Medical Expense Savings Act

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss the nomination of William Barr to be Attorney General.

Today, I want to make clear that I will be opposed to this nomination for several reasons. I am just going to outline some of my key concerns that really haven't been addressed much over the last few weeks.

I am specifically concerned about his view that the President of the United States is effectively royalty, in his book, and he seems to believe that the President is unaccountable to the laws of our Nation or to the normal constraints imposed by the Congress. Today, I am going to focus on what I consider to be Mr. Barr's dangerous views on surveillance and his contempt for surveillance laws and the Fourth Amendment.

It is my view this is not a partisan issue. There has been, for some years, a bipartisan coalition in the Senate that has battled to protect the privacy and constitutional rights of Americans, but Mr. Barr's views, after I have laid them out today, ought to frighten every Member of this Senate. What Mr. Barr has said is that whether the Congress supports broader or narrower surveillance authorities and regardless of whether Congress votes for more checks and balances and oversight, it really doesn't matter. He has made the judgment, based on the proposition which he has stated very clearly, that the President can essentially do what he wants.

This nominee, in my view, poses a unique threat to the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment. His long-held views, which presumably he would put in practice if confirmed, threaten the very notion that Congress or the courts have any say in who in America gets spied on. If he is confirmed as Attorney General, he could take us back--and not just 12 years to an era of warrantless wiretapping. As Mr. Barr himself has made clear, he would be taking us back 40 years, to an era before the Church Committee, when neither Congress nor the courts had any role at all in checking or overseeing an abusive, out-of-control government.

Before the reforms of the 1970s, as has now been well documented, the government committed one horrific abuse after another. It spied on hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans. It spied on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It spied on activists. It spied on Congress. When these abuses finally came to light, Congress acted by passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to issue warrants against spies and terrorists.

Unfortunately, as we now know, the government violated the law when it implemented its warrantless wiretapping program in 2001. The program included warrantless collection of the content of private communications, including through warrantless targeting of phone numbers and email addresses of people in our country. The program also included the bulk collection of phone and email records of enormous numbers of innocent, law-abiding Americans. All of this occurred in secret, without warrants or any judicial oversight at all, and almost no one--no one in the Congress, nor even most members of the Intelligence Committee--knew anything about it.

The secrecy didn't even end when the bulk phone and email record programs were moved under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Obama administration, just like the Bush administration, kept this abusive program and the secret legal interpretations behind it from the American people, even lying about it in public testimony.

How did these abusive and illegal programs get their start? With secret determinations made at the Department of Justice that the law didn't matter and that the President can do what he wants.

That brings us to Mr. Barr. His dangerous views on Executive power have long been consistent--consistent--throughout his career, from his writings at the Department of Justice in the late 1980s to the present, but in October of 2003, he laid out in public testimony his position that, in Mr. Barr's view, the President is not accountable to surveillance laws and that the President enjoys huge loopholes in the Fourth Amendment.

October of 2003 was shortly after Congress had passed the PATRIOT Act, legislation that many in Congress have come to view as granting too much authority with too little oversight, but from Mr. Barr's perspective, the PATRIOT Act was too limiting and too constraining, and that wasn't even the most troubling part of his testimony. Right up front, he asked himself the question of whether the law was adequate to fight terrorism. Here is what he said. He said he wasn't worried about the law, and this is a direct quote: ``The critical legal powers are granted directly by the Constitution itself, not by Congressional enactments.'' In other words, Mr. Barr's view of surveillance is that the laws passed by Congress do not matter. If the President wants to violate them, it is Mr. Barr's position that he can just go out and say he has constitutional authority and do it.

Here is a direct quote from Mr. Barr's testimony. Talking about laws going back to the 1970s, he said: ``Numerous statutes were passed, such as [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], that purported to supplant Presidential discretion with Congressionally crafted schemes whereby judges become the arbiter of national security decisions.''

I am going to unpack that sentence for a minute. From Mr. Barr's perspective, decades of laws passed by the U.S. Congress are nothing but schemes--schemes. He is talking about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a fundamental framework of checks and balances that Congress has relied on

for four decades to ensure congressional and judicial oversight of surveillance. He is talking about every modification of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, from the PATRIOT Act to what is called section 702, reauthorized last year, to the USA Freedom Act, which was intended to stop the collection of millions of innocent Americans' phone records. Whatever you think of these statutes, they are how Congress determines the extent of the government's surveillance powers and exercises its responsibility to protect the rights of Americans. Mr. Barr notwithstanding, these duly enacted laws of Congress are not mere schemes.

Worse still, it is Mr. Barr's contention that all of these laws only purport to have any effect. The President, says Mr. Barr, has the discretion to ignore them. By definition, if you are saying that the President can just ignore the laws, in effect, that is a position that is in favor of tyranny. This is as dangerous a position as I have heard in congressional testimony. It is very similar to the language that was concocted in the Department of Justice to justify warrantless wiretapping--and these are the views coming from the man who might be Attorney General of the United States.

Mr. Barr is correct that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives judges some say in when the government can spy on Americans. It is a secret system, one that greatly advantages the government and almost always precludes challenges from those who are spied on. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been abused through secret interpretations of law, but the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does involve judges considering the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans, and that is what Mr. Barr objects to.

Based on his own testimony, it is clear to me that Mr. Barr has fundamental problems with the Fourth Amendment or at least its application to anything the President might unilaterally decide involves national security. He believes that if the government determines there is a threat, there is no need to ask a judge for a warrant.

The Fourth Amendment protects the rights of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures unless there is a probable cause warrant. That is what the Constitution says. Mr. Barr, however, has found two very big loopholes in the Fourth Amendment.

First, he insists that if the government decides a foreigner in the United States is ``apparently acting as a terrorist,'' then he or she is not one of the ``people,'' and the government can just throw out the Fourth Amendment.

Second, Mr. Barr argues that so long as the government says there is a threat, a warrantless search is not unreasonable, and the warrant requirement under the Fourth Amendment simply doesn't apply.

At the core of Mr. Barr's philosophy is that no one--not Congress and certainly not judges--has any business assessing the government's assertion about threats.

Here is another quote from Mr. Barr: These are ``assessments judges are not competent to make or responsible for making under the Constitution.''

For 40 years, judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court have been making these determinations, but, from Mr. Barr's perspective, the courts are not competent to decide who gets spied on; only the President gets that power.

Some might ask whether Mr. Barr has had a change of heart, particularly since Congress has passed additional surveillance authority in the year since his testimony. I hope we see in the days ahead where he stands, whether he now believes that spying on Americans and people in the United States has to be consistent with the laws passed by Congress, but his 2003 testimony suggests that even new, sweeping, bipartisan laws that have passed wouldn't satisfy him.

A little over a decade ago, Congress created section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That allows for warrantless spying on foreigners overseas. I have said our country faces real threats from foreigners overseas, so I stipulate that is something that is important to the safety of the law-abiding people whom we all represent. I have had serious concerns about the number of innocent Americans whose communications are being swept up under section 702 collection, but at least the targets of the surveillance are overseas.

Mr. Barr would go further in his testimony, calling for the warrantless targeting of people inside the United States. According to Mr. Barr, there are individuals right here in the United States who have no Fourth Amendment rights. This is an important issue today, and it will become more important in the days ahead.

I have already stipulated that I think there are serious threats to our country overseas. What troubles me is, as telecommunication systems around the world become more globally interconnected, more and more innocent Americans are going to get swept up in these searches. To me, when you are talking--as Mr. Barr seems to be doing--that there are individuals in our country who have no Fourth Amendment rights, that is why I think all Senators should be troubled about these positions he has long espoused.

There is also the matter of collecting business records, sensitive information about Americans that are in possession of a third party. Here, we are talking about your purchases, who you are communicating with, where you are located at any time of the day.

Mr. Barr believes that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to any records held by a company or other third party, no matter how sensitive that information is. This view has actually been rejected recently by the U.S. Supreme Court. What Mr. Barr has been saying is actually out of sync even with the current thinking of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court most recently held that the Fourth Amendment does apply to the government's collection of location data from wireless carriers.

Apparently, yesterday Mr. Barr said he had not read that Supreme Court decision. Colleagues. I think that ought to be really troubling to the Members of this body. We are talking about location data. Location data can be a personal safety and national security nightmare.

We saw what happened just last week. In 2018, the wireless companies all made promises to me that they wouldn't make available precise location data to hedge funds, bail bondsmen--all kinds of bottom feeders just looking to make a buck. What happened was, in 2018, those wireless companies said they wouldn't make that data available any longer to these location trackers and bail bondsmen and the like, and then last week, a bounty hunter got 300 bucks and found out those 2018 promises to me meant nothing. So last week, the wireless companies promised again that they wouldn't make location data available to all of these financially interested parties. I appreciate their saying it, but I will tell you, I will believe it when I see it, because we got a promise in 2018 that they would be serious about protecting location data, and we saw last week that they weren't.

We have the Supreme Court now making it clear that the Fourth Amendment applies to the government's collection of location data from wireless carriers, but the person who is up for nomination, Mr. Barr, has not been willing to or doesn't find it important enough to even read the Supreme Court decision on this case.

The government's collection of business records is authorized by section 215 of FISA, which was part of the PATRIOT Act. There are serious concerns about 215. It was abused for years to carry out a secret program that swept up the phone records of millions of innocent, law-abiding Americans. Even after the USA FREEDOM Act, which was intended to end bulk collection, it has been used to collect hundreds of millions of phone records. All the government needs to collect these records is to show the FISA Court that the records are relevant to an investigation. There is no requirement for a probable cause warrant.

This important law sunsets this year, so the Congress will have a debate about whether these authorities are too broad, whether there is a need for more checks and balances. I see my colleague from Texas, who also serves on the Intelligence Committee. We are going to have a debate on it. That is the way it ought to be.

Today, we are talking about what I consider to be dangerous views espoused by Mr. Barr. What Mr. Barr believes is that the government shouldn't have any court oversight at all when it comes to collecting the records on Americans. He thinks the government should just unilaterally issue a subpoena and collect those records and that there would be no oversight whatever. The foundation of Mr. Barr's beliefs when it comes to surveillance is that the President can do whatever he wants if he believes national security is at stake.

I am going to close by simply talking for an additional minute or two about what it will mean if Mr. Barr is confirmed as Donald Trump's Attorney General.

Right now, the President is openly considering a declaration that he, Donald Trump, has emergency powers to override the will of the Congress, and he is doing this while relying on a baseless assertion that there is a national security crisis.

Until he was fact-checked, he was making very far-fetched claims about terrorists coming over the border. He also regularly calls journalists ``enemies of the people'' and calls for investigations of his political enemies.

I would oppose the nomination of anyone with William Barr's views on Executive power regardless of who was President, but the kinds of threats I am talking about are too serious to ignore.

Donald Trump has openly said and said specifically how much he would enjoy unchecked surveillance power. During the 2016 campaign, when the Russians were hacking his opponents, the President of the United States, our current President, said: ``honestly, I wish I had that power. I'd love to have that power.''

If Donald Trump decides that national security is at stake and William Barr is the Attorney General, it would be Mr. Barr who might give him that power--power he could use with no oversight from the courts and without regard to what Mr. Barr has dismissed as ``the schemes''--our laws--of Congress.

In case anyone thinks Mr. Barr would himself serve as a check on the President, he has also written that that is not the Attorney General's job. Just last year, he wrote that all Executive power rests in one and only one person--the President--and that the President doesn't have to convince his Attorney General that his orders are legal.

Let me be clear. The issues I have raised with respect to Mr. Barr's views on surveillance are not kind of conjecture or possible theories. What I have been talking about this afternoon are the views outlined in Mr. Barr's own testimony. I hope every Member of this body will take the time to read Mr. Barr's testimony and consider what is at stake.

There are Members in both political parties in this Chamber who have long been concerned about the expansive surveillance authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the possible abuse of that law. Those concerns are, in my view, small potatoes compared to what Mr. Barr has proposed, which is that the law need not constrain the President whatsoever. For example, some Members of this body have expressed concern about Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants in connection with the Russia investigation and whether all relevant information has been provided to the FISA Court. Consider a world in which the government doesn't need a warrant and doesn't have to justify its surveillance to any court. Consider the possibility of abuse in that world. That is the world Mr. Barr has testified he wants.

I also would appeal to my colleagues with whom I have had some pretty vigorous debates over the years about surveillance and who may have no concerns about the current framework of our laws. We can have our disagreements about how to write the law. Here in the Senate, we do agree that the laws passed by the Congress mean something. They are binding, and they are not, as Mr. Barr has stated, ``schemes'' that the President can just ignore whenever he feels like it.

This nominee has been more than clear about where he stands. He believes that the President alone decides when there is a threat and that when he does, he doesn't have to worry about Congress, judges, or the laws, or the Constitution. In my view, that is a prescription for trouble, a prescription for more abuses--abuses that Congress may or may not even be told about. But we have been warned. We have been warned by Mr. Barr's testimony.

I also would like to note that I have concerns about Mr. Barr that relate to classified matters, and I am currently seeking declassification of those matters and hope that this will be resolved prior to any votes on the nominee.

I see colleagues are waiting.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, a few minutes ago, I got off the phone with Jasmine Tool, who is an Oregonian living with an inoperable brain tumor. As the shutdown lingers on, I want to share her story because she has been bearing the unthinkable consequences of her illness.

I am going to start today by asking: How can a country as rich and good and strong as the United States of America let Jasmine Tool suffer this way?

She is a 34-year-old mother of two young children. She lives in Lake County, a rural community in south central Oregon. She is a public servant, an employee of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She has been living with an inoperable brain tumor. The cancer has caused related debilitating conditions. She is in and out of hospital emergency rooms. Her digestive system is impaired. With the invaluable care provided by a home health worker, she takes in liquids and nutritional infusions through tubing that is plugged into her abdomen.

Because she lives in a rural area, her treatment can require long- distance travel. That is hard to deal with when you are suffering from the flu. Just imagine how hard it is with a brain tumor, a broken digestive tract, and feeding tubes attached to your body that prevent you from eating or drinking normally.

She is confronting this health challenge with remarkable bravery, and I don't believe there is a single Member of the U.S. Senate who would wish Jasmine's struggle on their very worst enemy.

Then comes the government shutdown.

Jasmine was due to travel to Nevada this month for treatment related to her tumor, but last week, as she was prepared to go, she was informed that her health insurance had lapsed. Initially, she thought it might be--we all know with insurance--kind of a recent hiccup or recent problem, something that could be corrected quickly.

This week, she learned that it lapsed in October--October, months ago--and her insurance company told her that only her employer could fix it.

Jasmine's employer is shut down. Nobody is answering the phones. Right now, Jasmine Tool is suffering--this mother of two--and is unable to determine what caused the lapse in her coverage or what can be done to get it fixed.

The most immediate threat is this: Jasmine was told that her home health assistant cannot continue to help her if she doesn't have insurance. That means that within days this 30-year-old mom will not be able to get the infusions she needs to stay alive.

Now, if that isn't enough, Jasmine has been failed by the government on multiple occasions. Shortly after she went on medical leave in early 2017, she began the process of applying for disability--disability retirement. She worked with the appropriate human resources official to prepare the paperwork to send to the Office of Personnel Management. She thought, as anybody would, that the process was underway and she would hear back soon about the results of her application.

She just learned recently that the official who prepared the documents retired without sending them in. For a year and a half, while Jasmine fought cancer and was just hoping to get some positive news, her disability paperwork sat in an unused office--just sat there collecting dust.

She had to travel to that office against her doctor's orders to finalize the paperwork once more and prevent a loss of benefits. But the Office of Personnel Management--that is shut down too. Jasmine hasn't been able to learn where her benefits stand.

It is too cruel already that thousands and thousands of American workers are going without paychecks. This shutdown is making victims of those who do public service. But consider what it is doing to this young mother of two, a woman who is currently fighting for her life right now.

Because of this shutdown, she can't figure out how to restore her health insurance. She can't get the status of her disability application. She could be cut off--I just talked to her--from her nutritional supplements in a matter of days. That means Jasmine could starve. That is what she just told me.

So I have been talking to people who have suffered from health challenges

for a long time--director of the Grey Panthers about 7 years at home. I listened to Jasmine and I just said: How can it be that there is no outbreak of conscience here--no outbreak of conscience here in this Senate? How can a country as rich and powerful as ours fail Jasmine in such a shameful way?

Our country is going to spend $3.5 trillion on healthcare--$3.5 trillion on healthcare--this year. It is not a lack of money that is causing this nightmare for Jasmine Tool in rural Oregon.

With the government reopened, things would be different. Things would be very different for Jasmine. There would be somebody on the other end of the phone line to tell Jasmine what happened to her insurance, and because of the professionalism of those in these positions, I think they could tell her how to renew that insurance. There would be somebody to tell her what is happening with her disability application. Jasmine could bring back her home health aide and get the infusions she needs to survive.

So I am asking the Senate, how can this be allowed to continue? How can this be allowed to continue? The Senate passed a bipartisan government funding bill by voice vote just 2 weeks ago in the previous Congress.

I see Senator Collins. She has a longstanding interest in these healthcare issues. Senator Sasse also, I know from our conversations, has a heart and cares about people.

The House passed this legislation. The pathway out of this shutdown is right in front of us if the majority leader would decide when to bring up the legislation again, and we could do it tonight. Jasmine Tool could get the lifesaving healthcare that she needs, based on our conversation, by week's end, so she will not starve.

Otherwise, unless the majority leader calls it up, it seems to me the White House has no plan to end this shutdown. So I just think it has to end right here--right here in the U.S. Senate, where all of us say: This cannot go on any longer.

I just spoke to a young mom in rural Oregon who is in a fight for her life, a fight for her survival.

Colleagues who are here, I am sure Jasmine is not the only such case in America. Jasmine Tool--my guess is, there are plenty of others in communities across the country. Jasmine Tool does not have the luxury of time.

I am going to go back to my office. My staff here, my staff folks in Oregon--we are just going to be pulling out all the stops now because it really is a matter of hours to get Jasmine the help she needs. We do it recognizing that there is only one immediate solution: The shutdown must end, and it must end now.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, more than 100,000 people and families will join together in the March for Life in Washington that is going to take place tomorrow. They will brave the cold--there is supposed to be sleet and bad weather--for one simple reason, to give voice to the voiceless, the unborn, our most vulnerable among us but are still deserving of the right to life.

Jeremiah 1:5 says:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

Before you were born I sanctified you.

To everyone who comes to the March for Life, know that we hear you, and we are standing with you, just as we have in the past.

This is not a new topic, not for me to speak on either. Twenty-five years ago, I came down to tell a story. At that time, I was in the House. This has been going on for a long period of time. I came down here to tell the story of Hannah Rosa Rodriguez. This is a quote from 1992:

Mr. Chairman, there is a big misconception regarding abortion and the issue of women and their right to protect their bodies. It is not that right that I object to but the right that is given them to kill an unborn fetus--an unborn child.

I want to share with you a story that my colleague Chris Smith told me some time ago on this floor. That was 1992.

Ana Rosa Rodriguez is an abortion survivor. This is another group of people we haven't talked about very much on the floor. At birth, she was a healthy 3-pound baby girl, except for her injury; she was missing an arm. Ana survived a botched abortion.

Her mother attempted to get an abortion in her 32nd week of pregnancy when she was perfectly healthy--8 weeks past what New York State law legally allows. In the unsuccessful abortion attempt, the baby's right arm was ripped off. However, they failed to kill Ana Rosa. She lived. Pro-life supporters agree that nightmare situations like the Rodriguez case are probably not common, but abortion-related deaths and serious injuries occur more frequently than most people are aware.

It is amazing that we can pay so much attention to issues such as human rights abroad and can allow the violent destruction of over 26 million children here at home. We are fortunate that Ana was not one of those children. She survived.

That was 1992, but today we still don't have Federal protections for the babies who survive the brutal abortion process. I am working with Senator Sasse, who is leading the effort this year to reintroduce the Born Alive Abortion Survivor Act, which would ensure that a baby who survives an abortion will receive the same treatment as any child naturally born premature at the same age, without prescribing any particular form of treatment. That is just morally right, and I don't see how anyone could vote against something like that. We will find out.

Just a few years later, in 1997, I was on the floor of this body, the U.S. Senate, with my good friend former Senator Rick Santorum, to try to pass the partial birth abortion ban and end the horrific practice of late-term abortions. I remember how active Senator Rick Santorum was at that time, a real leader in the pro-life cause. I spoke then, 1997, on the floor:

I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for yielding time. I think he made one of the best presentations I have heard on the floor of this body. I want to say that, when he deals with the facts, he is dealing with the facts but, you know, we are also dealing today with perceptions.

I tried to make a list of those things I have heard over and over. There is a lot of redundancy on this floor, but there are some things that have not been stated. I would like to share a couple of those with you.

I am going to do something that is a little unusual because I am going to read some Scriptures to you. It is not totally unprecedented in this body. In fact, I have done it many, many times. The distinguished Senator from West Virginia does it quite often.

I was talking about Bob Byrd. We remember Bob Byrd. He is deceased now, but this was 1997, and he read Scriptures every day on the floor of this Senate.

So I would like to read a couple of Scriptures, just for those who care. Anyone who does not, just don't listen.

First of all, I have used this a number of times. Jeremiah 1:35 says: ``Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you.'' The 139th Psalm, no matter which interpretation you use, makes it very clear when life begins. Life begins at conception.

Then I was, not too long ago, at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. I had been to the museum in Jerusalem, and I found the same thing was printed on the last brick as you are going through. This is Deuteronomy 30:19. It said: ``I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.''

Last, I am also concerned that something that is as dramatic and as significant as this issue is going to go unnoticed; that maybe there are Senators out there who are not really into this issue, and they might want to vote the party line or they might want to say, well, maybe there aren't as many of these procedures out there, so they just really are not knowledgeable on the subject. So I will read Proverbs 24:11-12:

Rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to death; don't

stand back and let them die. Don't try to disclaim

responsibility by saying you didn't know about it. For God,

who knows all hearts, knows yours, and He knows you knew.

That is pretty specific.

Mr. President, I was listening to the Senator from Massachusetts who said it does not do any good if we pass this because the President is going to veto it anyway.

That was actually in 1997. The President, if you remember, at that time, I advised the chairman, was Bill Clinton.

But I suggest to you that the President may not veto it, and if he does veto it, maybe some people will come over who were not here a year ago on this side of the aisle.

See, this was 1997. It was pretty close back then. It could have gone either way.

One individual at the time was Ron Fitzsimmons, who just last year insisted that the number of partial birth abortions were a relative handful now admits: ``I lied through my teeth.'' He was lying. So if the President is predicating his decision to veto this ban on the basis of what was told to him by Ron Fitzsimmons, there is every reason to believe he could turn around on the issue. I suggest also that we are talking now not just about a procedure but a culture.

I have a very good friend by the name of Charles Colson. We all remember Chuck Colson. He is the guy who started the Campus Crusade for Christ. He gave these remarks upon winning the prestigious Templeton Prize for a contribution to religion. Listen very carefully. He puts it all together, not isolating one procedure or one issue. He said:

Courts [like to] strike down even perfunctory prayers, and

we are surprised that schools, bristling with barbed wire,

look more like prisons than prisons do. Universities reject

the very idea of truth, and we are shocked when their best

and their brightest loot and betray.

Celebrities mock the traditional family, even revile it as

a form of slavery, and we are appalled at the tragedy of

broken homes and millions of unwed mothers. The media

celebrate sex without responsibility, and we are horrified by

plagues. Our lawmakers justify the taking of innocent lives

in sterile clinics, and we are terrorized by the disregard

for life in blood-soaked streets.

I think that puts into context what we are now approaching--that it is not just a normal type of abortion.

I have a great deal of respect for one of the most intellectual Members of this body. Keep in mind that this is 1997. His name is Patrick Moynihan--a very good man. He is from New York. Not many people know that he actually lived in his early years as my neighbor in Tulsa, OK. Again, at that time, nobody knew it until I mentioned it.

He was a self-proclaimed pro-choice Senator. He said: ``And now we have testimony that it is not just too close to infanticide; it is infanticide, and one would be too many.''

That is Patrick Moynihan. He is thought of and respected as one of the great liberal scholars of this body.

This is where we get the numbers game. I heard it said on the floor many times that we are talking about maybe 1 percent or that maybe talking about those who are in the ninth month may be an infinitesimal number, but in fact, one is too many. It was said on the floor that we may be only talking about 200 lives being taken during the normal delivery process. That is when a baby is given a natural birth and, yet, they take the life by using this barbaric procedure. We have all kinds of documentation that it is being done in the ninth month and during the normal birth process. They say only 200--only 200 lives are taken.

I agree with Patrick Moynihan. I am totally in a different philosophy than he is, but one is too many.

I am from Oklahoma, and some of you remember that we lost 168 lives in the Murrah Federal Office Building bombing. This was the largest domestic terrorist attack in American history. Did anybody say that is only 168 lives that were lost in Oklahoma City? No, the entire Nation came with compassion and mourned with us.

One life--I agree with Senator Moynihan--is too many.

One other issue that has not been discussed in this debate this year--keep in mind that is 1997--is that of pain. Rather than go into it--I do not think anyone refutes the fact that a small baby, if that baby is certainly past the second trimester, feels pain every bit as much as anybody who is in here, as any Member of the U.S. Senate would feel pain.

There was a study conducted in London, and I have the results here, but I think everyone understands that this is something that is very real--that these babies do feel pain.

My junior Senator gave an excellent speech on the floor, and he talked about all of these issues in a different way, but he is doing it currently, and we are talking about now quite a number of years ago.

I have a picture of a good friend of mine with me. His name is Jase-- James Edward Rapert.

Back when people our age were having babies--I am talking about myself now. Kay and I have been married 59 years. We have 20 kids and grandkids. We know a little bit about this. Back at that time when they were having babies, they wouldn't even let you in the hospital, let alone the delivery room.

When my daughter Molly called up and said, ``Daddy, the time is here; could you come over,'' I went over to the hospital, and she said: Would you like to come into the delivery room?

I said: Yes, I would.

I saw for the first time what many of you in this room have seen and many of the women have experienced firsthand. I was there when this little guy was born. It is hard to describe to some of the men here who have not been through that experience of seeing this wonderful life begin, and I can remember when, in that room where the delivery took place, it occurred to me that when baby Jase, my grandson, was born, that is the moment when they could have used this procedure inflicting all of the pain you have heard described so many times: going into the cranium with the scissors, opening the scissors, sucking the brains out, and the skull collapses.

That is pain, and there are individuals who want to keep a procedure like this legal. If you did that to a dog, they would picket in front of your office. Somehow, we have developed a culture that puts a greater value on the lives of critters than human life. I watched baby Jase being born. I suggest to those of you who are concerned about choice that this is really the choice. It is either that choice or this choice, and these choices we are facing today.

This is something on which I agree with the Senator from Pennsylvania. I was talking at that time about Rick Santorum.

We should not be having to talk about it. To think that 100 years from

now they may look back and talk about that barbaric society that killed their own young, and here we are just trying to save a few lives from a very painful death. Nonetheless, that is the issue we are faced with today.

I gave that speech in 1997 and again in 1998 and year after year until we won the battle and finally ended the practice of partial-birth abortion in 2003--a ban that was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007. There is still much more that needs to be done to end abortion on demand culture.

President Trump gets this. He was the first sitting President to speak at March for Life, and his administration has made real progress to advance the pro-life agenda. He has reinstated the Mexico City policy. We remember what that was. It was the one that bans taxpayer money from funding abortions abroad and directed the Justice Department to formally investigate Planned Parenthood.

President Trump also directed the Department of Health and Human Services to expand religious and conscience exemptions to protect individuals' religious liberty.

I am working in Congress to end the practice of abortion on demand that strips opportunity away from unborn babies and deprives them of the right to life.

This week I have joined my colleagues in introducing five commonsense bills--this is taking place right now, as we speak--in addition to the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Act, by Senator Sasse, which I mentioned earlier in this presentation. The No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act, working with Senator Wicker, would establish a governmentwide statutory prohibition on taxpayer subsidies for abortion and abortion coverage-- simple enough. I am pleased that Majority Leader McConnell has set up a procedural vote for this bill today.

There is the Life at Conception Act, which Senator Paul has, which would recognize that life begins at conception.

The Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, led by Senator Blackburn--one of our brand-new freshman Senators--would prohibit title X family planning funds. Those are taxpayer funds now being used to subsidize abortions.

You might be wondering how that is different from the one just talked about. Here is how. Every year, Planned Parenthood receives nearly $60 million from the American taxpayer through title X family planning program. The program is intended to assist low-income women with family planning services. Unfortunately, this money is being used to subsidize massive organizations that engage in abortion activities, such as Planned Parenthood, and we need to stop that.

The Protect Funding for Women's Health Care Act, led by Senator Ernst, would prohibit all Federal funding of Planned Parenthood.

I also cosponsored the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, led by Senator Rubio, which would prohibit individuals from taking minors across State lines where they have lax laws just to have an abortion, stopping their States from having the jurisdiction.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I am cosponsoring Senator Graham's Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would prohibit abortions from being performed on unborn babies after 20 weeks, when we know they can feel pain. Only five countries allow abortions after 20 weeks, including the United States and North Korea, and that is unacceptable.

I wish to acknowledge a very important day. Religious Freedom Day is today. It is clear that our Founding Fathers recognized and enshrined the importance of religious liberty--one of our most precious and foundational religious freedoms, which allowed them to live their lives according to the teachings of the Bible.

I have long been a strong advocate of the basic human right to freely worship, and I am glad we can take a moment today to recognize that.

Anyway, all from speeches from 1992 and 1997--it is as true today as it was then. We are ready to start saving lives instead of taking the most vulnerable little lives, and we are ready now.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, tax filing season is just around the corner. This has never been anyone's favorite time of the year, paying taxes, but the uncertainty created by the current partial government shutdown has understandably created a bit more angst than in a usual tax filing season.

The Treasury Department and IRS have been proactive in taking steps to minimize the burden of the shutdown on taxpayers. They recently announced that tax season will start as planned, on January 28. The IRS has confirmed that taxpayers can expect refunds to be sent out as usual should this shutdown drag on. Of course, this is the right conclusion, legally, and the right call for the taxpayers, as I had an opportunity to tell IRS Commissioner Rettig when we spoke recently.

Congress has explicitly provided for a permanent appropriation for the IRS to pay tax refunds. This makes common sense. A tax refund represents the taxpayer's money--not Congress's, not the government's but the taxpayers'--despite what some people in Congress seem to think; that this money belongs to the government. It should be returned then in a timely fashion and, thank God for their decision, that is going to be the case.

With around 75 percent of individuals receiving a tax refund on an annual basis, many have come to look to their refund to make important purchases, whether that is to replace an old water heater, make a downpayment on a reliable vehicle to get them to work, or just to make ends meet generally. It would be wrong for the government to impose undue financial strains on families across the country because Congress and the President can't get their act together.

As we continue to work through our differences, the least we can do is return to taxpayers their own money.

This tax season, of course, is a little different, not only because of the shutdown but also because it is the first tax filing season under the tax reforms and tax cuts enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. A lot of work has gone on to get us here. Treasury and the IRS have been working diligently and swiftly to ensure taxpayers have the information they need. In a little over a year, they have put out 16 proposed regulations, 2 final regulations, 45 notices, 21 revenue procedures, and updated countless forms, publications, and other guidance--all of this geared toward implementing the law and addressing taxpayer questions.

Right out of the gate, Treasury and IRS went to work updating the annual withholding tables so taxpayers could immediately begin seeing the benefits of lower taxes in their paychecks. Of course, whether a taxpayer had less or more withheld from their paycheck is not the final word on whether one received a tax cut.

Also, due to changes in withholding, a smaller or larger refund than usual may not tell the whole story. I encourage taxpayers to compare their 2019 tax return with that of the previous year to see the difference. At the end of the day, the vast majority of taxpayers will see that less of their hard-earned money is going to the government.

A chief priority for the new withholding tables was, of course, accuracy. Extensive analysis was done to help taxpayers get the right amount withheld from their paycheck--not too much, not too little. However, as we all know, no withholding table will ever be perfect. Every taxpayer may be affected a little differently under the new law based on their personal circumstances. The IRS continues to consider whether future improvements to the withholding structure may be necessary, which I support and will be monitoring as chairman of the Finance Committee.

The IRS has also embarked on an extensive campaign to alert taxpayers to check and update their withholding. This included establishing an online withholding calculator to help taxpayers determine what, if any, adjustments to their withholding may be necessary.

That said, there are still going to be some taxpayers who may discover that they were underwithheld due to changes in the law and owe taxes at the end of the year. A subset of these taxpayers could be subject to a penalty for underpayment.

The ranking member of the Finance Committee, Senator Wyden, raised this concern in a letter to Commissioner Rettig on January 3, requesting that penalty relief be granted. I generally agree with the ranking member and have encouraged the IRS to be lenient on penalties, especially with this first time through a filing season under the new tax law. If a taxpayer has underwithheld as a result of the changes in the law, and not through the fault of their own, the IRS should consider what actions the Agency can take to provide penalty relief, but the issue of underwithholding due to the passage of tax reform should not be exaggerated. Yes, as the ranking member claims in his letter to the Commissioner, it is estimated that as many as 30 million taxpayers may have had taxes underwithheld from their paychecks, but what hasn't been said is that 30 million is actually only about a 3- percentage point increase from how many taxpayers would be underwithheld under the old law.

Moreover, just because a taxpayer was underwithheld during the year does not automatically mean they will be subject to a penalty tax. Safe harbors have long been in place to protect taxpayers whose withholding is slightly off from being penalized.

It is quite possible that some issues will arise this filing season that we did not anticipate and will need to be fixed as we go forward. We already identified a number of those issues, which I am hoping my Democratic colleagues will allow us to fix to further help as many more constituents as possible.

That doesn't detract from the fact that we have delivered real tax relief to middle-income families, small business owners, and the family farmer, nor does it undermine the fact that we modernized our outdated international tax system and improved America's business competitiveness in the global economy. Of course, that is going to benefit the American worker.

These efforts have contributed to a strong and growing economy. The unemployment rate is at a half century low. Wages are rising at the fastest rate in nearly a decade. Workers, employers, and small business owners are all more optimistic than ever.

Unfortunately, I hear increasing calls from the new House majority pledging to erase the progress made with the tax cuts and reforms that we enacted 13 months ago. At least one new Democratic Member has suggested bringing back top tax rates as high as 70 percent to pay for a wish list of far-left, Big Government programs. Such a confiscatory tax rate targeted at a relatively small number of wealthy taxpayers would barely make a dent in the cost of programs they wish to implement.

Policymakers across the globe abandoned such punitive tax rates over the past several decades for their negative effect on economic growth, investment, and incentives to work. While tax rates at 70 percent or higher may have been fairly common in the 1960s, today, not a single OECD country boasts such high rates. How soon people forget about the prolonged economic stagnation and high unemployment of the 1970s when we last had tax rates as high as 70 percent.

I am going to detract here to show a chart. How soon we forget that just raising tax rates doesn't automatically bring in more money. For the benefit of my colleagues and for the benefit of the public watching on C-SPAN, I should have had this blown up. I doubt it is going to do much good for me to just hold up a small sheet of paper.

This goes back to the year 1955, ending in 2017. The blue line shows the marginal tax rates over a period of about 60 years. You can see high tax rates in the 1960s, going down, up, generally down, generally down, staying pretty low in recent years. You can see that the red line is the amount of money that comes in from taxes, whether you have high tax rates or low tax rates, which kind of tells me that the taxpayers are a lot smarter than the Congress of the United States because when you talk about high marginal tax rates, they want you to believe more money is going to come in. They are probably going to take the position that if you lower tax rates, less money is going to come in. But you see, in the 1950s top rate was 90 percent. Can you imagine Americans being dumb enough to work hard to only keep 10 percent of their income? No. What you do is you change people's behavior. They decide, I am going to work only so much. Why should I work harder and give more money to the Federal Government? You see, higher tax rates don't do what a lot of people want you to believe they are going to do.

I would like to give a little history on this, because you kind of think that if we have lower marginal tax rates, and Republicans are the ones who want lower tax rates, that you would give Republicans a lot of credit for reducing these marginal tax rates. I can remember the work of Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey--probably at least a moderate Democrat. He was probably as responsible as anybody in the 1980s for reducing these marginal tax rates, because Republicans didn't have guts enough to do it, and we might not be where we are right now. So it is not just Republican thinking that got these marginal tax rates down. It is not just Republican thinking that has kept this red line where it has been for 60 years, at approximately 16 to 20 percent of gross national product--the amount of the economy that is coming into the Federal Government.

I hope the talk of such confiscatory taxation truly is a talk of a few rogue Members and not representative of things to come. I wish to think there will be opportunities for us to work together in a bipartisan way.

I am firmly in the camp that the tax reform and tax cuts enacted by the last Congress represent important revisions to our tax laws, but I also understand that no major piece of legislation is entirely perfect. To the extent there is legitimate interest in improving tax laws, as chairman of the Finance Committee, I am going to be all ears.

When it comes to making modifications to tax reform, our first order of business should be focused on examining how the law affects individuals, families, and the businesses in our States that provide the jobs and benefits they rely on. When necessary, we should work together to take action and ensure that the law is fulfilling its potential. A key part of this discussion should be enacting technical corrections to the tax law--revisions to ensure that the bill does what Members thought it did when they voted on it. Some of these are related to just poor drafting, honest mistakes that were made.

I also hope that there will be plenty of opportunity to work on a bipartisan basis on tax issues involving everything from education, to renewable and alternative energy, to consumer-directed healthcare options.

However, I fear opportunities to work together could be put at risk should my colleagues become fixated on tearing apart tax reform, hiking taxes, and, of course, going after the President's tax returns.

I want to put my Democratic colleagues on notice that I have no intention of undoing structural changes implemented as part of the tax reform. This would include the lower tax rates and family benefits, such as the increased child tax credit and standard deductions.

I am also not interested in eliminating the cap on the deductibility of State and local taxes, backtracking on our move toward a more territorial tax system, or raising tax rates on passthrough business owners and farmers or corporations, all of which provide critical jobs and contribute to economic growth across the Nation.

For the first time in probably about 30 years, our businesses are competitive with the rest of the world. When we have a 35-percent tax rate--as we did for decades--on corporations, and the world average is about 23 percent, how can we expect American corporations to compete? We are now at 21 percent. It wasn't long after we went to 21 that we read about China maybe feeling they were uncompetitive and were going to have to lower their tax rates. Other countries are thinking about doing it as well. Just like with the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s, the United States is plowing ahead, setting a standard for the rest of the world.

Lower tax rates, with businesses and individuals making decisions on where they earn their money, how much they are going to spend, and how much they are going to save, is a heck of a lot better than 535 Members of Congress making that decision. When we make decisions about stuff like this, they are political decisions. When most of the individual taxpayers and the corporations of America make decisions, it is strictly economic and does much more economic good.

Another one that I don't want to mess with is efforts to weaponize the authority of tax-writing committees to access tax returns for political purposes. Such an action would be unprecedented.

I am optimistic that we can continue to make progress helping Americans improve their lives by keeping more of their hard-earned wages, taking the chance of starting a new business or continuing to expand an existing one--in short, building an opportunity economy. I invite my colleagues to join me.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, last Saturday was a historic day in Springfield, IL, my hometown. It was the biggest snowfall in one day in our city's history. I spent that Saturday not shaking hands with my constituents but shaking hands with my shovel, trying to shovel snow away. It was a historic day in Springfield but, sadly, it was a historic day for America too.

Saturday marked the longest shutdown of the U.S. Government in the history of the United States. As of today, the shutdown has continued for 26 days. Day by day, the harmful effects of this government shutdown are getting worse. Alarmingly, the President seems not to really understand or appreciate the real-life impact this shutdown is having on many Americans.

In all, more than 8,000 Federal workers in my home State of Illinois are going without a paycheck during this shutdown--8,000 people who are concerned about paying their bills, as most working families are. These are hard-working Americans.

I want to show you a photo of one of them. He happens to be a friend of mine. His name is Toby Hauck. This is Toby here. Toby is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. His job in Aurora, IL, is to make sure that my plane, when it arrives at O'Hare, lands safely. Toby Hauck is an air traffic controller. Air traffic controllers have some of the most important and most stressful Federal jobs in America, and this shutdown is a kick in the gut to Toby Hauck and all of these air traffic controllers.

Many air traffic controllers, like Toby, are already working 6 days a week. I am not happy to report that. Pushing them to the limits of physical exhaustion isn't in the best interest of safety when it comes to our aircraft, but because of staffing shortages, that is what they are faced with, working 6 days a week. The shutdown is making staff shortages in the air traffic control facilities across the United States even worse.

The shutdown has closed down the FAA academy where new air traffic controllers are trained and has stopped training in each facility to implement new procedures and new equipment.

Toby's father and grandfather, incidentally, served in the U.S. military, as he did. This picture depicts his great son and Toby's granddaughter. I wanted to bring another point home. Toby's son is deploying overseas this month. Toby and his wife will be looking after their 2\1/2\-year-old granddaughter during the 10-month deployment. Toby's lack of a paycheck since December 31 of last year adds stress to an already hectic life.

Toby says:

Veterans are very proud of our heritage and what we have

done for the country. And those of us who continue to serve

the Federal Government as Federal employees continue that

pride throughout their careers.

Toby says:

We are hardworking, proud American employees doing a job

for the American public that is essential as an air traffic

controller. It's not acceptable as a veteran, as a federal

employee, as an air traffic controller to use my profession

and my livelihood as a political football.

Toby doesn't stand alone as a veteran working for the Federal Government. Veterans are some of the hardest hit Federal employees of the Trump shutdown. Today as many as 250,000 Federal workers and Federal contractors are going without pay during the shutdown. According to the Office of Personnel Management, as of the end of fiscal year 2016, veterans represented 31 percent of the Federal workforce. This is more than a 5-percent increase since 2009, when President Obama encouraged veterans to apply for employment with the Federal Government to boost the hiring of men and women who served our country in uniform.

In Illinois, we have 50,000 Federal workers, and almost 28 percent of them are veterans. More than one-quarter of all veterans working in the Federal Government also have a Department of Veterans Affairs disability rating.

For example, if SNAP, the food stamp program, runs out, 38 million Americans could lose their food stamp benefits. That includes veterans living in households that participate in SNAP. You don't think about that very often, do you? Do you mean there are veterans on food stamps? The figure has averaged about 1.4 million veterans a year between 2015 and 2017, according to the Census Bureau. Illinois is home to nearly 50,000 veterans who are beneficiaries of food stamps and HUD rental assistance programs on an annual basis as well. So the very programs that are going to be hampered, slowed down, and stopped because of the Trump shutdown affect veterans across my State of Illinois and across the Nation. About 1,150 contracts under the project-based rental assistance program have lapsed, with hundreds more scheduled to expire because of this shutdown. People are suffering around the country.

Federal workers are suffering. Their workers are suffering and veterans are suffering because of this Trump shutdown. More than 380,000 Federal workers have been furloughed; 450,000 or more are being forced to work without pay. These are hard-working Americans like the TSA officers I met last week at O'Hare and met just a few days ago when I flew to St. Louis Lambert Airport. They go to work every single day, and their job is to make sure that dangerous people don't get on the airplanes with you, your children, and your family. They can't afford to have their paychecks held hostage by a manufactured crisis.

These families of Federal workers have bills to pay. A worker at the Environmental Protection Agency, Cynthia Colquitt, is going without a paycheck after serving 26 years as a Federal employee. How hard is it? She is a single mom, and she says, quite honestly: I get by paycheck to paycheck. She has never missed a mortgage payment; she is very serious about those things. But now she is worried the shutdown will impact her credit rating if she doesn't have a paycheck to pay her bills on time.

Shutdowns not only hurt our Federal workers, but the impact is also felt by small businesses around the country that rely on the business of Federal workers and the government. This shutdown is hurting our economy and only adding to economic uncertainty. Remember what happened in December? If you happen to have a retirement account with investments in stocks, you noticed that December was a pretty horrible month. There was an 8.7-percent drop in the stock market in December-- the worst December for the stock market since 1931, during the Great Depression.

The CEO of JPMorgan Chase is now warning that if this shutdown lasts another several weeks, it could reduce our Nation's quarterly growth to zero. The victims of the shutdown will not be the Federal employees; it will affect the entire economy because the input into the economy--the things they buy and pay for--will be diminished.

Just why are we in this mess? Well, as the President said several weeks ago on camera in the Oval Office, it is his shutdown and he is very proud of it. He said that he was going to hold the hard-earned paychecks of Americans hostage in an attempt to fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall on the southern border of the United States, a concrete wall, as he described it, ``from sea to shining sea,'' which, incidentally, he promised would be paid for by the Mexicans.

Let me say that again. All of the pain of this shutdown is caused because the President made a campaign promise to build this almighty wall. Well, we know something about walls. They don't work very well. We know it

might have been a great response several hundred years ago to build a wall--not so much today. There are better ways to make America safe, other than building a wall. Yet the President said: It is my wall or a shutdown.

If we have a debate about border security, I want to be a part of it, but we shouldn't do it while holding the Government of the United States hostage. Every day of the government shutdown is another day that President Trump is harming innocent Americans, preventing hundreds of thousands of Americans from getting their paychecks and millions more from getting access to vital Federal services.

We should reopen this government and we ought to do it this afternoon and we can. One phone call from the President to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican leader of the Senate, is all it takes. Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, has already passed the spending bills to open the government. She did it last week. She sent them over here. They are sitting at the desk up here. We are not touching them because Senator McConnell said: I am not going to solve this problem until the President gives me permission. A little reminder to my colleague Senator McConnell, under the Constitution, we are a separate branch of government. We don't wait for a permission slip from the President of the United States to do the job we were elected to do.

Today we had a vote earlier, and I looked at the other side of the aisle and talked to a number of my Republican colleagues. I wasn't a bit surprised to find so many of them fed up with this government shutdown. They want it to end today, and so do I. Then we can sit down and negotiate border security and do it the right way, not with a gun at our head--I should say, a gun to the head of 800,000 Federal employees. Let's reopen the government and then continue to negotiate. House Democrats have given us the bills we need to do that. Now it is up to Senator McConnell. Will he come forward through that door onto the floor, call these bills, and end this shutdown before 5 p.m. today?

He could. He has the power to do it. He can pass the spending bills. He warns us that President Trump may not sign these bills. Well, Senator McConnell has been around the Senate for decades. He has been around so long that I am sure he is familiar with our Constitution. Do you know what? If the President vetoed these spending bills, we have the constitutional authority and opportunity to override his veto--to come up with 67 votes in the Senate, two-thirds in the House to override any Presidential veto. I think the votes are there, and I think that is the reason Senator McConnell is afraid to call the bills.

It is time for the Senate to act. Let's not wait for a permission slip from President Trump. Let's do what we were elected to do. Let's spare Toby Hauck and 800,000 Federal employees, including many veterans, the hardships their families are facing.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee began to hear witnesses on the nomination of Bill Barr to be the next Attorney General of the United States. We heard first, of course, from Mr. Barr himself all day yesterday and today from additional witnesses.

By any standard, Mr. Barr is an exceptionally qualified individual, in part because 27 years ago, he was Attorney General, nominated and confirmed unanimously--nominated by President George Herbert Walker Bush. Under his leadership at the time, the Department of Justice focused on some of the most important law enforcement challenges facing our country at that time. They worked to fight violent crime and combat the drug epidemic, both of which continue to do great harm to communities across the country still today.

As significant as the work done under his leadership was, I was more impressed with the fact that after 27 years, he was willing to take on the task of becoming Attorney General once again. He said he was sort of semiretired. He and his wife were looking forward to spending more time with their children and grandchildren. But he answered the call to public service, and I am grateful that he did. He knows that our Nation needs a strong law-and-order Attorney General at the Department of Justice.

When he spoke at his confirmation hearing more than 2\1/2\ decades ago, he said:

The Attorney General must ensure that the administration of

justice--the enforcement of the law--is above and away from

politics. Nothing could be more destructive of our system of

government, the rule of law, or the Department of Justice as

an institution, than any toleration of political interference

with the enforcement of the law.

He repeated that commitment yesterday, and I think the need for that sort of strong statement is more important today than ever.

I believe Attorney General Barr will be a good Attorney General, assuming what is one of the most challenging positions in the Cabinet because you are a political appointee but you are also the chief law enforcement officer in the country. That sometimes can be difficult to navigate.

As the nominee noted, doing the job and doing it well sometimes requires being prepared to burn your political capital in order to preserve the rule of law. I believe this is the most fundamental quality of a good Attorney General, and having a leader at the helm of the Department of Justice with the right temperament and a fundamental understanding of this responsibility is critical now and forever. In recent years, we witnessed some Attorneys General carrying out actions that repeatedly toed that political line, sometimes crossed it.

Under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice began to veer increasingly away from the impartial administration of law and toward politics. That shift undoubtedly occurred at the hands of President Obama's Attorneys General who were in the driver's seat during his administration, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

Both Holder's and Lynch's conduct has come under a great deal of scrutiny--even now, after they have left--and for good reason.

For example, under then-Attorney General Holder, there was something called Operation Fast and Furious in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the Department of Justice purposefully allowed the illegal sale of firearms in Mexico in the hopes of being able to track them. Unfortunately, there were a number of casualties, including Border Patrolman Brian Terry, who was killed with one of those firearms in 2010. Attorney General Holder never accepted responsibility

for Brian Terry's death or ever admitted that allowing these guns to walk into Mexico, into the hands of some criminal organizations, was a terrible mistake.

Under his watch, the IRS targeting controversy occurred in which politically aligned groups applying for tax-exempt status faced official oppression based upon their political affiliation.

Then, of course, more recently, let's not forget then-Attorney General Lynch's handling of the Clinton email scandal--something even James Comey, the FBI Director, objected to--along with her famous so- called tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton when his wife was under an active FBI investigation. The conduct of both Holder and Lynch undermined the public's confidence in the impartial administration of justice and law at the Justice Department.

Under the leadership of my friend and our former colleague, Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice has begun to right the ship and again separate politics from the impartial administration of the law, and I am confident that Mr. Barr will continue to do the same.

During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Barr reaffirmed that politicians should not interfere with criminal investigations, and he likewise committed not to interfere with the special counsel's investigation. He assured us that his allegiance will be to the rule of law, to the Constitution, and to the American people, and that, above all else, he will work to protect the professionalism and integrity of the Department of Justice and the thousands of dedicated public servants who work there.

Not only is Mr. Barr exceptionally qualified for the job, he is prepared on day one to step in and lead with distinction.

The Senate unanimously confirmed his nomination to three different positions at the Department of Justice, and I hope we can work expeditiously to get this fine man to the Department of Justice once again.

I thank Mr. Barr and his entire family for agreeing to bring his talents and his temperament to the Department of Justice at a time when those qualities are so desperately needed, and I look forward to voting yes on his nomination.

Remembering Herb Kelleher

Mr. President, on another matter, I want to share a few words about the passing of one of the airline industry's most unconventional and most successful executives. That would be Herb Kelleher, who cofounded Southwest Airlines.

Herb was born in 1931 in New Jersey, and his young life and early career kept him on the east coast. He graduated from Wesleyan University and New York University School of Law and served as a law clerk for 2 years at the New Jersey Supreme Court and then joined a law firm in Newark. But as fate intervened in this promising young lawyer's career, he met his wife Joan, a native Texan, and they decided to move to the Lone Star State, something he later referred to as the greatest business decision he ever made.

Building America's largest domestic airline carrier was never on Herb's to-do list. In the late 1960s, he was an attorney in San Antonio, when one day his client approached him with an idea about a low-fare airline serving three Texas cities. Tired of spending so much time in the car traveling between San Antonio and Houston and Dallas, he believed they could make point-to-point intrastate travel faster and much cheaper by flying, and also cheaper than other airlines.

Getting their innovative idea off the ground wasn't easy. These men who founded Southwest Airlines slogged through years of legal battles before the airline operated its first flight. Their vision not only led to the creation of a budget airline but also drove down the cost of their competitors, as competition will do.

To maintain their edge, Southwest tried some interesting ideas along the way. After another airline ran an ad calling Southwest a cheap carrier, Herb responded by filming a commercial where he wore a brown paper bag over his head and promised that the airline would gladly provide one to any customer too embarrassed to be seen flying on Southwest Airline.

At one point, to compete with the low fares of other airlines, Southwest started a program to keep customers, and they said: You can either pay the lowest fare or pay full fare and get a full premium bottle of liquor in the process. Well, apparently it worked, and for a short time, I am told, Southwest was the largest liquor distributor in the State of Texas.

I think one of the most distinctly Herb Kelleher stories is of a battle called ``The Malice in Dallas.''

In 1992, Southwest Airlines and another company realized their slogans--``Plane Smart'' and ``Just Plane Smart''--were similar. Rather than settling the matter in court, they settled it by holding a public arm wrestling match.

The 61-year-old, with the cigarette fixed between his teeth, gave his much younger competitor a run for his money, but he couldn't pull off a win. At the end of the match, the two men made donations to each other's chosen charities. They agreed to share the slogan and called it a day.

Each of these stories has Herb Kelleher written all over it. He was known for his gregarious personality, his incredible work ethic, and his penchant for the nontraditional, not to mention his affinity for Wild Turkey.

I first met Herb when I represented him in a lawsuit early in my legal career in San Antonio. He had a larger-than-life personality, and it was a pleasure to know him.

We can all learn a lesson from Herb about the importance of working hard, treating people with respect, and not being afraid to have a little bit of fun along the way. His entrepreneurial spirit was credited with democratizing the skies by disrupting the airline industry, and I believe he was one of the most consequential leaders in American aviation, and we have all benefited from that.

So I join Herb's wife Joan, his children, his grandchildren, his many friends, and, of course, his beloved Southwest Airlines family in mourning the loss of this larger-than-life figure.

I yield the floor.