CRUISE Act

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, my friend and colleague Senator Manchin from West Virginia and I are on the floor today to talk about this issue of fentanyl.

This is a deadly synthetic opioid that is killing more people in our States than any other single drug. Unbelievably, Congress has only 15 days to act, and if we don't, some of these illegal fentanyl products are going to be legal again. This is exactly the wrong thing for us to do right now as, sadly, we are seeing a big increase in overdoses and overdose deaths because of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

We want to have bipartisan legislation that we have introduced, passed, that simply says: Let's not allow these illicitly manufactured and deadly synthetic opioids to suddenly become legal again.

If we don't act within 15 days, that will happen. Our bill would ensure that these deadly drugs continued to be scheduled--that is the technical term--scheduled by the Drug Enforcement Agency, meaning they would continue to be illegal.

Here is why we have to act. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is more than 15 times more powerful than heroin, and it is incredibly addictive. For years, this has been coming to our shores from China, almost all of it through the mail until recently because we, frankly, passed legislation to cut down on mail deliveries, and instead, now much is coming through Mexico, across our southwest border.

It is a big reason overdose deaths in the United States surged to record highs during this COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 87,000 Americans--think about that--87,000 Americans died during the 12-month period between September 2019 and September 2020. That is a record. It is a terrible record.

When we have the actual numbers from 2020, it is going to be even worse. We just got these numbers from September 2019 until September 2020. When we have the numbers from January 2020 through December 2020, it will be even worse. That is what everybody says, and it makes sense. When you look at this data, the worst months are the months during the pandemic in 2020.

Again, we are very sadly, after several years of progress, looking at once again an increase in these overdose deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, synthetic opioids like fentanyl are the biggest drivers of this tragic surge. We can project that more than half of these deaths are from this class of drug based on what we know from the 2019 data. That is the latest information we have. In 2019, there were 70,630 deaths, and more than half of those-- 36,359--involved fentanyl. Experts believe that fentanyl, sometimes mixed with other drugs like cocaine or crystal meth or sometimes heroin, continues to be the No. 1 killer.

It is such an enormous crisis because these drugs are so incredibly dangerous. It takes only 2 milligrams of fentanyl to kill an adult, which is why the DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, permanently classified fentanyl as a schedule II drug.

In order to avoid prosecution, drug traffickers started making slight modifications to fentanyl. You have some evil scientist in China or in Mexico who makes a slight modification to fentanyl, sometimes adjusting a single molecule and creating what are called fentanyl analogs. In other words, it is not precisely pure fentanyl, and so unfortunately, although it has the same narcotic properties as fentanyl, these tiny variations allow these traffickers and these scientists to evade prosecution. Oftentimes, by the way, these analogs, like carfentanil, are even more deadly, believe it or not, than fentanyl itself.

In response, in 2018, the DEA temporarily scheduled fentanyl analogs, but under law, that designation expires after May 6--again, only 15 days from now. If that deadline lapses, evil scientists and criminals who run labs in China and Mexico will be able to avoid law enforcement as they flood the United States with unlimited slight variations of this deadly drug.

That is why Senator Manchin and I are calling on Congress to do the sensible thing: Pass the FIGHT Fentanyl Act to make these dangerous substances permanently illegal. That is what law enforcement wants, that is what our communities demand, and that is what we deserve to give them. It is long overdue that we make this designation permanent.

China, by the way, implemented classwide controls over fentanyl analogs in 2019. China's law defines fentanyl-related substances more broadly than the U.S. Government defines fentanyl-related substances. How ironic. Here is China, a country sending us this poison and actually making these drugs illegal in China, and they are not illegal here. How could that be?

I know some colleagues oppose permanent scheduling of these fentanyl drugs because they are concerned about mandatory minimum sentences and also that it could hinder research into future medications to treat addiction. Let me address both of those.

First, I share this concern about the harsh punishments that don't fit the nature of the crime. That is why our legislation ensures that mandatory minimum sentences are not automatically imposed. In any criminal case, we want the judge to look at the severity of the crime and consider all relevant factors in sentencing. So that issue is addressed.

There has been a great deal of conversation about the impact of prosecutions and incarcerations on specific populations, including minority communities, but what is often lost in this debate is the growing impact of fatal overdoses in these same communities.

Since 2016, while White fatalities decreased through 2019--the data we have--overdoses from opioids among Black Americans, particularly Black men, have actually accelerated. From 2011 to 2016, Black Americans had the highest increase in synthetic opioid-involved overdose death rates compared to all populations. So it is getting worse, not better, in these same minority communities.

While from 2017 to 2018, overall opioid-involved overdose fatalities decreased--remember we were making progress for the last several years. Overall, it decreased by just over 4 percent. Rates among Black and Hispanic Americans actually increased.

Another issue my colleagues have raised, again, is concern that permanently scheduled fentanyl and its analogs somehow hinders research in treating addiction. First of all, I agree that we need this research and need it badly. One example of this is coming up with naloxone, a miracle drug based on heroin that actually reverses the effects of overdose. It is a miracle. I have seen it work, and it saves lives.

Researchers have told me there are barriers to being approved to legally research schedule I substances. There is also a stigma to conducting this kind of research even though we know that it could lead to development of new treatments. I am open to working with colleagues to address these barriers, and I believe we can do that through legislation creating flexibility in the registration system for scientists. But we cannot let these deadly fentanyl drugs become legal in the meantime, and certainly we can't allow this to happen in the next 15 days.

Just before we came to the floor this afternoon, the House of Representatives passed a temporary measure. It is a 5-month extension of the ability to schedule these deadly drugs. Why would we do it for just 5 months? Let's do it permanently.

Now I am told: Well, we have a take-it-or-leave-it from the House. I hope that is not the case. If so, of course I will be for extending it rather than having it expire in 15 days. But let's act. Let's act responsibly. Let's act now.

The U.S. Senate should be taking the lead here in saying let's permanently classify these drugs, as everybody agrees they should be classified in the sense that they are dangerous narcotics that are killing literally tens of thousands of our fellow citizens every year.

Let's do the right thing for those communities. Let's do the right thing for law enforcement. Let's be sure they have the predictability and certainty in law enforcement to know that they can prosecute these criminals--these traffickers. We need to act now to address the threat of these deadly fentanyl drugs coming into our communities, and I urge the Senate to pass the FIGHT Fentanyl Act this week.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I welcome the Vice President, the President of the Senate, to our Chamber this evening.

I am here this evening to discuss the infrastructure plan that has been proposed by President Biden and the plan along with it for massive tax increases.

The Biden infrastructure plan totals a massive $2.3 trillion, but only about 20 percent of it actually goes towards funding anything that Members of either party have ever considered infrastructure. I support more infrastructure investment, as do, I believe, most if not all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

The question is, What is infrastructure, and how do you pay for it? Roads and bridges, as an example in this proposal, are only about 5 percent of the plan. In fact, it provides more money for long-term care than it does for roads and bridges, more money for electric cars than it does for roads and bridges, and more money for schools and daycare than it does for roads and bridges. Many of these noninfrastructure ideas are worthy ones, and they should be debated and they should be considered but not as part of a self-described infrastructure bill, in part because the funding sources should be very different.

The price tag, $2.3 trillion--soon to be $2.7 trillion, we are told-- and also the scope of the bill are bad enough, but what I want to talk about tonight is the equally concerning way the Biden administration plans to pay for this massive new legislation. They want to pay for the bulk of it by completely reversing the progress we made

over the past few years in making America competitive again and making our workers competitive again.

In the 2 years before COVID-19, we saw record growth in jobs and wages, in large part thanks to the pro-growth policies we put in place through the 2017 tax cuts and reforms. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found that 70 percent of the savings from the 2017 corporate tax cuts went into workers' wages. Seventy percent, they say, went into workers' pockets. It is one reason that, leading up to the pandemic in February, a year and a couple of months ago, we had the 19th straight month--19th straight month--of wage growth of 3 percent or more annually. That was great news in my home State of Ohio. We hadn't had wage growth like that in over a decade, maybe two decades. Most of that benefit, by the way, went to middle and lower income workers--exactly what you want.

During that time period a couple of years before the pandemic hit, we tied the 50-year low in unemployment at 3.5 percent and had the lowest unemployment ever for Blacks and Hispanics. In fact, before the pandemic, we had reached the lowest poverty rate--10.5 percent--since we started recording this data back in 1959. It was the lowest poverty rate on record.

Importantly, tax reform also stopped these corporate inversions. You will remember this. Companies were actually becoming foreign companies so they could get from under our Tax Code. This made no sense. It was happening during the Obama administration and during the first year of the Trump administration. We also ended the so-called lockout effect, caused by a Tax Code that made it too expensive to bring foreign earnings back home. So people kept their earnings overseas. In fact, during those couple of years, the $1.6 trillion in overseas earnings has now come back home to invest and create jobs here--$1.6 trillion. We want that money here.

As a result of those changes, the largest U.S. companies increased domestic research and development spending by 25 percent to $707 billion, and capital expenditures went up by 20 percent to $1.4 trillion. The Biden plan would throw all of that positive progress out. It would change our competitiveness to put us back where we were before or worse.

The administration's corporate tax increase raises the combined Federal and State corporate rates from an average of 25.8 percent to 32.8 percent. It would put us, again, as having the highest rate in the developed world. These tax hikes, by the way, when you include the international tax hikes, are actually five times as large as the corresponding cuts in 2017, based on the analysis that has been done. By the way, this would also, of course, give us not just the highest tax rate among the developed countries but also a far higher tax rate than countries like China with whom we are trying to compete.

It also changes the international tax code to make it much more costly for U.S. companies to operate outside of the United States, punishing American workers who have jobs here supporting international sales. I use the example of Procter & Gamble in my hometown of Cincinnati. They are headquartered in Ohio, but they do business all over the world. They have told me that it will be far more expensive for them to do that, even uncompetitive for them to be working globally, because we will be the only developed country in the world that will charge them a tax to do that, and that will hurt the jobs in Cincinnati, OH, that support international sales.

It just doesn't make any sense. Why would we want to go back to that and have that lockout effect where profits are kept overseas and where companies actually become foreign companies?

In the Biden plan, it also eliminates the so-called foreign-derived intangible income provision. This was a carrot that we put in the law very deliberately, a carrot for companies to bring their intellectual property back here. By the way, that is what Google did. So did Cisco. So did Qualcomm. So did Synopsys. So did Facebook. They actually brought valuable intellectual property back home, creating high-paying high-tech jobs here in the United States of America. Why would we want to change that?

The bottom line is that this tax plan that has been proposed would make us uncompetitive again in the global economy, and the Biden administration knows it.

That is why, when Treasury Secretary Yellen announced the proposal to increase these taxes, she actually asked other countries around the world to raise their own corporate taxes. She pleaded with them: We are going to raise ours. You need to now raise your taxes.

Of course, when she said we need to do that to create a more level playing field, other countries in the world said: This is great. We are going to get more American investment and more business for our companies. In fact, right after she made that announcement, the Minister for Finance in Ireland was asked the question. He said he had no interest in joining America in raising taxes--nor do others. China is not going to raise its taxes. In fact, these countries are continuing to do what they have been doing, which is to knock down barriers to jobs and investment in their economies, and that makes sense from their points of view. It makes sense from our point of view to continue to be competitive also.

The tax increases would leave America standing alone atop the corporate tax rate chart. Studies by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and others have shown that, again, it is American workers who will bear the brunt of these corporate tax hikes in the form of lost jobs and lower wages.

Because of the tax hikes, the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton model, in analyzing this Biden plan, actually projects that we will see a nearly 1-percent decrease in the GDP and a 0.7-percent decrease in wages by 2031 over current projections. Now, this is extraordinary to me because that is despite the economic benefit--the obvious benefit--we are going to get from this infrastructure spending. So, despite all of that benefit, we are still going to see a reduction in our economy, or economic growth, and a reduction in wages. This harms American workers, particularly those toward the bottom of the economic ladder.

The bottom line is that the $2.1 trillion tax hike used to pay for this infrastructure bill will harm middle-class families and our businesses, and I believe the American people get that. They recognize that this is not the way forward for our economy or for our infrastructure.

Instead, let's follow the proven bipartisan model on infrastructure. Let's keep the plan to real infrastructure. Let's agree to what it is. Let's do it generously. Let's include broadband. Let's include water projects. Let's make it real infrastructure, though. Then let's come up with sensible pay-fors, including user fees. That is what the American people want, and that is what they deserve.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my friend and colleague Senator Scott from Florida.

Madam President, I am honored to be on the Senate floor with my colleague Senator Scott from the great State of Florida. We are here to talk about an issue that really matters to both Alaska and to Florida and, I would say, that actually matters to the whole country.

Let me begin by saying that, like all States, my State, the great State of Alaska, struggled through the pandemic. There were a lot of challenges. I am proud to say that, with regard to the health challenges of the pandemic, I am very honored and privileged and proud to represent a great group of Americans, my fellow Alaskans, who came together on the health side despite our huge challenges in terms of its being a giant State with a dispersed population.

We worked together, and on so many indicators of health that were directly related to the pandemic, Alaskans did very well. We were the No. 1 per capita in terms of testing throughout almost the entire pandemic. Remarkably, we have been the No. 1 State per capita in terms of vaccine distribution, which is a mini miracle, if you know Alaska, given how big it is. We had vaccines going out of snow machines, dog sleds--you name it. We were getting it out to everybody in a more efficient way than in any other State in the country and, importantly, thank God, with one of the lowest per capita death rates in the country. We are proud of that.

Yet our economy--like many but I would say almost uniquely--is getting hammered, and people are suffering economically, first by the pandemic, of course, and now, unfortunately, by our own Federal Government. Let me just give a couple of examples.

The energy sector is very important to Alaska and very important to America, and, yes, we still need energy. Oil and gas, we need them. We have some of the greatest workers in the world in my State, but the Biden administration thinks we don't need them. It has been crushing my State with nine Executive orders directed solely at the State of Alaska to shut us down--nine by this administration. There is no State in the country that is getting that kind of attention. We don't want that attention.

Regarding commercial fishing, our State has been what I like to call the superpower of seafood. Over 60 percent of all seafood harvested in America comes from Alaska. This has been hurt by the pandemic.

The issue that we are here to talk about today is tourism, which is so important to Alaska and so important to Florida, and it is what I want to talk about with my good friend Senator Scott. It is about bringing relief to our fellow Americans--Floridians, Alaskans--and working to immediately pass the CRUISE Act. That is our bill, which would provide relief to coastal communities in our country--in Alaska and in Florida--and would enable a responsible return of cruise ship activities, which are so important to the small business owners in our States, whose livelihoods depend on having a robust tourism sector.

Let me just very quickly mention one thing. Alaska is open for tourism--one of the most beautiful places in the world. In fact, America, if you want to come and have a great vacation, come on up to Alaska this summer. Not only will you have an amazing experience, but we just announced 2 days ago that you can get a vaccine. Come on up. If your State is too inefficient for you to get a vaccine, have a great vacation in Alaska, and you will get a vaccine in Alaska as well. You can do both. You can see the most beautiful State in the country. You can fish, see glaciers, wildlife, climb mountains, whale watch. If you do that, it is going to help our economy and help the small businesses--fishing guides, hotels. I know Americans want to help one another. That is what we have been doing for the last year. We want you to come up, stay safe, and get a vaccine.

But here is what we need. To enable that to happen in Alaska and in other parts of the country, we need the CDC to better understand its job, its mission, and its role. This particularly relates to the issues of cruise ship passengers and the ability for cruise ship vessels to start to return to America's waters as they are doing throughout the rest of the world. In Asia, Europe, and Latin America, people are cruising safely right now, but the CDC is dragging its feet. It is dithering.

I have been meeting and my staff has been meeting with them, certainly, weekly. I have met twice with the CDC's Executive Director, but all we get is foot-dragging. All we get are excuses. All we get is guidance that is muddled, confusing, and simply unworkable.

Here is the thing: In my State, communities are dying, and no one seems to care. At the CDC, the bureaucrats there don't seem to give a damn about what Americans are suffering through right now, literally. I don't know how many times we can be on calls with them wherein we get no response. When people lose jobs and lose businesses, that has a health impact too.

Here is what our simple bill does, the CRUISE Act.

First, it will require the CDC to issue recommendations for how to mitigate the risks of COVID-19 to passengers and crew on board ships. This will be in addition to what the industry has already put forward, and there are over 70 recommendations.

Second, our bill will establish an interagency working group that will develop recommendations to facilitate the resumption of passenger cruise ship operations in the United States--in Florida and Alaska. The recommendations will facilitate the resumption of passenger cruise ship operations no later than July 4, 2021. Our bill will require the CDC, on no later than that same day, Independence Day, to revoke the order entitled ``Framework for Conditional Sailing and Initial Phase COVID-19 Testing Requirements for Protection of Crew.''

Our bill, finally, ensures that the HHS and CDC retain all appropriate authorities to make and enforce the regulations necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases on individual cruise ships.

This is a commonsense bill. We need the CDC to continue to work with us, certainly, but to recognize that by dragging its feet, tens of thousands of Americans are going to continue to suffer when they don't have to.

We can do this responsibly. My State and the State of Florida want to do this responsibly, but we can't wait any longer. Our tourism season in Alaska is very short. Our businesses need to know that they can open again, and our citizens need help.

I yield the floor to my colleague from Florida, whose citizens are experiencing some of the same devastating impacts that my fellow Alaskans are.

Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 1105 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, to my colleague from Washington, whom I have the utmost respect for, it is true that at the beginning of the pandemic, there were all kinds of challenges with the cruise ship industry. There is no doubt about that. We saw that, but that was over--well over--a year ago. We didn't know anything about the virus then, we didn't have vaccines then, and we didn't see the economic devastation then. It is a very different period right now, a year later.

What we are asking for is the CDC to move. That is what our bill does.

You know, Senator Murkowski and I had a meeting--our second meeting-- with the CDC Director just 3 weeks ago, and in that meeting she told us that they were going to issue all the guidance for the cruise ships-- issue it all so people can plan. They said that they could anticipate with this guidance that we could meet cruising opportunities to start by mid-July in Alaska. They said that with this guidance the CDC wouldn't have to be approving every move--every move going forward--and they said that they would take into consideration this huge progress we have made on vaccinating Americans.

In my State, in southeast Alaska, there are communities with 60, 70, 80 percent vaccination rates. That is where these cruise ships are going to be going.

The unfortunate thing is that not one thing the Director of the CDC told us turned out to be true. That is not good. Her staff or somebody in the CDC needs to be held responsible for telling us something that was not true at all.

Again, what is happening right now is an economic and health devastation. In my State, the estimates are up to $3 billion worth of damage just in Alaska alone because of the foot-dragging, mixed messages, and unresponsiveness when it comes to the CDC's guidance.

As my friend from Florida just mentioned, airlines, schools, hospitals, and hotels have all gotten CDC guidance and have been able to open. But for some reason, they are focused on this industry, which negatively impacts thousands of small businesses across America, in Florida and Alaska. And I certainly hope that the CDC, seeing that we are trying to move this--and it is a bipartisan issue, by the way--will start to do its job--will start to do its job and make the commitment that was made to me and other Senators to get this moving quickly in terms of guidance so we can be having tourism, cruise ships, and otherwise in America by mid-July. That is what I was told by the Director 3 weeks ago. They need to keep that commitment.

I yield to my good friend from Florida.

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

Let my start by urging my colleagues in the Senate to vote against the motion to discharge from the Senate Armed Services Committee the nomination of Colin Kahl for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. This is not a decision I take lightly. I have always felt that any new administration should have his team or her team, and I have generally been very supportive.

When President Biden nominated Dr. Kahl for this position, my expectation was that, if confirmed, he and I would often disagree on policy, but we would actually get along together; we could coexist together. I quickly learned that this would really be impossible with Dr. Kahl. I don't think I have ever said that about any nominee for any position that I can recall.

My Republican colleagues in the Senate Armed Services Committee--all 12 of them--reached the same conclusion. We opposed his nomination unanimously. That is very unusual.

Before I explain why not a single Republican was able to support Dr. Kahl's confirmation in committee, I want to emphasize how rare this is. The Senate Armed Services Committee, as everyone knows, is extremely bipartisan, certainly in the years that I was chairing that committee with Ranking Member Jack Reed. We got along famously. We got things done that other people couldn't get done.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has always been bipartisan. We have disagreements, of course, but Republicans and Democrats on the committee have a legacy of consensus. National security and taking care of our troops are bipartisan concerns. This is how we succeeded in passing the National Defense Authorization Act.

The National Defense Authorization Act is the largest bill every year. It is the one where it sets out the guidelines for the coming year, and it is the one where we always have gotten along. We passed it every year for 60 consecutive years. It shows and demonstrates very clearly how well we get along.

The Department deserves a nominee with bipartisan credibility. You have to keep in mind this position is the No. 3 position in the Pentagon. It represents our shared bipartisan vision of effective national security and healthy civil-military relations.

This position demands a nominee who can carry out the President's policies while engaging those who disagree in good faith. That isn't the case with this nominee. That is why we are faced with this vote today.

I also want to clear up a common misunderstanding. Republicans on the committee did not vote against Dr. Kahl simply because we disagreed with his policy views. Policy is what that position is. It is the policy position of the Pentagon. This should be obvious to anyone who paid attention to the confirmation of President Biden's nominees for Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary. We got through both of them quickly. I don't remember a time when any new administration got the two very significant positions of Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense so fast. We got them in record time. There are some things that we disagree with policywise, but we supported their confirmation, as did most of my Republican colleagues, for one reason: They were eminently qualified. I am talking about the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary. Both of them were eminently qualified, with long track records of bipartisan cooperation and strong professional judgment. I have dealt with both of them for many, many years.

In fact, we expedited the nomination to give the President his national security team just about as quickly as we could. Republicans may disagree with him, but we can work with them very well.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Colin Kahl. The national security problems we face are wicked and complex. We wrestle with them constantly on this committee.

What I cannot support are nominees who reduce complex national security conversations to partisan sound bites. For instance, as many of my colleagues will recall, back in October of 2019, Republicans and Democrats disagreed about our policy in Syria. When President Trump announced a full U.S. troop withdrawal from northeastern Syria, some of our colleagues worried about extended deployments. This is a reasonable concern because here is how Dr. Kahl chose to characterize it: Republicans are ``the party of ethnic cleansing,'' he wrote. He actually said that. He said that publicly.

Good and kind people can disagree with each other. They don't have to resort to name-calling and accusations of war crimes.

That is not an isolated example, as we discovered during our review of Kahl's writings and public statements. He often embraces conspiracy theories. For example, he alleged a ``Kushner-Kremlin quid pro quo'' referring to the President's son-in-law. And when given the opportunity to correct this type of conspiracy theory during his confirmation hearings, he refused to do it. He stood by those statements.

Dr. Kahl also has a long history of claiming every policy decision with which he disagrees will lead to war. Thankfully, he has never been right.

Dr. Kahl predicted that President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran deal would lead to war. It didn't. He said by sanctioning Iran's Foreign Minister, President Trump was boxing ``himself into war.'' There was no war. It didn't happen.

At one point, Dr. Kahl suggested that President Trump might ``start a war with Iran for political diversionary purposes.'' This is a ridiculous claim. Obviously, it didn't happen.

According to Dr. Kahl, the strike on Iranian terrorist leader Soleimani, the appointment of John Bolton as National Security Advisor, and the events of the Korean Peninsula, among others, were going to lead to war. And none of the wars happened.

His public declarations and policy judgment are consistently partisan and consistently wrong. The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy serves as the Defense Secretary's top national security advisor. It requires a leader with sound judgment and even temperament, and Colin Kahl simply doesn't possess either one of these qualities.

Even worse, Dr. Kahl has a long track record of maligning people whom he disagrees with. I mentioned the Syrian example earlier. He also said that the Republican Party has a ``death cult fealty'' to Trump. That is seriously what he said.

The bare minimum for the Defense Department's top policy position is good judgment and even temperament. Dr. Kahl lacks both of these qualifications. It would set a terrible precedent if we confirm someone like him for the job.

I have a history of working so well with people on both sides, which is why I can and have supported many nominees whose policy views differ from mine. That goes with the job.

We have someone who is elected President of the United States. I disagree with him on many of the issues having to do with our defense policy, but because I trust that while we may disagree, they understand that we are all trying to do the right thing for our Nation and for our kids and our grandkids. Unfortunately, I don't have that trust in Dr. Kahl. Confirming him would create a real political challenge for the Department over the years to come.

Every time DOD lays down a new policy or makes a critical military decision, we will have to wonder: Was this the decision informed by the Department's skilled professionals or by the partisan conspiracy theorist that happens to run the Department? That is why all 13 Republicans on the Armed Services Committee voted to reject this nominee. This is why I urge my colleagues to vote against the motion to discharge and urge President Biden to consider another nominee--one who can work productively with both sides of the aisle, even when we disagree. Mr. President, I would like to have you consider these things to make your job and my job a lot easier.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, Colin Kahl is President Biden's nominee to be the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. This is the top strategic planning position at the Department of Defense--the No. 3 position at our Department of Defense. The role is critically important to the national security of our country and the safety of our allies around the world.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kahl is temperamentally and professionally unfit to hold this--or, for that matter, virtually any other--job at the Pentagon. He is impulsive, intemperate, offensive, and has consistently demonstrated terrible judgment.

For the past several years, Mr. Kahl has endeavored, for some inexplicable reason, to be something of a Twitter celebrity--not exactly aiming his sights high. In pursuit of this goal, he has personally attacked the character and reputation of virtually every Republican Senator, as well, I would say, with lots of Democratic Senators.

He has tweeted that Members of both parties who supported the withdrawal from the terrible Iran nuclear deal ``won't be satisfied until they get the war they pushed for decades.''

He wrote that 45 Senators who supported weapon sales to Saudi Arabia share ``ownership of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.'' This claim, in which he referred to the war in Yemen, of course, ignores the role of Iran's murderous, terrorist proxies, something, of course, that Colin Kahl repeatedly turns a blind eye to everywhere in the world-- Iran's evil malignancy.

On a separate occasion, Mr. Kahl said that every Republican who supported an end to combat operations in Syria ``debased themselves at the altar of Trump.'' He then added that the party of Lincoln is ``the party of ethnic cleansing.'' Let's let that sink in for a moment.

Joe Biden has nominated a man to be the No. 3 official at our Department of Defense who has accused one of the two main political parties in our country as being ``the party of ethnic cleansing.'' It is hard to imagine an uglier or more vicious accusation than that.

Perhaps Mr. Kahl could ask Bill Clinton and Susan Rice, on whose watch the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda happened.

When John Bolton was about to become the National Security Advisor, Mr. Kahl, quite reasonably, stated on social media: ``We are going to die.''

To my knowledge, we are not dead, and Mr. Kahl is very much alive, despite John Bolton being appointed as a staffer in the U.S. Government. He also claimed that the Republican Party had a ``death cult fealty'' to former President Trump. These statements and many more make it difficult to conceive of a circumstance in which this nominee could successfully forge a productive relationship with Members of the Republican Party in the Senate or the House or anywhere else, for that matter.

Mr. Kahl's ranting and raving on social media in 2017 may have even gone from offensive to criminal on several occasions. It appears that several of Mr. Kahl's tweets divulge or confirm classified and sensitive information. I recently joined 17 of my fellow Senators in requesting a full FBI investigation into this very serious and troubling matter. No vote should occur until that important inquiry takes place.

Now, the nominee's transgressions on social media are somewhat reminiscent of Neera Tanden's foolish statements on that social media platform. I think this Chamber set a reasonable standard when it rightfully rejected her nomination, and we ought to maintain that standard with this nominee.

In many ways, though, Mr. Kahl's behavior is worse than Ms. Tanden's because his poisonous partisanship, his narrow-sightedness, and his short temper will directly affect his job. He is up for a post that is less partisan and more cooperative in nature than was Ms. Tanden's. His position will require him to be under extreme stress, where he will need to listen to a full range of options, engage in careful deliberation, and regularly make life-and-death decisions. I have to say, his auditions as a social media celebrity over the last 5 years don't inspire confidence in his ability to do so.

When I asked him about this at his hearing, he said he may have gotten caught up in the passions of the moment or that these were stressful, trying times. Some of these social media statements, I would point out, came in the middle of the night when Mr. Kahl was presumably sitting on his couch at home watching his news feed. If he thinks that is a stressful or trying moment, what is he going to do when he is sitting in the Pentagon and Vladimir Putin is invading southern Ukraine?

Talking about foreign policy decisions, I would point out that Mr. Kahl has been like Joe Biden--wrong about nearly every important foreign policy decision over the last decade. In 2010, Mr. Kahl said that concerns about a rapid withdrawal from Iraq were ``exaggerated'' and it was ``very unlikely to trigger a dramatic uptick in violence.'' He missed that one by just a little bit because soon thereafter, 30,000 radical Islamic extremists conquered a quarter of Iraq, and ISIS carried out horrific terrorist attacks on multiple continents.

In 2012, he ridiculed then-Candidate Mitt Romney's, now-Senator Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia was a major geopolitical threat. Of course, 2 years later, Russia invaded Ukraine and conquered Crimea. It has since been an obsession of the Democratic Party, even though Joe Biden has once again reverted to the Democrats' traditional dovishness on Russia, something presumably Mr. Kahl would support.

In 2017, he predicted that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, where the seat of Israel's Government is located, would result in a ``third Intifada.'' Instead, Israel has signed multiple historic peace deals.

In 2018, when President Trump warned Iran against pursuing nuclear weapons, Mr. Kahl wrote the ``war drums are already sounding.'' But no war happened.

That same year, when President Trump withdrew from the terrible Iran nuclear deal, Mr. Kahl said: ``War will be all that is left.'' No war happened.

In 2020, when the United States finally delivered justice by killing Iran's terrorist mastermind Qasam Soleimani, Mr. Kahl said Mr. Trump had ``started a war with Iran in Iraq.'' Yet again, no war happened.

Mr. Kahl's inability to accurately assess these events almost defies probability. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

On issues of war and peace, Mr. Kahl is reliably unreliable and consistently wrong. This is not a fault that one of the chief strategic planners, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon, and one of the most powerful policy advisers in the government ought to have. No Pentagon nominee should be this partisan, this divisive, and this controversial.

Republicans have given every Defense Department and intelligence nominee a fair hearing, and most have passed this Chamber with healthy bipartisan majorities and in some cases unanimously. Mr. Kahl is different. Mr. Kahl is different because his toxic statements and reputation would inhibit the workings of the Department of Defense.

Every time, as Secretary Austin and senior Pentagon personnel testify before the Senate, Members of this body will wonder if the policies they are presented with are the product of hard-headed serious planning or the workings of a political hack.

A man of Mr. Kahl's judgment and temperament and his record of disastrous policy judgments is unfit to be the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and I will oppose his nomination, as every Senator should.

I yield the floor

Madam President, I rise today to discuss my serious concerns about the judgment and the temperament of the nominee Colin Kahl, the controversial nominee to be the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the third highest position in our Department of Defense.

On April 13, 2021, I, along with 17 other Senators, wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting an investigation into whether Kahl had improperly disclosed classified information. We also asked the majority leader not to advance Kahl's nomination to the floor until the FBI completes its investigation. Yet here we stand.

The 18 Senators who signed these letters include Senators who sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate Armed Services Committee.

As Senators, the Constitution charges us with providing advice and consent, and so I stand here today because the Senate deserves to have these questions answered so that we may properly discharge our duties.

I fear my Democratic colleagues want to force this nominee through before we know all the facts--facts which may be incredibly damning to his nomination.

Here is what we do know. As a U.S. Government employee with a Top Secret security clearance, Colin Kahl signed a classified information nondisclosure agreement. In fact, he likely signed many of them during his tenure in government. This document binds government employees in perpetuity to protect classified information under U.S. laws, regulations, and Executive orders.

These classified information nondisclosure agreements don't come with footnotes. They don't come with fine print that says you are only obligated to protect classified information when it is a President you like or when it is a President that belongs to the political party you agree with.

Mr. Kahl signed this document to protect classified information in perpetuity, period. Rather than uphold the oath that he took to his Nation and to his government, Kahl decided to recklessly disclose sensitive information to secure political points on Twitter.

Some of the information that Kahl appears to have leaked--internal deliberations of the National Security Council--is of a category that even Senators and Senate staff with the highest security clearances are almost always denied access.

In December of 2017, Kahl publicly bragged that he confirmed the disclosure to the media of classified planning for military operations in North Korea with ``multiple sources inside the Administration.''

You can see right here his tweet:

There is a contingent at the White House that believes a

limited strike is viable and

the US can control escalation by threatening regime change if

Kim Jong Un retaliates.

This is incredible.

Continuing on that same thread, he says:

I've heard this separately from multiple sources inside the

Administration.

In other words, if the intelligence services of North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, and other adversaries were working to corroborate the accuracy of this leaked information, Kahl saved them the trouble by working with ``multiple sources inside the Administration'' to confirm this leaked classified information, publicly, no less.

Let me put this in a personal perspective. When Kahl tweeted these leaks in December of 2017, I was serving as U.S. Ambassador to Japan. This was at a time when North Korea had launched two intercontinental ballistic missiles over Japan, and they had also detonated a thermonuclear warhead, putting the lives of my family, my fellow American diplomats, and more than 50,000 Active-Duty U.S. military and their families--all of us living within range of North Korea--in harm's way

At a time when tensions couldn't have been higher, Colin Kahl was willing to expose vital information to North Korea and risk American lives--all of this just to score political points. Reckless, I say.

In February and March of 2017, Kahl leaked details about a classified National Security Council meeting on counterterrorism operations in Yemen that he ``confirmed with 4 separate staffers in the room.''

Here is his message, talking about Yemen, quoting the Deputy National Security Advisor, K.T. McFarland, saying ``saddle up.''

The existence of this meeting should have been classified and certainly anything that was said during this meeting. Here it is on Twitter.

Then he follows up by saying he has ``confirmed with 4 separate staffers in the room.''

In short, Kahl used social media and other forums to leak classified information to brag about his ability to get U.S. Government employees to confirm with him the veracity of leaked classified information.

Whoever holds the third highest position at DOD must be someone who completely understands and appreciates the important nature of sensitive information and is dedicated to safeguarding it.

Yet rather than respect the responsibility that came with his access to sensitive material, Kahl recklessly shared this privileged information on Twitter for the world to see, merely to scratch political, partisan itch.

If we let this nominee slide through under these conditions, what message does it send to other ambitious national security types? Doesn't it say that leaking classified information for political reasons will be rewarded? Doesn't it encourage further disclosure of classified information? Doesn't it play right into our adversaries' hands by showing that our internal political divisions can be exploited to obtain the most sensitive information that our government keeps?

My Senate colleagues and I explained in our letter to FBI Director Wray:

The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy plays a key role

in matters crucial to America's national security and should

be held by a person of sound judgment and temperament--

someone who understands and respects the need to safeguard

classified information and to keep national security affairs

distinct and separate from partisan political activities.''

Kahl's growing record of apparent mishandling of classified

information and his evasive response regarding this issue

fall far short of the standards required for holding one of

our nation's top national security positions.

By apparently soliciting or otherwise receiving classified

information from U.S. government officials serving in

national security roles and repeatedly posting such

information on social media . . . Kahl demonstrated disregard

for security protocols that are designed to protect our

national security interests.

Kahl has shown that he is unfit to serve and his nomination should not move forward until the FBI has completed the investigation requested by me and 17 of my Senate colleagues.

I hope that all of my colleagues want to see answers to these important questions, as well, before we begin to advance his nomination.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.