A joint resolution to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, today I want to talk about the tragedy of human trafficking. I want to talk about it today because this is an issue that I hope the entire U.S. Senate will take up within the next week.

We have legislation on which we have worked on a bipartisan basis over the last couple of years, and we have an opportunity late this week or early next week to address this growing problem. I have spent a lot of time focused on this issue over the last couple of years because of the growth of trafficking and my sense that we can do something constructive about it. Others have been involved as well.

Today, I will be at the White House for a meeting that Ivanka Trump is hosting with congressional colleagues, anti-trafficking advocates, and others who have demonstrated a commitment to addressing this issue. We will talk about the need to pass this legislation, get it to the President's desk for signature, and begin to help women and children across our country who are currently being exploited online.

We will probably talk about lots of different kinds of trafficking this afternoon, including work trafficking and other human trafficking, but the one I want to focus on this afternoon is sex trafficking, and the reason is that we think we have a legislative solution for addressing the biggest problem.

Unbelievably, right now in this country, sex trafficking is actually increasing. That is based on all the best data we are getting from all the experts around the country. They say that it is increasing primarily for one simple reason, and that is the internet. The great increase is happening online.

As some have said, this is because of the ruthless efficiency of selling people online. When I am back home in Ohio, victims tell me: Rob, this has moved from the street corner to the smartphone. There is a ruthless efficiency about it.

Anti-trafficking organizations, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Shared Hope International, and others, have told us that the majority of the online sex trafficking they encounter occurs through one single website, and that is backpage.com.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that backpage is involved in about 75 percent of the online trafficking reports it receives from the public. Shared Hope International says it is more than that.

I chair the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Learning about what is going on online, we decided to do an in-depth investigation to find out what is really happening and how we could address it. We spent 18 months studying this, and studying online trafficking quickly led us to backpage.com because, again, that is where the majority of this commercial sex trafficking is occurring.

What we found was really shocking. Not only was backpage--as other websites have in the past--selling women and children online, but this organization and others are actually complicit in these crimes; in other words, they knew much more than we had previously thought. We found that backpage was actually knowingly selling people online.

We did this through a subpoena process that had to be approved here in the U.S. Senate because the company objected to responding to our subpoenas. For the first time in 21 years, we had to come to the U.S. Senate to get approval to actually enforce the subpoena. We then had to take it all the way to the Supreme Court because they appealed it all the way up, and we won.

Through this, we were able to get about 1 million documents. We went through these documents to find out what was happening. What we learned was that this website actually was actively and knowingly involved in selling people online. When a user would post an ad that might have a word indicating that the girl they were selling was underage--for instance, it might say ``cheerleader'' or it might simply reference the age of the girl being 16, 17 years old or younger sometimes--instead of rejecting that ad, knowing that it was of course illegal, they would instead clean up the ad; in other words, they would edit out the words that indicated someone was underage. They didn't just remove the post because they didn't want to lose the revenue--and you can imagine this is a very lucrative business. They just insisted that the ad be edited.

By the way, this also covered up the evidence of the crime, so it was then harder for law enforcement to find out who was involved in the selling of girls online--and underage girls. Of course, it also increased the company's profits. That is what we found in our investigation.

We also found that for years and years people who had been trying to hold these websites accountable in court had failed, and they had failed and been unsuccessful because of a Federal law that, in essence, said to these websites: You have an immunity to be able to do this. You couldn't do it on the street corner, but online you have an immunity to be able to do it.

I recommend a powerful documentary. It is called ``I am Jane Doe.'' You

can find it on iamjanedoe.com. It is on Netflix. It tells the story of underage girls who have been exploited on backpage. It talks about the trauma they have experienced, and, finally, it also talks about their frustration with their inability to hold these websites accountable.

What might surprise you is the reason these websites are not held accountable--the more we dug into it, the more it became clear--is that Washington basically passed a Federal law, which I believe has been misinterpreted by the courts, but it has been interpreted by the courts to say that these websites have no risk, that they are not liable, and that they have an immunity under Federal law. It is called the Communications Decency Act.

The Communications Decency Act was enacted back in 1996, when the internet was in its infancy. It was intended to protect websites from liability based on third-party posts on that website. I understand the intention of Congress, but it now protects websites when they knowingly allow this criminal activity--the crime of sex trafficking--to occur through their site.

I believe Congress meant well when enacting this law. In fact, part of its original intent was actually to protect children from indecent material on the internet by holding individuals liable for sending explicit material to those children.

Now that same law is being used as a shield by websites that promote and engage in online sex trafficking with immunity. I don't believe Congress ever intended this broad liability protection for websites that actively and knowingly facilitate online sex trafficking, but the legal interpretation of the law has led to this. That is why America's district attorneys, 50 State attorneys general, judges all over the country, and so many others have called on Congress to amend this Communications Decency law and fix this injustice--really, this loophole.

Last year, a Sacramento judge threw out pimping charges against backpage and directly called on Congress to act. Here is what this judge said--again, this sort of message has been repeated by other courts: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking.'' That is not just a suggestion; it is an invitation--an invitation to this Congress to act, calling on us to do what we were sent here to do, which is to craft laws that promote justice.

For too long, victims of online sex trafficking have been denied the justice they deserve, and now we have the opportunity here in the Senate--I hope within the next week--to fix that.

Last August, I introduced legislation called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, with a bipartisan group of 24 cosponsors, including my coauthor, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Senators John McCain, Claire McCaskill, John Cornyn, Heidi Heitkamp, and others.

SESTA would provide justice for victims of online sex trafficking and hold accountable those websites that intentionally facilitate these crimes. We do this by making two very narrowly crafted changes to Federal law. First, we remove the Communications Decency Act's broad liability protections for a narrow set of bad-actor websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking crimes--high standard: knowingly. Second, the legislation allows State attorneys general to prosecute websites that violate existing Federal trafficking laws. SESTA simply says that if you are violating Federal sex trafficking laws and you are knowingly facilitating it, then you have to be held to account. That seems to make all the sense in the world, and it will make a big difference for these girls and women who are being exploited online.

Our bill protects websites that are doing the right thing, by the way. In fact, it preserves what is called the Good Samaritan provision of the Communications Decency Act, which protects good actors who proactively block and screen their sites for offensive material, and thus it shields them from frivolous lawsuits. I think that is appropriate. We simply carve out a very limited exception in the Communications Decency Act's liability protections for those who knowingly facilitate sex trafficking.

By the way, there are already exceptions for things in this law-- exceptions for things like copyright infringement. This isn't a new idea. So unless you think protecting copyrights is more important than protecting women and children from the trauma of trafficking, you should be for this. Even those who support section 230 otherwise should strongly support this.

If a prosecutor can prove in court that a website has committed these acts, SESTA allows that website to be held liable and the victims to get the justice they deserve.

By the way, 68 Senators now--more than two-thirds of this body--have signed on as cosponsors of this legislation, a majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats. That doesn't happen very often around here. The House of Representatives passed SESTA as an amendment to a broader anti-sex trafficking bill just a couple of weeks ago by an overwhelming margin--more than 300 folks. The Trump administration has endorsed this solution and again shown a commitment to the issue. So SESTA has overwhelming support from the White House, from more than 300 House Members, and from the 68 Senators who signed on to be a part of this solution.

I think one reason it has gotten so much support is because of the logic of the legislation, the fact that we narrowly drew up the legislation not to affect internet freedom, to be sure we were listening to people who had concerns, but also, and more importantly, because we are all hearing about this issue back home. We are all hearing the stories, and they are powerful, they are compelling, and they are heartbreaking.

Kubiiki Pride came to Congress, to our subcommittee, as we were looking into this issue and told us her story. In testimony, she said: My daughter ran away from home. She had gone missing. She had been missing for several weeks. Obviously, I was very concerned. I couldn't find her. Someone suggested that I look at this website called backpage, so I did. I found my daughter.

She found her daughter--14 years old--but found her daughter in very sexually difficult photographs, horrible photographs of her beautiful daughter. So she called backpage.com and said: I am Kubiiki Pride, and that is my daughter on your website. She is 14 years old. I am so glad I found her. Thank you for taking down that ad. She is 14 years old.

Do you know what the person on the other end of the phone said? They said: Did you post the ad?

This is how evil these people are.

She said: No, I didn't post the ad. That is my daughter. I have been trying to find her. She has been missing for several weeks.

They said: If you didn't post the ad, if you didn't pay for it, you can't take it down and we won't take it down.

That is what we are dealing with here.

Eventually, she found her daughter, got her daughter back. She went through the proper process to be able to hold backpage accountable, and guess what. The court said: Sorry. Under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act--Congress wrote this bill--this website has immunity, even though she is 14 years old and she was being sold online.

So I think that is why 68 Senators have said: Let's step up and do this. This is something we can do around here that is not partisan, that isn't about politics. It is about people. It is about human dignity. It is about ensuring that more girls like Kubiiki Pride's daughter don't have to go through this trauma, that more women and children can live out their life's purpose without having to go through this trauma. I think that is why we have been able to find so many Members who want to step up and do something here and do something that will really make a difference.

So let's vote on this legislation in the next week. Let's get it signed into law so that more children and more women are not exploited through this brutally efficient online process of selling people. If we do this, we are going to be able to provide justice to those victims who deserve it, and we are going to make this world a little better place. I urge the Senate to vote this next week.

For those Members who are not yet a part of this legislation, we urge you to join us. Wouldn't it be great to have everybody on board to correct this injustice, to close this loophole, and to ensure that everybody has the ability to meet their God-given purpose in life?

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, before I speak on the topic that I came to the floor to speak about, which is the resolution currently before the Senate, I wanted to just echo the commentary made about our colleague Senator Heller. I have enjoyed our time working together.

I spent 6 years of my childhood growing up in Las Vegas, so we have a lot of mutual friends. He knows a lot of the people I grew up with and is a part of our family. He will be sorely missed here. I am sure he will be warmly welcomed back home to the community and to his family. We all look forward to seeing the future endeavors lying ahead for him. I know he still has much to offer the Nation and the State of Nevada.

S.J. Res. 54

Madam President, one of the things that makes service in the Senate meaningful is when we get to discuss big issues of great importance. I want to start by thanking the authors of this War Powers Resolution on Yemen because, while I may not agree with it--and I am going to describe why in a moment--I think it is important that the Senate have big debates about big topics and play its rightful role. The Senate and the legislative branch have an important role to play in setting the foreign policy of the United States.

I actually don't think the War Powers Act is constitutional. I believe it is an unconstitutional restraint on the power of the Commander in Chief, and even if it were constitutional, I do not believe that our engagement, or what we are doing in Yemen with the Saudi UAE coalition, rises to a level of triggering it.

That doesn't mean that Congress should not be involved. Frankly, the one way to be involved if you wanted to, if you wanted to pronounce yourself on a matter of this topic, you should file to cut off the money. I wouldn't support it, but that is where Congress's power really comes from. Shut off the money; say that no money can be spent on this effort. Few people are willing to do that, so we rely on these other mechanisms that exist in our law.

But I want to talk more about why I think it is bad idea to vote for this and why I hope more of my colleagues will join me in opposing it.

First of all, I understand what is happening. This resolution is not new; it has been discussed before. It existed for a number of months, well before Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi's brutal murder at the Saudi consulate in Yemen. So this is not a new issue, but it has become for many Members proxy--a vehicle by which they can express displeasure at the way the administration and the President have responded to the murder of Mr. Khashoggi.

I think what has happened to Mr. Khashoggi is an outrage. I don't need a smoking gun or an intelligence briefing to tell me that the Crown Prince is responsible.

If you know anything about Saudi Arabia, if you know anything about how their government works, and if you know anything about the Crown Prince, you know that there is no way that 17 guys close to him get on an airplane, fly to a third country, chop up a guy in a consulate, dispose of the body, and fly back, and he didn't know anything about it. It is just not real.

It is also consistent with a pattern of behavior by the Crown Prince. He literally kidnapped the Prime Minister of Lebanon about a year and a half ago. He has jailed multiple members of his family and government because they weren't in support of his being the successor to the King. This is a pattern of behavior that needs to be dealt with. I do not believe dealing with it requires us to shatter the Saudi-U.S. alliance.

Foreign policy is hard because it must be infused with our values and

the defense of human rights. And I say this with humility--I hold my record up to that of anyone in this Chamber when it comes to fighting on behalf of human rights and humanitarian causes, and we have a lot of great champions of that in the U.S. Senate. But we also have to recognize that this has to be balanced sometimes with realism, and it requires us to make difficult decisions.

The interesting thing about foreign policy is that it is often not a choice between a great idea and a bad idea; it is often a choice between two less-than-ideal outcomes, and you are trying to figure out which one would do the least harm and make the most sense. In many ways, that is what we are facing here in this debate about the Saudi- U.S. alliance.

I have long recognized and condemned the horrifying human rights violations that occur at a systemic level in Saudi Arabia, and I will continue to do so. But I also recognize that there is a threat in the Middle East posed by Iran and their ambitions that must be confronted, and it must be confronted now, regionally, or eventually it will pull the United States into direct conflict. Saudi Arabia and our alliance is a key part of that coalition, so it would be a mistake to shatter it.

In the case of Yemen, this has become a proxy issue for the broader issue of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Hopefully later today, there will be a resolution offered by the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and the majority leader--I hope others will join in--that makes very clear that the vast majority of Members in this Chamber condemn what happened to Mr. Khashoggi and hold the Crown Prince responsible for his murder.

There is no disputing that what is happening in Yemen is a horrifying humanitarian tragedy. The numbers speak for themselves. Over 57,000 human beings have lost their lives. Half the country's population of 28 million people is starving to death, including many women and children, and 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes. It is horrifying, and there is plenty of blame to go around, including Iran and their Houthi surrogates.

The first question I would ask is, If this resolution passes and were to become law, would it end this conflict? If we pass this and the White House were somehow forced to do what we are asking them to do, it wouldn't end this conflict. This conflict will continue, this fight will continue, and the reason why is pretty straightforward: The Saudis view the Houthis as agents of Iran. They already see agents of Iran via Hezbollah, Syria, and Iraq obviously for a long time in Lebanon, and now, to their west and south, Yemen. They are not just agents of Iran. They have launched rockets and ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia, at their civilian populations, including efforts to kill members of the Saudi royal family and government leadership. They have threatened global shipping in the region, where over 400 million barrels of oil a day transit--critical to the world's energy supplies. So they are going to have a war. There is no way Saudi Arabia or the UAE or any of these countries are going to allow themselves to be encircled by Iranian agents.

This conflict will continue irrespective of what we do, and the Saudis will have no problem buying weapons. One of the sad facts about the world today is that countries have plenty of sources from which they can buy this weaponry and plenty of countries and arms dealers who are willing to sell it to them.

Will this resolution, if it passes, end the suffering? The answer, sadly, is no, it will not. In fact, it is the Houthis who have blocked the two access roads that lead to the port, making it difficult to deliver aid. It is the Houthis who have placed mines at the entrance of the port. It is the Houthis, by the way, who are torturing people-- torturing people. We have seen reports of faces being smashed by batons, of people hanging from chains by their genitals and by their wrists for weeks in places, people being scorched with acid. That is the Houthis. That will continue.

Will this end the warfare? It will not. It will not end the warfare. In fact, I think it has the potential to trigger broader warfare.

First of all, it won't end the warfare because right now they are having peace talks. Put yourself in common sense for a moment, and ask yourself: If you are the Houthis and you just read in the newspaper that now the U.S. Senate has voted to end support for Saudi Arabia--do you know what they are thinking? We don't need a peace deal; we might be able to win this thing now. They don't know that it is not going to become law, that the House is not going to take it up. They don't know any of that. They just read that the United States is weakening in its support of Saudi Arabia, and they think, we don't need a peace deal. It is going to embolden them to not strike a peace deal.

But here is where I think it really gets dangerous. The United States stops its support of Saudi Arabia. Houthis establish more control and more stability in their control in areas of Yemen. What are they going to do then? Are they then going to go and rebuild the country, build roads and bridges, and move on to an era of prosperity and peace? They are not. They are going to become what they are but in an expanded way--agents of Iranian influence and of Iranian-sponsored violence.

Here is what you can expect to see if the Houthis establish control of key areas of Yemen and are able to reach a stalemate or, worse, are able to solidify their grip on power: You are going to see hundreds of ballistic missiles launched against Saudi Arabia--missiles that, by the way, in a contingency where there is a crisis between the United States and Iran, would also be able to target American service men and women serving in the region. You are going to see these explosive UAVs that they have already used in attacking Saudi Arabia.

Do you know what Saudi Arabia is going to do in response? They are going to hit them back even harder. In fact, they may even hit Iran, triggering an even broader war. And it gets worse. It gets worse because you can also see them using explosive boats and anti-ship missiles to cut off shipping lanes in the Arabian Gulf. At that point, you will see the U.S. Navy called upon to go in there and reopen shipping because the global energy supply is relying upon it, and the world looks to the United States as a guarantor of the freedom of the seas.

In essence, this could very well lead, in the long run, to an even broader and more dangerous conflict that could involve us and could pull us in. That is the way we need to think about these issues--not just what is before us now. You have to think two or three steps ahead, and two or three steps ahead is that this could become a broader conflict that forces us in.

Imagine it for a moment. We know for a fact that Iran's plans are to use surrogates to attack the United States in instances of a crisis. That is why these Shia militias in Iraq are so dangerous. At a moment's notice, they could decide they are going to start attacking American troops in Iraq, and Iran is going to say: It wasn't us; it was the Shia militia. That is why Hezbollah in Syria is so dangerous. That is why Lebanese Hezbollah is so dangerous. That is why they have cells all over the world ready to be activated at a moment of crisis as an asymmetrical way for Iran to attack the United States without direct attribution. And now we are going to give them one more--the Houthis in Yemen to target our service men and women and our allies in the region, and then we will have to respond, and then we will be in a war involving American service men and women.

Nothing we are doing now guarantees that won't happen anyway, but I am telling you that if we pull out of this effort, it makes it likely. I think it makes it likely that we will see a broader conflict in the very near future that will directly involve the United States of America.

On this final point, I will say that it is important for us to think about these things pragmatically because we lose our influence over the conduct of this war. The Saudi authorities and their military do not do a good job of respecting the rules of war. In fact, they have a military culture in Saudi Arabia where you are more likely to get punished for not taking the shot than for blowing up a bus full of children or hitting a residential project.

You are more likely to be punished for not taking the shot than for taking the shot that kills innocents. That has to change, and we have some level of influence now, given the fact that we are engaged with them, to sort of steer them in that direction and explain to them what troubles our alliance here in Washington. We lose that influence if we walk away.

I do sympathize with the two points behind this resolution: reasserting congressional authority on foreign policy--I agree we need to have more oversight and engagement, and I agree that the conduct of this war in Yemen is horrifying and that what is happening to civilians there is terrible. I just don't think our pulling out makes it better. I actually think it makes it worse, and I actually think that in the long run, it sucks America into a much broader and more dangerous conflict. That is why I hope more Senators here today will oppose this resolution.

We do need to send a clear message to Saudi Arabia that what the Crown Prince did to Mr. Khashoggi is unacceptable, but this is the wrong way to do the right thing.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Minnesota for laying out the case so clearly on the challenge, as I like to call it, of taking on climate chaos.

My wife Mary comes from Minnesota. I know they value the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Every time I have said that before, I always say the ``Land of a Thousand Lakes,'' and Senator Klobuchar corrects me. I just can't quite envision 10,000 lakes.

Minnesota is a land with incredible wildlife, a land that certainly has seen the impacts of climate chaos, as has my home State. So thank you so much for your remarks and for being here to help celebrate our colleague and our friend, the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, who spoke tonight just a few minutes ago for his 200th time, to say: Wake up. Wake up, America.

We have a significant challenge, the sort of challenge that you may not notice from one day to the next. We may wake up tomorrow and not realize that the damage being done to our planet is greater than the day before or we may not be able to wake up a week from now and realize that the damage is more. Nonetheless, it is, if looked at over any significant span of time, a huge, huge force wreaking havoc on our planet, and it will just get worse with time if we do not take on this pollution of the atmosphere by carbon dioxide.

Back in 1959, an eminent scientist was asked to speak at the 100th anniversary of the petroleum industry. That scientist was Edward Teller. Edward Teller gave his speech at this 100th anniversary in 1959, but he said to the gathering of the fossil fuel industry: You do realize that you will eventually have to look for a different form of energy to invest in, first, because the amount of fossil fuels in the Earth's crust is limited and it will run out. He said: Second of all, there are some interesting facts that many of you might not be aware of--that when you burn fossil fuels, it creates carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide might not at first seem like a pollutant because it is invisible and it is odorless, but it has this quality where visible light passes through it, but heat energy is trapped. As a result of trapping heat energy and changing the makeup of our atmosphere, we will start to do major damage to the planet. He talked about how it would affect the melting of ice on the poles, the rising of sea levels, and that humankind lived by the oceans and, therefore, this carbon dioxide would do enormous damage and it would be important to transition off of burning carbon fuels, off of burning fossil fuels. That was in 1959, which is a long time ago that we have had the information about the damage wreaking havoc by this pollutant, carbon dioxide.

Henry David Thoreau, the philosopher, challenged us and said: What is the use of a house if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on?

Yet everywhere we see our planet crying out for us to pay attention-- never as much, however, as in this last year. Here in America, there were fierce forest fires from Montana, across Idaho, into Washington, down to Oregon, and into California clear into December. Smoke covered much of my State for month after month this last summer, having an impact on people's health and certainly having an impact on our economy.

We could look at the storms of last year--the hurricanes of Harvey, Irma, and Maria assaulting Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Those storms were unusually damaging, and part of the reason for that is because the energy of those storms is taken from the temperature of the ocean, and the ocean has been collecting 90 percent of the increased heat on the planet from carbon dioxide pollution and, therefore, producing more powerful hurricanes.

So we saw it in the fires, and we saw it in the hurricanes, but you really can start to see it almost everywhere. You can see that the pine beetles are doing much better because the winters aren't cold enough to kill them, and the trees are doing much worse. You can see that the ticks in New England and Maine and on through Minnesota are doing much better because the winters are not cold enough to kill them. Therefore, they are killing the moose. You can see the impact of the rising ocean temperature on coral reefs around the world, which are a small part of the ocean but have a significant role in the fisheries on our planet.

In my home State in Oregon, the warmer temperatures and the acidity in the ocean caused a billion baby oysters to die in 2008. Well, that is quite an impact on our seafood industry. I can tell you that scientists were mystified because they couldn't imagine, at first, that it had to do with the water quality. They thought it must be a virus or it must be some form of bacteria, but it just turned out that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere not only results in the warming of the ocean, but it is absorbed in the ocean and becomes carbonic acid. That greater acidity of the ocean damages the ability of baby oysters to form shells. So now we have to artificially buffer the ocean water.

We see it in spreading diseases, like malaria, as they follow the mosquitoes, and Zika, as it follows the mosquitoes into greater territory, or leishmaniasis, which is a real diabolical disease that now has come to the United States with sand flies.

My point is that everywhere you look, if you open your eyes, climate chaos is having a big impact and hurting us.

The answer is simple. We have to stop burning fossil fuels. This is where the 100-percent notion comes from, from my bill of last year--100 percent by 50, 100 by 50, or, if you prefer, mission 100. It just means we have to transition from the energy that we gain

from fossil fuels to substituting energy from clean and renewable sources--100 percent. Stop burning fossil fuels.

A few years ago, folks said: Well, that will cause great damage to our economy because renewable energy is so much more expensive than cheap fossil fuels. But we have been blessed. We have been blessed in taking on this challenge because it is no longer true that renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuel energy.

We have had an incredible drop in the price of solar energy over a short period--from 35 cents per kilowatt hour down to 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Then Xcel Energy in Colorado put out a proposal this year. The proposal came back at 2 cents per kilowatt hour. In other words, it is cheaper to have new and clean renewable energy than to burn coal in an already depreciated fossil fuel coal electric plant. Wind has gone from 13 cents or so per kilowatt hour to 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Xcel Energy in Colorado brought in a bid at 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

As we have seen these prices drop dramatically on solar and wind, we have seen the installations of solar and wind surge. On the solar side, in 2017 we installed about 12 gigawatts of capacity--12 gigawatts, or 12,000 megawatts. That is a lot of energy. To put it differently, one- fourth of the total installed capacity of the United States of America went in just in 2017. That is a dramatic upsurge in installation. Think of a world where we can have every flat business roof and every manufacturing plant with solar rays on its surface or canopies over its parking lot because this energy is so cheap to collect, and we can collect it in places where the grid already exists. For wind, in 2016, 8 gigawatts of new capacity went in. Again, there is a tremendous upsurge in the amount of wind installed.

Now we are seeing roughly half of our utilities scale new capacity with renewable energy rather than with fossil fuel energy. The transition is underway, but we need to accelerate it. We need to move it much more quickly, and then we need to move our consumption of energy over to the electric grid. What does that mean? For example, it means heating your house with a heat pump, which uses electricity, rather than a gas furnace. It means changing the way you heat water from a gas hot water heater to an electric hot water heater. It means getting a plug-in vehicle, an electric vehicle.

Let's stop and talk a little bit about electric vehicles. While we have been seeing the production of carbon dioxide from making electricity come down in America, we are seeing the carbon dioxide from driving vehicles go up, so it is a major area we have to take on.

Five years ago, I bought a Volt, which is a plug-in hybrid. It has a range of about 35 miles of electricity, and it also has a gas backup. That car really worked exceedingly well. We drove 3 out of 4 miles on electricity, even though we used gasoline to drive all the way to South Dakota and back. What we found was that the cost per mile on electricity was only about 3 cents a mile, and the cost of running it on gasoline--with oil, maintenance, and so forth--was closer to 10 cents a mile. So it is three times cheaper to drive it on electricity. So there is a big incentive.

Unfortunately, my son had an auto accident, and we had to replace that car. Because the range has increased over 5 years, we were able to get a fully electric car, a Nissan LEAF. The range had gone up in 2016 from roughly 80 miles to about 107. That extra 27 miles is enough that my wife could do her work in home hospice, potentially being assigned to a house way on the west side of the Monona County area and then way on the east side and back and forth several times a day and still make it completely on a single-charged battery.

With the proliferation of driving stations, now we are starting to see the ability to operate much more closely to the way we behaved, if you will, previously with gasoline vehicles--being able to drive hundreds of miles and then recharge. We have seen that with the Volt that just came out to replace the Bolt, which now goes over 200 miles on just its battery alone and more if you drive cautiously.

Buses are another big piece of this. I went down to Eugene, OR, a couple of weekends ago and rode on their first electric bus, the first one in the State of Oregon. That bus looked just like the old diesel buses that we have had serving our metro systems across America, but it cost a lot more. It cost $200,000 more than a diesel bus.

You might say ``Well, that is way too much,'' but here is the interesting thing: It saves about $40,000 to $45,000 a year on fuel. It doesn't take a math genius to then realize that after 5 years of service, you have paid off that cost, and after that, you are saving money. We are going to see a huge transition simply on the economics.

This is the challenge before us, that we have been given the gift of affordable solar that is cheaper than fossil fuel energy, affordable wind that is cheaper than fossil fuel energy, a greatly declining cost of battery power to help supply meet demand, but at the Federal level, we are paralyzed.

Unfortunately, the Koch brothers are really the puppet masters of this body, this Chamber I am in. This wonderful Senate is supposed to be the place where we deliberate to have government of, by, and for the people, but right now we have deliberations here that are of, by, and for the Koch brothers; of, by, and for the wealthy and the well- connected. That is not the vision of America. We have to reclaim the vision of America. The people of America understand that we have this enormous challenge that we must undertake to save our beautiful, blue and green planet.

Since the Federal Government isn't operating, we see companies and cities and places of worship jumping in to fill the gap, adopting 100 percent resolutions--resolutions to transition to 100 percent cleaner renewable energy, to stop burning the fossil fuels that are damaging our planet.

Burlington, VT, is now using a mixture of biomass and hydro wind and solar so that 100 percent of electricity comes from renewable generation. Fifty-eight other cities across America have committed to making that 100 percent transition, and they are handing out an action plan--this year we can do this, and this year we can do that. Families can do the same, places of worship can do the same, and companies are doing the same all across our Nation. We see many of our Fortune 500 companies stepping forward to be real leaders in this. They want to attract employees who know that they care about our planet. They care about stopping this pollution that Edward Teller, an eminent scientist, pointed out in 1959.

When Henry David Thoreau said ``What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?'' he asked a question we should always ask ourselves in terms of the different threats to this beautiful orb that we call home. So let's fight to save this beautiful planet. It is the only one we have. We have no other. It is under serious threat, and we in this Chamber need to tell the Koch brothers to go and sit on their fossil fuel fortune, invest it as they want somewhere else, but to join us in the most important work they could possibly be part of in the years that they have remaining to live here in America, and that is this fight to take on climate chaos and win.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Thank you, Mr. President.

I have come to the floor of the Senate five times over the past week to talk about how the bank lobbyist act puts American families in danger of getting punched in the gut in another financial crisis. I have talked about how it rolls back consumer protections and how, if it passes, 25 of the 40 largest banks in this country--banks that sucked down, collectively, almost $50 billion in bailout money during the crisis, and nobody went to jail--can be regulated like tiny, little community banks.

I talked about how the bill will roll back the rules on the very biggest banks in this country--JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and the rest of them--banks that broke our economy in 2008, banks where no one went to jail, banks where taxpayers coughed up $180 billion to bail them out. I talked about how Washington is poised to make the same mistake it has made many times before deregulating giant banks while the economy is cruising, only to set the stage for another financial crisis.

Now, I am not the only one who has talked about problems with this bill. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the FDIC, the Congressional Budget Office, the NAACP, the Urban League have all talked about parts of this bill that cause problems and would cause problems in our economy.

Today, I want to talk about another part of the bill that keeps me awake at night--the part that guts our ability to find and go after mortgage discrimination by exempting 85 percent of banks from reporting data about the loans they make under a law called the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act or HMDA.

There is a long and shameful history in this country of discriminating against communities of color when they try to buy homes. From 1934 to 1968, the Federal Housing Administration led the charge, actively discriminating by refusing to insure loans to qualified buyers while helping White families finance their plans to achieve the American dream. This policy was not a secret. Nope. It was not the product of a handful of racist government officials. Nope. It was the official policy of the U.S. Government until 1968--in my lifetime and the lifetime of 90 Senators who serve today. The official policy of this government was to help White people buy homes and to deny that help to Black people. Because the Federal Government had set this standard, private lenders enthusiastically followed Washington's lead.

Homes are the way that millions of working families built some economic security. They pay down a mortgage and own an asset that over time often appreciates. A home serves as security to fund other ventures--to start a small business or to send a youngster to college. If Grandma and Grandpa could hang on to the home and get it paid off, they can often pass along an asset that boosts the finances of the next generation and the one after that.

That is exactly what White people have done for generations--but not Black people. Systematically, over many decades, government policies that encouraged mortgage companies to lend only to White borrowers cut the legs out from under minority families trying to build some family wealth, and the result has been exactly what you would predict. It has contributed to a staggering gap of wealth between White communities and communities of color today. One statistic from Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe, states that the median net worth of White families living in Boston is $247,500, and the median net worth for a Black family is $8. That is something all Americans, regardless of race, should be ashamed of.

When I was traveling around the country in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it became clear to me that the crash had made the problem worse. Subprime lenders that had peddled mortgages full of tricks and traps had specifically targeted minority borrowers. That meant that during the great recession, a huge number of minority borrowers lost their homes. When rising home prices helped White Americans regain some financial security, communities of color, with their lower homeownership rates and their higher foreclosure rates, were often left behind.

Again, this is just one example. According to Pew, between 2010 and 2013, the median wealth of White households grew by 2.4 percent, but the wealth of Hispanic households in that same time fell by 14.3 percent, and the wealth of African-American households fell by 33.7 percent.

Mortgage discrimination didn't end in the 1960s when formal redlining policies were abolished. It didn't end with the tightening of mortgage rules following the financial crisis. Lending discrimination is still alive and well in America in 2018.

According to a new report that just came out from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Reveal, in 2015 and 2016, nearly two-thirds of mortgage lenders denied loans for people of color

at higher rates than for White people. This problem affects both big and small lenders, and it is nationwide. Minority borrowers were more likely to be denied a mortgage than White borrowers with the same income in 61 different cities across America.

How do we know that? Because of HMDA data. That is how we can see how much Black families were charged for a mortgage or how often Latino families were denied a chance to take out a mortgage--and we can compare those numbers with White borrowers who have the same income and same credit scores, but we can't do that if the data is missing. It is impossible to detect and fight mortgage discrimination without HMDA data.

The banking bill on the floor of the Senate says that 85 percent of the banks will no longer be required to report HMDA data, including the borrower's credit score and age; the loan's points, fees, and interest rates, and the property value. Eighty-five percent. This data is essential to figuring out whether the borrower got a fair deal.

If this bill passes, there will be entire communities where there will not be enough data to figure out whether borrowers are getting ripped off, entire communities where it will be impossible to monitor whether people are getting cheated because of their race or gender, entire communities where Federal and State regulators will not be able to bring cases, and independent groups like Reveal will not be able to hold these groups accountable.

Sure, banks will save a little money by not having to fill out the HMDA data, but when communities of color are once again left behind, there will be no way to prove it. That is why civil rights groups around the country have spoken up against this bill. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said ``[e]xempting the overwhelming majority of our Nation's banks and credit unions from an expanded HMDA requirement that would better enable Federal regulators, State attorneys general, fair housing advocates, and others to identify and address discriminatory and predatory mortgage practices is unwise.''

The Urban League and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition wrote in a newspaper column that the bill ``would be a giant step backwards for the public and national groups who use this data to ensure banks treat all borrowers equally.'' According to the NAACP, the bill ``would devastate our attempts to determine--and potentially rectify--racially discriminatory lending or loan approval patterns at play.''

This is about basic fairness. HMDA data is an investment we should be making to make sure that all qualified Americans have the same chance to buy a home. Throughout our history, Washington has always fallen short of that goal. Gutting HMDA allows our country and our government to ignore discrimination, letting history repeat itself.

Communities of color will pay the price if this Congress makes this same mistake again. It isn't too late. We can stop this bill from becoming law.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to join the citizens of Massachusetts who are making their voices heard and sending a clear message to President Trump: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts stands strong in opposition to his reckless proposal to expand offshore drilling. We stand strong in opposition to yet another handout to Big Oil executives who are willing to put corporate profits ahead of the health of our coastal families. We stand strong in opposition to this administration's willful ignorance of climate change and the world's ongoing clean energy revolution.

President Trump may say that his drilling plan is about growing jobs, but the truth is that this offshore drilling proposal is a slap in the face to every hard-working coastal family. President Trump is willing to put corporate profits for his Big Oil buddies ahead of shipping crews in Boston, ahead of the fishermen from Gloucester to New Bedford, ahead of the mom-and-pop diners all along the Cape, ahead of every tourism industry worker, and ahead of the families of all of these workers. President Trump is willing to gamble with the livelihoods of over 600,000 North Atlantic coastal and ocean workers. The people of Massachusetts and the people who depend on a clean coast are not willing to take that gamble.

Our coastal communities remember when the BP Deepwater Horizon oilspill happened in 2010. One offshore oil well blew and caused Deepwater Horizon's drilling rig to explode. It killed 11 workers, injured 17 others, and unleashed one of the worst environmental disasters in human history. Nearly 5 million barrels of oil gushed into the ocean, contaminating more than 1,300 miles of coastline and nearly 70,000 square miles of surface water. Millions of birds and marine animals died, suffocated by thick coatings of oil and poisoned by other toxic chemicals. The gulf fishing industry lost thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The spill devastated the gulf's coastal tourism economy. The environmental and economic devastation hit working families and small businesses across the region.

But the Trump administration insists on padding the pockets of Big Oil while small coastal towns bear all the risks that something will go wrong. The local towns bear the risk of a devastating oilspill. The local towns bear the risk of climate change impact, including increased coastal habitat destruction, fisheries threatened by ocean acidification, and rising sea levels. President Trump and this Republican Congress want to bury their heads in the sand or bury their heads in the big pile of Big Oil money, but the reality is this: Climate change has happened, and the evidence is all around us. The consequences are worsening with every single day of inaction.

Make no mistake. We are in the most critical fight of our generation and we are running out of time. We are in a fight to save our coastal towns, a fight to save our farmers, a fight to save our fishermen, a fight to save good-paying clean energy jobs, and a fight for our children's future.

Will winning the fight against climate change be tough? You bet it will. We will need to retool to install offshore wind turbines instead of offshore drilling rigs. We will need to invest in faster clean energy deployment, modernize the electric grid, build sea walls to protect our coastal towns, and much, much more. It is a big job ahead, but there is no country and no workforce in the world that is more willing and more able to tackle the challenges of climate change head- on than the United States of America. Yes, it is hard, but it is what we do. It is who we are.

We are a nation of unrelenting workers who clawed our way out of the Great Depression, who fought two world wars, who put a man on the moon, and who electrified the Nation with 20th century fuels. With a level playing field, we are a nation of workers who can electrify the world all over again with the 21st century fuels of wind, solar, and other clean energy sources.

The American people deserve leadership that understands just how innovative and persistent we are--leadership that knows the fearless strength of the American people; leadership that believes in the innovative, get-it-done attitude of the American worker; leadership that will stand up to Big Oil executives hell-bent on protecting their profits at our expense; and leadership that knows that our best days are ahead of us. But we have to fight for them. They deserve leadership that will not ignore the challenges of climate change; leadership that will not chain our economy to the fossil fuels of yesterday and, instead, will support the good-paying, clean energy jobs of tomorrow; and leadership that refuses to put our coastal families at risk of another devastating oil spill.

The American people deserve leadership that doesn't work for Big Oil. The American people deserve leadership that works for them.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking a number of my colleagues who have contributed so much to bringing us to this point on S.J. Res. 54. I have been very pleased and honored to work with them in cosponsoring these measures in the past--most recently in March and now today--to end all U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen that is killing innocent civilians and murdering children and committing, arguably, war crimes.

The United States should have no complicity in these actions that betray our values and our national interest, so this resolution would direct the removal of all U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities.

There are many to thank--Senators Sanders and Lee, Senator Menendez, and my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Murphy--but I want to thank some people who have not been mentioned during this proceeding

Before Yemen and before the killing of Khashoggi--that is, before the civil war in Yemen and the Saudi involvement in it and before the brutal, heinous killing of the American journalist Jamal Khashoggi-- there was 9/11. The victims and loved ones of those victims are remembered by me. They are friends. They are heroes. They have fought relentlessly to hold the Government of Saudi Arabia accountable for its culpability--not yet proven in court, but they are seeking to hold the monarchy accountable for its possible involvement.

They have been largely absent from the discussion on this floor, but they are the original champions of holding the Saudis responsible for any and all possible involvement in supporting the 9/11 attack on our Nation. Make no mistake--their loved ones were victims, but it was an attack on our Nation, on the Twin Towers, on our Defense Department, on a plane that was forced to crash in Pennsylvania.

I am pleased that the U.S. Senate is pursuing justice for Jamal Khashoggi. He was a journalist, an opinion writer for an American newspaper with two young children who are U.S. citizens.

The United States has a moral obligation to end support for a government that engages in this kind of heinous, murderous action. There is intelligence that points directly to the highest levels of the Saudi monarchy--namely to the Crown Prince, Muhammad bin Salman.

The United States ought to end its support for the humanitarian crisis caused by the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Make no mistake--it was and is a Saudi-led attack, and the Kingdom is responsible for it, but this monarchy was doing bad things and engaged in bad behavior well before the Yemen civil war and Khashoggi's tragic death. The Saudis have a long record of violating human rights and international norms. They have funded extremism that led to the rise of terrorism. They may well have provided financial support and even training for the Saudis who went to the United States and thereafter enabled and led and participated in the attack on this Nation.

We should never forget the survivors and the loved ones of 9/11. We should never overlook the Saudi role in that horrific attack. We should never relent in supporting those 9/11 families.

Fortunately, we have made progress in holding Saudi Arabia accountable for its culpability in 9/11. In 2016, this Congress unanimously passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act-- JASTA--to allow terrorist victims their day in court, their fair opportunity to hold accountable state sponsors of terrorism, including the Saudi Arabian Government. This September, the Senate unanimously passed my resolution to release all classified documents related to the 9/11 attack. These documents are absolutely essential to giving those families their day in court because they are the evidence that is needed to establish the link the United States has--intelligence dating from those days now seemingly long ago--that inculpates the Saudis.

We must support the continued investigation into 9/11 by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and we must support those 9/11 families to ensure that the facts are made public and that the necessary individuals, entities, and governments are held accountable.

The families of victims who perished on that horrific day deserve answers about those events and circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack. We know their pain and grief are very much with them. We should respect their loss and honor it with action.

We should recognize those heroes like Brett Eagleson of Connecticut and the families of Connecticut and New York and New Jersey and all around the country--and so many are from our area of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey--who continue to demand justice and have done so year after year--well before this resolution came before us.

I say to my colleagues today, we need to keep our resolve alive and well to never forget, never yield to hopelessness, never allow our support for these 9/11 families to diminish, never cease our quest for justice in the name of Brett Eagleson's dad and his family and every family who still suffers the pain and grief from 9/11.

Given the role of the Saudi Government in perpetrating the 9/11 attacks, the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the Saudi-inflicted humanitarian crisis, this reevaluation of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia is long overdue.

The Saudi-led war has consisted of an aggressive campaign as brutal as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, indiscriminately killing civilians and Houthis alike. Day after day, the humanitarian crisis of famine, cholera, other medical afflictions, and simple trauma to those children trying to grow up in the midst of exploding bombs continues to get worse. The United Nations warns that 14 million Yemenis could face starvation--14 million--14 million innocent people facing starvation.

Diplomatic efforts, in coordination with the United Nations and European allies, are vital to establish a peace framework and ensure civilian access to humanitarian aid.

In the absence of meaningful action from the United States, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen will only worsen. Regional instability will be exacerbated. America's standing in the global community will be further undercut and enduringly diminished.

In March of this year, I led a letter to the Department of Defense with my colleague Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, along with many of our colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee, stating our concern regarding U.S. support for Saudi military operations against the Houthis in Yemen and asking about the DOD's involvement, apparently without appropriate notification of Congress, and its agreements to provide refueling support to the Saudis and the Saudi coalition partners. We were concerned that the DOD had not appropriately documented reimbursements for aerial refueling support provided by the United States.

Eight months later--just days ago--the Department of Defense responded to our letter and admitted that it has failed to appropriately notify Congress of its support agreements; it has failed to adequately charge Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for fuel and refueling assistance. That admission 8 months after our inquiry is a damning indictment. These errors in accounting mean that the United States was directly funding the Saudi war in Yemen. It has been doing it since March of 2015.

In November, the administration announced an end to U.S. aerial refueling support for Saudi military operations in Yemen, but we still must determine whether the Department of Defense was incompetent or disingenuous--or both--in failing to charge the Saudis and Emiratis for previous refueling assistance. We need accountability, a full explanation from the Department of Defense.

The Department will be seeking reimbursement for its refueling support, but I will continue to demand and conduct oversight to get to the bottom of this apparent negligence. I have made the DOD aware of my concerns, and I will evaluate whether an inspector general investigation is necessary to determine the extent to which U.S. taxpayer funds--potentially millions and tens of millions of dollars-- were used to fund the Saudi war and used to fund it without the legally required acknowledgment and approval from the Congress of the United States.

Very simply, the United States should not be funding this war. We should not be supporting this war. We should not be providing intelligence or logistics support. We should not be complicit in the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in Yemen, the murder of children, the famine and humanitarian crisis that are ongoing right now. That is why today we should pass this resolution.

It is all the more important today, as well, that the Senate take a stand, given the Trump family ties to the Saudis and the President's habit of undermining the intelligence community. In the absence of leadership from the President, Congress must reassert its constitutional responsibility to authorize the use of U.S. military support.

We must take action to uphold the Constitution, as well as American values and interests. Intelligence assessments indicate with high certainty that members of the Saudi royal family, including the Crown Prince MBS, ordered and orchestrated the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. But both President Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have undermined these findings and tried to stifle the intelligence community conclusions. They have undermined not only these conclusions but more broadly the intelligence community itself.

President Trump has debased and dishonored brave intelligence professionals by demeaning their fact-based conclusions as ``feelings.'' President Trump has falsely claimed that ``we may never know all the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi.''

His Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, unfortunately, have further demeaned those findings by saying that there is no direct evidence or there is no smoking gun. The fact is that there is powerful and compelling evidence.

We know from public statements of my colleagues coming from briefings by the intelligence community, and we recently learned that the White House Middle East adviser--I should put ``adviser'' in quotes--Jared Kushner offered advice to his close friend Muhammad Bin Salman about how to ``weather the storm'' during the warranted backlash of Saudi Arabia after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Rather than ensuring accountability, Jared Kushner is inexplicably offering support.

There is also stunning evidence that the Saudi Government lobbyists reserved blocks of rooms at the Trump hotel in Washington, paying for an estimated 500 nights in the luxury hotel just 3 months after President Trump was elected, bringing veterans to Washington to lobby against JASTA, the bill I mentioned earlier--the bill that enables the 9/11 victims to have their day in court, the bill that upholds American interests and American values and American people.

The effort of the Saudi Government to bring those veterans to Washington and fund their stays in the Trump hotel was a despicable irony and insult to America, but it yielded the Trump Organization $270,000 and millions of dollars, by the President's own acknowledgment--indeed, his boasting--go to the Trump organization from condos, apartments, and offices rented or bought in New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC, to say nothing of deals that may be contemplated by the Trump Organization now or after Donald Trump leaves office. These kinds of payments and benefits directly implicate the emoluments clause of the Constitution. They are part of the reason that I have enlisted almost 200 of my colleagues in the U.S. Congress in a lawsuit called Blumenthal v. Trump, and I believe this lawsuit, which claims that the President violated the chief anti-corruption provision of the U.S. Constitution, will shed even more light on those payments and benefits from Saudi Arabia and other countries around the world. These friendships and conflicts of interest demonstrate the very flawed and likely corrupt basis for the Trump administration's foreign policy with Saudi Arabia.

American credibility is at stake. We must end all U.S. involvement in the Saudi war. We must sanction the top levels of the Saudi monarchy under relevant statutes like the Global Magnitsky Act. We must ensure that the President removes U.S. forces from any hostilities against the Yemeni people.

There are countless reasons to vote for this resolution. I call on my colleagues to support it and to make sure that U.S. support for this unacceptable conflict in Saudi--the aggression and attacks by Saudi Arabia on innocent civilians--is ended now.

Thank you.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I move to proceed to S.J. Res. 54.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I just wanted clarification. Was it section 1546 or 1446?

You are right. OK.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use an oversized floor display.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about one of the great humanitarian crises facing our planet, and that is the horrific war in Yemen.

In March of 2015, under the leadership of Muhammad bin Salman, who was then the Saudi Defense Minister and is now, of course, the Crown Prince, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened in Yemen's ongoing civil war. As a result of the Saudi-UAE intervention, Yemen is now experiencing the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.

According to the United Nations, Yemen is at risk of the most severe famine in more than 100 years, with some 14 million people facing starvation. In one of the poorest countries on Earth, as a result of this terrible war, according to the Save the Children organization, some 85,000 Yemeni children have already starved to death over the last several years, and millions more face starvation if the war continues.

Further, Yemen is currently experiencing the worst cholera outbreak in the world, with there being as many as 10,000 new cases each week, according to the World Health Organization. This is a disease that is spread by infected water that causes severe diarrhea and dehydration and will only accelerate the death rate. The cholera outbreak has occurred because Saudi bombs have destroyed Yemen's water infrastructure and because people there are no longer able to access clean water.

Last week, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an article, which I urge all Members to read, that describes his recent visit to Yemen.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the New York Times article, ``Your Tax Dollars Help Starve Children.''

Let me just take this opportunity to quote some of what he said in that December 7 New York Times article:

Some 85,000 children may have already died here in Yemen,

and 12 million more people may be on the brink of starvation,

casualties in part of the three-year-old American-backed

Saudi war in Yemen. United Nations officials and aid experts

warn that this could become the worst famine the world has

seen in a generation.

``The risk of a major catastrophe is very high,'' Mark Lowcock, the United Nations humanitarian chief, told me. ``In the worst case, what we have in Yemen now has the potential to be worse than anything any professional in this field has seen during their working lives.''

Nicholas Kristof continues:

What is most infuriating is that the hunger is caused not

by drought or extreme weather, but by cynical and failed

policies in Riyadh and Washington. The starvation does not

seem to be an accidental byproduct of war, but rather a

weapon in it. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,

backed by the United States, are trying to inflict pain to

gain leverage over and destabilize the Houthi rebels. The

reason: The Houthis are allied with Iran.

He continues:

The problem in Yemen is not so much a shortage of food as

it is an economic collapse--GDP has fallen in half since the

war started--that has left people unable to afford food.

Kristof continues, and I want you to hear this:

We think of war casualties as men with their legs blown

off. But in Yemen the most common war casualties are children

like Fawaz who suffer malnutrition.

He continues:

Some will die. Even the survivors may suffer lifelong brain

damage. A majority of Yemen children are now believed to be

physically stunted from malnutrition.

Let me repeat that:

A majority of Yemen children are now believed to be

physically stunted from malnutrition (46 percent were stunted

even before the war), and physical stunting is frequently

accompanied by diminished brain development.

``These children are the future of Yemen,'' Dr. Aida Hussein, a nutrition specialist, told me, looking at Fawaz. ``He will be stunted. How will he do in school?''

The war and lack of health care facilities have also led to

outbreaks of deadly diseases like diphtheria and cholera.

Half of the country's clinics and hospitals are closed.

That was written by Nick Kristof of the New York Times.

The fact of the matter is that the United States, with very little media attention, has been Saudi Arabia's partner in this horrific war. We have been providing the bombs the Saudi-led coalition has been using, refueling their planes before they drop those bombs, and assisting with intelligence.

In too many cases, our weapons are being used to kill civilians. In August, it was an American-made bomb that obliterated a schoolbus full of young boys, killing dozens and wounding many others. A CNN report found evidence that American weapons have been used in a string of such deadly attacks on civilians since the war began.

According to the independent monitoring group, Yemen Data Project, between 2015 and March 2018, more than 30 percent of the Saudi-led coalition's targets have been nonmilitary.

A few weeks ago, I met with several brave human rights activists from Yemen in my office. They had come to urge Congress to put a stop to this war. They told me, clearly, when Yemenis see ``Made in USA'' on the bombs that are killing them, it tells them the USA is responsible for this war, and that is the sad truth.

The bottom line is, the United States should not be supporting a catastrophic war led by a despotic regime with a dangerous and irresponsible military policy.

Some have suggested that Congress moving to withdraw support from this war would undermine U.N. efforts to reach a peace agreement, but I would argue that the exact opposite is true. It is the promise of unconditional U.S. support for the Saudis that have undermined the efforts toward peace. We have evidence for this.

Just yesterday, we received news that U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths made a breakthrough agreement for the exchange in that war of some 15,000 prisoners--a significant development. This is an important step in building the necessary trust for a broader peace agreement.

A piece published today in TRT World observes: ``[T]here seems to be a firmer willingness to reach an agreement than in previous talks, as the Yemeni government realises that the international pressure on its backer, Saudi Arabia, is growing.''

So our effort to move this resolution forward may have already made a positive impact. I thank all of my 18 cosponsors and all of the many civil society organizations--progressive and conservative--who have worked so hard to raise awareness of this horrific conflict.

Above and beyond the humanitarian crisis, this war has been a disaster for our national security and for the security of the region. The administration defends our engagement in Yemen by overstating Iranian support for the Houthi rebels. Let me be clear. Iran's support for Houthis is of serious concern for me, and I believe for all of us, but the fact is, the relationship between Iran and the Houthis has only been strengthened with the intensification of the war. This war is creating the very problem the Trump administration claims it wants to solve.

Further, the war is also undermining the broader effort against violent extremists. A 2016 State Department report found the conflict has helped al-Qaida and ISIS ``deepen their inroads across much of the country.'' This war, as I see it, is both a humanitarian and a strategic disaster.

Further--and I think it is important to state what everybody knows, although we don't talk about it terribly often--Saudi Arabia is a despotic regime, controlled by one family, the Saud family, one of the wealthiest and most powerful families on Earth.

In a 2017 report by the Cato Institute--a conservative think tank-- Saudi Arabia was ranked 149th out of 159 countries for freedom and human rights. For decades, the Saudis have funded schools, mosques, and preachers who promote an extreme form of Islam known as Wahhabism.

In Saudi Arabia today, women are not treated as second-class citizens; they are treated as third-class citizens. Women still need, in the year 2018, the permission of a male guardian to go to school or to get a job. They have to follow a strict dress code and can be stoned to death for adultery or flogged for spending time in the company of a man who is not their relative.

Earlier this year, Saudi activist, Loujain al-Hathloul, a leader in the fight for women's rights in Saudi Arabia, was kidnapped from Abu Dhabi and

forced to return to the country. She is currently being held without charges. The same is true of many other Saudi political activists.

Human Rights Watch recently reported that imprisoned women activists have been subjected to torture, including electric shocks, and other forms of physical and sexual assault.

Further, as every Member of the Senate knows or should know, there is now overwhelming evidence that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman was responsible for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident who lived in the United States. He was a columnist for the Washington Post. He made the mistake of going into the Saudi consulate in Turkey and never came out alive. We believe his body was dismembered, and nobody knows where it is.

Unbelievably, President Trump continues--despite the overwhelming evidence of the Crown Prince's involvement in the murder of a man living in the United States, a Saudi dissident journalist--to proclaim his love and affection for the Crown Prince and the Saudi regime, but that is not how, in my view, the American people feel.

For too many years, American men and women in our military have put their lives on the line in the never-ending struggle for democracy and human rights, and we cannot and must not turn their struggles, their sacrifices aside in order to follow the military adventurism of a despotic regime. That is not what this country is supposed to be about.

Finally, an issue that has long been a concern to many of us-- conservatives and progressives--is that this war has not been authorized by Congress and is therefore unconstitutional. Article I of the Constitution clearly states it is Congress, not the President, that has the power to send our men and women into war--Congress, not the President.

The Framers of our Constitution, the Founders of this country, gave the power to declare war to Congress--the branch most accountable to the people--not to the President, who is often isolated from the reality of what is taking place in our communities.

The truth is--and Democratic and Republican Presidents are responsible, and Democratic and Republican Congresses are responsible-- that for many years, Congress has not exercised its constitutional responsibility over whether our young men and women go off to war.

I think there is growing sentiment all over this country from Republicans, from Democrats, from Independents, from progressives, and from conservatives that right now, Congress cannot continue to abdicate its constitutional responsibility.

I believe we have become far too comfortable with the United States engaging in military interventions all over the world. We have now been in Afghanistan for over 17 years--the longest war in American history. Our troops are now in Syria under what I believe are questionable authorities. The time is long overdue for Congress to reassert its constitutional role in determining when and where our country goes to war.

If you want to vote for a war, vote for a war. If you want to vote against a war, vote against a war, but we as a Congress have to accept our constitutional responsibility; that it is ours, not the Presidents of the United States.

This resolution provides that opportunity. It finally says that in this one war in Yemen--this terrible, horrific war--that Congress is prepared to act, and I hope very much that all of us will seize this opportunity.

For the sake of starving children in Yemen; for the sake of what this country stands for in terms of democracy and human rights and not following the leadership of a despotic, authoritarian regime; for the sake of the U.S. Constitution and the fact that it is Congress and not the President who has the authority to make war; for all of these reasons and more, I ask strong support for this important resolution.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to speak very briefly on behalf of the resolution being offered today by Senator Sanders, Senator Lee, me, and several others. I encourage my colleagues to support it. I want to use my brief time to respond to some of the arguments that the administration has made over the course of the last few days as to why we should not stand together as a body and say that without a congressional declaration of war, the United States cannot and should not be involved in a disastrous civil war in Yemen.

This is as important a vote as we will take in the Senate. Lives are at stake; lives are in the balance. I don't need to repeat everything Senator Sanders and others have said about the humanitarian catastrophe that exists inside that country. Yet this is different than other famines. This is different than other cholera outbreaks. This is different than other humanitarian nightmares in which tens of thousands of children lose their lives because we are not just a spectator in Yemen; we are participant. The bombing campaign that is causing the worst humanitarian nightmare in the world today is caused by a military campaign of which the United States is a major player and participant. So we have something to say today about whether this civil war ends. We have something to say about whether this Congress is going to allow the administration to continue to perpetuate a war that has had no debate in the U.S. Congress.

Let me take the four arguments the administration uses to try to argue against our resolution and talk to you a little bit about them.

The first argument that has been made--it is probably the most clear in

Secretary Pompeo's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning--is that the real issue is not Saudi Arabia, it is Iran, and if we do not continue to support the Saudis' bombing campaign inside Yemen, the result will be that Iran will win in the region.

First, that exhibits a third-grade understanding of the Middle East. The Middle East is not a zero-sum game between the Saudis and the Iranians. Every time you do something that is potentially disadvantageous to the Saudis doesn't mean it results in an equal-sized benefit for the Iranians. In fact, it may be that both countries are doing things that are deleterious to American national security. It may be that we want to pick and choose when we engage with the Saudis and when we don't engage with the Saudis. Just because we choose not to engage in one particular aspect of Saudi foreign policy does not mean that it equals a gift to the Iranians. Yet that is what Secretary Pompeo would have you believe; that if we don't blindly support the Saudis' civil war inside Yemen, then that will be a win for the Iranians.

The reality is, while this civil war has been occurring, al-Qaida and ISIS have gotten stronger and more numerous. In fact, the greatest threat to the American homeland today comes from the wing of al-Qaida that is inside Yemen. This civil war that we have been helping to perpetuate is actually making our most sacred enemy even stronger inside that country.

Second, there has to be a line that is crossed in which our ally has gone too far, that we are not willing to follow. Clearly, that has happened in Saudi Arabia as they intentionally bomb schools and hospitals and schoolbuses. Just because we stand up and say: We are not willing to support you, Saudi Arabia, in your targeted bombing of civilians, that does not equally gift to Iran. We are still able to decide when we engage or not engage even with our allies.

Third, a lot of folks seem to believe there is some command-and- control relationship between the Iranians and the Houthis. They are, certainly, tied together. There are, certainly, weapons capabilities that have been gifted, granted, to the Houthis by the Iranians, but the Houthis are not Hezbollah. This is not a group of fighters that Iran controls. In fact, as the civil war goes on and on and gets deeper and deeper, the Houthis and the Iranians get closer and closer together. So as we continue to just feed enough support to the Saudis to keep the civil war going, we are actually perpetuating the very end we seek to avoid, which is the merger of the Iranian regime and the Houthi rebels. They are becoming closer and closer the longer and longer the United States becomes engaged in this conflict.

The Middle East is not a zero-sum game. You do not have to unconditionally back the Saudis in everything they ask of us simply because you don't like the Iranians. That is not how the Middle East works. You can pick and choose the places in which you back up your ally--at no cost to your campaign--so as to try to delegitimize and reduce the influence of Iran.

Second, the claim is that this resolution, if it were to be agreed to, would hurt the negotiations that are scheduled for next month. False. It is exactly the opposite for two reasons.

One, the Saudis need to understand that our support is not unconditional, that they actually have to bend at the negotiating table. Right now, they don't believe they have to do that. In fact, over the course of this civil war, they have been, more often than not, the reluctant party in these negotiations because they believe that if negotiations fall apart and they return to a state of military hostilities, the United States will give them whatever they need. It is really important right now for the Saudis to understand, as they head into these negotiations, that if these negotiations don't succeed, there will be consequences.

Second, the idea that the Houthis are ready to give up the fight, that they are tired, is also false. There is no evidence of that. The Houthis don't believe the negotiation is real, so they are prepared to just fight it out. If the Houthis believe the United States is an honest broker here, that there is some point at which we are unwilling to follow the Saudis into battle as they continue to deliberately attack civilians inside Yemen, then the Houthis will be actually more willing to sit and talk at the negotiating table. Showing that there is some conditionality to our support for the Saudis, that there is some line on war crimes that they cross that is too far, is actually helpful in getting both of these parties closer together at the negotiating table.

Third, the claims that if this resolution were to be agreed to, it would hurt our work against al-Qaida and ISIS are absolutely false. Inside this resolution is an exclusion. What we say is, if there is an existing authorization for war inside Yemen, this resolution does not erase it. There is an existing authorization for any campaign anywhere in the world that the United States launches against al-Qaida. The administration and the prior administration, the Obama administration, have expanded the 9/11 AUMF to cover ISIS as well, so nothing in this resolution hurts our ability to go after al-Qaida and ISIS inside Yemen. All of those operations can continue, even if this is to be agreed to and becomes law.

Second, al-Qaida has been growing in strength. ISIS had no foothold in Yemen before this civil war. It is stronger today than it was 3 years ago because, once again, like we did in Iraq for 10 years and like we are doing in Syria, we are giving just enough help to the Saudis to keep the civil war going without actually ever being willing to give enough force so as to be dispositive on the ground. All we are doing is lengthening the civil war. Nature abhors a vacuum, and in the vacuum that is created by that civil war, especially in the vast, ungovernable portions of Yemen, al-Qaida takes advantage, and ISIS continues to grow. Every day we continue to just keep this thing going, our sworn Sunni extremist enemies are getting stronger.

Lastly, the argument is made that if the United States is not involved with the Saudis, the humanitarian nightmare would be worse. How could it be worse? How is that a justification? There are 85,000 children under the age of 5 who have died of starvation and disease. There are 22 million people in the country, and three-quarters of the population cannot live without humanitarian assistance. The world's worst cholera epidemic in the history of the world is happening right now inside that country. Why? Because the Saudis have been deliberately hitting the water treatment facilities. I am not making this up. They have been targeting the water treatment facilities so you can't get clean water, so people get cholera.

Today, humanitarian supplies have been reduced by 50 percent to the Port of Hodeidah because, as we speak, the Saudis, with U.S. support, are bombing all around Hodeidah, and humanitarian agencies have cut off many of the supplies they would traditionally send into that capital. The humanitarian nightmare is getting worse right now, as we speak today, because this civil war continues to go on and on.

It can't get much worse than it is today, and there is no evidence that the U.S.' participation in this campaign has made it better. In fact, since we have been sitting inside these targeting centers, with U.S. personnel helping the Saudis pick targets, more civilians have been killed, not fewer. We actually pulled out of the targeting centers at the end of the Obama administration. The Obama administration made a determination in 2016 that we were potentially committing war crimes by being with the Saudis as they were choosing to hit the water treatment facilities, so they pulled our people out.

There is no evidence that during the time we were not in the targeting centers, the Saudis were hitting more civilian targets. In fact, the evidence tells us that the deeper we get involved in the targeting decisions, the more they hit civilian targets. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. So long as they have the United States inside the tent, they have moral cover for hitting civilian targets. They can use us to say: Well, the United States was there. It was inside the room when these decisions were made, so it can't be that we are doing the kind of damage you say we are.

The evidence doesn't suggest the contrary. The evidence says, the contrary is true--of a 160-percent increase in civilians being killed just this year versus last year. So the Middle East

isn't a zero-sum game. The adoption of this resolution does not empower Iran. We are not obligated to follow the Saudis into every mistake they make.

Second, this resolution will not hurt negotiations. It will absolutely help negotiations by showing that the United States is going to be an honest broker. The Houthis are bad players. They have killed a lot of people. They have done a lot of damage inside that country. This is not just a question of what the Saudis have done. Seventy percent of the civilians have been killed by Saudi bombs, but the Houthis need to be held to account for what they have done as well. We need to be a broker of peace. This resolution will help us be a broker of peace.

Third, al-Qaida and ISIS can still be confronted, even if this resolution is agreed to, and the quicker this civil war ends, the less power they have.

Fourth, theoretically, maybe things could be worse. Maybe we could have 185,000 children under the age of 5 die from starvation and disease, but this is not a justification to just stay the course. We need to shake up the stalemate that exists today. We need to send a signal that the United States is not OK with the way the Saudis have perpetuated this war--frankly, the way they have lied to us over the course of the last several months about other things they are doing to quell dissent in and around the Kingdom. We need to send a message, but we also need to get the United States out of a conflict right now that is of no benefit to American national security and that has become a nightmare for people who are stuck in Yemen today.

I urge the adoption of the resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to join many of my colleagues in support of passage of the underlying resolution. I was pleased to be one of the original cosponsors, along with the Presiding Officer and Senator Sanders, amongst many others.

This is clearly not the first time I have been to the floor to talk about the crisis inside Yemen and the broader crisis with respect to our relationship with Saudi Arabia that has grown worse and worse, especially in the last several months.

I want to thank Senator Menendez and Senator Corker for taking this incredibly seriously, especially since the death of Jamal Khashoggi, who was a resident of the United States here, ostensibly under our protection. I am hopeful that we will get another big bipartisan vote when this comes up for final passage.

I want to reiterate some of the reasons I think this is incredibly important.

First, let me state what I hope is obvious even for those of us who have been critics of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is a very important ally of the United States. It is an important partner for stability in the region. We continue to engage in an important counterterrorism, intelligence-sharing relationship with Saudi Arabia. They have helped us track down some very bad people. We have helped them track down some very bad people. Sunni extremists-- separate and aside from the argument as to where that movement gets some of its seed funding--are out to get the Saudi regime, just as they are out to get the United States.

Second, it is important to note something that we take for granted in the region--this now long-term detente that has existed between the Gulf States and Israel, which did not used to be something you could rely on. In fact, one of the most serious foreign policy debates this Senate ever had was on the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia back in the 1980s. The objection then was that by empowering Saudi Arabia, you were hurting Israel and Israeli security. No one would make that argument today because Saudi Arabia has been a good partner in trying to figure out a way to calm the tensions in the region and, of course, provide some balance in the region, with the Iranian regime on the other side continuing to this day to use inflammatory and dangerous rhetoric about the future of Israel.

So this is an important partnership, and I have no interest in blowing it up. I have no interest in walking away from it. But you are not obligated to follow your friend into every misadventure they propose. When your buddy jumps into a pool of man-eating sharks, you don't have to jump with him. There is a point at which you say enough is enough. I came to this floor 3 years ago and suggested that time had already come.

Muhammad bin Salman, who is the Crown Prince, who is the effective leader of the country, has steered the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia off the rails. Folks seem to have noticed when he started rounding up his political opponents and killing one of them in a consulate in Turkey, but this has been ongoing. Look back to the kidnapping of the Lebanese Prime Minister, the blockade of Qatar without any heads-up to the United States, the wholesale imprisonment of hundreds of his family members until there was a payoff, the size of which was big enough to let some of them out.

This is a foreign policy that is no longer in the best interests of the United States and cannot be papered over by a handful of domestic policy reforms that are, in fact, intended to try to distract us from the aggressive nature of the Saudis' foreign policy in the region.

Of course, the worst example of their regional behavior going off the rails is Yemen. And I don't want to restate the case here; I think Senator Sanders did a great job of it.

I have stood here before with posters of malnourished children with distended bellies. Some 85,000 of them have died from malnutrition or disease. The world's worst ever outbreak of cholera is happening right now as we speak. Ten thousand Yemenis have died from warfare, from bombings, or from siege campaigns. About two-thirds to three-quarters of those were as a result of the Saudi side of the civil war, but let's make clear that there are some really bad actors on the Houthi side as well. Part of the reason the humanitarian aid can't get to where it is needs to get to is because the Houthis are stopping it from getting into the areas they control today. So the Saudis bear the majority of the responsibility for the humanitarian nightmare, but there is enough to be spread around.

I am appreciative that many of my colleagues are willing to stand up for this resolution today to end the war in Yemen. I wish that it weren't because of the death of one journalist, because there have been tens of thousands who have died inside Yemen, and their lives are just as important and just as worthwhile as Jamal Khashoggi's life was, as tragic as that was. But there is a connection between the two, which is why I have actually argued that this resolution is in some way, shape, or form a response to the death of Jamal Khashoggi, for those who are primarily concerned with that atrocity. Here is how I link the two:

What the Saudis did for 2 weeks was lie to us, right? In the most bald-faced way possible. They told us that Jamal Khashoggi had left the consulate, that he had gotten out of there alive, that they didn't know what happened, when of course they knew the entire time that they had killed him, that they had murdered him, that they had dismembered his body. We now know that the Crown Prince had multiple contacts all throughout the day with the team of operatives who did it. Yet they thought we were so dumb or so weak--or some combination of the two-- that they could just lie to us about it.

That was an eye-opener for a lot of people here who were long-term supporters of the Saudi relationship because they knew that we had trouble. They knew that sometimes our interests didn't align, but they thought that the most important thing allies did with each other was tell the truth, especially when the truth was so easy to discover outside of your bilateral relationship. Then, all of a sudden, the Saudis lied to us for 2 weeks--for 2 weeks--and then finally came around to telling the truth because everybody knew that they weren't.

That made a lot of people here think, well, wait a second--maybe the Saudis haven't been telling us the truth about what they have been doing inside Yemen.

A lot of my friends have been supporting the bombing campaign in Yemen. Why? Because the Saudis said: We are hitting these civilians by accident. Those water treatment plants that have been blowing up--we didn't mean to hit them. That cholera treatment facility inside the humanitarian compound--that was just a bomb that went into the wrong place, or, we thought there were some bad guys in it. It didn't turn out that there were.

It turns out the Saudis weren't telling us the truth about what they were doing in Yemen. They were hitting civilian targets on purpose. They did have an intentional campaign of trying to create misery. I am not saying that every single one of those schoolbuses or those hospitals or those churches or weddings was an attempt to kill civilians and civilians only, but we have been in that targeting center long enough to know--to know--that they have known for a long time what they have been doing: hitting a lot of people who have nothing to do with the attacks against Saudi Arabia.

Maybe if the Saudis were willing to lie to us about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, they haven't been straight with us as to what is happening inside Yemen, because if the United States is being used to intentionally hit civilians, then we are complicit in war crimes. And I hate to tell my colleagues that is essentially what the United Nations found in their most recent report on the Saudi bombing campaign. They were careful about their words, but they came to the conclusion that it was likely that the Saudi conduct inside Yemen would amount to war crimes under international law.

If it is likely that our ally is perpetuating war crimes in Yemen, then we cannot be a part of that. The United States cannot be part of a bombing campaign that may be--probably is--intentionally making life miserable for the people inside of that country.

So I would argue that this resolution is an appropriate response if you are only concerned about Jamal Khashoggi because it is a way to make clear that if you lie to the United States, there are consequences. It is also a way to say to the Crown Prince: We are not going to be partners with you in your most important foreign policy endeavor--the war inside Yemen--if you are not being straight with us about this or other matters.

If you care just about what happened to that journalist, this is still an important vote for you to cast. And I get it that some people have issues with the mechanism by which we get here, the War Powers Resolution. I understand that it is new, that it hasn't been tested before. But I believe this is the right moment to have this debate and to have this vote.

I am hoping that we are going to come to a conclusion here as quickly as we can in which we maintain bipartisan consensus. I just joined several of my colleagues upstairs to express our desire--this isn't the beginning and the end of our debate about what to do with Saudi Arabia moving forward. I support Senator Menendez and Senator Young's legislation to take some additional steps to halt arms sales. I support imposing sanctions on the individuals who are responsible for this crime. But I would also hope that all of us take a little bit of time over the holidays to really think about how we reset this relationship in the region and how we send a signal to the world that there is no relationship in which we are the junior partner--certainly not with Saudi Arabia.

If Saudi Arabia can push us around like they have over the course of the last several years and in particular the last several months, that sends a signal to lots of other countries that they can do the same thing--that they can murder U.S. residents and suffer almost no consequences; that they can bomb civilians with our munitions and suffer no consequences.

This is not just a message about the Saudi relationship; this is a message about how the United States is going to interact with lots of other junior partners around the world as well. Saudi Arabia needs us a lot more than we need them, and we need to remind folks of that over and over again.

Spare me this nonsense that they are going to go start buying Russian jets or Chinese military hardware. If you think those countries can protect you better than the United States, take a chance. You think the Saudis are really going to stop selling oil to the United States? You think they are going to walk away from their primary bread winner just because we say that we don't want to be engaged in this particular military campaign? I am willing to take that chance.

We are the major partner in this relationship, and it is time that we start acting like it. If this administration isn't going to act like it, then this Congress has to act like it. As Senator Graham said, sometimes Congress has

to go its own way. Sometimes Congress has to reorient American foreign policy when an administration will not.

With respect to this bilateral relationship, with respect to this egregious, unconscionable military operation inside Yemen, it is time for Congress to step up and right something that today is very, very wrong.

I appreciate all of the great work that Senator Sanders and Senator Lee have done as partners in this, and I thank the chairman and ranking member for helping guide us through this debate as painlessly as possible. I look forward to coming to the floor again before final passage and look forward to another big bipartisan vote at the end of this.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I wish to thank Senators Lee, Sanders, and Murphy, as well as the other cosponsors of the resolution we are debating, for their commitment to elevating this debate in the Senate. I agree with my colleagues that this is an important debate with significant implications. As the elected representatives of the American people, we must serve as an effective check on the executive branch, fulfill our commitments to protect the national security interests of the United States, and be responsive to our constituents.

This debate is about how we best leverage the tools in our national security toolbox, including military tools, to protect U.S. national security. Although the resolution focuses on one particular element of U.S. policy, limited military support--basically, refueling, intelligence, and advice--to the Saudi coalition, I encourage my colleagues to expand the aperture of this debate so we may call on the administration to assert real leadership, diplomatic heft, and nonmilitary resources to move the conflict in Yemen toward a political tract.

As the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I remind

my colleagues that it is this committee that has the jurisdiction over the questions of use of force. I remind my colleagues that it was also under my leadership as chair of this committee that it twice voted on authorizations for the use of military force--once in 2013, in response to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people, and once in 2014, in response to the rapid rise and spread of the Islamic State. I remind my colleagues of these two committee votes to underscore my commitment to open debate, my willingness to take tough votes, and my enduring commitment to a robust role for the legislative branch of the U.S. Government in the use of force and oversight of that force.

Now, I am pleased that Chairman Corker has agreed to hold a public hearing with administration witnesses on the war in Yemen--I think a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is critically important--to look at the U.S. military support to the Saudi coalition and our overarching U.S. policy for resolving the war in Yemen. I appreciate that the chairman has also made a commitment to a markup in the committee in the near future on legislation that deals with the question of Yemen, and I also welcome his commitment to markup an AUMF, or an authorization for the use of military force, in the committee. Those are significant and actually will go a long way toward an informed process about how we deal with this challenge.

In considering S.J. Res. 54, I encourage my colleagues to assess the best way to promote core U.S. security interests in the Middle East, including pushing back on Iran's aggressive and destabilizing actions across the region, countering terrorism, and ensuring the freedom of navigation. To achieve these goals, our longstanding policy has been to partner with the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council to promote the security and stability of the Arabian Peninsula.

As we consider this resolution, we must fully grasp the situation on the ground and the scope of attacks on one of our traditional security partners. Saudi Arabia has endured Yemeni-originated attacks inside its territory on a scale that no American would accept--ballistic and Scud missile attacks aimed at major Saudi population centers, cross-border attacks by Iran-backed Houthis. Those are significant.

Now, having said that, I share the concerns, I think, of a majority of my Senate colleagues regarding the conduct of the Saudi-led coalition operations, the unacceptable scale of civilian casualties, the severity of the humanitarian crisis, and the seeming lack of momentum on all sides toward a political tract to negotiate an end to this conflict.

The Saudi coalition bears significant responsibility for the magnitude of human suffering and the scale of destruction in Yemen. Seventy-five percent of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance, and more than 8 million are on the brink of famine. The conditions have also led to the worst outbreak of cholera in modern history, with an estimated 1 million people suspected to be infected.

While the Houthis bear much responsibility for the violence, the Saudi-led campaign has played a significant role in exacerbating, however, the current humanitarian catastrophe. We must remember that the Houthis overthrew the internationally recognized and lawful government of Yemen and continue the conflict by resisting a political solution. So we ask the Saudis to have a political solution, but we need the Houthis to engage in a political solution as well. We also have to remember that the Houthi insurgency has vastly expanded the opportunities for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

At the same time, I worry that withdrawal of limited U.S. military support to the Saudi coalition will weaken our leadership and our ability to influence a political settlement, improve humanitarian conditions, and could even make the situation worse.

Let us be clear-eyed about who will most benefit from an absence of American power. As it has done in political vacuums throughout the region, Iran will continue to expand its proxy power, and through its Revolutionary Guard, Iran will continue shipping weapons to the Houthis in violation of the arms embargo. With an emboldened Iran as patron, the Houthis will continue their campaign within Yemen and their attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, other nations in the region will be left questioning the commitment of its long-term security partner, the United States. In Saudi Arabia's darkest hours, as ballistic missiles are launched at major population centers in Saudi Arabia and Lebanese Hezbollah is on their border training Houthi fighters while Iran continues to transfer lethal equipment, we risk sending a signal to our partners and to our adversaries that the United States is not reliable.

Across the world, from Canada to the United Kingdom, President Trump has damaged our credibility as a reliable partner, even to some of our most stalwart allies. We must push against those concerns and show our allies that the United States upholds its international commitments. Consideration of withdrawal of support for the Saudi coalition must be taken in concert with other ways in which the United States is working to end this war--the totality of U.S. policy--which I fear is lacking.

The solution, I believe, is to bolster our diplomatic, humanitarian, and political presence to help solve this crisis, to end the human suffering, and to assert practical, concerted leadership. Thus far, the administration's approach has effectively abdicated leadership on the global stage. Thus far, while we have heard senior officials assure us that there is no military solution to this conflict and a political settlement is necessary, this administration is actively dismantling the State Department and antagonizing the United Nations--the two entities that have the potential to play the most critical roles in moving toward a political settlement and addressing the humanitarian crisis.

We have vacancies at the Assistant Secretary of State level for the Middle East and the Ambassador in Riyadh--a failure of leadership.

With this dangerous approach to our diplomatic institutions, we will not be in a position to promote political solutions, and our military, once again, will be called on to do the critical work of diplomacy and development, distracting their attention from other pressing challenges--a failure of leadership.

Regarding a broader diplomatic strategy, the administration has also failed to develop a comprehensive strategy to confront Iran, including holding Iran accountable for continuing to provide missile supplies and lethal training to the Houthis.

Across land and sea, we know Lebanese Hezbollah operatives are in Yemen. Yet we have seen no sanctions and no action at the Security Council for this illicit, illegal activity. The administration has not made one designation for Iranian violations of arms embargoes, as directed by the legislation passed here 98 to 2, the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act--again, a failure of leadership.

I expect the administration to articulate and implement a comprehensive strategy for addressing Yemen that includes requisite conditions for continuing to support the Saudi coalition, a strategic push for a political settlement, efforts to alleviate the human suffering, and a comprehensive strategy to decisively push back on Iran's destabilizing actions in Yemen. This includes tough diplomacy with countries that will continue to facilitate or, at a minimum, fail to push back on Iran's actions.

I will continue pushing the administration to assert critical American diplomatic leadership rooted in the values of democracy, human rights, and human dignity.

Based upon Chairman Corker's commitments to those hearings and future markups and based upon the totality of the situation, I will vote to table the motion to discharge from the committee because I am not ready to either abandon our partners that face an existential threat from Iran run amok in Yemen, but my support is not unconditional, and I will demand responsive actions.

I want to see, as I told the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia earlier today, a renewed commitment and a rapid movement toward a political track by the Saudi coalition. I want to see consistent demonstrations of commitment

to humanitarian access and alleviating the humanitarian crisis. I want to see followthrough in pledges of assistance to stabilize and rebuild Yemen by members of the Saudi coalition. I want to see energy and diplomacy from the Trump administration.

This week's visit of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is an opportunity to press forward on a path for ending the war and addressing the civilian suffering. That certainly was my message to him. The limited support the United States provides is leverage. Now the Trump administration needs to use it.

In conclusion, I invite my colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to join me in holding the administration to account and pushing the administration to use our leverage to drive this conflict toward a political track. I also invite my colleagues to join me in conducting oversight of our policies and programs to counter Iran's activities in the region, including implementing CAATSA.

Finally, I want to be very clear that my vote today is not a blank check for U.S. military support, nor an endorsement of the current policy and strategy, and, finally, not a thumbs-up for the Saudi coalition that we should continue business as usual. I expect to see improvements on all fronts, as I have previously stated, and I will review future decisions with respect to potential arms sales and other votes with that type of extreme scrutiny.

There is no more time to waste. We must move toward a political settlement to end the war in Yemen, and the people of Yemen must see improvements in their situation immediately.

I look forward to working with all of my colleagues to ensure we are working toward a policy that embraces American leadership in promoting a political solution and alleviating the devastating humanitarian suffering in Yemen. I look forward to this continuing debate before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, there was a classified briefing this morning that Members of the Senate were invited to on a bipartisan basis, Democrats and Republicans. It is rare. We don't do it very often. We do it when there is an important issue of national security and something else of great moment.

What we came to discuss today was Saudi Arabia, and that discussion really focused on our guests--the Secretary of State, Mr. Pompeo, and the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Mattis. They talked to us about our relationship with Saudi Arabia, for obvious reasons. Hardly anyone in the world could have missed what happened over the last several weeks when a man named

Khashoggi went into the consulate for Saudi Arabia in Istanbul and never came out.

We have a videotape that shows the Saudi citizen and American resident entering that building. For the longest time, there was a debate as to what actually happened to him. All sorts of stories were manufactured and fabricated. It turned out that the Turks had access to audio recordings of what actually happened inside that consulate. They eventually made them public, released them to the Government of Saudi Arabia as well as to the United States, and we came to learn that Mr. Khashoggi, a frequent critic of the Saudi royal family, was murdered. He walked into that consulate and never walked out alive. Some group flew in from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, ambushed him, killed him, and, as hard it may be to believe, brought with them a bone saw so they could dismember him and take parts of his body out to be destroyed and buried somewhere in Turkey.

That story eventually emerged, and President Trump was confronted repeatedly: What are we going to do about this?

Saudi Arabia is supposed to be one of our allies. We have arms agreements with them. We are involved in a lot of things relative to energy and national security. For the longest time, the President was dismissive, saying: I have spoken to the royal family, and they have denied they had anything to do with it.

Well, that excuse worked for a while but not very long. Once the recordings were released by the Turks, once the world came to grips with what actually happened to Mr. Khashoggi, serious questions were raised about this outrageous abuse of human rights at the hands of the Saudi regime.

There is a lot of speculation back and forth about who ordered it and who knew about it. Those questions may never be answered. But we do know that some 15 to 17 people close to the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia have been implicated to the point where the Trump administration finally acknowledged that we have to do something. We have to take a stand even when it involves a country that has been our ally in many circumstances.

If you read the history of Saudi Arabia's relationship with the United States, it has a lot to do with oil. For the longest time, we counted on the Middle East for oil. We looked the other way. We helped them, and they made a fortune in the process. The opulence of the royalty in Saudi Arabia rivals any royalty in the modern world, and the lavish lifestyles of the Saudi princes as they travel around the world has been well documented.

The United States has looked the other way many times because we needed the oil or we needed them as a strategic ally or a strategic partner. Those times have changed in some respects. We are becoming more energy independent. We are not as dependent on Saudi Arabia as we once were for energy supplies to fuel our economy.

In the meantime, something else has happened within the Kingdom. There has been a transition of power to the Crown Prince, who is known as MBS. He is a young man in his thirties, and he announced when he came to power that he was going to make some real changes in Saudi Arabia. One big breakthrough he announced was that women would be allowed to drive cars. In the West, it is almost comical to think of that as a concession, but in Saudi Arabia, that is progress in a country that has been slow to give women recognition in roles they deserve.

Then he got engaged in foreign policy and started doing things that were hard to explain, one after the other. One of them was the decision to take the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Mr. Harari, and, basically, to put him under house arrest when he visited from Lebanon in the Royal Kingdom and, then, to have a confrontational relationship with Qatar, a country that we rely on for our military basing and support in the region. Then, of course, there is what brings us to the floor later this afternoon for an important--maybe historic--vote. He decided that the Saudis would invade Yemen because they believed the Iranians were establishing a power base there and because there was aggression from Yemen against Saudi Arabia.

That decision to begin this war in Yemen sometime in the recent past resulted in outcomes that no one could have predicted. There are about 28 million people who live in Yemen. We estimate that 14 million of them, half of the people living in that country, are subjected now to a famine that threatens their very lives. We know that over 80,000 children have been killed so far in the war in Yemen.

What is the role of the United States? Well, it is hard to define it in specific terms. At one point--I think it has been discontinued now-- we were fueling the bombers the Saudis sent into Yemen, releasing the bombs that killed civilian populations and other innocent people. At one point--I think it is still the case--we were assisting them in targeting the areas in Yemen where they were going to drop their bombs.

So the United States has not been on the sidelines. We have been involved. Our military, the best in the world, has been involved in helping the Saudis with this invasion of Yemen. They have discontinued, I understand, the fueling mission, but other things continue.

The question we have to ask ourselves now is this: Why are we there? By what constitutional authority? It is this little book here that is supposed to guide our conduct. By what constitutional authority is this administration and the Department of Defense waging a war in Yemen? It isn't because of any vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives, though the Constitution is explicit that the declaration of war is in the hands of Congress--really, in the hands of the American people through Congress. In this case, whatever is going on in Yemen has never been expressly approved.

What they hearkened back to was a measure that was passed on the floor of the Senate 17 years ago, and I remember because I was here. It was after 9/11. Who will ever forget that? Three thousand innocent Americans were killed by terrorists who crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York and into a field in Pennsylvania. Do you know the nationality of the terrorists who were on those planes, the ones who commandeered them and killed those innocent Americans? Saudis. They were all Saudis.

Yet we passed this resolution saying the United States can use force to retaliate against them, and I voted for it. We found them in Afghanistan. We went after them. But could anyone have possibly imagined that that vote 17 years ago gave authority to our government today to engage in a war in Yemen?

True, there are terrorists on the ground in almost every country in the Middle East, and you could justify our military involvement by saying we are fighting terrorism. But let's be honest. This Constitution did not want a generic declaration of war. It wanted us to be careful when we chose those battlegrounds.

So today we had a briefing by the Secretary of State, Mr. Pompeo, which I cannot recount in detail because it was in a classified setting, but we do know this. This morning, that same Secretary of State authored an article in the Wall Street Journal about this issue. It is entitled ``The U.S.-Saudi Partnership is Vital,'' by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. I would like to read the opening paragraph of Secretary of State Pompeo's statement. When it comes to our relationship with Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen, here is what he wrote:

The Trump administration's effort to rebuild the U.S.-Saudi

Arabia partnership isn't popular in the salons of Washington,

where politicians of both parties have long used the

kingdom's human-rights record to call for the alliance's

downgrading. The October murder of Saudi national Jamal

Khashoggi in Turkey has heightened the Capitol Hill

caterwauling and media pile-on. But degrading U.S.-Saudi ties

would be a grave mistake for the national security of the

U.S. and its allies.

It is a long article. Read it in its entirety and draw your own conclusions, but the first paragraph sets the tone. We are not discussing our role with Saudi Arabia in the salons of Washington. We are discussing them on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Why? Because we were elected to do just that.

The American people entrust us with the foreign policy of the United States and decisions that need to be made

about whether we commit American tax dollars or American lives in a military conflict. It isn't some group of academics in a salon. It is Members of the U.S. Senate, duly elected, who are facing their responsibility to debate it today.

Listen to these terms that the Secretary of State uses: ``The October murder of Saudi national Jamal Khashoggi has heightened the Capitol Hill caterwauling and media pile-on.''

``Caterwauling''--you don't run into that word much, do you? I went to look it up to make sure I understood it. It is the shrieking of cats when they are in a fight.

So the national reaction--the international reaction--to the cold- blooded murder of an American resident, a Saudi citizen and the dismemberment of his body and its disposal in ways we couldn't even explain is ``caterwauling''? To me, it is a reflection of your values, and, rightfully, people around the world are protesting that this sort of activity could happen.

That is why we are bringing this measure before the Senate this afternoon. I see my colleague from Indiana is here. I thank him for his leadership.

I will close with this. I am reluctant to display this picture, though it was on the front page of a major newspaper in the United States. But I want those who wonder why we are in this debate and why we are caterwauling about this assassination of Mr. Khashoggi to understand what is really the issue that we are debating and voting on.

Amal Hussain died at the age of 7 in Yemen. ``My heart is broken,'' her mother said. She died just a few days after the picture was taken. She is a victim of famine in Yemen. This is what the decision is all about on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Will we continue to expend American taxpayer dollars--even American lives--in support of the Saudi regime and their invasion in the war in Yemen?

I understand the threat of Iran, and I understand we have to stand up to their aggression when and where it takes place. But did we enlist in this war? Did the American people have a national debate about this war? Did we vote in the Senate to engage in this war? The answer is, clearly, no.

I will be supporting this resolution that will be coming before us this afternoon. I thank my friend from Indiana for waiting an additional moment while I completed my remarks.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor tonight to discuss America's role in the crisis in Yemen.

I have here a picture of the fractured remains of buildings, people fleeing from those buildings, and a small child, probably in her father's arms. This represents the challenge of the bombing that is going on in that nation. I am here tonight to discuss America's role in that bombing and the fact that here in the Chamber we need to debate how it is we have come to the point of supporting this bombing when the War Powers Act clearly says we should not be.

When our Founding Fathers wrote our Constitution, they designated the President as the Commander in Chief, but they gave Congress, the House, and the Senate the sole power to declare war. Article I, section 8 states unequivocally: ``The Congress shall have the power . . . to declare war.''

It is only Congress that can take our Nation from peace to war. If one has any doubt about that, consider the words of James Madison himself, the father of our Constitution. He said: ``In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department.''

Now, the clearly stated responsibility in our Constitution was reinforced by the 1973 War Powers Resolution, often referred to as the War Powers Act. That particular piece of legislation stated as its purpose the following: ``It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities.'' It goes on to say: ``The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only''--and that is a critical word--``pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States.''

The picture I showed you showing the fractured remains of buildings and people fleeing that bombing in Yemen, that activity is not taking place subject to a declaration of war by this body--we have done no such thing--nor is there any specific statutory authorization for our assistance in that, nor is there a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States where that is justified.

Tomorrow this Chamber will take up this issue. We will be voting on a resolution put forward by our colleagues Senator Sanders, Senator Lee, and Senator Murphy calling for the removal of our Armed Forces in this role of supporting Saudi Arabia in this war against the Houthis.

There are two basic components of our presence in Yemen, and those are very distinct and not to be confused. The first is counterterrorism efforts in which we are directly engaged against associated forces of al-Qaida. This is a role that stems from the authorization for the use of military force that we passed in this Chamber in 2001. Members may come to the floor and argue about whether that initial authorization for use of military force involving al-Qaida in Afghanistan has been stretched beyond recognition. I would argue it has been stretched substantially and perhaps beyond recognition, but that is not the issue we are debating this week.

This week we are addressing the central issue of whether our involvement in supporting Saudi Arabia in its role in war against the Houthis in Yemen has violated our Constitution and the War Powers Act, and we have to confront and face how our assistance is contributing to a vast humanitarian crisis in that country. We may not have boots on the ground in support of the Saudi war against the Houthis, but we are very involved.

As we judge whether this involvement is violating the Constitution and the War Powers Act, we should turn to section 8, the interpretation of the joint resolution. It says:

Authority to introduce United States Armed Forces into

hostilities or into situations wherein involvement in

hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances shall

not be inferred--

(1) from any provision of law . . . including any provision

contained in any appropriation Act, unless--

This is the key--

such provision specifically authorizes the introduction of

the United States Armed Forces into hostilities.

It is very clear. The interpretation of this joint resolution says there is no room here to be participating in hostilities--that is a war--even in a supporting role, unless it has been specifically authorized by Congress. This interpretation of the joint resolution section of the War Powers Act goes on to say:

(c) For purposes of this joint resolution, the term

``introduction of United States Armed Forces'' includes--

You see the language here--

the assignment of member of such armed forces to command,

coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the

regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country

or government when such military forces are engaged.

There is the key fact that was laid out when we passed the War Powers Act. This War Powers Act doesn't just address us directly engaging in hostilities or directly confronting an enemy on the battlefield, it includes these provisions of commanding, coordinating, participating in the movement of, or accompanying military forces of a foreign country.

There is no question that we are coordinating and participating in the movement of the Saudi forces, so let's take a look at exactly how we are involved. The administration comes back and says: Yes, but we are not directly bombing the Houthis. We are not directly putting boots on the ground and shooting them.

It is clear the War Powers Act includes coordinating with, participating with, supporting, and partnering, if you will, with a foreign country involved in such a war. We are very involved.

First, we are involved by refueling Saudi planes en route to bombing the forces of the Houthis in Yemen. That is pretty direct involvement, and it goes to that language which says ``participate in the movement of'' those foreign forces. If we are refueling their planes en route to bombing the Houthis, we are participating in the movement of their military forces. A plane, a bomber, is a part of a military force.

Second, we are providing intelligence and thus very directly supporting this war of the Saudis.

Third, we are selling the weapons to them that they are using in this war on the Houthis.

Fourth, we are providing targeting assistance. We have even established a

joint combined planning cell, an operation center, to conduct military intelligence activities in partnership with Saudi Arabia.

Here is why this matters so much: It has a huge impact on the lives of the people in Yemen. It is very possible the planes we refueled are responsible for conducting a series of three airstrikes in Saada last month, killing 5 civilians and wounding 14 more, including 4 children, as well as paramedics trying to pull survivors out of the rubble after that first strike, or that the planes we refueled played a role in striking a hotel last August that turned the building's ceiling black with the charred blood of 50 farmers who were staying in that building. We know that the bombs we have sold to the Saudis are killing many civilians. It is time for us here to reckon with that fact.

A lot of Americans may not even know we are involved in this war. It has not been widely discussed. There are so many things going on across the planet at this time--so much going on in Syria, for example, that perhaps Americans in general are not paying attention. But we should be paying attention because of the carnage that is occurring: 10,000 civilians have been killed since this conflict began. The great, vast bulk of those civilians are dying from air strikes conducted by Saudi Arabia that we are supporting through intelligence and target assistance and refueling. Then there are the consequences of that bombardment. The result is just a tremendous humanitarian crisis.

The Saudis have been involved in blockading the ability to get humanitarian supplies into Yemen--food and medicine and fuel. This has resulted in what the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, has warned could become ``the largest famine the world has seen for many decades.'' Seven million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation because of this war that we are involved in and the related Saudi blockade of food and medicine.

About every day, 130 Yemeni children die from extreme hunger and disease--130 a day. One of the factors that is killing people is cholera. Since October of 2016--so roughly a little less than a year and a half ago--1 million Yemenis have contracted cholera. More than 2,000 have died from it. It is the largest cholera outbreak in recorded history. Let me say that again: 1 million Yemenis have contracted cholera, and it is the largest cholera outbreak in recorded history. So 7 million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation, 1 million have contracted cholera, and so many are dying because of this war we are involved in.

The death and destruction in Yemen is unimaginable, and the United States needs to take a hard look at the role we are playing--a role we are playing in violation of our Constitution and in violation of the War Powers Act of 1973. That is the issue we are going to be discussing here on the floor.

I know there is some popularity in saying: Let's not look at that humanitarian crisis and our role in it; let's just look at the relationship we have with Saudi Arabia and know that they have helped us in other cases--for example, the war on ISIS. Let's know that they are a good customer for many of our products and for many of our military products. But I say to my colleagues: This issue is bigger than simply a good marketplace or a good relationship with Saudi Arabia. This goes to our involvement, our culpability in the deaths of thousands of Yemenis and 130 children a day through bombs falling on them, through hunger, starvation, through cholera.

It is hard for me to think about this young child in this picture, this young Yemeni, who clearly is the victim either of cholera or starvation or some other consequence of this conflict. But imagine 130 of these children dying every day.

It is our responsibility to honor the Constitution, and it is our responsibility as humans on this planet to wrestle with the fact that our involvement is contributing to this vast humanitarian disaster. Let us not abdicate our responsibility on the basis of friendship with another nation based on the fact that they are a good market for our products or that we think they may be future partners in some other agenda. We have a direct responsibility in war and peace that we have not fulfilled, and this week, with this coming resolution tomorrow, is a point that we must wrestle with this. Let us wrestle with it and honor the Constitution and give some integrity to the 1973 War Powers Resolution.

Thank you.