Automotive Jobs Act of 2018

Mr. President, there are a few things I wish to talk about today, but I would like to start by recognizing the service and bravery of our Capitol Police officers.

This week is the 20th anniversary of a shooting which occurred in the U.S. Capitol that claimed the lives of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Jacob Chestnut and Detective John Gibson when a gunman forced his way into this Capitol Building. They laid down their lives in defense of others and made the ultimate sacrifice defending the U.S. Capitol, this pillar of American democracy.

At the time, then-President Clinton said: ``The shooting at the United States Capitol yesterday was a moment of savagery at the front door of American civilization.'' He was right.

I was working in the Capitol that day, 20 years ago. I remember where I was, as I am sure everybody does who was here. I remember hearing the gunshots. I was on the telephone from my office in the House of Representatives with a member of the leadership staff, and I heard the chaos through the phone lines for the first time.

We are forever grateful for the sacrifice of those two police officers and their families and for the continued service and commitment of the U.S. Capitol Police every single day in the Capitol. They are the ones who protect us every single day. This week, we are reminded to thank everyone who puts on a uniform and steps into harm's way to protect fellow Americans.

Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act

Mr. President, I also wish to discuss important legislation the Senate passed earlier this week and the House passed today to improve skills training in our country at a time when it is so badly needed.

I am the cofounder and cochair of the Senate Career and Technical Education Caucus. I have to tell you, I am excited about this bipartisan legislation. It reauthorizes what is called the Perkins Career and Technical Education, or CTE, Act. It is a Federal law designed to help Americans get the education, training, and skills they need to fill in-demand jobs. The President supports the legislation. I know he is excited about signing it into law and helping

those who need the skills to fill those jobs that are out there.

CTE--at one time called vocational education--is just a great opportunity for the students but also for our economy and for employers. The bill that passed includes what is called the Educating Tomorrow's Workforce Act, legislation my colleague Senator Tim Kaine and I authored a few years ago to allow States and localities to use Perkins grant funding for a number of purposes.

No. 1, we allow them to use it for CTE-focused academies. We also encourage schools to incorporate key elements of high-quality CTE programs from around the country and promote partnerships between local businesses, regional industries, and other community stakeholders to create work-based learning opportunities for students, like apprenticeships and internships. We know they work. Getting that work experience really helps to be able to land a job, so we are excited about this legislation.

It also includes important accountability information for our most vulnerable students to track how well CTE programs are performing so we can ensure high-quality skills training.

When I travel around Ohio talking to employers of all sizes, they all stress one thing to me, which is, yes, the economy is doing better, tax reform has worked well for me, the regulatory relief is happening--that is great--but we are having trouble finding workers.

In Ohio today, on our website OhioMeansJobs, you will probably see 145,000 jobs being advertised, and yet we have 200,000 people out of work. A lot of that is the skills gap. I often hear the biggest challenge employers have is they can't find enough skilled workers for the positions they already have. We want to give these students the chance to acquire that training needed for today's jobs. Again, this legislation helps to ensure it regardless of someone's economic standing.

It provides a route to good-paying jobs and a successful career for students who might not have been interested in a typical formal STEM education or maybe they can't easily spend the time and money involved in going through a traditional college education.

It is not just about the students. It also helps those who are further on in life who are trying to rebuild or start a new career. This bill will also help those incumbent workers. Recently, I visited Flying HIGH, a welding school in Youngstown, OH. It is a very impressive program. It focuses on teaching people in recovery and people who have recently been released from prison to learn a skill--in this case, welding--which lets them transition back into the workplace. I am really impressed by it. Their placement rate is about 100 percent. They have taken people and helped provide them with the skills they need, and then, in turn, their lives have been turned around. This legislation will help enable places like this school to be more successful.

There are so many opportunities out there. Whether it is welding, whether it is coding, whether it is machining, whether it is healthcare skills, or whether it is in commercial driving, where we need drivers right away who have the CDL commercial license, we should encourage more of that.

I wish to thank my colleague and cochair of the Senate CTE Caucus, Tim Kaine, as well as Senator Lamar Alexander, who chairs the Senate HELP Committee that passed the bill this last month, Mike Enzi, and all my colleagues on the CTE Caucus, for their work on this issue over the years.

Once signed into law, this legislation will help students get the career and technical education they need, regardless of economic standing, and help them have the opportunity they need to be able to pursue whatever their American dream is

DATA Act Implementation

Mr. President, the last thing I want to talk about today is some bad news we received this week. This is about our Federal Government and the lack of information from Federal agencies as to how they are spending our hard-earned tax dollars.

As many people know, our Federal Government has grown a lot in the last half century or so. In 1961, President Kennedy entered office with 7 Cabinet positions and 451 career management positions. When President Trump took office, we had gone about seven times higher in terms of the number of people. The number of Cabinet posts have been doubled from 7 to 15.

The increased size of our Federal Government is intended, of course, to provide a better structure to carry out important duties the government has and help more Americans, but one result we have to be cautious of is the increase in Federal spending that comes with it. As the size of our government grows, transparency in how taxpayer money is spent becomes increasingly important.

Most of the increase in funding we have seen over the last 20 years, of course, is in programs that Congress does not appropriate every year. This includes important entitlement programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. We need to address this unsustainable growth in the so-called nondiscretionary spending. We need to save these entitlement programs for the current and future generations of Americans who rely on them, but we also need to ensure we rein in the waste, fraud, and abuse in our departments and agencies, the so-called discretionary spending that Congress spends every year on departments and programs. That is why this legislation is so important--to be able to require transparency and accountability with how Federal agencies spend their taxpayer dollars.

While the White House and Congress tracks spending through the budget and appropriations process, each Federal agency tracks its own spending internally. They have their own metrics and measurement systems. As you can imagine, it has made it hard to truly know where all of the funds are going to various departments and agencies because each has their own measurement. We recognized a need to address this.

In 2006, when I was Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act became law. I personally endorsed that legislation by then-Senator Tom Coburn--who some will remember was a key sponsor of that--when I was at OMB because I knew we needed it badly. We went about putting all grants and contracts online. That was a good thing. The goal of that law was to standardize the way Federal departments and agencies report their spending to have a more comprehensive and transparent account of where taxpayer dollars are going.

It also created a public website to be managed by OMB called USAspending.gov, where taxpayers and policymakers could go to get accurate, accessible information about what these funds are used for. Taxpayers should be able to see where their money goes, and Congress-- which is given the power of the purse in our Federal Government--needs to know what the funds it allocates are being used for to make informed decisions about spending.

In 2010, the GAO, Government Accountability Office, looked into how this program was working. What they found was the usefulness of the USAspending.gov website was impaired by the lack of guidance to agencies on how to report their spending. So, in 2014, my colleague Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and I authored what is called the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, the DATA Act. We followed what the GAO had said, and we wrote this legislation to fix the law.

The goal of the DATA Act was to create a more consistent spending system across government to improve the efficiency of USAspending.gov and make tracking Federal spending more transparent and accessible. That would ultimately provide the American public and policymakers, we thought, with accurate, consistent, and reliable data on governmentwide spending to eliminate unnecessary spending.

Being able to follow Federal dollars from appropriation to the resulting grant or contract that actually occurs is incredibly helpful in that effort. The DATA Act required Federal agencies to report spending in real time down to the location by congressional district by 2017.

Now it is time to take stock of how that program is working and to assess the transparency in our Federal spending. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, has taken this task on. Along

with the ranking member, Senator Tom Carper, we have looked into the implementation of the DATA Act and how accurately departments and agencies report spending data. What our bipartisan report found was troubling.

We reviewed inspectors general, or IG, reports of 25 Federal agencies, making up more than 80 percent of all Federal spending from the second quarter of 2017.

At least 55 percent of the spending data--equal to roughly $240 billion those agencies submitted to USAspending.gov--was found to be incomplete, inaccurate, or both. Notably, the IG's report on the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy determined that 100 percent of those Departments' spending data was not accurate.

According to the inspectors general, some agencies, such as the Department of Education and the Agency for National Development, did well. They reported accurate data.

Unbelievably, about 96 percent of the spending data the Treasury Department submitted for its own Department was not accurate. So the Treasury Department, which the DATA Act says is supposed to monitor other Departments' spending data for accuracy, overwhelmingly submitted inaccurate data itself--and we found that just last month, OMB and the Department of Treasury have updated agency guidance that appears to weaken some of these data standards, which could lead to less accurate and not standardized DATA Act submissions in the future.

So we should be doing more to ensure this law is properly implemented, to ensure accountability and accuracy in our finances.

We also found deficiencies with the USAspending.gov website itself. The DATA Act requires the website to be user-friendly and accurate. Our investigators found it to sometimes be neither.

It is important to remember that the DATA Act is still in its early stages. It was fully implemented just a little over 1 year ago. So it is not yet what we had hoped it would be when it became law in 2014, but it is not too late to improve it. We know it has to be done. Our PSI--Permanent Subcommittee Investigation--report includes recommendations to do just that.

First, OMB and the Treasury Department should continue to update the standards and guidelines for agencies to follow when making DATA Act submissions to improve accuracy and accountability of spending. It is really up to them to do it.

Second, OMB and the Treasury Department should establish clear definitions for agencies and IGs to follow when conducting reviews of DATA Act compliance to avoid any existing confusion and disparity, which we found is out there today.

Finally, the Treasury Department should improve the overall quality of USAspending.gov.

These are all reasonable steps, and they are going to help increase accountability within the Federal Government and provide greater transparency for taxpayers. As I mentioned, taxpayers deserve to be able to access accurate information on where their money is going, and lawmakers need to know how departments and agencies are actually spending their resources to be able to conduct proper oversight, plan future budgets, and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in our Federal spending.

On the floor today, we were discussing appropriations bills. We will pass another floor appropriations bill this week, I hope. That is good, but part of this process is that we have to be sure we are doing the oversight so that if we are passing spending bills--all 12 should be passed by this Congress--we know where the money is going so we can identify ways to improve the spending.

I recognize that a lot of hard work has gone into USAspending.gov to date, and I am grateful for all the support and investments that many outside groups--like the Data Coalition and the Project on Government Oversight--have put into making this project successful. I also appreciate those in the Federal Government who have taken this seriously and have worked hard on this.

Although the executive branch has only implemented the law selectively so far, it has already made our government more transparent. If we continue to do the necessary followup to this important law that passed 4 years ago, I am optimistic that it will spur action to make our government spending more accountable, more accurate, and more accessible. That is the goal.

Mr. President, I yield back my time.

Mr. President, it is always an honor to follow the President pro tempore of the Senate on the Senate floor.

I am here to talk about the work we are working through and what--for decades would actually be an understatement--for a couple of centuries was the principal work of the Congress, which was to set our priorities by how we spend the money people have entrusted us with.

Today I want to talk specifically about the importance of transportation, and the ag bill is in here, too--the agricultural bill. Certainly, those things come together in a way that allows us to be competitive or don't come together in a way that doesn't allow us to be as competitive as we would like to be.

There is no question that our Nation's infrastructure is not what it should be. The Interstate Highway System, built under the leadership of President Eisenhower, some of it is now over seven decades old, a lot of it over five decades old. It is not where it should be. It has outlived the projected life, and that is a good thing. The construction and repair are better than thought to be at the time, but they are not the kinds of things that are going to last forever.

It has been reported that we have a backlog of at least $836 billion in highway and bridge infrastructure, just that part of our infrastructure.

I am the chairman of the Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Aviation. The Chair and I serve on that committee, and on that committee, we believe there is at least $100 billion in airport infrastructure projects. There are all kinds of airports all over the world that you can fly into or fly out of, and as you come back into the United States, you realize how far we are behind.

Location is important to us. In fact, Winston Churchill said at one time, talking about the United States, that the United States of America was the best located country in the world. We have the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. We have neighbors north and south whom we have learned to cooperate with and live with. We could turn to the Pacific, if that is where the opportunities were. We could turn to the Atlantic.

Winston Churchill pointed out that the Mississippi River, which runs through the center of our country, is maybe the greatest waterway in the world, in terms of the system that created transportation from the very start. The Mississippi River and all the tributary valleys there were incredibly well located.

But all of these things can benefit us if we make the most of them, but it is possible to make the least of them. If you get to the water or if you get to the river and you get on it and you can use it and it becomes an avenue of commerce, it is an opportunity. If you get to the water and you can't get on it, it is an obstacle.

That is sort of what all these things are when we talk about transportation. Are we going to talk about obstacles or

opportunities? What are we going to do with inadequate and deficient infrastructure that really does impact whether local communities can compete or not?

Back to the thoughts about the map of America and where our State is located, Missouri is really at the hub of where a lot of the natural infrastructure of the country come together, and also the No. 2 and No. 3 biggest rail yards in America are in our State. No. 2 is in Kansas City, and No. 3 is in St. Louis. The interstate highways come together there.

Chairman Collins and her committee worked on this part of the bill--a bill where all four committees have brought a product to the floor that we can vote for and that we get a chance to amend. We get a chance to talk about how this could have been made better and maybe find a way to make it better or maybe find a way to realize that, now that I understand the arguments, it is a better bill than I thought. That is the importance of getting that to the floor.

The bill provides $1 billion for BUILD Grants. Those were previously known as TIGER grants. At least 30 percent of that billion dollars is to benefit rural areas. This is particularly the kind of program we had benefited from. The program funded the Champ Clark Bridge over the Mississippi River in Louisiana, MO, and the bridge over the Missouri River at Washington, MO. They all benefited from TIGER Grants.

There is another $49.3 billion for critical highway infrastructure. That is an increase of $3 billion over the authorized level. This program will provide our State with $79 million more in Federal funding increases for roads, bridges, and freight programs. Highways and roads are generally still largely a State problem. This bill encourages States to do things that they might not quite be able to do otherwise.

We have 3,000 bridges in our State deemed structurally deficient. I think it is the highest number of bridges anywhere because we have more than 3,000 bridges that are structurally deficient and there are thousands of bridges more than that.

The bill provides $175 million in discretionary spending, combined with $140 million in mandatory spending to support Essential Air Service communities. Those communities can almost support their own commercial system, but not quite, and still have an argument that they need it. In Missouri, Joplin, Cape Girardeau, and Kirksville all benefit from that Essential Air Service Program. The airport in Columbia is benefiting right now with rehabilitating runways from that program.

The bill provides some capital investment grants that allow some help with transit projects.

As far as ag infrastructure is concerned, we have the chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee on the floor right now. For ag to work, you have to have an infrastructure that works. The world price of grain is the world price of grain less what it costs you to get it there. The way you win that competition is to have a transportation network that works in a way that allows you to be more competitive than anyone else. If you could arrive with a quality product and get it there cheaper than anybody else can, you get that marketplace.

We don't want to forget broadband. As we think about rural America today, broadband is as important as the telephone was 70 years ago. We figured out how to get telephones to people that were a long way from the nearest telephone, or until they got a telephone, a long way from the nearest telephone pole. We figured that out, and we need to figure out rural broadband just as well. If you can't get the high-speed information you need, you may be doing something that you don't have to go to an office to do, like commodity trading, but you do have to have instantaneous information to do it effectively.

As for rural Missourians, we have 3 percent of the rural population in our State, and half of that population doesn't have access to high- speed internet. That is behind the rest of the country, and our State is trying to catch up. If we can take advantage of these broadband pilot grants that encourage everybody to catch up, we will catch up faster than we would otherwise.

This bill provides distance learning and telemedicine grants as part of our rural community development, and there are rural development community facilities grants in here. We are benefiting from that, and we hope to see that program continue. We received rural development community facilities grants for things like police facilities, road construction equipment, and healthcare facilities in Dent County, Scotland County, Livingston County, Grundy County, and Schuyler County. All of those kinds of things would still be out there to compete for if we pass this bill.

It includes $1.25 billion for the Rural Development Water and Waste Disposal Program to be developed in rural Missouri. We have eight communities right now benefitting from that. Every level of government--local, State, and Federal--as well as the private sector, really has to continue to recognize the importance of infrastructure-- the infrastructure we see on top of the ground, the infrastructure we don't see below the ground, and the broadband infrastructure that some people have and other people don't. That is how we compete.

This bill largely is a bill about competition. Certainly, the transportation and ag parts of this bill are about competition. We need to do what we can to strengthen our overall infrastructure and our transportation network, to boost economic growth, to create jobs, and to be sure that we are more competitive where I live and where you live and all over our country. That is what this bill is about.

I am really pleased that, for the first time in a long time, every Member of the Senate has a right to come to the floor and say: Here is how we can spend this money better. Our goal should be to take what we have been entrusted with and spend it in the way that benefits the country in the most effective way. I think this bill goes a long way in the right direction to do that. I am certainly looking forward to supporting it when it comes to final passage and looking carefully at every amendment anybody offers to see if that is not a better idea than those of us on the Appropriations Committee had.

I see that my friend from West Virginia is here.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 772, which was received from the House. I ask unanimous consent that the Blunt substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to and that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, in 2010, legislation passed that mandated national calorie menu labeling standards for chain restaurants and similar retail food locations, like grocery stores. Many of us know that there are many different ways that foods are prepared and sold to customers. We can see all kinds of examples by walking around the Capitol Complex itself, let alone through one's neighborhood grocery store. As a result, it would be almost impossible to have a one-size- fits-all rule.

Before I mention what the Blunt-Alexander-King substitute amendment would have done, to which the Senator from Washington State has objected, let me, first of all, address the House-passed bipartisan bill that has been pending on the Senate's calendar.

Senator King joined me in introducing the bipartisan Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act here in the Senate--the same bill that has already passed in the House. The bill is not just bicameral but bipartisan, meaning Democrats and Republicans have sponsored legislation in the Senate and Democrats and Republicans have passed the same legislation in the House. My Democratic colleague from Missouri cosponsored the initial bill.

The House-passed bill would not exempt pizza delivery and it wouldn't exempt supermarkets or grocery stores or convenience stores or others from menu labeling requirements.

There are always all kinds of things that are talked about here. What the House bill and what the Blunt-Alexander-King bill would do, which is pending in the Senate, is recognize that there are unique differences in business types and product offerings to allow for more flexibility in different kinds of business models providing their customers with calorie information. This would still happen under our bill, but it would happen in a more effective way so that it meets the customers' needs. The goal here should be the customers' receiving the information rather than exactly where the information is placed in a one-size-fits-all or in a one-location-fits-all kind of format.

The campaign on this issue of misinformation has run pretty wild. There is a group saying that what we are trying to do is exempt restaurants and others from menu labeling. They clearly haven't read the bill that Senator Alexander and I and Senator King have introduced. I would like to go on record as saying what the amendment does.

First and foremost, it does not impact the delay of that menu labeling final rule that went into effect this year. Again, it does not impact the delay or stop the menu labeling final rule. The Blunt- Alexander-King amendment provides those who have to implement the rule with the regulatory flexibility to implement the rule and provide the information to their customers in the most useful manner. The amendment also provides protection against frivolous lawsuits. That is really all it does. Those are two big things, but they are two not very complicated things.

I have been working on this issue for a number of years. I am disappointed that we have been unable to move a commonsense measure here in the Senate.

I thank Senator King for working with me on this issue, and I thank Senators McCaskill, Heitkamp, and Donnelly--all Democrats--along with Senator King, for joining me as bipartisan cosponsors.

I also thank Chairman Alexander, who is the chair of the authorizing committee, who has joined with me and others in finding a commonsense path forward to ensure we provide the information to consumers in the most effective way, while providing the flexibility in implementation and protection from lawsuits, not only on the information but on some highly technical piece of the rule that really wouldn't have an impact if anybody were to have the information or not. Senator Alexander has been a leader on this. I know he is as disappointed as I am that we can't move forward with the House-passed bill, for I spent a lot of time on it.

I turn now to my friend Senator Alexander, the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, to make whatever comments he wants to make.

Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of the line workers at our Alabama auto plants. I rise on behalf of our soybean and cotton farmers. I rise on behalf of countless other Alabama businesses that have contacted me because they feel threatened by proposed tariffs but are afraid to speak out publicly for fear of reprisal. In some cases they simply don't want to be seen as inflicting political damage on the President.

I came to this body to work on solutions, not to raise partisan threat levels. I am not one to unfairly level criticism at the President of the United States, but I have called it as I see it when his actions hurt our economy and my State, in particular, and I will continue to do so.

Today, I want to talk about his proposed tariffs on our allies and our trading partners. These actions have prompted retaliatory tariffs on countless Alabama goods, including cotton and soybeans. American industries overwhelmingly oppose these tariffs or, really, they are taxes on their products.

I share President Trump's desire to see continued growth in our manufacturing sector and to secure trade deals that benefit our country. His tariffs are not leading to more manufacturing jobs in Alabama. Instead, they have manufactured a crisis that threatens to permanently harm our businesses and our farms. This is a self-inflicted wound.

I am well aware that China has been a rogue actor when it comes to trade, and I support a strong response. Alabama's steel industry, for example, was hurt by the illegal dumping of Chinese steel into the global market. I witnessed it firsthand in my hometown of Fairfield, AL, once home to one of the country's largest U.S. steel facilities, which now sits virtually idle. Globe Metallurgical in Selma has been hit by the dumping of silicon metal from China. China has time and again shown a blatant disregard for American intellectual property rights. I have spoken out against these abuses and will continue to do so when they occur in the future.

We should not sweep our friends with the same brush with which we sweep China. Antagonizing allies like Canada, South Korea, and Germany for no reason at all only weakens us. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, more than half a million Alabama jobs are supported by global trade, meaning more than one in every four Alabama jobs are tied to trade. Those jobs are needlessly at risk to date.

I have spoken with representatives from industries across my State. Some are already hurting from the tariffs; others are OK for the moment but are fearful of consequences down the road, such as losing suppliers or taking a direct hit from retaliatory tariffs.

Many of these workers or business owners tell me they support President Trump. They want him to do well. They voted for him, and they are hesitant to speak out because they don't want to appear to be disloyal or harm him politically. They are confused as to why the President is taking steps that hurt their businesses and put their jobs at risk. They want help.

They say what we in this body already know: Tariffs are nothing more than tax increases. They are taxes that hurt American businesses, American workers, American consumers, and the American economy. In a cruel twist, they seem to be doing the most damage in the places and sectors that make up the President's base of support: farmers, autoworkers, truck drivers. These are the exact folks he promised to take care of. Nowhere is that more prevalent and evident than in our automotive industry. It is not just really an ``industry'' as we think of it in abstract terms. It means people, jobs, families, and the ability to support a family.

One of those people is a man named John Hall. John has been a maintenance worker at the Hyundai Motor manufacturing plant in Montgomery, AL, for nearly 14 years. He recently came to Washington to tell folks about what the industry has meant to his community.

At a rally last Thursday, he said that the transformation of Montgomery and the Alabama River Region has been breathtaking-- breathtaking--since the Hyundai plant arrived in our State. He went on that day to testify at the Commerce Department at a hearing about whether or not imported automobiles, trucks, and parts posed a national security threat.

That bears repeating. These tariffs on automobiles--foreign automobiles and parts--are being proposed because somehow, some way foreign vehicles and parts are a threat to national security.

I don't know how else to say it, but that is a ridiculous premise, and everyone knows it. Even the President implicitly acknowledged that in one of his Twitter rants the other day when he threatened to raise auto tariffs in response to the antitrust fine levied against Google by the European Union. Not only is it not a national security threat, this industry has brought untold opportunity to Alabama and other States, particularly in the Southeast.

Before the automakers came to Alabama, our manufacturing industry was still reeling from NAFTA. Many Alabama facilities, like textile manufacturers, were closing down and moving to other countries. These automakers came to Alabama--Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota's engine factory, which is now a Toyota and Mazda automobile factory, breaking ground soon, and they have breathed new life into our economy. They have all announced planned expansions in the last year or so.

Alabama's automotive sector employs some 50,000 people, and motor vehicle exports from Alabama reached $11 billion in 2017. Simply put, Alabama is a trade State, an exporting State. It is not just cars, either. We export about $170 million annually in soybeans to China, and that industry contributes 11,000 jobs to our State.

The day China released its list of U.S. goods that could be tariffed, soybean prices fell 40 cents that morning. Stan Usery, the president of the Alabama Soybean & Corn Association and soybean farmer, said:

If you weighed that out in dollar figures, it was in the

billions of what the value of the U.S. soybean crop lost in

just that one day. Just based on the fear of an imposed

tariff.

I have heard from other farmers too. Peanut contract prices have fallen flat. Pork prices have fallen $18 a head since March. Cotton prices dropped 10 cents in the wake of the initial round of tariffs. Our cattle farmers share these concerns and are anticipating potential production cost increases as a result of more expensive fuel and grain.

Just yesterday, we learned that the administration is going to spend $12 billion in taxpayer money to help offset the damage its trade war has done to American farmers. These farmers need the money. It is a self-inflicted wound, but they need it. This money might help some of the farmers somewhat in the short term, but it is a slippery slope for the President of the United States to start down.

What about the meatpackers who see less work because of reduced sales or truckdrivers who transport these goods across the country? These folks want trade, not aid. If tariffs are not reversed soon, the damage to supply chains and markets cannot be undone.

A company like Harley-Davidson can move a plant from Wisconsin overseas to avoid tariffs. My farmers in Alabama can't do that. You can't move a soybean farm. You can't move a cotton field. You can only move plants, hardware, and people.

China is one of the top markets for Alabama's cotton, poultry, pork, and soybeans. When China chooses to source these goods from Brazil, Australia, or Vietnam to avoid the President's tariffs, they will not go back to purchasing from Alabama once common sense prevails and the tariffs are rescinded. By then, it will be too late. A market will be lost, and family farms cannot recover from the loss of a business.

I know some folks back home in Alabama don't like it when the President gets criticized. They certainly don't like it when I do, and I understand that. They don't like it even when the policies of the administration may hurt Alabama.

One of my own delegation colleagues in the House went so far as to suggest that we shouldn't be worried about these automobile tariffs; we are all getting worked up over nothing. I like to think he is right, but I don't think he is, and neither do the thousands of folks who work in Alabama's automobile industry or their family members who have written or called my offices, nor do the industry representatives they have sent to Washington to plead with their elected officials for help, nor does my good friend, the senior Senator from Tennessee, with whom I am proud to be standing here today.

I believe these tariffs are bad for Alabama and bad for America.

Senator Alexander, who is a strong supporter of the President on many issues, agrees that these tariffs represent a very real threat to the hundreds of thousands of jobs in the automotive industry. No region in the country would be hit harder than the Southeast, where textiles used to be king but where automobiles now reign supreme.

That is why I am here today, to stand up for my constituents and to do what I think is right. It is why, last month, Senator Alexander and I wrote to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, urging him to reconsider the auto tariff tax proposal before it damages the automotive sector, which contributes more than 200,000 jobs to our two States. It is why I have reached out to the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representatives on behalf of a number of Alabama businesses, from textiles to heating and air conditioning companies, to businesses in the energy sector, each facing their own unique crisis because of the proposed tariffs.

In fact, since I was sworn in, I have invited representatives from a number of impacted industries to come to my office to share their stores, to offer suggestions on what we can do, and to be honest about outcomes if we fail to act.

I did not come to this body to simply sit by and watch and do nothing, especially when I see a need and I need to step up. I said I would follow my conscience and do the right thing to make Alabama and America a better place. In that spirit, a short time earlier today, Senator Alexander and I followed up on our letter to Secretary Ross--to which, quite frankly, we have not yet received a response--by introducing the Automotive Jobs Act of 2018. It is a bipartisan effort to halt President Trump's proposed tax on imported cars, trucks, and auto parts, which would raise the price of every automobile produced in the United States.

Our legislation would require the International Trade Commission to conduct a comprehensive study of the well-being, health, and vitality of the U.S. automotive industry. The ITC will be required to deliver the report to Congress before these tariffs could be applied.

Tariffs should be used to protect American jobs, not hurt them. In the coming weeks, I will be looking at other legislative solutions to help other sectors impacted by the President's tariffs, but the President can save our auto industry today by simply calling off the 232 investigation.

If we are not vigilant, hard-working Alabamians are going to be the losers in this game of chicken with China, the European Union, and others. The small family farmers, the line workers at our auto plants, the truckdrivers who transport Alabama-made products to market, and our port, all stand to lose the gains that we have made in the last couple of decades.

It is my hope that through this legislation we can demonstrate beyond any doubt the positive benefits the auto industry brings to Alabama, Tennessee, and many other States across the country.

Instead of pursuing these tariffs, we should be partnering with our allies who have also been treated unfairly by countries like China and present a united front against bad actors and their harmful trade practices.

I believe in the great potential of our Nation's automobile industry, and I want to empower both the American and foreign automakers who have already invested significantly in this country. This is a thriving industry and one supported by the greatest workforce in the world. Let's help it to continue to grow and support good-paying jobs in our communities. We need to stand united against these proposed tariffs.

President Trump, Alabamians are counting on you to do the right thing by those who stood with you. I hope you will do so.

I yield for my friend, the senior Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander.

Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of the line workers at our Alabama auto plants. I rise on behalf of our soybean and cotton farmers. I rise on behalf of countless other Alabama businesses that have contacted me because they feel threatened by proposed tariffs but are afraid to speak out publicly for fear of reprisal. In some cases they simply don't want to be seen as inflicting political damage on the President.

I came to this body to work on solutions, not to raise partisan threat levels. I am not one to unfairly level criticism at the President of the United States, but I have called it as I see it when his actions hurt our economy and my State, in particular, and I will continue to do so.

Today, I want to talk about his proposed tariffs on our allies and our trading partners. These actions have prompted retaliatory tariffs on countless Alabama goods, including cotton and soybeans. American industries overwhelmingly oppose these tariffs or, really, they are taxes on their products.

I share President Trump's desire to see continued growth in our manufacturing sector and to secure trade deals that benefit our country. His tariffs are not leading to more manufacturing jobs in Alabama. Instead, they have manufactured a crisis that threatens to permanently harm our businesses and our farms. This is a self-inflicted wound.

I am well aware that China has been a rogue actor when it comes to trade, and I support a strong response. Alabama's steel industry, for example, was hurt by the illegal dumping of Chinese steel into the global market. I witnessed it firsthand in my hometown of Fairfield, AL, once home to one of the country's largest U.S. steel facilities, which now sits virtually idle. Globe Metallurgical in Selma has been hit by the dumping of silicon metal from China. China has time and again shown a blatant disregard for American intellectual property rights. I have spoken out against these abuses and will continue to do so when they occur in the future.

We should not sweep our friends with the same brush with which we sweep China. Antagonizing allies like Canada, South Korea, and Germany for no reason at all only weakens us. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, more than half a million Alabama jobs are supported by global trade, meaning more than one in every four Alabama jobs are tied to trade. Those jobs are needlessly at risk to date.

I have spoken with representatives from industries across my State. Some are already hurting from the tariffs; others are OK for the moment but are fearful of consequences down the road, such as losing suppliers or taking a direct hit from retaliatory tariffs.

Many of these workers or business owners tell me they support President Trump. They want him to do well. They voted for him, and they are hesitant to speak out because they don't want to appear to be disloyal or harm him politically. They are confused as to why the President is taking steps that hurt their businesses and put their jobs at risk. They want help.

They say what we in this body already know: Tariffs are nothing more than tax increases. They are taxes that hurt American businesses, American workers, American consumers, and the American economy. In a cruel twist, they seem to be doing the most damage in the places and sectors that make up the President's base of support: farmers, autoworkers, truck drivers. These are the exact folks he promised to take care of. Nowhere is that more prevalent and evident than in our automotive industry. It is not just really an ``industry'' as we think of it in abstract terms. It means people, jobs, families, and the ability to support a family.

One of those people is a man named John Hall. John has been a maintenance worker at the Hyundai Motor manufacturing plant in Montgomery, AL, for nearly 14 years. He recently came to Washington to tell folks about what the industry has meant to his community.

At a rally last Thursday, he said that the transformation of Montgomery and the Alabama River Region has been breathtaking-- breathtaking--since the Hyundai plant arrived in our State. He went on that day to testify at the Commerce Department at a hearing about whether or not imported automobiles, trucks, and parts posed a national security threat.

That bears repeating. These tariffs on automobiles--foreign automobiles and parts--are being proposed because somehow, some way foreign vehicles and parts are a threat to national security.

I don't know how else to say it, but that is a ridiculous premise, and everyone knows it. Even the President implicitly acknowledged that in one of his Twitter rants the other day when he threatened to raise auto tariffs in response to the antitrust fine levied against Google by the European Union. Not only is it not a national security threat, this industry has brought untold opportunity to Alabama and other States, particularly in the Southeast.

Before the automakers came to Alabama, our manufacturing industry was still reeling from NAFTA. Many Alabama facilities, like textile manufacturers, were closing down and moving to other countries. These automakers came to Alabama--Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota's engine factory, which is now a Toyota and Mazda automobile factory, breaking ground soon, and they have breathed new life into our economy. They have all announced planned expansions in the last year or so.

Alabama's automotive sector employs some 50,000 people, and motor vehicle exports from Alabama reached $11 billion in 2017. Simply put, Alabama is a trade State, an exporting State. It is not just cars, either. We export about $170 million annually in soybeans to China, and that industry contributes 11,000 jobs to our State.

The day China released its list of U.S. goods that could be tariffed, soybean prices fell 40 cents that morning. Stan Usery, the president of the Alabama Soybean & Corn Association and soybean farmer, said:

If you weighed that out in dollar figures, it was in the

billions of what the value of the U.S. soybean crop lost in

just that one day. Just based on the fear of an imposed

tariff.

I have heard from other farmers too. Peanut contract prices have fallen flat. Pork prices have fallen $18 a head since March. Cotton prices dropped 10 cents in the wake of the initial round of tariffs. Our cattle farmers share these concerns and are anticipating potential production cost increases as a result of more expensive fuel and grain.

Just yesterday, we learned that the administration is going to spend $12 billion in taxpayer money to help offset the damage its trade war has done to American farmers. These farmers need the money. It is a self-inflicted wound, but they need it. This money might help some of the farmers somewhat in the short term, but it is a slippery slope for the President of the United States to start down.

What about the meatpackers who see less work because of reduced sales or truckdrivers who transport these goods across the country? These folks want trade, not aid. If tariffs are not reversed soon, the damage to supply chains and markets cannot be undone.

A company like Harley-Davidson can move a plant from Wisconsin overseas to avoid tariffs. My farmers in Alabama can't do that. You can't move a soybean farm. You can't move a cotton field. You can only move plants, hardware, and people.

China is one of the top markets for Alabama's cotton, poultry, pork, and soybeans. When China chooses to source these goods from Brazil, Australia, or Vietnam to avoid the President's tariffs, they will not go back to purchasing from Alabama once common sense prevails and the tariffs are rescinded. By then, it will be too late. A market will be lost, and family farms cannot recover from the loss of a business.

I know some folks back home in Alabama don't like it when the President gets criticized. They certainly don't like it when I do, and I understand that. They don't like it even when the policies of the administration may hurt Alabama.

One of my own delegation colleagues in the House went so far as to suggest that we shouldn't be worried about these automobile tariffs; we are all getting worked up over nothing. I like to think he is right, but I don't think he is, and neither do the thousands of folks who work in Alabama's automobile industry or their family members who have written or called my offices, nor do the industry representatives they have sent to Washington to plead with their elected officials for help, nor does my good friend, the senior Senator from Tennessee, with whom I am proud to be standing here today.

I believe these tariffs are bad for Alabama and bad for America.

Senator Alexander, who is a strong supporter of the President on many issues, agrees that these tariffs represent a very real threat to the hundreds of thousands of jobs in the automotive industry. No region in the country would be hit harder than the Southeast, where textiles used to be king but where automobiles now reign supreme.

That is why I am here today, to stand up for my constituents and to do what I think is right. It is why, last month, Senator Alexander and I wrote to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, urging him to reconsider the auto tariff tax proposal before it damages the automotive sector, which contributes more than 200,000 jobs to our two States. It is why I have reached out to the Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representatives on behalf of a number of Alabama businesses, from textiles to heating and air conditioning companies, to businesses in the energy sector, each facing their own unique crisis because of the proposed tariffs.

In fact, since I was sworn in, I have invited representatives from a number of impacted industries to come to my office to share their stores, to offer suggestions on what we can do, and to be honest about outcomes if we fail to act.

I did not come to this body to simply sit by and watch and do nothing, especially when I see a need and I need to step up. I said I would follow my conscience and do the right thing to make Alabama and America a better place. In that spirit, a short time earlier today, Senator Alexander and I followed up on our letter to Secretary Ross--to which, quite frankly, we have not yet received a response--by introducing the Automotive Jobs Act of 2018. It is a bipartisan effort to halt President Trump's proposed tax on imported cars, trucks, and auto parts, which would raise the price of every automobile produced in the United States.

Our legislation would require the International Trade Commission to conduct a comprehensive study of the well-being, health, and vitality of the U.S. automotive industry. The ITC will be required to deliver the report to Congress before these tariffs could be applied.

Tariffs should be used to protect American jobs, not hurt them. In the coming weeks, I will be looking at other legislative solutions to help other sectors impacted by the President's tariffs, but the President can save our auto industry today by simply calling off the 232 investigation.

If we are not vigilant, hard-working Alabamians are going to be the losers in this game of chicken with China, the European Union, and others. The small family farmers, the line workers at our auto plants, the truckdrivers who transport Alabama-made products to market, and our port, all stand to lose the gains that we have made in the last couple of decades.

It is my hope that through this legislation we can demonstrate beyond any doubt the positive benefits the auto industry brings to Alabama, Tennessee, and many other States across the country.

Instead of pursuing these tariffs, we should be partnering with our allies who have also been treated unfairly by countries like China and present a united front against bad actors and their harmful trade practices.

I believe in the great potential of our Nation's automobile industry, and I want to empower both the American and foreign automakers who have already invested significantly in this country. This is a thriving industry and one supported by the greatest workforce in the world. Let's help it to continue to grow and support good-paying jobs in our communities. We need to stand united against these proposed tariffs.

President Trump, Alabamians are counting on you to do the right thing by those who stood with you. I hope you will do so.

I yield for my friend, the senior Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Alexander.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 3433.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, before I make remarks on this amendment, I express my gratitude to my colleagues from New Mexico, to Senator Reed, who is the ranking member, and to Senator Collins, the chair of the appropriate Appropriations subcommittee, for working so closely with me and my colleagues in regard to rail service, the Southwest Chief, from Chicago to Los Angeles, which transports people through Kansas and through Colorado and through New Mexico. We have had a bipartisan effort from the Senators of those three States to make certain that service continues into the future. I am very grateful for their support.

I ask my colleagues, the other Senators, to support the Moran-Udall amendment.

Amendment No. 3433

Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to support my amendment to force the USDA to continue honoring its existing agreement between grain handling facilities and official inspection services.

Following the passage of legislation to reauthorize the U.S. Grain Standards Act, the Department of Agriculture amended its regulations and changed the treatment of grain facilities using inspection services located outside their defined, designated geographic areas.

The USDA's decision to alter the way it had been doing business has disrupted existing agreements and longstanding working relationships between grain handlers and grain inspectors. Also, the change has decreased the efficiency of inspections and reduced grain elevator operators' flexibility to coordinate with inspection services.

This amendment would not allow the USDA to revoke any additional agreements that are currently in place. To be clear, these grain elevators are still using USDA-sanctioned, official inspection agencies. The inspection agencies in question have agreed to perform inspections outside of the designated geographic areas.

The question we will soon be voting on is whether USDA ought to honor those exceptions already made to grain facilities and their inspectors. This is a commonsense amendment to make certain USDA does so--honors its commitments--and that grain facilities are afforded the best possible service from the Department of Agriculture.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. President, I want to speak this evening for a few moments about trade and tariffs. They certainly have been in the news for a long time. They are in the news today. I want to highlight the importance of trade and exports to Kansas, my constituents, and express my concerns about tariffs and an escalating trade war.

A global trade war will raise the price of goods for American consumers; result in retaliation against farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers who depend upon exports; and weaken our ability to work with our allies to challenge China's unfair trade practices.

Kansans are already feeling the effects of tariffs. Approximately $361 million worth of Kansas exports are being targeted by the emerging trade war, including soybeans and sorghum exports to China, aerospace exports to Canada, and beef and corn exports to Mexico. Moving forward with another $200 billion to $500 billion in tariffs against China or new section 232 tariffs on automobiles for supposed national security concerns will only increase the negative impact upon my folks at home.

With 95 percent of consumers living outside our country's border, the ability for Kansas farmers and rancher to earn a living is directly tied to our ability to sell food, fuel, and fiber. The food, fuel, and fiber we grow in Kansas must be exported to people around the world.

Since March, uncertainty in trade has contributed to the price of soybeans falling by $2 a bushel. A $2 drop in soybean prices equates to Kansas farmers and grain handlers losing out about $378 million of possible revenue solely on soybeans--one crop.

The significant harm the trade war is causing to farmers and ranchers is no doubt the reason the administration is proposing $12 billion in disaster relief for agriculture. Unfortunately, it is only a short-term fix to a long-term problem and will not make up for the lost markets for farmers.

China and Mexico, two of our largest markets in Kansas for agriculture producers--Mexico is No. 1, and China is No. 2--have already started to increase purchases of ag commodities from Brazil and Argentina instead of from U.S. producers, including those in Kansas. I am concerned that once we lose those markets, it will take years, if ever, for us to regain those markets.

This hit could not come at a worse time for ag producers. Farm revenue has already fallen by over 50 percent since 2013. Low commodity prices have pushed many producers to limits of financial viability.

I wrote an op-ed this spring arguing that Kansas farmers and ranchers can't afford a trade war. With fall harvest around the corner, many farmers will be faced with the reality of selling grain at or below the cost of production just to be able to pay off this year's operating loans.

The impact of the downturn in the ag economy cannot be solely quantified on a balance sheet. I am concerned that reduced economic opportunity in agriculture will result in fewer young people returning to rural America. One of my goals is to see that the sons and daughters of farmers and ranchers in Kansas have the opportunity to continue another generation of agriculture production in our State. When they cannot reach a price that is profitable, when they cannot obtain a price that is profitable, the likelihood of those young men and women remaining or returning to Kansas farms and ranches disappears because when agricultural struggles, so do our rural communities.

As the average age of a farmer nears 60 years old, it is critical that our policies increase the likelihood that a

young person is able to return to take over the family farm or ranch. I fear the trade war and tariffs will unfortunately have the opposite effect. Fewer markets to sell meat and grain will make it more difficult for the next generation to earn a living in rural America.

If farmers in Kansas are not producing a crop and selling it, then it means their communities also suffer. The ability to keep a grocery store in town or a grain elevator or a hardware store is diminished when farm income is as it is today.

It is not just an agricultural issue. In fact, Kansas manufacturers are also dealing with the negative impact of recently imposed tariffs.

Users of steel and aluminum are frequent in Kansas. Ours is an automobile and aviation manufacturing State, and they are facing increased costs of materials, regardless of whether they utilize domestic or imported steel and aluminum.

Chanute Manufacturing in Chanute, KS, is an example of the steel and aluminum tariffs harming a small company and its workers. The company, which employs about 130 Kansans, is a domestic manufacturer of steel- based components for the power generation market. Due to tariffs, Chanute's cost for raw materials has increased by about 8 percent.

However, when the same powerplant equipment is manufactured overseas, it can be imported here tariff-free. The actual unintended consequence of the steel tariff has been to incentivize foreign manufacturing of power equipment currently made in my home State.

Chanute Manufacturing has also missed opportunities to compete on projects in other countries due to the tariffs. Last year, the company built and shipped equipment they manufactured in Kansas to Morocco. However, when a duplicate project came available in Morocco again this year, Chanute wasn't even considered because the steel tariffs have raised their production costs, making them less competitive than cheaper foreign manufacturers.

China is important. The President is right to try to change the behavior of China. Tariffs are not the only tool to make certain that other countries follow international trade rules and treat American exporters and workers fairly.

I support efforts to hold China accountable for unfair trade practices and the theft of trade secrets and intellectual property rights from American companies. I applauded the United States for filing a challenge to China's domestic agricultural support levels at the World Trade Organization. When China unfairly subsidizes its producers or limits market access to U.S. wheat, corn, and rice, the United States is right to contest them and to contest them strongly and firmly. While I remain unconvinced that tariffs are the best tool to change China's behavior, it does not mean we should not pursue strong enforcement of global trade rules.

I am also concerned that picking a fight on trade with the rest of the world reduces our ability to win the fight with China, the country that is most deserving of strong trade actions by the United States. By attempting to take the whole world on at once, the United States risks spreading our resources thin and reducing our focus on changing China's practices.

The United States is not the only country with complaints about China's trade practices. Yet, instead of working with our allies to influence China and change their behavior, we have forced confrontations with other countries that ought to be by our side in dealing with China.

I believe that by strengthening our trade and economic relations with our allies, the United States will be better able to continue directing sound trade policies on the global stage. This includes successfully concluding a NAFTA renegotiation with Canada and Mexico and reengaging in the Trans-Pacific Partnership--TPP--negotiations or pursuing bilateral agreements with countries in the TPP, such as Japan.

This week, in fact tomorrow, Ambassador Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative, will be testifying before the Appropriations subcommittee that I chair, the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science. That subcommittee oversees the funding for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. The hearing will be an opportunity for the subcommittee members to hear firsthand from Ambassador Lighthizer on USTR's trade efforts and to express concerns about the impact the tariffs have had and will continue to have on our constituents. I hope to learn more about the USTR strategy and the end goal in threatening more tariffs, progress to conclusion of NAFTA negotiations, and efforts to fill the President's call for a new bilateral trade agreement.

Again, recently imposed tariffs are having immediate impacts upon farmers and ranchers and manufacturers, but the long-term implications of disrupting supply chains and losing market share that took decades to build up is perhaps even more concerning. It is time to inject more certainty into our trade policies. We ought to start by reaching an agreement on a modernized NAFTA and ending the threat of an escalating trade war.

I look forward to conversations with Ambassador Lighthizer this week and making certain that the administration understands the importance of getting trade policy right for Kansas and for America.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 477, S. 3093. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Heller and Senator Cornyn may join in a colloquy with myself.

Madam President, I want to talk about my motivation for offering this unanimous consent request.

The people listening to the debate may not understand, but we have a courtesy in the Senate where we make colleagues on the other side of the aisle aware of our intent.

Before I do that, I yield the floor to Senator Durbin.

Madam President, Reserving the right to object, I first wish to acknowledge that Senator Durbin has worked hard to address the DACA issue. I don't think there is a lot of daylight between Senator Durbin and me on the need for a path to citizenship and having the DACA legislation move forward. I think there are voices trying to come together to try to come up with a just solution to a myriad of immigration issues.

However, this particular unanimous consent request is in reference to, I think, a bill that was introduced earlier today, and we have not had an opportunity to study it. I think it is another positive step in the process of maybe bridging the gap, but in the absence of being able to analyze it and reconcile it against the bill I am actively involved in that the Senator mentioned, I have to object.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Heller, Senator Cornyn, and I be allowed to enter into a colloquy.

Madam President, I was trying to explain to those who are watching this what is going on. What is going on is, we actually have a very collegial environment, where we come to the floor and ask unanimous consent on something, and if somebody doesn't object, the bill moves out of the Chamber. We don't surprise people. We inform them so they are able to come to the floor and register their objection, which is exactly what Senator Hirono did today. So you could ask yourself, why would I come down here and offer up something I knew was going to be objected to and not move forward? Because I think it is pretty important for people to understand we are making progress, and it is pretty important to keep this issue and this discussion active in the U.S. Congress because Congress needs to act.

Regardless of where you are on the Trump administration's position, it is Congress's job to set long-term clarity. It is our job to set policy that can't move based on who happens to be in the White House. It is our job to fix the immigration problem, not the President's. This is the first step, in a number of things we need to do, to fix the failed immigration system in this country and to fix what I think are legitimately some injustices going on.

I have to disagree--I think it is interesting--and I look forward to reading the measure Senator Durbin put forth for unanimous consent. In his comments, he said a part of the baseline language came from a bill I have been working on with Senator Feinstein, the Keep Families Together and Enforce the Law Act.

What we are trying to do is figure out a reasonable, fair way to keep families together, to have families prioritized so they can go before a judge and determine whether they have a legitimate asylum claim, and to move as expeditiously as possible.

So this bill--if you heard Senator Hirono, you would think it is some heartless, uncaring--I think the words were ``partisan political stunt.''

Let me just tell my colleagues briefly--and I know Senators Heller and Cornyn will speak as well--this bill has agreement on most of the provisions. We want to make absolutely certain that if the families have to be kept together while they are going through the adjudication process, that it is in proper facilities. We want to make sure that if the parents want their children with them while they are being detained--which is, on average, about 40 to 60 days before they get their case cleared--then they can.

We also want that time period to be reduced, which is why we agree that we need to add an aggregate of about 700 judges to draw the backlog down, but until the backlog gets drawn down, parents with children get to the front of the line. We want to make sure there are an adequate number of attorneys--about two and one-half to every one judge we are adding--so we don't get clogged up in the courts.

This discussion about indefinite detention is just simply patently false. We are talking about a matter of 40 to 60 days. We want to draw that backlog down even further. We want to make sure these images of people being held in tent cities never occurs. We want to make sure we have adequate family facilities while they are being detained going through a legal process.

We want to also do the one thing I heard in Senator Hirono's comments--I am not an attorney, I believe Senator Hirono is--but it is false. The fact is, there is a court order that actually prevents children from being detained

for more than 20 days. So now we have this catch-22, where you detain the parents because they crossed the border illegally. They are being detained to process their immigration case, and they happen to have children, but you can't keep children for more than 20 days, so that is why the separation is occurring.

We are not talking about eliminating the whole Flores agreement. What we are saying is, we need to have very clear language that allows us to keep these children with their parents who are being detained pending court procedures. These are not unaccompanied children who would still be subject to Flores and who would be placed in the community within about 20 days, but there are other reasons--including some of the 2,500 or so whom Senator Durbin mentioned--we may need to keep them a little bit longer.

For example, what if their parent or guardian has been convicted of human trafficking or child abuse or some other charge, and we need to make sure it is the right setting for that child to go to? We are holding the same standards for these guardians or these parents that we do for any American citizen when we are trying to determine whether that child is going to be in a safe setting. Those are the sorts of things we put into place within narrowly tailored language, which is, my understanding right now, the only sticking point.

I came to the floor today to propound this unanimous consent request so we can start having this discussion in front of the American people, and we put pressure on ourselves to solve this problem.

This is not a problem for the President to fix. It is Congress's problem for the President to fix, and then it is the administration's responsibility to act on the will of Congress.

So I am going to continue to work with people on both sides of the aisle to do everything I can to eliminate the partisanship, the polarizing rhetoric, and fix this problem for these children who deserve and must be--should be--with their parents and put them in a setting that I think is respectful and safe.

I yield the floor to Senator Heller.

Mr. President, I am here again this week to fulfill a promise I made after becoming deeply involved in a situation involving a Presbyterian minister who has been held in prison since 2016 in the country of Turkey.

I have traveled to Turkey a couple of times, and I have met Pastor Brunson. He is from an area in Western North Carolina. He is actually a part of a church affiliated with the Reverend Billy Graham. He has been a missionary in Turkey for about 20 years. In October 2016, he was incarcerated and accused of being a part of plotting the coup attempt-- an illegal act for which people who were involved should be held accountable, but he was not one of them--and, also, suspected of terrorist activities.

Back in the late winter, after almost 19 months in prison without charges, after the indictment was issued, he was concerned that the American people were going to look at this indictment and turn their back on him. I felt like I needed to be able to look him in the eye and tell him nothing could be further from the truth. So I traveled to Turkey and met with him in a prison outside of Izmir to tell him that I would continue to be his voice and that I spoke for a number of Senators who are also concerned with this. More than 70 signed onto a letter expressing their concern. This is not a partisan issue. This is about the illegal incarceration of a Presbyterian minister in a NATO ally, Turkey.

Pastor Brunson has been imprisoned 656 days, counting today. We just got word this morning that the Turkish authorities have agreed to release him on house arrest. So we are going to get him out of the situation he has been in for about 16 or 17 months, in a cell designed for 8 people that had 21 in it. Now he is at least going to be able to be under house arrest and held outside of prison.

For as long as I am in the Senate, I will come to this floor every week and advocate for Pastor Brunson and a number of other people who are detained in Turkey for what I believe are inappropriate reasons-- reasons that wouldn't keep you in jail overnight in the United States.

Under the emergency authorities that President Erdogan had, they were swept up and some have been convicted. We have a NASA scientist who also has family in Turkey. He was arrested when he was over there, apparently for being a conspirator in the coup attempt. We have State Department staff and Turkish nationals who worked with our State Department and our Embassy over there who are in prison. We have to have a watchful eye on everybody.

I am glad that the Turkish Government is moving in the right direction with Pastor Brunson, but he is still effectively detained. Now it is under house arrest. So I will continue to work for Pastor Brunson's release, but I also want to make sure that the other people who are, in my opinion, illegally and inappropriately detained in the Turkish prison system also have a voice here in the U.S. Senate.

Again, I appreciate the Turkish officials taking this step to release Pastor Brunson and to put him on house arrest, but I will guarantee that, for as long as I am a U.S. Senator and there is somebody detained in Turkey, they will have a voice here in the U.S. Senate.

I hope that by next week or in the next couple of weeks Pastor Brunson is back in the United States, and I hope I don't have a reason to come to this floor and speak on his behalf and be his voice.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, this bill being offered by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is a partisan, political stunt designed to distract the American people from the crisis created by Donald Trump's zero tolerance policy.

Almost 3,000 children have been ripped from the arms of their parents and traumatized by the President's cruelty. This bill would allow the Trump administration to continue to traumatize children by forcing them, possibly indefinitely, into so-called family detention centers.

By offering this proposal, our colleagues are calling for the extended incarceration of children. This bill would invalidate the Flores settlement, which has ensured the humane treatment of children for decades. It offers no specifics on what constitutes adequate detention conditions and no mechanism for monitoring them. The bill says the families will be given ``suitable living accommodations'' and ``access to drinking water and food'' and that services will be offered that are ``necessary for the adequate care of a minor child,'' but it does not say who determines what is suitable, whether adequate nutrition will be offered to the children, and who will decide what is necessary. These so-called standards are not good enough when the welfare of children is involved.

This bill would also authorize the Border Patrol to separate families for the most minor offenses that have nothing to do with parenting or the safety of the children. It puts form above substance and gives DHS no discretion about when detention is most appropriate or when alternative means, such as ankle bracelets or other monitoring programs, might be better.

The so-called family unit residential centers in the bill are essentially family jails.

We have heard from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other experts about how these children will be traumatized for life. We should be listening to these experts and stop giving the Trump administration a free pass to harm immigrant children.

I look at the policies of this administration and at bills like this one, and I wonder how my colleagues are able to stomach our government treating families in these awful ways. And we have witnessed this kind of treatment in America over the last several weeks.

The President refers to families of children fleeing war, gang violence, and poverty as ``infesting'' our country. I hear echoes from the darkest parts of America's past when African-American slaves were depicted as monkeys, Chinese laborers in the 1870s were referred to as ``pouring forth'' from their ``Asiatic hive,'' and Japanese Americans penned up like animals for the crime of their heritage during World War

I yield to the Senator from Illinois.

Yes, I am.

That is correct.

Yes.

Again, correct.

Exactly. It is a continuation of the cruelty and the dehumanization of children.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Brown for his continued leadership in the fight to protect our Federal workforce and for organizing this time for us to speak on such an important issue.

Over the past year and a half, Donald Trump and his administration have launched a concerted attack on Federal workers and the unions that fight on their behalf. There appear to be no lengths to which Donald Trump and the anti-union, moneyed interests who support him will not go to attack and try to eviscerate protections for working people.

Here are some examples. In one of his first acts in office, Donald Trump instituted an across-the-board Federal hiring freeze that impacted the work of critical agencies such as the Veterans Administration, the State Department, and the Department of Defense.

Then the President appointed Neil Gorsuch to join the anti-worker majority on the Supreme Court. This decision paid off when Justice Gorsuch provided the decisive vote intended to gut public sector unions in Janus v. AFSCME.

As a side note, Mark Janus--the public employee who served as the front man for the Koch brothers in the landmark Janus case--has left his job with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services and now works for the Koch brothers. Is that a coincidence? I think not.

The administration has demoted or reassigned dozens of senior agency leaders tasked with serving our veterans and protecting our environment.

The President has left thousands of critical positions across the government unfilled. He has presented a legislative program as well. The President's fiscal year 2019 budget proposes to freeze Federal workers' wages, slash their benefits, and undermine their rights in the workplace.

In late May, as mentioned, the President issued three Executive orders that weaken longstanding--longstanding--and hard-won rights and protections for our Federal workers. Each of these actions is part of a focused radical--radical--effort to shrink the Federal Government and limit its ability to help hundreds of millions of people across our country.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party obviously do not recognize the service and commitment of our more than 2 million Federal workers, but in Hawaii, and, indeed, across the Nation, we see the impact of their hard work every single day.

In Hawaii, Federal workers provide critical healthcare for the tens of thousands of veterans living in our State. Federal workers service and repair our naval fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Federal workers stand watch at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Hundreds of Federal employees across 17 agencies are even now helping our Hawaii Island community respond to and recover from the impact of the ongoing volcanic activity at Kilauea on the Big Island.

In my visits to the Hawaii County Emergency Operations Center in Hilo and the Disaster Recovery Center in Keaau, and to affected communities across Puna, I have seen the impact these workers are having firsthand.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is coordinating the overall response and recovery with Federal, State, and county agencies. The U.S. Geological Survey scientific experts are monitoring seismic activities and providing realtime updates to affected residents. The affected residents are in the thousands. The Department of the Interior has provided technical assistance to protect Hawaii Island's natural and cultural resources. The Environmental Protection Agency has deployed experts to monitor air quality and provide timely alerts to county residents. The Department of Agriculture and the Small Business Administration are identifying resources and

assisting affected farmers and small business owners. The U.S. Coast Guard is monitoring and patrolling areas where lava is flowing into the ocean and enforcing safe perimeters for fishing and recreational activity.

These dedicated public servants have been working around the clock for months to support the Puna community. These workers deserve our respect, appreciation, and unwavering support for their service. They certainly don't deserve the contempt and animosity that Donald Trump and his administration have directed at them.

The collective weight of this administration's anti-worker agenda is taking a toll on our Federal workforce, needless to say, and the Executive orders President Trump issued in May are already making things worse by undermining workers' rights to fair representation in the workplace.

The President's first order directs agencies to reopen existing-- these are existing already--bargaining agreements with the intent of rushing through one-size-fits-all replacement agreements without an opportunity for labor to provide input. The President's second order severely restricts the ability of unions to protect workers from managerial retaliation, workplace discrimination, and sexual harassment. The President's third order undermines traditional civil service protections intended to shield public servants from political retribution by making firing workers easier.

Collectively, these Executive orders sabotage the hard-fought gains Federal workers have achieved through decades of organizing and collective bargaining at agencies throughout the Federal Government. This sabotage has a purpose: to make life so miserable for our Federal workforce that they either quit their jobs or retire.

The long-term damage that gutting our Federal workforce would cause to our Nation, economy, and communities is serious. That is because, as Teddy Roosevelt recognized when he pushed for the first major civil service reform, a quality, professional civil service is a bulwark against corruption and cronyism.

Public servants uphold the law and promote the public interests. That includes holding big corporations accountable when they cheat consumers and pollute our environment.

Is this why Donald Trump and his moneyed, anti-union allies have such a fear of and disdain for our Federal workers--because they would rather be left unfettered by any government or regulatory oversight? Is that what is going on? How else can we explain the President's focus and vicious attacks on Federal employees, which ignore the work they do to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the people of our country every single day?

These are not normal times. It is not normal for the President and his allies to go after our Federal employees in this way. It is not normal, and it is up to each of us to resist this administration's coordinated attack on our Federal workforce and the institutions that represent and protect them.

I call on all of my colleagues to join me in this fight. I just do not understand what it is that motivates the President and his moneyed allies to try and tear apart the very workforce in our country that protects our health, safety, and welfare. I just don't get it.

I yield the floor.

Amendments Nos. 3553 and 3543 to Amendment No. 3399

Mr. President, I am really pleased to be on the floor today to join my fellow Senator from Missouri to talk about, as a fellow member of the Appropriations Committee, what I think are the real highlights and the good parts about the fact that the process is moving but also what is contained within the process.

Senator Blunt did a great job, I think, of explaining some of the more detailed areas that are important to the entire Country but also to his area. I am going to do the same for my State of West Virginia.

I want to commend the committee leadership, both the committee chairs and the ranking members, and our Senate leadership, both Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer, for moving this process forward and for making good on the promise that we are going to return the appropriations process to regular order.

I tried it to explain it in a radio interview today. I found myself saying: Well, of course, we would be doing this every year, because appropriating money every year is one of the core missions of the Congress. It kind of hasn't worked out that way. This progress that we are making on these four bills and the three previous bills, I think, are an indicator that we will have overwhelming bipartisan support. Each of these bills was written under the budget agreement that we passed and President Trump signed into law.

These bills address a broad range of national concerns and priorities. They highlight areas that we found bipartisan agreement and support on. I am also happy that many of these bills not only have national priorities, but a lot of the national priorities are focused toward different States--rural America, urban America, agriculture America, highly technical jobs, et cetera.

Since my first days in the Senate, I have been committed to doing all that I can to advance the issues that help the Mountain State, including improving our economy and making room for

growth and development, fighting burdensome and overreaching environmental regulations that have crippled our coal industry, improving broadband access in our rural communities and across the States, and fighting the opioid epidemic that has disproportionately affected my State of West Virginia and is devastating so many families and communities not only in our State but across the country.

The bills under consideration today include resources and directions to address each of these priorities and many others.

In our Omnibus appropriations act of 2018, we made a significant investment in a pilot project at the USDA to improve rural broadband in unserved and underserved areas. The State of West Virginia is right in there in terms of lack of broadband deployment in our most rural areas. The Agriculture appropriations bill in this minibus builds on those investments and provides an additional $400 million into that pilot program.

Closing the digital divide has been one of my top priorities. I started my Capito Connect plan to talk about the progress that can be made. This pilot program will help us to build on that progress and connect areas that previously lacked service, making that the highlight of the bill for me.

We had a hearing today about 5G in the Commerce Committee and about how much faster speeds and more advanced technology can improve the economy and how it can be extrapolated to the numbers of jobs and the numbers of dollars into the economy. I am a firm believer that technology is going to drive this, but for those areas that are still left behind or are still on the wrong side of the digital divide, certainly, the program within the USDA is going to be a big boost.

I have already had several conversations with USDA to make sure they understand the unique challenges that we face in West Virginia when it comes to connectivity and so that they continue to keep these challenges in mind as they move forward on the pilot programs.

Every Senator here could make an argument on what their particular challenges are. One of the challenges that we face that some of our midwesterners don't face as much is our terrain. We are not called the Mountain State for nothing. It is hard to drive from one place to another without being in a mountain. If you don't live on a hill, you live in the valley. That creates challenges for connectivity that technology is going to drive. I am very encouraged about this. I am very encouraged, not just about the broadband part of agriculture but the rural development, water, and electricity infrastructure and about opposing cuts to several programs that have been very helpful to our rural communities.

West Virginia, as does every State, also has challenges and opportunities in the transportation sector. I see the chairman of the Transportation Subcommittee here, Senator Collins. She has done great work on the T-HUD appropriations bill. Some of these--certainly, the Airport Improvement Program and the Contract Tower Program--are very important to our smaller airports as well as to our cities, which receive the CDBG funding. They provide ways to improve communities and ways to move forward with the housing and development we need. Also, just in a smaller sense, they help the rail service by ensuring we have a ticket agent in Charleston for Amtrak. It sounds like a small thing, but it is good for tourism and good for our city and good that our Hinton Railroad days will be able to go on uninterrupted.

One thing that has been interrupted in the last several years is any kind of sustained economic progress in our coal and energy sectors--the result, I believe, of the previous administration's never-ending war on coal. Thanks to the new administration, that war is over. This bill will help us in making sure that what remains will give us a fair and even playing field.

The Interior portion of this bill ensures that the EPA returns to its core mission of environmental cleanup. The Interior bill, which, I should note, passed the subcommittee by 31 to 0--everybody voted for it in committee--also emphasizes the need to fund the deferred maintenance of our national parks. This is something for which I have long advocated. We are at a point at which we are really going to make a significant difference here.

The Secretary of the Interior is really devoted to this, as is the President. This is very much a bipartisan effort.

It restores proposed cuts to the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds and grants programs that are tremendously helpful to States and localities. Some of these grants are not very large, but they make the difference of there being clean, drinkable water and water systems as opposed to having to bring your water in, which, in this day and age, in my opinion, in our country shouldn't be happening.

The bill also includes funding to continue a pilot program through the Abandoned Mine Lands Funds to invest in projects that will strengthen our local economies. Obviously, this has been very helpful in West Virginia and in Pennsylvania. We have a lot of abandoned mine land area that needs reclamation, that needs repurposing, and this program is very helpful for that.

The final bill is the Financial Services and General Government bill. I served as the chair of the FSGG bill in the last Congress, during the fiscal year 2018 budget. I was pleased that the funding levels we placed in fiscal year 2018 have remained and that some of the priorities have remained in fiscal year 2019, including a historic increase for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, called the HIDTA Program. This is out of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, where you get a coordinated effort from your State, local, and Federal law enforcement to stop the illegal flow of drugs into our country, which is literally killing a generation and is killing a lot of our communities.

We have an increase in there for drug-free communities, something that is a ground-up program, where your communities get together and ask: How do we solve this problem we have in our small communities? This increase, I think, demonstrates a commitment to the Office of National Drug Control Policy and a rejection of the proposed elimination of the ONDCP.

In having been a Member who voted for the historic tax cuts and tax relief we passed in December, I want to make sure the IRS can implement this so we don't have a glitch or a hitch while people are getting more money back when filing their new taxes. The IRS needs these resources. It just so happens that a lot of those IRS workers actually live and work in the State of West Virginia, so this will have a great impact, I think, in my region.

As one can see, we are doing the people's business by taking up and debating these appropriations bills. I think the committee is functioning, and the Senate floor is already functioning with three bills having gone out and there having been the opportunity for everybody to have weighed in, yea or nay. That is kind of why we are sent here, isn't it? We are sent here to express an opinion, to vote, to make the thoughts of our constituents and our own thoughts known. I am even proud that a lot of the resources we are going to be addressing in these bills will help to address very important West Virginia priorities.

I look forward to the continuing debate on amendments, to the continuing openness of the process, and to the continuing cooperation and dedication of spirit to do the work we have been sent to do--to appropriate the money, to prioritize our tax dollars, and to show the efficiency and care that every single one of our taxpayers deserves. That is what we are doing today.

I yield the floor.