Fair Compensation for Low-Wage Contractor Employees Act of 2019

Mr. President, I never cease to be amazed how the politics here inside the beltway remind me of two ships passing in the night, where we can all be looking at exactly the same thing and describe it in such remarkably different ways.

I have been amazed at the Democratic leader's negative comments about the President's speech last night, and I listened to comments of my friend the Democrat whip. They found virtually nothing to like about what the President had to say last night.

So I was a little bit surprised to see a CBS News poll that indicates that 70 percent of the viewers approved of what they heard in President Trump's speech last night at the State of the Union, and 72 percent said they approved of President Trump's ideas on immigration, one of the most contentious and divisive issues that faces our country.

One conclusion might be that it is because our Democratic colleagues are simply unwilling to do anything to

work with President Trump and are determined to do everything they can in order to defeat him or that anything that he happens to be for they are reflexively against. That seemed to be what gave us the 35-day shutdown, where Nancy Pelosi said that building a physical barrier along the southwestern border was immoral, even though Democrats and Republicans had routinely voted for fencing, extending the hundreds of miles there in the Secure Fence Act of 2006 and 2008. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Senator Schumer, the Democratic leader, all voted for that. Now Nancy Pelosi woke up one morning and decided it was immoral to build any physical barrier at all along the southwestern border.

I agree with those who say the real immorality here is to see the scourge of human trafficking, sex slavery, women and children being held against their will by the traffickers who transfer people up and across the southwestern border. What is really immoral is to stand by and do nothing and watch 70,000 Americans die of drug overdoses last year alone, with a significant amount of that due to opioid addiction, including the 90 percent of the heroin that comes into the United States from Mexico. To me, that is the immorality, not some fence or wall or pedestrian bridge or whatever the physical barrier may be.

I agree with those who were polled in the CBS News poll who believe that what we heard last night from the President was a strong message in his second State of the Union address. Since President Trump took office 2 years ago, the American people have seen real results and a shot of adrenalin has been given to our economy, allowing millions of Americans to get back to work.

Yes, our economy is booming. We have gotten our optimism and confidence back again. Wages are on the rise. People are getting to keep more of what they earn, and middle-class Americans are seeing their paychecks expand.

We have heard the remarkable statistics that people who have disabilities are now reentering the workforce because there is such demand for workers that even people who previously weren't able to find work are now able to get that work.

Yes, in addition to the low unemployment rate, we are seeing minority unemployment and African-American and Hispanic unemployment lower than it has ever been in recorded history. You would think that would be something that people would want to applaud on a bipartisan basis.

But time and again, we saw our friends across the aisle last night sitting on their hands with a grim and sort of discontented look on their face. That is another reason why I think so many people believe that Washington, DC, and what happens here and the politics that take place here are completely removed and disconnected from their experience across the breadth of this country.

We have done some pretty significant things in the last year together, on a bipartisan basis. We combatted the opioid crisis. We improved our criminal justice system just this last December by huge, overwhelming margins. We repealed taxes on low- and middle-class Americans, known as the ObamaCare individual mandate, punishing people simply because they could not afford the high premiums and deductibles of the so-called Affordable Care Act, and we restored much needed funding to our military in a still very dangerous world and provided an overdue pay raise for our troops.

But President Trump wasn't there just to tout his accomplishments. He was there to assure the American people that we are not going to rest on our laurels. There is still work to be done, and we are eager to get moving. The President offered up some constructive ideas about what that might be: rebuilding America's infrastructure, making healthcare and prescription drugs more affordable, and, finally, eliminating the scourge of HIV over the next decade.

I remember being at the dedication of the George Bush Library at SMU a few years ago, when they had all the living Presidents speaking at that dedication. President Jimmy Carter, surprisingly--to me, anyway-- applauded President George W. Bush for saving millions of lives in Africa as a result of the PEPFAR program, providing new, incredible drugs to help reduce and eliminate the scourge of HIV in Africa. The President now wants to do that in the United States, and I applaud him for it.

To address these and other countless challenges before us, the President stressed the need for unity. As much as we would like to, nobody gets everything they want in Congress. In a country where democracy prevails, we know that means that we are going to have to negotiate and compromise, but there are 80-percent solutions that when we see them, we ought to grab them. Just turning on the news or social media, it is easy to think there is more that divides us than unites us as a country, but the President reminded us that citizens of goodwill share the same goal, and that is to build a stronger and better America.

As the President said last night:

There is a new opportunity in American politics, if only we

have the courage to seize it. Victory is not winning for our

party. Victory is winning for our country.

I hope all of us will answer the President's call to work together to respond to the better angels of our nature and to build on the successes of the last 2 years for the benefit of all the American people.

Nomination of Neomi Rao

Mr. President, yesterday, we had the Judiciary Committee hold a hearing to consider an important nomination, and that is of Neomi Rao to the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, what some have called the ``second highest court in the land.'' This is the seat, of course, that has been vacated by the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ms. Rao is currently the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an obscure but important Agency--probably the most powerful Agency nobody has ever heard of here in Washington, DC. She was confirmed to that position on a bipartisan basis in 2017, and since taking the helm at OIRA, Agencies have reduced regulatory costs by more than $23 billion, which has been another spur to the American economy.

Ms. Rao is currently an associate professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and a leading scholar in the field of administrative law.

Through her career, Ms. Rao has served in all three branches of the Federal Government. She clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and Judge Harvie Wilkinson on the Fourth Circuit. She served as an Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President George W. Bush, and she has also worked here in the Senate as a counsel for the then-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, our friend, Orrin Hatch.

Suffice it to say that she has a vast understanding of the workings of the Federal Government, as well as the rulemaking process. In a court that frequently hears challenges to Federal regulations, her unique experience and knowledge of administrative law will be an incredibly valuable asset.

Unsurprisingly, I am not the only one who holds that view. Two dozen former Supreme Court clerks who worked alongside Ms. Rao sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee touting her qualifications. They noted:

Many of us have worked in government, at both federal and

state levels, some for Democrats and some for Republicans.

They went on to say:

While our professional and personal paths have thus

diverged, one of the things we have shared is admiration for

Neomi. We are confident she will serve our country well on

the D.C. Circuit.

We have seen similar letters from her classmates at both Yale and the University of Chicago Law School, as well as from her former students.

Adding to the list of her glowing recommendations, Ms. Rao has received a unanimous ``well qualified'' rating from the American Bar Association. My colleagues, Senator Schumer from New York and Senator Leahy from Vermont, once referred to this rating as ``the gold standard by which judicial candidates are judged.''

But despite her outstanding qualifications, Ms. Rao has faced some unconvincing attacks by opponents of this administration. I am convinced that some of our colleagues would oppose any judicial nominee by this

President just because they were nominated by President Trump.

On Monday, the day before her hearing, I was surprised to see a headline from POLITICO. The story was entitled: ``Dems hope to draw blood from potential Trump SCOTUS pick.'' What they were referring to, I assume, is that Ms. Rao, as qualified as she is and nominated for the court of appeals, once confirmed, she could possibly in the future be a candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. So the goal is to rough her up now, tarnish her reputation the best you can, in preparation for that potentiality in the future.

This is not entirely surprising, but it is regrettable. Before we even had a chance to hear from the nominee and discuss her qualifications for a circuit court seat, some on the other side are sharpening their claws, and the special interests are unfairly trying to undermine her nomination. This war being waged against Ms. Rao is not because she is unqualified for the job, but it is because some fear her commitment to the rule of law and speculate, as I said, that someday she might be a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Wall Street Journal editor last week warned that Ms. Rao might get ``Kavanaughed.'' That is a new verb. It used to be called to get ``Borked,'' after Robert Bork. But of course, they said she could get ``Kavanaughed'' because of her writings in college newspapers more than two decades ago. So the term ``Borked'' has now been supplanted by the term ``Kavanaughed'' as a description of the scorched earth tactics of the radical left.

A young conservative at the time, her biweekly column for the Yale Herald was called ``Against the Current,'' and it challenged the politically correct, although poorly reasoned, views of some of her classmates at the liberal Ivy League school. I guess, when you consider what happened to Brett Kavanaugh, at least we moved on from high school yearbooks now to things that somebody has written in college. I don't know whether that represents progress or not.

Ms. Rao has said repeatedly, however, that she no longer holds the same views she held more than 20 years ago. That is called growing up and maturing. In any event, she said she wouldn't substitute her personal views for the laws of Congress or the precedents of the Supreme Court. Of course, the flimsy suggestion is that these articles are enough to deny her a seat on the Federal bench. The left's attempt to block this qualified nominee by any means necessary reminds me of a comment made by Judge Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

He noted that many members of the committee are taking our job of ``advice and consent'' to mean ``search and destroy.'' We have before us a highly qualified nominee with an almost unparalleled understanding of administrative law. She has received positive remarks from the American Bar Association, the so-called gold standard for nominees. She enjoys high praise from former colleagues and students who represent both liberal and conservative viewpoints.

I hope our colleagues can look objectively at these endorsements and all she has accomplished during her career rather than follow the radical voices down some rabbit trail. I believe Ms. Rao is exceptionally qualified for a seat on the DC Circuit Court, and I thank her for answering the call to serve despite the divisive political times in which we live.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as if in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, judging by the deafening silence of Senate Republicans, you would think there was no conservative support in this country for even the most measured response to climate change. However, many prominent Republicans are actually clamoring for climate action. They are just not doing it here in Mammon Hall.

See, for example, the January 16 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal is not exactly a progressive lefty rag. The opening line of the Wall Street Journal op-ed is: ``Global climate change is a serious problem calling for immediate national action.'' I agree.

The op-ed is signed by 27 winners of the Nobel Prize in economics, four former Federal Reserve Chairs, 12 past Chairs of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and two former Treasury Secretaries. Many were appointed by Republican Presidents.

Let's look at what this bipartisan group of experts and economists is proposing.

Here is the first policy recommendation:

A carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce

carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By

correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will

send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible

hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a

low-carbon future.

Again, I agree. We must make the price of fossil energy reflect the costs of carbon pollution. That is Econ 101. We have to do it if we are to reduce emissions as much and as quickly as we need to. This is why Senator Schatz and I introduced the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act to put a price on carbon.

It is not just academic economists and policymakers who recognize that putting a price on carbon pollution is the most efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Business executives agree. Few firms are more capitalist and fiercer than the legendary Goldman Sachs. Consider this from Bob Litterman, the former head of risk management at Goldman Sachs, writing recently in the New York Times:

[F]or society at large, and the government in particular,

the most important and urgent action required is to minimize

future warming by creating appropriate global incentives to

reduce carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Economists generally agree that rather than regulate

behavior, it is more effective to allow individuals to choose

their actions, as long as the prices appropriately reflect

the costs--

Again, back to Econ 101--

including the risks posed by climate change.

To date, prices of energy have not reflected the risk of

future climate changes. This is a stupid mistake. . . .

That is not very complicated economic jargon. This is the former head of risk management for one of the smartest and most capitalist firms the planet has ever seen saying that what we are engaged in now is a ``stupid mistake.'' Again, I agree.

Republicans typically support free market solutions, and this is a free market solution. Yet, still, there remains that deafening silence from the other side of the aisle here in the Senate.

Here is the second recommendation from the economists' op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

A carbon tax should increase every year until emissions

reductions goals are met and be revenue neutral to avoid

debates over the size of government. A consistently rising

carbon price will encourage technological innovation and

large-scale infrastructure development.

These are two things we want--innovation and infrastructure. So again, I agree. As to revenue neutral, the carbon pricing system Senator Schatz and I proposed is revenue neutral. Every penny goes back into the pockets of Americans--none is designed to make more or bigger government. As to innovation, a carbon fee levels the playing field so that polluters have to compete in the market on even terms with nonpolluters. Competition on a level playing field will incentivize innovation in renewable energy, innovation in energy efficiency, innovation in resilient infrastructure, and innovation in low-carbon manufacturing and transportation.

This is not a novel concept. Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus showed as far back as 1992 ``that a low tax on carbon, set to rise slowly, over time, could be enough to keep emissions at reasonable levels, saving us from climate change at little, if any, cost. The tax would promote innovations in new forms of power generation, and, eventually, a widespread adoption of clean-energy technologies.''

The latest Republican claim is that innovation is the solution to climate change. Fine, but you are not going to get adequate innovation on the tilted playing field that the fossil fuel industry protects. Carbon pricing uses market forces to drive innovation.

What else do the economists recommend?

A border carbon adjustment system should be established.

This system would enhance the competitiveness of American

firms that are more energy-efficient than their global

competitors. It would also create an incentive for other

nations to adopt similar carbon pricing.

Again, I agree. A border carbon adjustment system means that products from countries without a carbon price are subject to a harmonizing tariff so that they don't have an unfair advantage over domestic products. This protects American manufacturers, and, in turn, American jobs. It motivates other countries to help solve this global problem. People who say we need a global solution must look to a carbon price because it is the most efficient global solution. That is why the Whitehouse-Schatz bill includes just such a border adjustment system. By the way, we filed this bill three Congresses ago first. So we have been at this for a while. The economists' Wall Street Journal op-ed was just a few weeks ago. So we seem to have some convergence here.

The economists continue:

To maximize the fairness and political viability of a

rising carbon tax, all the revenue should be returned

directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates. The

majority of American families, including the most vulnerable,

will benefit financially--

Let me repeat that again--

will benefit financially by receiving more in ``carbon

dividends'' than they pay in increased energy prices.

The majority of our families, including the most vulnerable

will benefit financially.

As I already noted, the Whitehouse-Schatz plan returns all revenue to the American people. Carbon pricing is not a tax increase. Lower and middle-income households actually get more money back than they may pay in higher prices.

More than two dozen Nobel Prize winners signed this Wall Street Journal op-ed. Their economic expertise is unimpeachable. We have at least one Nobel Laureate from almost every year since the late 1990s. There are only a few missing names, and many of those names actually have endorsed carbon pricing in other venues.

You might say: OK, they are just a bunch of academics. They are all out of touch with political realities.

Well, these were all chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. When you are advising the President of the United States, you generally adopt some sense of political reality. Note that this is a bipartisan list. It includes advisers to four Republican Presidents and two Democratic Presidents. When this group of people can agree on an economic policy, you better believe it is not some fringe idea, and these experts all say that carbon pricing is a practical solution to a very real and pressing problem.

Here is yet another bipartisan list of signers on the Wall Street Journal op-ed: Fed chairs and Treasury Secretaries. We have top-level economic appointees from five different Republican Presidents, all saying that ``global climate change is a serious problem calling for immediate national action'' and

all saying that setting a carbon price is the best action to take. They don't write very big checks. So they don't get heard from much around here, it seems.

But let's think for a minute. What about this President? What about President Trump? What might he say? What might President Trump think about action on climate change?

This is a full-page advertisement from the New York Times from 2009. Back in 2009, Donald Trump and his children and the Trump organization all signed this letter published in the New York Times. This letter urged then-President Obama to pursue what they called ``meaningful and effective measures to control climate change.'' It goes on: ``If we fail to act now''--this being 2009--``it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.'' ``Irrefutable,'' ``catastrophic,'' ``irreversible''--there is not much ambiguity there.

Well, a decade has passed since this letter, and much has changed. Now Donald Trump mocks global warming, and the GOP in Congress has fled from taking any serious action on climate change--even on policies that are as mainstream and widely supported by appointees of Republicans as carbon pricing.

How did this come to pass? Well, I was here. I saw it happen. The year after President Trump signed this letter, the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited special-interest money--money from polluters into our politics--and that changed everything.

In 2007, we had bipartisan climate bills. In 2008, we had bipartisan climate bills. In 2009, we had bipartisan climate bills. Bipartisanship was the theme of responding to the climate change problem for those years. By my recollection, we had five different bipartisan Senate climate bills kicking around.

Then, in January 2010 comes the Citizens United decision. The fossil fuel industry pushed for it, asked for it, saw it coming, and took immediate advantage of it. Before you know it, there is that unlimited money, often unleashed through dark money channels, so you don't know who is behind it, and there are the threats and promises that necessarily accompany that power. Think about it. If you are given the power to spend unlimited money in politics, do you not necessarily also have the power to threaten to spend unlimited money in politics? Of course, you do. The two cannot be separated.

So the unlimited spending, the anonymous dark money, and the threats and promises combined to shut down the Republican Party on this issue. It was like turning off the lights. From January 2010 forward, no Republican in this Chamber has been willing to get onto any serious piece of legislation to reduce carbon dioxide.

Republican voters aren't there. Republican young voters are up in arms. Republican economic leaders aren't there. You can look across the Republican Party, and you find a strong and solid desire to address the climate problem, and you even have Republican leaders supporting a specific solution. It is just here where it stops. It is just here where political spending is so important that it has been able to overcome even the judgment of Nobel Prize-winning Republican appointees as to how to solve this.

After he received his Nobel Prize just last October, William Nordhaus, Nobel Prize-winning economist, lamented: ``It's hard to be optimistic. . . . We're actually going backward in the United States, with the disastrous policies of the Trump administration.''

Where is 2009 Donald Trump? Where is the guy who signed this? I want that guy back. These economists of all political backgrounds know what is going on, and they know how to fix it. The American people know what is going on, and they want us to fix it. It is time for us to take action, and it is time for us to wake up.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, last night President Trump had the opportunity to bring our parties together and offer the Congress and the country a new vision for the next 2 years of divided government. President Trump squandered the opportunity with a forgettable and, oftentimes, incoherent speech. At times, he called for unity without specifics, and at other times he served up divisive campaign rhetoric that he has used so frequently in the past.

The President's speech was like a 90-minute performance of ``Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,'' calling for comity but lacing it throughout with invectives. Unfortunately, President Trump seemed more excited and placed more emphasis on the Mr. Hyde parts of the speech than on the Dr. Jekyll parts.

Listen to a few of the contradictions in the speech. There were so many that I can't mention all of them.

President Trump says he believes in legal immigration but not illegal immigration, but every bill he has pushed on immigration has cut legal immigration as well as illegal immigration, including the proposal he has now sent over, in the debates, where he changes the asylum process dramatically.

President Trump said he would only work with us in Congress if we abandoned our oversight duties. He is back to his old tricks--hostage- taking. He said: I am not going to advance the causes of the American people if Congress investigates me.

Congress is supposed to do oversight of the executive branch. It is one of the things the Founding Fathers put in the Constitution. They were weary of overweening Executive power. They wanted Congress to be a check.

What is President Trump afraid of? If he weren't afraid of these investigations and if he weren't afraid of something that might be there that he did that was wrong, he would shrug his shoulders and say: Let them go forward.

But, instead, he threatens. He threatens the American people by saying: Unless these investigations stop, I am not going to move forward on anything.

How about this one? This one made everybody's eyes roll, even on the Republican side. He said if he weren't elected President, we would be in a war with North Korea--what hyperbole. It is not just hyperbole-- what untruth, what selective memory. President Trump began his time in office by precipitously ramping up tensions with North Korea. They were much lower under President Obama than they were with President Trump.

Maybe the most blatant contradiction of all, which makes you just lose respect for the integrity and honesty of the President, was when President Trump spoke about the need to defend protections for Americans with preexisting conditions, while at the very same time his administration is waging a lawsuit that would eviscerate protections for preexisting conditions. How can the President have the nerve to get up on the podium last night and say he wants to preserve preexisting conditions and wage a lawsuit, support a lawsuit that tries to undo them? It is shocking hypocrisy--that one maybe most of all for a speech that had many.

Of course, there were a whole lot of omissions in the speech that many Americans felt should have been placed in. Let me give an example. The President did talk about a few potentials for bipartisan compromise. We Democrats would love to compromise with the President and come up with some things that would advance the causes of working families in America.

He mentioned infrastructure and prescription drugs, but instead of offering substantive ideas and spending some time on these issues, he delivered a couple of lines about each and then moved on. It seemed obligatory and perfunctory. There was no new sinew, no real way to figure out if there is a way we can come together and get something done, because he really didn't seem interested.

He talked about the future of America and didn't even mention climate change. How could you do that? Every scientist who has studied it knows that in the next 10, 20, 30, or 40 years, climate change is going to evoke huge changes in our country and in our world. If you believe in the future and you want to have a good future for our children and grandchildren, which we all do, you can't ignore climate change. You may have different views on it, but you can't ignore it.

He also talked a great deal about the safety of the American people, but there was not one mention about gun safety--not one. Again, maybe not to President Trump, maybe not to his hard-core supporters, but to the rest of America, to talk about the need for security and the safety of Americans and not to talk about gun safety misses the mark badly.

Then he rattled off economic statistics--how great everything is--but completely ignored the difficult economic realities of working Americans. Why do so many Americans not have faith in the future? Why do so many Americans worry that their children

will not have as good a life economically as they do? It is because so much of what the President has done economically has benefited the top 10 percent. Those improve the overall statistics, but they don't improve the lives of the average middle-class person.

Let's take the tax cut, a huge tax cut geared to the wealthy and the powerful corporations. The President said each worker will get about a $4,000 increase. It didn't happen. Wages are going up by a small amount. They are still way behind where they were in the past. What did these companies do with all of this huge tax break? They got $1 trillion in buybacks--buybacks, which benefit the corporate CEOs, which benefit the shareholders but do nothing for the workers, since so many of them don't own stock.

In fact, the stock market has become more skewed. About 85 percent of the value of the shares is held by the top 10 percent of Americans.

Then, of course, on the wall, he demanded that Congress fund his wall but showed no signs of remorse over the pointless Trump government shutdown that he precipitated. He didn't mention the pain he caused to 800,000 Federal workers, even though many of them were in the Galleries listening.

I brought as a guest a man named Ronan Byrne. He works in the TRACON, our control tower in New York. He just had two twins. He has two other kids. I saw the nice pictures. He came with his wife. She quit her job when the twins came along.

He lost his salary at an intense job like that, where you have to be on all the time. I have been up there in the TRACON. It is dark. You see little dots, and you can't have them get too near each other because that is a safety issue for the people on the planes, and here he was worried about paying the bills and providing for his children.

Well, there was no mention of people like that. No, it was just about his wall.

It didn't work for the President. We know that. Our Republican colleagues and Leader McConnell know that. I think even in his situation, where he is often in a bubble that is often only aimed at the narrow band of his supporters, he touched a hot stove, and I don't think he wants to do it again.

But there was no mention of it. He should have used his speech to say: We are not going to have another government shutdown. There was no word.

There was no plan to tackle our opioid problem. There was no plan to increase wages for the middle class. There was no plan to increase manufacturing jobs.

So anyone who hoped that the President would change course and offer some new bipartisan ideas with some meat on the bone where we could discuss it and begin to move forward to help the American people was sorely disappointed. As I said, his real excitement came in the most divisive parts of the speech on immigration and abortion.

So let's contrast his speech with Stacey Abrams'. The contrast between the President's speech and Stacey Abrams' speech was stunning. The President was political, divisive, calculating, and, at times, even nasty. Ms. Abrams was compelling, warm, and uplifting, showing real compassion for the plight of our average families but also filled with hope and inspired by the promise of the American dream. It was an uplifting speech. Ms. Abrams' speech represented the kind of unifying vision--understanding our challenges but also having some confidence in our ability to solve them--that the President failed to deliver. In short, last night, Stacey Abrams gave President Trump a lesson in how to lead.

Xavier Becerra, speaking from the high school he graduated from in Sacramento, McClatchy High School, gave a wonderful response in Spanish.

We all knew the President would say that the state of our Union was strong, but the American people know the unfortunate truth. On the economy, on healthcare, on governance, and on foreign policy, it is abundantly clear that the Trump administration has been getting failing grades from the American people.

The state of the Trump economy? Failing the middle class. Wealthy shareholders and corporate executives cashed in from the Trump tax bill, while American workers have been left behind.

The state of the Trump healthcare system? Failing American families. Coverage is getting more expensive, and the amount of coverage is declining. Due to the sabotage this administration has done to our healthcare system, this is the first year that fewer Americans have healthcare than they did the year before--the first time in a while.

The state of the Trump administration? Chaos. President Trump has had the most Cabinet turnover in more than a century. He has failed to nominate anyone to one-fifth of our government's top positions. This has nothing to do with the Senate; for one-fifth of the positions, there are no nominations. This is 2 years into this Presidency. The Senate had nothing to do with all the Cabinet members who quit or resigned under a cloud--nothing to do with that either. President Trump likes to blame somebody else for the problems he creates; that is one of his MOs.

The state of President Trump's foreign policy? Inside out. Inside out. Our longstanding allies--countries of NATO--have been alienated. Our adversaries--Russia, China, North Korea--have been emboldened because President Trump doesn't stand up to them. During the national security section of the President's speech last night, the first item he mentioned wasn't Russia's malign activities, North Korea's nuclear program, or even the crisis in Venezuela; it was criticism for our NATO allies. That says it all.

The President's State of the Union last night did something rare for a State of the Union Address: It revealed just how much repair the state of our Union requires; just how much work we still have to do to aid working Americans left behind by an economy that only seems to work for the wealthy and well-connected; to provide American families everywhere with affordable healthcare; to bring stability and accountability to a government too short on both--a government that seems to have made the swamp deeper and more odorous and to further isolate our enemies and give comfort to our allies abroad.

Let us hope and pray that the country can heal. President Trump did nothing to move that forward last night.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, it is my honor to join my colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, in this brief colloquy about the current economic results that the President's agenda is achieving. I would like to put it in perspective though.

Just a little bit over 2 years ago, we had suffered through 8 years of probably the most onerous increase in big government regulatory reform that we had ever seen. These regulations were so onerous that they basically shut down free enterprise for a decade. Add to that a tax environment that was not competitive with the rest of the world, and the result was that we had the lowest economic growth in United States' history--1.6 to 1.9 percent, depending on whom you believe. Regardless of that detail, it was absolutely uncontested that it was the lowest economic growth in the United States' history. There was no secret behind that.

Actually, in 2009, when the last administration started, the economy was

at a low point because of the financial crisis. So they started from a very low point to start with. It is more draconian than the numbers indicate.

Two weeks after President Trump was elected, I was included in a leadership meeting in the White House to talk about how we are going to achieve the President's No. 1 objective, and that is to grow the economy. He said during the election and, indeed, during that meeting, that job one was to grow the economy. We had to put people back to work, get enthusiasm back, and get confidence in the U.S. economy again and in each other. In that meeting, we outlined, basically, what was required to do that. President Trump gave us his vision of what we had to do.

We wanted to work on regulations, energy, taxes, and, indeed, pull back on as much of the Dodd-Frank bill as we could. Those things in the first year were intended to get the economy jump-started. Then, in the second year, we were supposed to talk about immigration, infrastructure, and trade.

History will show that in the first year, more than 870 regulations were reversed. We unleashed our energy potential in two major projects: ANWR in Alaska and the Keystone Pipeline. Those benefits are even yet to come.

Thirdly, we passed a historic tax bill that made the United States more competitive with the rest of the world. We lowered the corporate tax rate. We changed the individual tax structure. We eliminated the repatriation tax.

The next thing was so important. We actually passed a bipartisan bill that pulled back on the most draconian parts of the Dodd-Frank bill. The Dodd-Frank bill was a knee-jerk reaction from the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. It really did put regulations in place that pulled back on the banking industry in many ways. Some of those, we might argue, were required. Certainly, on the money banks in New York, some things were needed. I would argue that not the full breadth of what Dodd-Frank did, but that is an argument for another day.

Last year, we got 17 of my Democratic colleagues in this body to agree that a minor adjustment in the Dodd-Frank bill would make a tremendous difference for small community banks and regional banks. We did that. We passed that with 17 votes from the other side. What this did in aggregate was to free up somewhere around $6 trillion back in the economy. That is real money when you are talking about a $21 trillion economy. Not all of that has flowed back in yet.

Here is what has happened. There is $2 trillion on the Russell 1000 balance sheets. These are our largest public companies, and they had the largest balance sheets in their history. They had about $2 trillion on their balance sheets.

Second, we had about $2 trillion on bank balance sheets of community banks and regional banks because of Dodd-Frank. Estimates were $3 trillion overseas in unrepatriated U.S. profits. What we have done in the last 2 years is fundamentally remove the roadblocks for that capital to flow back into the United States.

What are we seeing? Just the initial blush of regulatory reform pumped up CEO confidence and consumer confidence to 30-year highs. We saw that in the first 6 months of 2017. What happened after that was that consumers started to react, employers started to react, and capital started to flow. The free enterprise system started to breathe again after you took the jackboots of an oversized Federal Government off the throat of free enterprise.

We just heard the Presiding Officer's story about a small business. Those are multiplied by the thousands across our country. This isn't just about big business, as you and I well know. It is about individual enterprise. It is flowing again after a decade of being absent.

I am also proud to tell you that if you look at what the economy is doing right now--honestly, I am just a business guy, but I can back this up with economic realities--these facts are not debatable. This is the greatest economic turnaround in the United States' history. We are growing about a little more than twice the rate as we did in the past decade.

We created 5.3 million new jobs. Median income is the highest in U.S. history. At the same time, unemployment is at the lowest it has been in 50 years in total. African-American, Asian American, and Hispanic- American unemployment is the lowest ever measured. By any measure, this economic turnaround proves that what we believe in actually works. If you get big government out of the way and let the free enterprise system work, capitalism can breathe again, and this is what happens.

Are we going to have a steady rise in a consistent 3.5 percent, 4 percent growth? No, this is free enterprise. This is capitalism. What happens is we form capital. We have an idea for a product or a service, and we develop that. We get a customer. We make a transaction. Cash flows, and we reinvest that. This is what capitalism is. Capitalism is not Big Government getting all of your tax money, turning around, and redistributing that out because that absolutely shuts down free enterprise. As we know, free enterprise is the best economic system we have yet devised on the face of the Earth.

I am embarrassed that the President of the United States--I never thought I would see this day, on the floor of the House of Representatives in a joint session of Congress, in the State of the Union Address--had to feel like he had to make the statement that the United States would never be a socialist country. The fact that it is even debated is so embarrassing to me. It is unbelievable that this could even be proper as a viable alternative, given the history of the last 100 years alone.

If you go back to the 1970s and the great experiment that the Soviet Union was going to bring egalitarianism to the world, well, that failed. We have failed social states today in Venezuela, Cuba, and others. The Soviet Union today in Russia is a mere shadow of its former self because they played the game wrong. It may take decades before that can be rebuilt.

There can be no debate that freedom is what America is about. Our forefathers and foremothers fought and died to make sure that we would always have the liberty of the free enterprise system. That is what we are enjoying right now. That is what we are visibly witnessing before our very eyes today. As we go into a Presidential cycle in 2020, I hope that we have enough sense as a country to see that as the issue that we ought to be debating.

Yes, we have problems. Our debt is a serious threat to our own national security. It is the No. 1 threat to this continued economic boom we are all talking about. We have $21 trillion of debt. What is worse than that is that over the next 10 years, no matter what we do in terms of discretionary budget, Congress will add another $10 trillion to the debt unless we do something to save Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It is as simple as that.

We are actually spending about the same or a little bit less than we were in 2009 in terms of discretionary spending. That is less than one- third of what we spend as a Federal Government. The mandatory side of that equation never gets debated in this body. It is automatic-- mandatory. It is an automatic withdrawal, like a house payment, car payment, or insurance payment in a private business.

There is no doubt in my mind that we can solve every one of these. America is not bankrupt. We have more assets than we have liabilities. We have all the wherewithal in the world to solve our long-term debt problem. The rest of the world knows that. That is why they are still buying our corporate bonds and treasuries. I have never been more optimistic about the future of our country for my children and my children's children, but we have to deal with this Federal debt. Growing the economy, as President Trump said 2 years ago, was the first step toward doing that, but we have to get serious about dealing and saving the trust funds for Social Security and Medicare. That doesn't mean cutting them. It means finding a viable financing way to make them viable indefinitely. There are so many ways to do that.

I will close with this. It seems to me that what is at stake here is the very Republic that we are talking about. What are we going to be in the next 100 years? I would submit to you that the evidence is before us right now that one thing we have to be in order to protect the freedom of our country is to remain committed to the free enterprise system that we all have built this

economic boom upon that has been the greatest economic boom since World War II and in the history of humankind.

I implore both sides here to put the political differences aside, and let's get to funding this government on time, which this Congress has only done four times in the last 44 years. Congress has actually shut the government down, including this last one, 21 times.

This is totally unacceptable and unnecessary. I think that with a bipartisan approach, we know there are so many places of agreement that we can begin to do that, and I ask for everybody's forbearance and patience and willingness to engage in a bipartisan way to actually deal with some of these life-threatening issues we see before us.

As we do that, I hope we can end the debate once and for all about what really works here--lower taxes, less regulation, and certainly you have to have controls to make sure we have a level playing field for everybody in the United States, but this onerous, top-down-driven, controlling Big Government policy does not work. We proved that in the last decade and in other decades in the last 100 years.

It is an honor to be in the U.S. Senate. It is an honor to be an American. I never took that for granted, having lived outside of the United States. I can promise the Members of this body that what we have right now is not a false positive. What we have is evidence that capitalism works, the free enterprise system works. If we want to protect our liberty, we have to continue to develop that system.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are at a point we have been hoping to get to for some time, which is debate on S. 47, the Natural Resources Management Act.

This is a compilation, if you will, of various lands bills, water bills, and sportsmen's bills. This is a lands package that Senator Cantwell, Senator Manchin, and I recently introduced, but it is the result of years--multiple years, actually--of regular order process in the committees of jurisdiction--most notably, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. It is the result of months of intense, bicameral back-and-forth negotiations with now-Chairman Raul Grijalva and now- Ranking Member Rob Bishop of the House Natural Resources Committee. In that back-and-forth, we said: We are going to be very specific to our jurisdiction here, and we are going to stick to a four-corners agreement that we reached late last year and had actually confirmed here on the Senate floor in late December.

This package contains more than 100 public lands, natural resources, and water measures that have good, strong support in both Chambers. We are at that point where we can not only do the back-and-forth, but we can work through the back-and-forth that comes when we are able to advance a package like this to the floor.

I would like to thank Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer for agreeing to add our lands package directly to the Senate calendar. This was an agreement that was made back in December. We were teed up and ready to go, but in fairness, you run out of time at the end of the year. There was an agreement that was reached here on the Senate floor between the two leaders and other colleagues to make sure that we would take up this package quickly and that we would work to address it early in this new Congress.

A lot of thanks go out to our leadership, and special thanks to my former ranking member, Senator Cantwell, for working with me to get us to this point and to my new ranking member, Senator Manchin, for really stepping up and helping to manage this package just weeks into his new role as the ranking member.

Before I get into my full remarks, I also want to recognize the efforts of several of the other members of the Energy Committee who have really gone the extra mile to help us get to this point. On our side of the aisle, Senator Gardner and Senator Daines have been just dogged in making sure that--as issues arose and as we tried to cobble together different proposals, they were in the thick of it and have been helpful every step of the way. On the other side of the aisle, Senator Heinrich and Senator Wyden have been equally aggressive and helpful in all they have done to help advance and build support for this package.

It is probably true, if you were to look through this package, you are not going to see something that stands out with bright lights and flags that says these are sweeping changes in Federal policy. Most of the items we have included are probably considered too parochial, too local, too discrete to merit floor time on a standalone basis. That is the problem with lands packages, generally, in that they don't take up a lot of space when it comes to a Senate calendar, but I can tell you that every one of the provisions in this package matters to a community, matters to a constituency--many of them in Western States, States like mine, that have a great amount of public land, of Federal lands. These are, again, important at a host of different levels. So working with colleagues to understand their local priorities, their constituency, has really been a real pleasure as part of this process.

We worked very hard within the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this last Congress to prepare the vast majority of bills in the package, and our colleagues on the House side did the same. What we were able to agree to is a package that is sponsored by 50 different Senators in this past Congress. When you count the cosponsor provisions, this package addresses the priorities of close to 90 Senators. You have just about everybody in this body, Republicans and Democrats, who have come together and said: This is an issue in my region, in my State. These are issues we need to be working on together.

I think it is a real reflection of the priorities--the wide range of priorities--that Members have for their home States. I think it is also a sign, when you have more than 100 of these smaller, more discrete bills packages together--it is a sign that we are really overdue in moving these lands bills.

The last time we had a significant lands package on the floor was 2014. It has been 5 years since we have had an opportunity to move, again, a significant number of Members' priorities. I think it is also a testament to the long hours we have spent and our staffs have spent reviewing and working through and really trying to build the agreements on what we hope is soon to be ready to be signed into law.

It is important this bill, this package, becomes law in the near future. What we do through this legislative package is we really provide new opportunities for economic development through land conveyances and exchanges. We expand and we enhance access for sports men and women on our Federal lands for hunting, fishing, and other outdoor recreation activities.

This should be noted. We have been trying to work a sportsmen's package--a compilation of bills that relate to access on our Federal lands for hunting, fishing, and shooting sports. We have been trying to do this for three Congresses running. It is long overdue.

We also feature provisions related to western water management, national park units, other Federal lands administered by the BLM and the Forest Service. One of the provisions that is probably most strongly supported in this package reauthorizes the deposit function of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This expired last September. Instead of leaving that program subject to repeated lapses and short- term extensions--we see a lot of that around here--what we have done is we have agreed to remove that expiration date. We effectively make that permanent, and we paired it--this is very important to us. We paired that permanent authorization with meaningful reforms, with meaningful reforms that will help ensure greater balance in the funds that are allocated to the program.

I mentioned that many of these provisions might seem very local, very parochial. We have a provision that will facilitate the expansion of an airport in Custer County, SD. I have never been to Custer County, but when you have a constriction, a limitation on your ability to expand an airport because you need a land conveyance, it literally takes an act of Congress in order to make that happen.

Another provision in the measure will enable the construction of a large-scale solar project in the State of Arizona. This is going to bring about jobs, and it is going to bring about renewable energy opportunities. We have several more provisions that will designate national monuments but done the right way. The right way is with Congress in the lead, rather than the President exercising his authorities under the Antiquities Act--so making sure you have that level of consensus that is so important when designations like this move forward.

On some of the more Alaska-specific provisions, we have upheld our promise, a promise made decades ago to Alaska Natives who served during the Vietnam war. During this time of their service, they basically missed out on their opportunity to receive the land allotments that had been promised to them by the Federal Government under the land rights. What we have done is we have worked to address that inequity in a way that is fair to our veterans and fair to the process.

We provide routing flexibility for the natural gas pipeline that has been proposed for some time. We are able to create new opportunities for small, small, small communities, like down in Kake in Southeast Alaska or Utkiagvik up in the North Slope.

We also reached agreement to improve our volcano warning and monitoring system. Some of you might not think about why we need to be paying attention to our volcanoes. Believe me, you don't want to be in an aircraft when you are flying through volcanic ash. Knowing what is going on is important. Whether you are in Hawaii, Alaska, or another State, it is really just a matter of time before we see more eruptions. We saw it in Alaska with Mount Cleveland last year and Kilauea in Hawaii. So we are paying attention to that.

These are just a few of the highlights. I am going to be talking to more of them on the floor as debate goes on, but I also want to close with kind of an explanation of where we are in the process right now.

As I mentioned, when you have a package that has 100-plus bills--and we haven't done something like this in now 5 years--there is no shortage of provisions that we could include. We really worked hard. We did our best to work through everything we had on the table and included as much as we could reach agreement on. I think we all can agree there is more we can do, and we should try to do, and that our work on our lands and our resource issues is not going to end just because we passed this bill.

That is why I would encourage folks to view this as a first step. It is literally a downpayment. We say we are clearing the decks of the provisions that have been outstanding for a long time right now and that are ready to go right now.

I know we have several Members who would like to have amendments. We want to try to find a way to accommodate some of those, but that is going to take a level of cooperation. It always does. We may be able to take some by unanimous consent or by rollcall vote, but there are also going to be some we are just not going to be able to accept at this time and on this package.

Again, I would take back to the bipartisan agreement that we had and the spirit of that agreement, that we want to stay away from things that are outside our jurisdiction or that would create problems with the House. The House has been good--a cooperative arrangement up to this point in time. I think it is fair to say we have had some very good signals that they are anxious to receive this from the Senate and thus help us facilitate its passage into law.

For those who aren't able to add their specific provisions, you certainly have my commitment to work with you in this Congress, but in the meantime I think what you have in front of you is an excellent package. It is time for us to pass it. It is time to show our strong support, send it to the House of Representatives, and then to the President's desk.

I am pleased to yield and recognize my friend and new colleague on the Energy Committee--not a new colleague but certainly my new ranking member--who has been a great person to work with and a real help in all of our efforts.

Madam President, first, I am so pleased to work with my good friend Chairman Murkowski on something she has worked on for quite some time with Senator Cantwell. Taking up this new position, I want to make sure I help them the best I can to bring this to fruition. That is what we are working on right now. To have S. 47 in front of us is pretty special.

The public lands package includes such a wide variety of bills, as the chairman has spoken about. There are currently more than 130 different pieces of individual legislation that will address many Members' priorities for public lands and natural resources in their respective States. A public lands package doesn't come together that often. I think it has been 5 years, as was said, and they are far and few between. When it does, we try to accommodate and do the right thing that really helps our country and future generations.

Many of the bills in this package provide technical corrections and improvements to existing policies but do not have a significant impact outside their local sphere. However, these minor bills will improve the way our public lands are managed and conserved at the ground level. While these bills are important to the residents of the small towns like mine across America and Members of this body who represent them, rarely will these individual bills receive the floor time they truly deserve. Because of this, it is necessary for us to move these bills together in this package, which is what we have coming up before us probably by tomorrow.

This package was literally years in the making. As I said, it builds on the package that was negotiated last December by Chairman Murkowski, then-Ranking Member Cantwell, then-Chairman Bishop, and then-Ranking Member Grijalva of the House Natural Resources Committee. Together, this group came together and negotiated a large package. Unfortunately, the Senate could not pass the package last December, which is why we find ourselves here today.

I am grateful for the opportunity to serve as the ranking member of the committee and to be working with my friend from Alaska Chairman Murkowski on this package but also on many other issues we will consider in the committee in the coming time.

I would also like to take this moment to thank the committee staff, the majority and minority, as well as the floor staff for their diligence in working on this package. I would like to include a list of names who worked on the package for both me and Senator Cantwell and in our committee over the last few months. I would also like to include the names of the floor and leadership staff.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that this list of names be printed in the Record.

This package enjoys the support from numerous national stakeholder organizations across the political spectrum. For example, the National Wildlife Federation and the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation are two of its strongest and most dedicated advocates. I thank them for their support. I ask unanimous consent that the list of organizations writing in support of this bill be printed in the Record.

This package should be warmly received by both Democrats and Republicans. It is truly a bipartisan effort. For starters, the package includes numerous land exchanges and conveyances, designates over 1.3 million acres of wilderness, designates 367 miles of wild and scenic rivers, and provides boundary adjustments, designation changes, and management improvements to numerous areas in all four corners of the country. All of this will improve access, provide recreational opportunities, and allow four of our Federal public land management Agencies--the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service--to better serve the public through their varying missions as directed by Congress.

Our public lands are truly one of the Nation's greatest treasures, and we are unique in how we set aside some of our most special places in the country to be conserved, protected, and easily accessible to the public so we can all enjoy the beauty these areas offer. Usually, these lands are located in rural areas, with few other economic opportunities, making these treasures economic engines for the surrounding communities. In fact, data from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis shows the outdoor recreation economy accounted for 2.2 percent of GDP and grew faster than the overall economy.

According to the Outdoor Industry Association, outdoor recreation supports 7.6 million direct national jobs and $887 billion in consumer spending. Overall, this contributes billions to the Federal, State, and local governments in tax revenue.

In West Virginia, outdoor recreation supports 91,000 direct jobs and $9 billion in consumer spending. Each year, 67 percent of West Virginia residents take to the outdoors to escape the hustle and bustle of their daily lives to enjoy the peace and certainty of our wild and wonderful outdoor heritage. It is truly almost heaven. If you haven't been there, we welcome you.

This package provides permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which Senator Murkowski has pointed out. This is something most every one of us--535 Members of Congress--is truly supportive of because it affects our States and our districts. LWCF is a simple yet highly effective conservation tool with unrivaled success over the last 50 years. Every year, $900 million in royalties paid by energy companies drilling for oil and gas on the Outer Continental Shelf are put into this fund.

Unfortunately, LWCF expired last September. The National Resource Management Act provides permanent reauthorization of the LWCF. That is enough to bring all of us together.

This permanent reauthorization ensures that States and Federal public land management Agencies have the ability to continue to protect and conserve our natural resources for the next generation, and it does so without relying on taxpayer dollars.

Since 1965, more than $243 million in LWCF funds have been spent in my little State of West Virginia on more than 500 projects, both on State and Federal lands. This includes improvements to local parks and public spaces and 54 of our little State's 55 counties. It also funded acquisition for our most cherished public lands, such as the Gauley River National Recreation Area, the New River Gorge National River, and Dolly Sods in the Monongahela National Forest.

This package also includes some long-awaited priorities for our sportsmen's groups. Each year, more than 350,000 hunters take to the woods in West Virginia to pursue game. These hunting traditions directly benefit rural communities, generating annual revenue and supporting 5,000 jobs. According to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, hunting-related expenditures total nearly $270 million of the State's economy. Aside from this, and perhaps most importantly, hunting in West Virginia is one of our oldest pastimes in which friends and families can gather and spend quality time together.

As I work with other Members of this very body on difficult issues where we may strongly disagree with each other, we are able to set aside differences when it comes to sportsmen's traditions. The conversations quickly turn to stories of hunting a deer with our children and grandchildren or taking a child to the first deer camp. It is important that we provide opportunities to keep these traditions alive.

The Natural Resource Management Act will expand and enhance sportsmen's access by making Federal lands throughout West Virginia and the Nation ``open unless closed'' for fishing, hunting, recreational shooting, and other outdoor activities.

As a hunter myself and as vice chair of the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, I know how frustrated sportsmen's groups have been in trying to get their bills passed the last few years. That is one of the reasons I am pleased that Chairman Murkowski's bill, of which I am an original cosponsor, the Sportsmen's Act, is included in this package.

The Natural Resource Management Act also establishes several national heritage areas, including one in West Virginia, the Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area. National heritage areas are designated by Congress as places where natural, cultural, and historic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally important landscape. The Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area has been operating as an ad hoc national heritage area for more than a decade. Despite not having official designation, the Appalachian Forest Heritage Area has continually done a great deal for West Virginia. For example, the Appalachian Forest Heritage Area administers a credible AmeriCorps program. In one recent program year, 38 AmeriCorps members completed more than 65,000 service hours directly benefiting local rural areas in West Virginia, as in every State. These 38 members improved 1,700 acres of public land and managed more than 1,000 total volunteers.

By providing the official NHA designation, the Appalachian Forest Heritage Area can earn the national recognition it deserves and is now also eligible for grants and technical assistance from the National Park Service. This will take their programmatic efforts and other services they provide to the region to the next level.

I believe that this package is a great bill for both my Republican and Democratic friends. Numerous pieces of legislation that have been longstanding priorities for many Members are included.

I would like to thank Chairman Murkowski again, as well as other members of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, for their efforts to reach an agreement on this bill. For those of

our colleagues who felt that they were not able to get exactly what they wanted or exactly what they would love to have had in this bill, we are committed to working with them to further help them in getting access to any other piece of legislation we will have working through the committee.

I want to thank the majority leader for his willingness to bring this bill to the floor. I believe it is time to send the bill to the House and to the President for his signature. We have had a great working relationship with Chairman Grijalva, and he is committed to working with us as we work through this process.

There are many pieces of good legislation in this package that will be valued for years to come by communities across the country and each one of our States. I strongly encourage Members to vote yes on this final package.

Thank you.

I yield the floor to the Senator from Montana.

Mr. President, today U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the electric car industry. The cost to these taxpayers is billions of dollars, and the subsidies have lasted now for nearly 30 years.

In 2008, Washington added a tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles. The market was very small at that time, and it was worth encouraging that market, but today the electric market for vehicles is well established. The auto industry no longer needs these pricey subsidies for electric vehicles, and I believe it is time to pull the plug on subsidies for electric vehicles.

Leading manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford, and Volkswagen, have announced plans to massively increase investment in the electric vehicle market. Global automakers are

promoting electric car luxury brands, such as Bentley, Aston Martin, Maserati, Porsche, and Cadillac, but with these new electric vehicles coming to the market, the subsidy program is going to continue to run at an enormous cost to American taxpayers.

Congress first passed legislation to provide subsidies for electric car buyers back in 1992. The purpose was to temporarily support a promising, environmentally friendly market. For decades now, Washington expanded this program of tax credits. At the same time, many States enacted similar subsidies.

Between 2011 and 2017, electric car buyers received more than $4 billion in Federal credits alone, costing taxpayers up to $7,500 for each vehicle. This program disproportionately subsidizes wealthy buyers because nearly 80 percent of the tax credits go to households earning at least $100,000 a year. Well, these car buyers don't need a taxpayer subsidy.

The program has served its purpose, and I say that because today a million electric vehicles travel our highways. The global demand for electric vehicles is rising as well. Now nearly every automaker is entering the market. In fact, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that sales of light-duty electric vehicles will reach 4 million vehicles by 2025.

So here is exhibit A. This past weekend was Super Bowl weekend. They had so many commercials, and it cost about $5 million to run an ad during the Super Bowl. Well, the automaker Audi ran a commercial saying that by 2025 one-third of their cars--one out of every three cars--will be an electric vehicle. So I use that as exhibit A to say this market is firmly established. As a matter of fact, this market is positioned for expansion--which means so will the cost of subsidies. I believe it is time to take taxpayers off the hook.

I have introduced legislation, the Fairness for Every Driver Act, and it is to end the electric vehicle subsidy program. My legislation has three key goals; first is to the save taxpayers billions of dollars through the subsidy program; second is to help maintain our aging roads and bridges; and the third is to reduce wasteful Washington spending. According to the Manhattan Institute, ending this subsidy will save taxpayers an estimated $20 billion dollars--$20 billion.

The electric car market can thrive without Washington subsidies. We see it is thriving. It is growing. Nearly every State now provides its own subsidies and added incentives.

California even mandates the percentage of cars that must be zero emission. This category is almost exclusively electric vehicles. In 2017, Californians purchased 95,000 electric vehicles. Now, residents in my home State of Wyoming, where distances are long and recharging stations are few, purchased only 51. Hard-working Wyoming taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize wealthy California luxury car buyers.

Ending the electric car subsidies isn't just about saving taxpayers dollars, it is about our shared responsibility to maintain our highway system. The highway trust fund is depleted. The highway trust fund pays for road and bridge projects. Its main source of funding is the Federal gas tax.

Drivers of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles pay this tax every time they pull up and fill up at the pump. Electric car drivers never pay these fees. Although a Tesla puts as much strain on the highways as a Ford Focus, the Tesla driver pays next to nothing to fix the roads.

Without congressional action, the highway trust fund will be exhausted by 2021. This legislation ensures all drivers pay their fair share to improve America's roads. It establishes an annual highway user fee for these alternative fuel vehicles. Comparable to the gas tax, this user fee will result in billions of dollars over the next decade to fund needed road projects.

All drivers use the roads. All drivers should contribute to maintaining them. Electric cars are here to stay. The market is poised for growth, with or without the subsidies. Congress should pull the plug on this program. It is time to end this subsidy. It is time to stop wasting taxpayer dollars, and it is time to level the playing field for all drivers when it comes to repairing our roads and bridges.

It is time to pass the Fairness for Every Driver Act.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last night we heard from the President of the United States in his State of the Union Address. What I heard and what I know, living in Wyoming and traveling across my State and across the country--is that the state of the union is strong. It is strong, and we are strong militarily, economically, and politically.

It is so fascinating to see this growth that we have in our economy. I remember just a few years ago when the new normal for economic growth was stuck below 2 percent. People said: That is where we are going to be.

Well, as a result of tax cuts and regulatory relief, we have had an incredible amount of economic growth over the last couple of years. Really, the economy is sizzling, firing on all cylinders, fueled by the tax cuts that are allowing people to keep more of their hard-earned money, and wages going up because there are so many jobs being created.

Talking about the good news for the American people, I just noted that there were 3 million new jobs added

since Republicans passed tax reform a year ago. That is 3 million new jobs across the country.

Somebody might say: Well, maybe it is slowing down. It is actually the opposite. This past month, there were 304,000 new jobs. The experts, who thought they had a handle on the economy, said: Well, maybe there are 160,000 new jobs.

There were 304,000, not just 160,000, as it was estimated. There have been 3 million new jobs since we passed tax reform for the American people.

The other thing that is so interesting with the numbers is the increase in manufacturing jobs. I remember President Obama saying that you would need a magic wand to bring back manufacturing jobs to the country. Well, the number of manufacturing jobs that were brought back to the country or that were created in the country last year was the largest growth in over 20 years.

Now, what about wages? Wages are up significantly, compared to a year ago. People are noting not only an increase in their salaries but also an increase in their take-home pay because the amount of taxes taken out are going down as well. So you have higher salaries, lower taxes, and the amount of money that people are able to keep is going up as well.

More people are working today than at any time in our history as a nation. There are 157 million American workers, and workers are in the driver's seat. There are more jobs available than there are people to fill those jobs.

I am so happy with what President Trump has done with regulations to try to eliminate these burdensome, expensive, and time-consuming regulations that made it harder to create jobs, harder to keep jobs going, and harder to keep people in their jobs.

I was most pleased to see the President's focus and discussion on energy. Energy is called the master resource. It is called the master resource for a reason. It fuels our economy, it fuels our military, and it fuels our Nation.

We now have, through innovation and investment, enough energy resources that we have now become a net exporter of energy. People around the country and around the world look to us as a source of energy--crude oil, natural gas, and liquefied natural gas. There are opportunities for people around the country--coal from my home State of Wyoming. We are a net energy exporter, and it is because of the President's focus on allowing us to use the resources that we have been so blessed with in this great country.

As for this talk about 3 million new jobs, in Wyoming alone there have been 8,000 more jobs created since we passed tax reform.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board's headline this past Friday, February 1, was this: ``Sorry for the Good News.'' It said: ``This is what happens when the political class takes its boot off of the neck of private business, as the GOP Congress and Trump administration did for two years.''

That is why we have all this good news. Taxes are lower. Regulations are much more reasonable. They are not the kind of troublesome regulations that choked our economy.

I think now it is time to refocus, as the President talked about--a time for greatness in America, to refocus our attention on economic expansion.

When I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they have taken a hard left turn, way off to the liberal side, to the radical side of things, proposing socialist programs that increase taxes, that increase government spending, and that apply burdensome new regulations. That would put a tremendous brake on the economy and the economic growth we have seen. These hard-left policies will kill job creation and cripple the economy.

Americans want more freedom, more opportunities, more economic prosperity, and better paying jobs. That is what this is all about. That is what we heard last night in the State of the Union. That is why the state of our Union is strong, with a strong, healthy, and growing economy. It is time--and I agreed with President Trump last night--to unite, time to work together and keep the country moving forward with commonsense policies that improve Americans' everyday lives.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I start by thanking Senator Tom Udall, our senior Senator from New Mexico, for the incredible amount of work and really the years of advocacy and attention that have gone into many of the portions of this land package that he just described. Without his leadership, without his partnership, we would not be celebrating this opportunity today.

I rise to celebrate the landmark conservation measures that we are about to vote on here in the Senate. As a Senator from a State that proudly calls itself the Land of Enchantment, I know how much our public lands mean to New Mexicans. These are the places to which generations of families have gone to explore our natural wonders and to learn about our rich history and our incredible culture. Hunting and fishing, as well as hiking and camping, on our public lands are quite simply part of our identity in the State of New Mexico, and this relationship with our land and our water is fundamental to who we are.

These activities also fuel a thriving outdoor recreation economy that supports nearly 100,000 jobs in New Mexico

alone. Nationwide, outdoor recreation generates nearly $900 billion of consumer spending each year and directly supports more than 7 million American jobs. Think about that--7 million American jobs. That is why I thought to pass this legislation that will open additional access and create recreation opportunities on our public lands to support this important part of our economy.

I commend our chairman, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, our ranking member, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and our former ranking member, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington. We are, to say the least, going through a frustrating political era here in Washington, and there just don't seem to be many things we can agree on these days. Yet the package of public lands and conservation bills that we are now considering on the floor reflect Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member Manchin, and Senator Cantwell's leadership. It demonstrates their willingness to put aside partisan rancor and do the hard work that is required to build bipartisan consensus.

I am proud that we are moving forward to pass these bills that have earned broad, bipartisan support in our committee to conserve our public lands, to create new outdoor recreation opportunities, and to build on the success of our Nation's most effective conservation programs. I want to quickly highlight some of these incredible victories in this bill for New Mexico.

First and foremost, I am so proud that we are passing two bills to advance community-driven conservation visions for New Mexico's two newest national monuments--the Rio Grande del Norte and the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks. From the tops of the Cerro de la Olla and Ute Mountain to the depths of the Rio Grande Gorge, the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in northern New Mexico is one of the most spectacular landscapes on Earth. The historic monument designation for the Rio Grande del Norte was the direct result of tireless efforts by those in the local community who were dedicated to protecting this area for future generations, and they worked for decades to do just that.

The legislation we are voting on establishes two new wilderness areas within this monument--the Cerro del Yuta Wilderness and the Rio San Antonio Wilderness. By designating the most rugged and unique habitat in the Rio Grande del Norte as wilderness, we can protect the monument's natural heritage for our children and for generations to come.

We are doing the same thing for southern New Mexico's Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks is incredibly rich in cultural and natural history. It includes six stunning mountain ranges. This is the very well-known Organ Mountains-- its profile known by everyone who has ever visited or lived in southern New Mexico. It also includes the Robledos, the East Potrillos, the West Potrillos, the Dona Anas, and the Sierra de las Uvas.

The Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Conservation Act that Senator Udall sponsored, that I have cosponsored, and that we have worked together on for all of these years will safeguard sensitive cultural, historical, and natural treasures in this monument. ``Wilderness'' designation for several of the most rugged and unique areas in the Organ Mountains- Desert Peaks will promote the monument as a world-class destination.

President Obama based his 2014 ``national monument'' designation on the legislation introduced by Senator Udall and me, but, as with the Rio Grande del Norte, only Congress has authority to create additional federally protected wilderness.

We can now ensure permanent protection for the wildest places within the national monument, including the Organ Mountains but also the Potrillo, Uvas, and Robledo Mountains, as well as Aden Lava Flow and Broad Canyon.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to the diverse coalition of stakeholders from throughout our State who worked for decades to make the Rio Grande del Norte and Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks monuments a reality. From Tribal leaders to local elected officials, sportsmen, ranchers, land grant heirs, acequia parciantes, small businesses, and conservation groups, so many New Mexicans came together and worked together to make this possible.

Once again, I especially want to thank my colleague, the senior Senator from New Mexico, Tom Udall, and our former Senator Jeff Bingaman for their leadership and their partnership in getting this over the finish line.

These two monuments protect places that New Mexicans have long recognized as national treasures in their backyards.

Once we pass this legislation, we will put a capstone on years of work to make these monuments national models of community-driven, landscape-scale public lands conservation. I have no doubt that future generations will be grateful for what we are voting on here.

Speaking of future generations, I am also pleased that this public lands package includes my bipartisan bill, the Every Kid Outdoors Act. I want to thank Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee for joining me as the lead Republican sponsor of this bill. The Every Kid Outdoors Act will allow every fourth grader in America to visit our Nation's national parks or national forests or national wildlife refuges free of charge and to bring their families along with them.

Many of you might not know that long before I became a Senator, one of my first jobs in New Mexico was as the executive director of Cottonwood Gulch Expeditions--a 90-plus-year-old experiential education organization that takes children and adults out into the backcountry of our public lands.

Connecting kids to the outdoors can inspire a lifelong connection to conservation, while reaping all of the health benefits that go along with an active lifestyle. Some of my favorite memories are from my adventures on public lands with my wife Julie and with our sons, Carter and Micah, and I want all kids to have those same opportunities to fall in love with our amazing public lands.

Since 2015, the Department of the Interior has offered fourth graders and their families free entrance to all federally managed public lands. I can't tell you how popular this program has become. The Every Kid Outdoors Act codifies this effort into law and will encourage the creation of more educational opportunities for all of our kids on their public lands.

I am so excited that we are encouraging a new generation of kids--a generation that will explore the rich natural and cultural history on display in our parks, forests, and monuments. After all, they are the future stewards of these special places that we all love.

I also want to celebrate that we are voting to permanently reauthorize what I believe has been one of America's most successful conservation program ever, the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

In New Mexico, LWCF, as it is known--the Land and Water Conservation Fund--has protected iconic landscapes, such as the Valles Caldera, Ute Mountain, and Valle de Oro, without costing taxpayers a single dime. It has also provided for community projects, such as baseball and soccer fields, playgrounds, and picnic areas.

The broad support that LWCF has had from both Republicans and Democrats over the last half century is a testament to how well the program has worked all across this Nation; however, despite our best efforts to save LWCF, congressional inaction allowed the program to expire last year. I am proud to say that once we pass this package, we will no longer need to worry year after year about renewing this incredibly successful program. Now LWCF funds can continue being put to work protecting drinking water, providing public land access, and funding our neighborhood parks.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude once more to Chairman Murkowski for working with me to advance provisions in this package to improve public access on our public lands. Many pieces of the Sportsmen's Act are included in this, and I am especially pleased that we are passing my legislation, the HUNT Act, which will improve access to public lands wherever hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation are permitted.

With that, I would like to encourage all of my colleagues to support this bipartisan package of bills. I am confident that they will grow our outdoor recreation economy, promote access to

our public lands, and support the sustainable use of our natural resources. What we will vote on will go a long way toward ensuring that the outdoor places that we all treasure will be protected for future generations of Americans to enjoy.

I yield the remainder of my time.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.