misplaced. They ignore the enduring value and core protections in section 702 and the merits of various pro-privacy reforms in the House bill. As I said, it is truly a bipartisan bill.

Critics have expressed three concerns, and I want to address each in turn.

The first is that under 702, ``millions of bits of information are collected on Americans,'' not just foreigners, and that ``[w]e don't know the exact amount.''

What they are referring to, of course, is what the intelligence community calls ``incidental collection''--when intelligence officials monitor the communications of foreign terrorists and the information of any Americans who are in communication with those terrorists sometimes gets included in the mix. But, of course, if even an American is talking to a foreign terrorist, certainly the intelligence community would want to know that.

There are additional protections for U.S. persons who are incidentally collected based on a target of a foreign national. All of this would be a legitimate worry were it not for the fact that there are safeguards built into the statute that ensure that no more American communications are collected than are necessary to safely monitor foreigners with suspected terrorist ties. For example, section 702 already explicitly prohibits the U.S. Government from intentionally targeting a foreign person ``if the [real] purpose . . . is to target a particular, known person . . . in the United States.'' That is illegal. There are also so-called ``minimization'' procedures that limit the dissemination and use of information acquired and scrupulous practices at our intelligence agencies--the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI--on how that information is dealt with in order to protect U.S. persons.

Under the bill, several additional features should be acknowledged.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court must review the FBI's so- called ``querying'' procedures and certify that they are consistent with the Fourth Amendment.

I know of no government program that has as much oversight and protection for the privacy rights of American citizens as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is actually supervised by all three branches of government--by the executive branch internally; by the judicial branch through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and other courts, which decided that there is no constitutional violation in any of the procedures laid down in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; and, of course, the oversight we conduct here in the Senate and in the House on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.

To make sure all of this is scrupulously adhered to, a record must be kept of each U.S. person query term used. And far from ignoring Americans' privacy concerns related to incidental collection, the bill requires that the intelligence community hire and employ civil liberties officers--people whose explicit job is to look out for our privacy rights.

In sum, those who would misleadingly paint the intelligence community as renegade--as deliberately surveilling millions of Americans with no checks in place--are simply wrong about the facts of this bill and the layered protections that have been put in place.

Let me reiterate. The intelligence community is expressly prohibited from targeting Americans under section 702, directly or incidentally. In fact, the only Americans who might be worried about their communications

being swept up under section 702 are those who are deliberately communicating with foreign terrorists. But all Americans will benefit from a host of additional protections under the law.

The critics' second and related concern is that incidental collection can be used in domestic criminal prosecutions. They are concerned that the U.S. Government could collect information without ever having to obtain a warrant and then use it to investigate and punish Americans for crimes.

Again, this fear is misplaced under this bill. It is mitigated by analysis done by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in 2014, who, after a comprehensive review, found no evidence of intentional abuse. Concerns of the critics are also mitigated by the FBI, which under this bill has to obtain a court order before it can access the contents of 702 communications in support of a purely criminal investigation, as opposed to an intelligence-gathering activity. It is also mitigated by the fact that section 702 intelligence can be used as evidence against Americans only in instances of the most serious crimes. Apart from obtaining a court order, it can only be used if the Attorney General determines that the criminal proceeding involves national security or other heinous crimes, such as murder, kidnapping, or crimes against children.

The critics' preferred approach--and they introduced bills to this effect last year--would prohibit the government from using any 702 collection to investigate these dangerous, violent crimes, and therefore it would potentially protect dangerous criminals engaged in some of the most egregious behavior imaginable--something I think we would not want to do.

That brings us to the skeptics' third problem, which deals with oversight. They fear that the reauthorization of this legislation could spell the end of congressional monitoring of the program. They have chastised this possibility as one that is ``callous in its disregard for our cherished Bill of Rights.''

They are entirely correct to insist, in light of recent events, that Congress should continue to engage in rigorous oversight of the intelligence community and make sure that our surveillance tools aren't used for political ends. But we already have oversight in spades, and under this bill, we will have even more.

First of all, the House bill reauthorizes the program for only 6 years--not indefinitely. At the end of 2023, we will revisit section 702. In the meantime, existing and extensive oversight of section 702 will continue. As I mentioned, for example, there is judicial review. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court annually reviews section 702, and other courts have examined the use of section 702 in support of criminal cases. All agree that section 702 does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Even the Ninth Circuit, which is frequently out of line with other circuits and the Supreme Court, agrees that section 702 is constitutional.

Courts, of course, are not the only oversight mechanism; there are ones within the executive branch, which I alluded to earlier, including routine reviews by the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Of course, congressional committees, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee, both of which I serve on, also receive regular reporting on the 702 program and hold open and closed hearings on the subject.

Ultimately, the approaches that are preferred by the 702 critics would force the FBI to rebuild the wall between criminal and national security investigators that existed before the attacks in New York on 9/11 and would cause the FBI to stovepipe its section 702 collection, contrary to the recommendations of numerous commissions, including the 9/11 Commission and the Fort Hood Commission. We need to remember that the FBI protects our national security both as an intelligence agency and as a law enforcement agency. In other words, it wears two hats. So we can't wall off the FBI from the content of crucial communications, and we can't wall off the FBI from intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. That was the situation the FBI was in leading up to September 11, 2001.

We can't forget the increasingly dangerous world we are living in and the diverse array of threats that confront us. FBI Director Chris Wray has summarized our threat landscape. It is one that includes not only large mass-casualty events like 9/11 in the United States and similar recent attacks in Europe but also more isolated and diffuse lone-wolf and homegrown violent extremist threats that give law enforcement and national security investigators much less time to detect and disrupt. Imposing additional obstacles to accessing this critical information could either delay us when time is of the essence or, worse, prevent us from being able to connect the dots of information that the U.S. Government has already lawfully collected.

Real-world examples show how devastating this could be. A tip under 702 from the NSA, the National Security Agency, is what helped the FBI stop an attack on the New York City subway system in 2009. There is also Hajji Iman, who at one point was the second in command of ISIS. Section 702 helped us get him and take him off the battlefield. Then there is ISIS recruiter Shawn Parson--702 revealed his terrorist propaganda and identified members of his terrorist network. There are many, many more examples of instances where 702 helped us identify, disrupt, and prevent attacks against the homeland here in the United States and innocent civilians.

Whether it is combatting terrorism, detecting and countering cyber threats, uncovering support to hostile powers, or acquiring intelligence on foreign adversary militaries, 702 is one of our most effective tools, and we simply can't afford to blunt the sharpness of its blade or dull the focus of its lens.

In closing, I want to make one final point clear. I agree that, in the words of one critic, the Fourth Amendment is not a ``suggestion.'' It is a core constitutional protection of our sacred freedom. But reauthorizing section 702 would not suddenly relegate the Fourth Amendment to second-tier status. Every court that has considered the matter has said so, and frankly, it is obscene to ignore the balanced, pro-privacy reforms in the House-passed bill that would provide even greater protections for the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans.

The truth is that section 702 has never been systematically abused. It has helped stop terrorist attacks both at home and abroad. It has helped defend our troops on the battlefield. It has been critical to the Russian collusion probe and other counterintelligence work. As I said, every court--every single court--that has considered the program has found it to be lawful and constitutional; in other words, consistent with the Fourth Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

So we can all rattle the saber of civil liberties to score political points, but large, misguided changes to 702 are not the way to go. The House-passed bill will provide greater transparency and procedural protections for the Fourth Amendment rights of innocent, law-abiding Americans, while at the same time allow us to remain vigilant in protecting the homeland and our troops abroad and our national security at large by making sure we have the information we need in order to connect the dots with the threats to our national security.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for approximately 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, now, for the 193rd time, I will give my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, and as I do so, we are coming up on President Trump's anniversary in office. Unfortunately, this occasion does not offer the American people much to celebrate. Behind the persistent tweets and the dog whistles, the Trump Presidency has been a spectacle of special interests and self-dealing. Billionaire donors have endless access installing their operatives and pursuing their special interest goals throughout the executive branch. They are literally writing the rules in an unambiguous effort to enrich themselves evermore at the expense of everyone else.

Fossil fuel barons are the new American dark money emperors. Carl Icahn, early on, got himself installed as a special adviser to the President on regulatory reform and began pushing for a change to the renewable fuel standard that would net one of his companies, CVR Energy, hundreds of millions of dollars. Icahn's insider campaign came to an end in August of last year right around the time a New Yorker article outlined the potential legal claims that could arise from his murky status and self-dealing. Federal investigators have since opened a probe into Icahn's time at the White House.

Then came Murray Energy Corporation CEO and big Trump donor Bob Murray with his policy wish list for Trump officials. He called it his action plan. Murray had donated $300,000 to the President's inauguration, and he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to political action committees affiliated with the EPA Administrator and fossil fuel operative, Scott Pruitt. In a ``Frontline'' documentary, Bob Murray bragged about giving the administration this action plan and that the first page was already done.

Well, I was curious to see the Bob Murray action plan for the Trump administration, so I joined Senator Carper, our ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and asked the White House for a copy of the Bob Murray action plan. The White House ignored our request and to this date has never responded.

I guess the White House was busy organizing Trump's nominee for second in command at the EPA: a lobbyist for, guess who--Bob Murray and Murray Energy. During the Murray Energy lobbyist's EPA confirmation hearing, he claimed he did not have the Bob Murray action plan. He admitted he had seen the Bob Murray action plan at a meeting between Bob Murray and Energy Secretary Rick Perry last March, but he could not recall details of what was in the action plan or what was discussed in the meeting. Lobbyists for energy companies who get one-on-one meetings with the Secretary of Energy often little note nor long remember what went on at the meeting.

Anyway, I asked the Department of Energy whether they had a copy of the elusive Bob Murray action plan. Shortly after my request, and before we heard anything from the Department of Energy, the magazine In These Times released photos of that March meeting that the Murray lobbyist had mentioned between Secretary Perry and Bob Murray.

This photo shows Bob Murray and Secretary Perry. It looks like Bob Murray received a pretty cozy reception from the Energy Secretary. This gentleman, I believe, is another lobbyist for Bob Murray and Murray Energy. After they got through the hugging, they got down to business. There is the Secretary, there is the CEO Bob Murray, there is his other lobbyist, and this is the Bob Murray lobbyist who is now teed up to be the No. 2 at EPA. Right there in the picture is the Bob Murray action plan. This is a closeup of it, and the Presiding Officer can't see from there and nobody on the camera can see, but if you look right here, it talks about power grid reliability in the cover letter signed by Bob Murray, which may have cooked up, since this was a meeting with Secretary Perry, Secretary Perry's power grid reliability proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which included huge subsidies to coal plants.

So we have a coal company CEO bringing his action plan in to Secretary Perry on whose cover letter it talks about power grid reliability, and before you know it, Secretary Perry is proposing a power grid reliability project to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that just happens to give the coal industry enormous subsidies. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, with this photographic evidence in hand, I renewed my request that the Energy Department produce this Bob Murray action plan. They were no longer able to pretend they didn't have it because they had a picture of it, with the Secretary, on his desk. They nevertheless continued to stonewall me, saying they would provide me the document after responding to FOIA requests from the public.

So, memo to my Senate colleagues, when in the exercise of your oversight authority and the oversight authority of Congress and the Senate you request documents from the Trump administration, you might want to consider putting in a parallel FOIA request as that may be the only way you get a response.

Despite the administration's best efforts to stonewall the Bob Murray action plan, however, my office was able to obtain a copy from an independent source. This version is addressed to Vice President Pence.

The New York Times has now published the Bob Murray action plan.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the article they wrote, ``How a Coal Baron's Wish List Became President Trump's To-Do List,'' and the Bob Murray action plan that was the subject of that story at the conclusion of my remarks.

The article details demands made by Murray that have already been checked off by the President and the administration, including the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, the installation of mining industry operatives at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and even, believe it or not, the appointment of a fossil fuel-friendly U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Several more of Bob Murray's action plan requests are underway. At the

Mine Safety and Health Administration, now led by a former coal mine executive, Murray Energy and trade associations are working to undo Obama-era rules to protect miners. The 2010 coal mine dust rule is also on the chopping block. Over at EPA, Bob Murray's political money beneficiary, Scott Pruitt, has begun a review of the Agency's 2015 ozone standards.

Let me just drop in, as a Senator from Rhode Island, we have had days when you drive into work and the skies are clear and the weather is nice and the radio says: Little children, infants and elderly folks and people who have a breathing difficulty should stay indoors in the air- conditioning. They should not go outdoors and enjoy the beautiful day. Why? Because of ozone which is being bombarded in on Rhode Island from--guess what--coal plants in the Midwest. We are in the downstream receiving end of ozone, which is the product of those coal plant emissions. So, obviously, loosening the ozone standards is good for coal companies.

On a new topic, EPA continues to cut and to drive away its staff--all items on Bob Murray's action plan.

Since it appears that Bob Murray has tailored his action plan for individual agencies, I have sent additional requests last week to the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, all of which are named in the Bob Murray action plan to see what specific action plans they have from Bob Murray.

The fossil fuel industry may be able to boss Cabinet Secretaries around and may be able to bring the majority party in Congress smartly to heel, but, fortunately, there are still some venues where their demands run smack up against the rule of law. In our courts and in administrative proceedings, decisions must have substantial support in the evidence, and lying and misleading can be exposed and even punished--unlike in Congress, where lying and misleading have been sickeningly successful fossil fuel tactics for decades.

Last week, the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission--even one stuffed with Trump appointees--rejected Secretary Perry's proposed power grid reliability rule to subsidize coal and nuclear plants. The FERC Commissioners found that the proposal failed to meet ``clear and fundamental'' legal requirements, like that the result will be ``just and reasonable'' under the Federal Power Act.

As an aside here, the theory of the coal industry was that their units provide more reliability than renewables. Well, tell that to Iowa's electric grid operators, which have baked Iowa's abundant wind energy not just into their flow but into their reliability modeling. Tell that to New England's ISO, which has allowed renewables into its capacity auctions to be paid, for meeting baseload capacity requirements. And, of course, tell that to anyone who has had to deal with scheduled and unscheduled outages at coal plants.

When I went on one of my climate visits to, in this case, Tennessee, I heard about a coal plant that had to be shut down because climate change had warmed the river and shrunk the flow so that the river used to cool the plant was no longer adequate to cool the plant, and they had to go into an unscheduled outage. Wind and solar are very reliable, and the ISOs have baked the algorithms that quantify their reliability into their grid reliability planning.

The ``coal is reliable and renewables aren't'' argument may pass muster on talk shows, but in the real world of grid operators, it is nonsense. FERC, as a rule-of-law agency, is required to face that fact.

America's courts also stand in the way of the Bob Murray action plan agenda. Murray, for instance, has demanded that the EPA overturn its 2009 endangerment finding--the administrative finding that greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide and methane and so forth, threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. That is their finding, that those greenhouse gas emissions threaten the health and welfare of current and future generations. That is why it is called an endangerment finding, because of the danger to the public. Well, good luck challenging that determination in a court of law. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has already upheld the endangerment finding back in 2012.

Even the fossil fuel flunky running the EPA now knows better than to challenge that endangerment finding. If he thought he could, he would in a heartbeat, but he is clever enough to know that an avalanche of climate evidence would fall in on his head if he tried. Witnesses from virtually every leading State university in the industry, from Alaska to Oklahoma to Georgia to Maine; expert scientists from our National Laboratories, from Idaho to Tennessee; our national security agencies and our military; America's government watchdog agencies, like the GAO and the GSA; and even the Trump administration's own recent climate report, all, would pile on the conclusive evidence of climate change. And on the other side would be what? Pathetic Kathleen Hartnett White, who gave one of the worst performances in Senate history at her confirmation hearings? The secretly fossil-fuel-funded Willie Soon? Some coal company lobbyist? Or perhaps the Heartland Institute, with its proud history of comparing climate scientists to the Unabomber?

It would be a rout. It would be a rout, and even Pruitt knows it. The reason it would be a rout is because of the rule of law--the rule of law requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act, the rule of law specter of judicial review, and the rule of law sanctions that courts impose for false evidence.

Certainly, Bob Murray and his surrounding crowd of bad-acting fossil fuel billionaires know how to throw their political weight around. We see everywhere the phony science denial apparatus they have created. We see their false and toxic messages even in outlets like the Wall Street Journal editorial page. We see their lobbying front groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, continuing adamantly to oppose any serious climate legislation despite the contrary position of companies on their board of directors. American elections stink with their dark money and promises and threats. Their flunkies have now been moved into positions of authority in government, and the Trump's administration eagerness to carry out industry marching orders is humiliatingly servile.

Ultimately, the polluters' drive to put profit first above the health and safety of Americans will face strict scrutiny in the truth-based arena of Federal courts. Ultimately, it will also face the harsh test of time, as the fact that they knew and the fact that they lied becomes ever more obvious and ever more odious. Ultimately, the American voter will have her say about whether this great Republic should be under the dominion and control of the fossil fuel industry or free to address the problem of climate change as a rational world leader must.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to speak about what our tax reform and tax relief legislation actually does.

I want to start by welcoming in advance the President of the United States to Pennsylvania. The President is going to Pittsburgh, PA, to talk about the specifics of our tax reform and the effect it is having. I really wish I could be there with him, but we don't know when we are going to finish up here, as the President knows very well. We might be here well into the evening, and I have multiple obligations to which I have long been committed in addition to juggling that. Unfortunately, I will not be able to get to Pittsburgh with the President, but I hope to have another opportunity to celebrate this victory for Pennsylvanians and Americans because that is what it is.

When we set out to accomplish the biggest tax reform in at least 31 years, we had two big goals.

The first was to make sure we implemented a direct tax cut for working families, for middle-income families, and for the overwhelming majority of families and individuals whom we all represent. That was goal No. 1--to make sure we cut taxes for the people who are working every day, living paycheck to paycheck, working hard, and making America what it is. That was item No. 1.

The second thing we wanted to do was to reform what was a completely archaic, unbelievably complicated, inefficient, and really terrible business tax code that had become arguably one of the very worst in the world and one that was systematically discouraging investment in the United States.

So those were the two goals--direct tax relief for ordinary Americans and making the business tax code competitive. I am thrilled to be able to say that I believe we achieved both goals.

First of all, it is a simple, straightforward, factual matter that we cut taxes on the vast, overwhelming majority of taxpayers--the families and individuals who pay taxes. That is just a factual matter. That is easy to confirm. Of course, that has the effect of increasing the take- home pay for anybody who is working. You can increase your take-home pay by either getting a raise from your employer or by paying fewer taxes on what you earn or both, and we knew for sure that we were cutting taxes and that there was going to be a take-home pay increase.

I predicted at the time that we would also be creating an environment in which there would be upward pressure on wages, where over time we would start to see people getting bonuses, pay rate increases, and wage increases because we would be creating a dynamic in which employers would be competing more and more for workers so that, in effect, they would be bidding up the compensation for the workers. That is what I predicted, and I was confident that would happen within some number of months or a year or so. So I had to come down to the floor today and confess that I was wrong--very wrong--about the timing of that. You see, we didn't have to wait 3 or 6 or 12 months for our constituents-- the people whom we represent--to see the benefits in the form of higher wages. They started happening immediately--I mean, within days. It has actually been stunning.

It has been about 1 month since we passed this sweeping tax reform, and many hundreds of businesses--those cumulatively employing well over 2 million workers--have announced bonuses, wage increases, expanded benefits, and increased contributions to pension accounts. They have cited the tax reform as the mechanism that has enabled them to do this for their workers.

What is so exciting about this is that this is happening even before the wave of new investments has even been able to begin. This is happening because companies know that with lower tax rates, they are going to have more free cash flow. They are going to use some of that to invest in growing their business, but they have already announced that they are using some of that to enhance the compensation of their employees.

Let me give you some examples. These are just Pennsylvania-related companies, a handful of the ones I am aware of. It is typical of companies across the country. Comcast, a big employer based in Philadelphia, announced specifically that as a result of the tax reform, they would make a $1,000 bonus payment to 100,000 frontline nonexecutive employees, and they committed to $50 billion of capital expenditure over the next 5 years. How many tens of thousands of jobs is all of that capital expenditure going to support? It is a big number.

That is not all. Out in Pittsburgh, PNC Financial Services, a substantial large bank in Pittsburgh, announced right after the tax reform that they would pay $1,000 to 47,500 of their employees, and, in addition, they would contribute $1,500 to each of their employees for participating in their pension savings plans. They are also raising their base wage. Their minimum wage for employees at PNC goes up to $15 an hour. No Federal Government edict is forcing them to do it. This is what they want to do. It is so that they can attract more and competitive employees. They have also increased their contribution to their charitable foundation--$200 million to a charitable foundation that supports early childhood education. That is PNC.

Navient has 900 or so employees in Wilkes-Barre, PA, and they announced that they are giving a $1,000 bonus to their non-officer employees--98 percent of their employees. That is not the top brass, but everybody else is going to get a $1,000 bonus.

Customers Bank in Wyomissing, Berks County, PA, announced that as a result of the tax reform and the tax relief they are getting, they are going to be able to offer people who have a checking account with them a higher rate on their deposits. In another benefit for consumers, they are going to increase their charitable giving.

NexTier Bank in Butler County, in Western Pennsylvania, is giving a $1,000 bonus to all their employees.

As to Walmart, I think we all saw that. There are Walmart employees in every State of the Union, and there certainly are in Pennsylvania. There are over 160 Walmart locations in Pennsylvania. They are giving a bonus of up to $1,000, raising their starting wage, expanding their paid leave policy, and their adoption assistance program for their employees, all in response to the tax relief and reform that they know is going to be good for their business, and they already decided to make it good for their employees as well.

That is just a small handful of the companies that I know of in Pennsylvania that have made public announcements about this. How many more are there across the country? It is a huge number, and it is growing rapidly, and it is fantastic.

I think it is fantastic. I think it is fantastic when the people I represent are able to earn more to support their family, get a bigger bonus and get a bonus they might not otherwise have gotten at all.

I know this view is not universally shared. The House Minority Leader

Pelosi doesn't think very much of this. In fact, she said: ``In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put a schmooze on--it's so pathetic . . . I think it's insignificant.''

I have to state that I don't think it is pathetic, and I don't think it is insignificant. I think to a family that is struggling, a family that is working hard, a family that may be living paycheck-to-paycheck, as most families do, these are not crumbs. This makes a difference. For the people who wonder, because they heard so much from our colleagues on the other side that this is not going to help middle-class families, any mystery that people may think surrounds this will be resolved very soon because the IRS has already released new withholding guidelines. The Treasury has done their evaluation, and they have concluded as the Joint Tax Committee concluded, that over 90 percent of all individuals and families filing and paying taxes will see a tax cut. So they are adjusting the withholding table so that the take-home pay goes up and so that the money that workers pay to Uncle Sam goes down.

Honestly, I have to state that I am convinced that the best in all of this is yet to come. The best is yet to come because it is too early for us to have yet benefitted from the wave of new capital investment. We have made it more affordable for businesses to invest in their workers, to invest in their businesses, and to invest here in America rather than overseas. We have made that more affordable so more is going to happen, and when it happens, people are going to get the benefits from the jobs they have to provide those capital goods. Other people are going to benefits from jobs that are necessary to operate that capital equipment. Wages will rise because workers will become more productive. This is what is in store for us, and this is what is so exciting.

It is not just my theorizing on this. Last week the CEO of PNC, Bill Demchak, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. He said:

For all the investment decisions that companies make, the

U.S. just got that much more attractive. . . . It's going to

win more than it won before in terms of where people choose

to do business activity and invest.

I couldn't agree more. This is clearly going to be the result. We are allowing American businesses to compete and to win in a competitive global economy. This is going to increase the supply of capital. It is going to increase the productive capacity of the American economy. It is going to provide better tools for workers when they have that capital that they can work with that makes them more productive. That enables them to earn higher wages, and with all the need for more workers that this is going to generate, it is going to continue to put upward pressure on wages, because that is what companies are going to have to do in order to attract and retain the employees they need.

So I would say that I think we are well on our way to seeing the fruits of this reform. I think it is going to be extremely constructive. I am thrilled that our legislation has already begun to have tangible benefits for the people we represent, and I am convinced that the best is yet to come.

I yield the floor.