Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the nomination of Scott Pruitt to serve as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, is tasked with

protecting human health and the environment, including our precious air, land, and water. This is clearly one of the most critical missions in the Federal Government.

Americans believe that a great country deserves safe drinking water, clean air, and to know that the products we use are safe. And Americans care about continuing this legacy for future generations, believing that we should leave the environment in good shape or better than we found it, and that is where the EPA comes in.

Before the Agency was created in 1970, a hodgepodge of inconsistent State and city regulations proved to be inadequate for protecting the right of Americans to have a clean, safe environment. Before the EPA, in some cities in this country, the air was so polluted that during the day, drivers could barely see the car in front of them. Studies indicate that the air in the 1950s in Los Angeles, as measured by particulate matter and ozone pollution, was worse than it is in Beijing today. Our rivers, including the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, caught fire. Schools were built on toxic chemical dumps. I know the thought of public health risks like these sound preposterous today, but this was all the case back before the EPA. It took parents and regular citizens standing up and demanding better to finally force action. In 1970, President Richard Nixon and a Democratic Congress worked in a bipartisan manner to create the EPA.

Let me be clear. The EPA is not perfect. There are many instances when I have stood up to the Agency because I felt its actions were not in the best interests of Minnesotans. That said, since the creation of the Agency, the EPA has significantly improved our public health and our environment by cleaning up our air and cleaning up our water.

We still have a lot of work left to do. Yet we are now faced with a President and an EPA nominee who want to gut the Agency and reverse the progress we have made. President Trump has repeatedly attacked environmental protections and the EPA. He has called to ``get rid of'' the Agency. And during an interview with FOX News, Candidate Trump said of the EPA: ``What they do is a disgrace.'' And now he is in a position to try to implement his stated goal of gutting the EPA--gutting the EPA, that is right. He wants to slash critical public health and environmental safeguards, and to do this, he handpicked Mr. Pruitt.

Mr. Pruitt intends to prevent the EPA from protecting public health and the environment by reducing the budget by two-thirds. Trump transition team member Myron Ebell made these plans clear. Mr. Pruitt will cut and then cut some more and then cut some more, until the Agency we trust to keep us safe is no bigger than it was when Richard Nixon was President.

So what exactly should we cut? Which aspect of public health and our environment is in need of less protection and research? Well, let me tell you about some of the things the EPA has accomplished since its creation.

The EPA helps protect us from toxins. From 1948 to 1988, 30 million homes were treated for termite infestation with two related, very longlasting chemicals: heptachlor and chlordane. These chemicals are among the 12 worst known persistent organic pollutants--a rogues' gallery called the dirty dozen. A long-term study found that millions of Americans have these chemicals in their blood and in their fat and that the higher the levels, the more likely a person is to suffer from dementia, type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, breast cancer, or lymphoma.

The problems arising from heptachlor and chlordane are still with us, but at least they are not getting worse. Why? Because hard work by EPA scientists helped expose the risks of these chemicals and led them to be banned in the United States in 1988. The world didn't catch up to the protection offered to the American people by our EPA until an international ban came into effect in 2001.

The Agency also determined that lead in our paint and lead in our gas caused terrible public health problems, and they got the lead out. In the 1970s, 88 percent of American children had elevated levels of lead in their blood. Now the number is less than 1 percent.

However, we know that the battle against old toxins is far from over, as the disastrous lead poisoning in Flint, MI, tragically reminds us. We also know that new risks appear every year. That is why Congress recently passed bipartisan legislation to allow the EPA to take action on the most concerning toxic chemicals, including asbestos. Slashing the EPA budget endangers future progress and will not make us better off, will not make us safer, will not make our children safer.

The EPA has also made our air cleaner. Thanks to the EPA, we have reduced air pollution--like smog and ozone and particulate matter--by more than 70 percent since 1970, thus preventing millions of asthma attacks, hospital visits, lost workdays, and more than 100,000 premature deaths every year. At the same time, the American economy has grown 240 percent.

The Agency was also instrumental in the phaseout of harmful substances responsible for depleting the ozone layer. The ozone layer shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation that leads to sunburns or, worse, skin cancer. Thanks to the work of the EPA and other Federal agencies in cooperation with the international community, ozone depletion has now stopped and the layer has begun to regenerate.

The EPA has also made our water cleaner. The Agency invests billions in drinking and wastewater infrastructure every year through the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds. These funds are particularly important to rural communities.

What is more, the EPA is actually saving consumers money. Take the fuel efficiency standards that require car companies to manufacture vehicles that go farther on a gallon of gas. These standards both reduce air pollution and save people money. Thanks in part to the EPA, from 1975 to 2013, the average fuel economy of a car sold in the United States more than doubled. Further increases in fuel economy standards under the Obama administration mean that if you buy a new car, you can expect to save an average of $7,300 on gas during the lifetime of that vehicle. As a whole, Americans will save $1.7 trillion at the pump.

This is just a small subset of what the EPA has accomplished over the years to protect public health and the environment. And I didn't even mention cleaning up toxic waste sites or testing foreign products for lead and mercury. But if Mr. Pruitt is confirmed to lead the EPA, all this progress and continued work is at risk.

As the attorney general of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt put the will of his corporate donors above the public interest time and time again, suing the Agency 18 times--suing the EPA 18 times--to block clean air and clean water protections. Now Mr. Pruitt wants to run the EPA, but he refuses to say that he will permanently recuse himself from those lawsuits that are still pending. Thus, he would be both the defendant and plaintiff in those cases. This is a bizarre world nomination. We cannot allow this type of conflict of interest at the EPA.

As attorney general, he failed to take environmental protections seriously. He dismantled the environmental protection unit within the AG's office, and in particular Mr. Pruitt's record shows a disdain for protecting the air we breathe. He filed three lawsuits to block EPA health standards for smog, soot, mercury, arsenic, lead, and other air pollutants. His actions directly threaten those who suffer from asthma and other lung conditions. We can't go back to the air we had in the 1970s. We can't afford the air Beijing has today.

Mr. Pruitt is so ideologically driven to protect the interests of oil, gas, and other polluters that he even gets in the way of clean energy projects that would create jobs. Take for example the Plains & Eastern Clean Line, a high-voltage transmission project that President Trump has identified as an infrastructure priority. It will bring clean wind power from the heartland to power-hungry cities. As Oklahoma attorney general, Mr. Pruitt did everything he could to kill that very same project.

Even more concerning to me is Mr. Pruitt's years of opposition to the renewable fuel standard, the RFS. This program is vital in our fight against dirty air, and it also greatly benefits Minnesota's rural economy. It is certainly better to drive our cars on

biofuels from the Midwest than on oil from the Middle East. I know that Mr. Pruitt pledged during his hearing to honor the RFS, but this same law provides him with an important loophole: The RFS permits the head of the EPA to reduce the congressionally mandated levels of biofuel production. I, for one, do not trust an avid opponent of the RFS to now be responsible for its implementation.

During the confirmation hearings, my Democratic colleagues pushed Mr. Pruitt on climate change. His answers were not reassuring. Unlike our new President, Mr. Pruitt did not call climate change a ``hoax.'' Instead, he was more subtle, repeatedly saying: ``The climate is changing, and human activity impacts are changing climate in some manner.'' Those words are intentionally deceptive. They are meant to sound reasonable but also to excuse inaction. If we look at Mr. Pruitt's record, it shows that he has been steadfastly against action on climate change, including a suit to block the first requirements for powerplants to reduce their carbon emissions. Let me remind you that these requirements are based on Supreme Court rulings from a conservative majority Court at that.

In a 2007 decision, Massachusetts v. the EPA, the Supreme Court found that the EPA had authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. It also directed the EPA to assess whether climate change endangers public health, which the Agency correctly determined it does. The Court further ruled that because of this hazard, the EPA is obligated to regulate greenhouse gases.

During his hearing, Mr. Pruitt made clear that all he wants to do is transfer more environmental protection duties to the States, but there are two major problems with that. First, 50 States each implementing different requirements is both inefficient and likely to lead to a race to the bottom. There are many States that will be tempted to trade away the long-term public health of their citizens for the quick financial rewards that will come if they are able to lure businesses from other States with the promise of lax environmental regulations.

All Americans deserve a clean environment. If States want to innovate, free them to do better than our national standards, but there needs to be an EPA that can make sure they don't do worse than our national standards.

While my State of Minnesota has been a leader in environmental protection, the second problem with the State-by-State approach is that pollution doesn't respect State boundaries. The people of my State should not suffer ill effects of pollution from States upwind.

Mr. Pruitt also implied during his hearing that the EPA's regulations are killing jobs, suggesting we must either choose employment and economic prosperity or public health and environmental protection, but this is a false choice. We know we can and must in fact have both. Addressing environmental challenges like climate change will not only help prevent unprecedented damage to our economy but will also spur economic growth and innovation.

My home State of Minnesota has shown how we can do this. In 2007, under a Republican Governor, we established a renewable energy standard that produced 25 percent of our power from renewable sources by 2025. We established an energy efficiency resource standard requiring utilities to become a little more efficient every year. We established an aggressive target to reduce greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050, and we are national leaders in biodiesel blending requirements. These policies have not led to economic ruin in Minnesota. They have led to economic development--rural economic development--as we harvest the wind and Sun and convert our biomass into energy. We are investing in clean energy technology not only because it cleans up the air but because it creates thousands of jobs. In fact, a clean energy economy now employs more than 50,000 people in Minnesota, and it will continue to grow.

In 2005, 6 percent of Minnesota's electricity came from renewable sources. Today it is almost 25 percent, and we continue to go higher. In addition to good jobs for Minnesotans, this transition brought a 17- percent decline in power sector greenhouse gas emissions during a decade when the population of Minnesota increased 7 percent. It is clear that an EPA led by Mr. Pruitt will not move us in the direction Minnesota is going.

Americans expect and deserve clean water, clean air, and a hospitable environment. Although EPA is far from perfect, the Agency has shown that a cleaner environment is compatible with economic growth. In fact, cleaning the environment helps drive economic growth. We cannot afford to entrust the EPA to Mr. Pruitt or anyone else who has a history of putting polluters' interests above the public's and above the economy as a whole. We cannot afford to entrust this Agency to someone the President has handpicked to slash its budget and to prevent it from carrying out its mission. Mr. Pruitt represents a step backward, not a step forward. He is maybe the last person who should be the next leader of the EPA. I will oppose this nomination, and I call on my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my postcloture debate time to Senator Schumer.

But first, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, would my friend, the Senator from Wyoming, read back the part that he said earlier in the speech about Democrats doing this, the reasons we are delaying? Would he do me that favor?

The reason I am raising this is that we had a parliamentary question back when Elizabeth Warren was speaking on the Sessions nomination which, I guess, the majority leader questioned whether she was, in that case, questioning the motives or actions of a fellow Senator.

It seems to me that the Senator from Wyoming, whom I respect, was doing the same about Democrats in the Senate.

Mr. President, I have a parliamentary inquiry for the Parliamentarian.

Mr. President, it seems to me that that is imputing to Democrats' actions and motives not becoming of a U.S. Senator.

I made a parliamentary inquiry, and I would appreciate an answer.

Can I get some explanation?

Mr. President, can I have a minute?

Mr. President, may I ask the Chair for permission to speak for a minute.

Thank you. I had no intention of actually filing a rule XIX objection. My point is--and the reason is because I didn't want to delay things.

But we have a nominee here who has sued the EPA 18 times. The reason we are doing this is because we don't think this nominee is qualified. It has nothing to do with us not recognizing the results of the election, and I actually take offense to that.

I don't know why the Presiding Officer ruled the way he did because I think it is obvious that it is imputing motives unbecoming to Senators, by saying that we don't recognize the legitimacy of the election and we are pretending that Hillary Clinton won the election.

I am just raising this as a point, which is that Senators do this routinely, and if every time we raised a rule XIX on something like that, we would delay--if you want to accuse people of delaying the Senate--

I appreciate it. I thank very much the Presiding Officer and I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

I am just making a point here.

Mr. President, my understanding was that the Democratic leader wanted to come and speak for 5 minutes between Senator Stabenow and myself. But he is not here, so I am going to speak.

Before I start my remarks that I have prepared, I want to say something specifically to the Presiding Officer because he is a new Senator from Indiana.

I read a front-page article in the New York Times just a few weeks ago. It featured Indiana University Hospital and the health physicians there. It was an article about the savings and the delivery reform that have been driven by the Affordable Care Act, things that will be staying with us even if this is repealed, which I hope it isn't. But this is a quote I would like to read for the Presiding Officer from Dr. Gregory Kira, cochief of primary care, Indiana University Health Physicians.

I would ask the Presiding Officer for his attention for a second. This is what it says: `` `I've been a registered Republican my whole life, but I support the Affordable Care Act,' said Dr. Gregory C. Kiray, co-chief of primary care for IU Health Physicians, `because it allows patients to be taken care of.' ''

I admit, I didn't have 49 others for every State, but I had remembered reading this.

On February 3, 2009, Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, withdrew his nomination because he hadn't paid his taxes on his car service. On January 9, 2001, Linda Chavez, President George W. Bush's nominee for the Department of Labor, withdrew her nomination after questions were raised about her decision to shelter an undocumented immigrant. Most recently, Vincent Viola, President Trump's nominee to be--

Would the leader like me to yield to him for a few minutes?

Really?

Would that be good for me and my career?

Well, I am going to yield to our leader in just a moment, when he manages to get there, and it will be the esteemed Senator from New York, Charles Schumer. I will narrate as he is stepping over there, walking now to the podium--the leader, whom I will yield to.

Thank you, Mr. Leader.

Mr. President, I have to start this over fresh. I don't know if the Congressional Record needs to have this first half paragraph twice, but so be it.

On February 3, 2009, Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, withdrew his nomination because he hadn't paid his taxes on his car service. On January 9, 2001, Linda Chavez, President George W. Bush's nominee for the Department of Labor, withdrew her nomination after questions were raised about her decision to shelter an undocumented immigrant. Most recently, Vincent Viola, President Trump's nominee to be the Secretary of the Army, withdrew his nomination after it proved too difficult for him to distance himself from his business ties.

Congressman Price's conflicted financial investments and his affiliation with conspiracy-theory-peddling extremists should be enough to disqualify his nomination. On top of that, Congressman Price's policy agenda squarely contradicts what the majority of the American people want and the key promises President Trump made during his campaign. It is, frankly, hard to believe that we are seriously considering someone who has advanced policies that would privatize Medicare, gut Medicaid, and rip coverage away from millions of Americans.

For all of these reasons, I strongly oppose Congressman Price's nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Let's take these issues one by one.

First, Congressman Price's stock trades. Public documents show that between 1993 and 2012, Congressman Price owned shares in tobacco companies worth tens of thousands of dollars. At the same time, Congressman Price voted against landmark legislation in 2009 that gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco and bring down the death toll inflicted by tobacco products. That means Congressman Price, a physician who swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath of ``do no harm,'' voted against public health and for Big Tobacco. This is the person who is slated to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, someone who personally profited from increased sales of deadly, addictive products.

When asked about this during his hearing in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Congressman Price's best defense was that his broker made the stock trades on behalf without his knowledge.

Here is the problem with that defense:

First, Congressman Price annually reported his financial holdings, signing off on documents acknowledging his investments in tobacco companies, meaning that he would have knowledge of the fact that his vote to block tobacco regulation could have a direct financial benefit to him.

Second, these were not investments in diversified funds; these were individual stocks that he owned for nearly 20 years and that he reported paid him dividends. Let me repeat that. Congressman Price, medical doctor, owned individual tobacco company stocks that paid him dividends.

Owning tens of thousands of dollars of tobacco stocks while voting to help tobacco companies was not Congressman Price's only questionable investment. In late December, the Wall Street Journal reported that over the past 4 years, Congressman Price has traded stocks worth more than $300,000 in about 40 health-related companies while at the same time serving on the House Ways and Means Committee, where he drafted and cosponsored legislation that could affect his investments.

Let's talk about one example that is particularly troubling. Congressman Price made his largest ever stock purchase in a company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, a small biotech company based in Australia. This is a company that has only one experimental therapy in the early stages of testing, has never generated revenues from drug sales. It is not exactly a household name. How did Congressman Price get in on this sweetheart deal? He was told about Innate by Congressman Chris Collins, who, in addition to being a Member of the House of Representatives, serves on the board of directors for Innate Immunotherapeutics and is the company's largest shareholder.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Congressman Price was part of a small group of fewer than 20 U.S. investors who participated in the private stock sale. The New York Times and the Buffalo News reported that many of those people had close ties to Congressman Collins, including Collins' chief of staff, a prominent DC lobbyist, and several of Congressman Collins' campaign contributors.

On August 31, Congressman Price reported that as part of this special private stock sale, he bought about 400,000 shares of Innate stock for as little as 18 cents a share. That same day, the stock was trading on the Australian Stock Exchange for the equivalent of 31 cents per share. That is a 42-percent difference--42 percent below the market price--and Congressman Price now stands to make a profit of more than $200,000. That is quite a stock tip.

Richard Painter, George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer, describes Price's stock trades as ``crazy. . . . We wouldn't have put up with anybody in the Bush administration buying and selling health care stocks.'' Painter went on to explain that ``if you, as a member of Congress, buy and sell health care stocks at the same time you are possessing non-public information about that legislation, you are taking the risk of being charged with criminal insider trading.''

Let me repeat that. Mr. Painter, who was George W. Bush's chief ethics official, suggested that Mr. Price's actions risk a criminal insider trading charge.

Congressman Price could have directed his broker to stay away from tobacco stocks. He could have directed his broker to stay away from health care stocks or individual stocks altogether given that health care was one of his legislative priorities. But he did not. Why would Congressman Price take this risk?

My colleagues and I have sent Congressman Price a number of letters asking for more information about his stock trades and investments. If this is all aboveboard, then Congressman Price should have nothing to hide. I also submitted questions for the record as a member of the HELP Committee. In response to all of these questions, I have received nothing. It makes no sense that his nomination has been brought to the floor despite his refusal to respond to committee questions.

Congressman Price has demonstrated a lack of judgment with his stock trades and now is stonewalling the committee, refusing to answer our inquiries, but Congressman Price's questionable stock trades aren't the only area raising red flags.

My second set of concerns stems from Congressman Price's longstanding association with conspiracy-peddling, anti-science extremists. For more than 25 years, Congressman Price has been a dues-paying member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He has spoken at the organization's conferences and even described the organization's executive director as one of his personal heroes. This organization is way out of the mainstream. It promotes anti-vaccine pseudoscience and denies the scientific fact that HIV causes AIDS. It is an organization that blames ``swarms'' of immigrant children for disease and has published scientifically discredited theories linking abortion to breast cancer. At one point, it even accused President Barack Obama of hypnotizing voters with ``neuro-linguistic programming.''

Let me repeat that. It accused President Barack Obama of hypnotizing voters with ``neuro-linguistic programming.''

That is not all. The statement of principles for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has an entire section devoted to urging doctors to refuse to participate in Medicare, in which it says the effect of such government-run programs is ``evil, and participation in carrying out his provisions is, in our opinion, immoral.'' Congressman Price--the person poised to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, the person responsible for leading Medicare--has been an active, engaged member of this organization for 25 years.

Just in case you don't think he has bought into these ideas, let me read you what Congressman Price wrote in 2009 in an op-ed: ``I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare.''

Since Congressman Price will not answer my questions, I will pose this to one of my Republican colleagues: How are the American people supposed to trust Congressman Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services given that he has belonged to an organization for over 25 years that has such blatant disregard for science and a propensity for putting partisanship and ideology above evidence?

Lastly and most importantly, the policy reforms that Congressman Price has put forward are so extreme that they should be disqualifying in and of themselves. As an editorial recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine stated, ``As compared with his predecessors' actions, Price's record demonstrates less concern for the sick, the poor, and the health of the public and much greater concern for the economic well-being of their physician caregivers.'' That is from the New England Journal of Medicine.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the article printed in the Record.

This article cites his votes against mental health parity--think about what that means in terms of treatment during this opioid crisis--against funding for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, against the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, against tobacco regulation, against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, and more.

Price has also been a champion of efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that if the ACA is repealed, nearly 20 million Americans will lose their health care coverage immediately, with the number growing to 32 million over the next 10 years, and 300,000 of those individuals live in my State of Minnesota. Let me tell you about at least two of them.

Leanna has a 3-year-old son named Henry. Henry has been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and his treatment will last at least until April of 2018. Henry often needs around-the-clock care to manage his nausea, vomiting, pain, and sleepless nights. This is a 3-year-old boy. Henry's immune system is so compromised that he is not supposed to go to daycare. So Leanna left her job to take care of him. Leanna's family is supported by her spouse, but they couldn't pay for Henry's treatment on one salary. Leanna says:

It is because of the ACA that Henry gets proper health

care. Henry can get therapy and the things he needs to

maintain his health and work toward beating cancer. Henry is

still with us because of the ACA.

Let me say that again: ``Henry is still with us because of the ACA.''

I have asked Republicans repeatedly to show me the plan they have to make sure Leanna and her son Henry and the hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans who have gained coverage don't lose the care they need. I have yet to see their plan. What I have seen Congressman Price advocate for so far is pretty awful. His proposals would strip away coverage for people with preexisting conditions, strip away preventive health benefits, strip away protections from annual and lifetime limits, strip away coverage for young adults. Moreover, Congressman Price views Medicaid and Medicare as government expenditures to be cut, rather than lifelines to millions of seniors, disabled populations, children and families. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Price introduced proposals to cut funding for Medicaid by more than $2 trillion.

In my State, Medicaid provides health insurance to 14 percent of the residents. That includes two out of five low-income individuals, one in four children, one in two people with disabilities, and one in two nursing home residents. Think about that. One in two

people in nursing homes are covered by Medicaid in my State.

What is going to happen to these people--our parents, our children, our spouses, our families--if Congressman Price and his colleagues succeed in slashing Medicaid's budget? I can guarantee you, it will not be kind and it will not be just and Americans are going to lose out.

Congressman Price's assault on our health care system doesn't end there. He wants to slash Medicare's budget by hundreds of billions of dollars, undermining our basic guarantee of coverage to our Nation's seniors, and no wonder. Let me remind you, this is the same person who wrote: ``I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the Federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare.''

Do we really want the person who wrote this to be running Medicare? Price's determination to gut Medicaid and Medicare is directly opposed by the vast majority of Americans and in direct opposition to President Trump's campaign promise never to cut Medicaid or Medicare.

When Tom Daschle withdrew from consideration for HHS Secretary, he talked about the challenges of health care reform and said:

This work will require a leader who can operate with the

full faith of Congress and the American people, and without

distraction. Right now, I am not that leader, and will not be

a distraction.

So I say to Congressman Price, you do not have the full faith of the Congress, and you do not have the full faith of the American people. You are not the leader this country needs, and you should not be a distraction. Since you have not withdrawn your nomination, I urge my colleagues to do the right thing and oppose this controversial nomination.

I yield the floor to my colleague from Hawaii.

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

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I rise this evening in opposition to the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be our next Secretary of Education. This is one of the most important jobs in our government. The Department of Education bears responsibility for making sure that every child in America has the opportunity to fulfill his or her potential, which means that the Secretary of Education has an enormous amount of power to shape our Nation's future. This is not a job for amateurs.

President Obama's first Secretary of Education was Arne Duncan, who had spent 7\1/2\ years building a record of accomplishment as CEO of Chicago's public school system, previous to which he had been director of a mentoring program and the founder of a charter school.

When Secretary Duncan stepped down, he was replaced by Dr. John King, Jr., the recipient of a doctorate in education administrative practice. He had served as Deputy Secretary under Arne Duncan and was previously the education commissioner for the State of New York. Each brought to the job a background in public education that informed their understanding of what students, parents, teachers, and administrators need in order to succeed, which brings me to Betsy DeVos.

There are reasons to be skeptical about Mrs. DeVos's nomination right off the bat. As my Republican colleague, Senator Collins of Maine, put it: ``The mission of the Department of Education is broad, but supporting public education is at its core.''

Well, in Mrs. DeVos, President Trump sent us a nominee with no experience in public education. Mrs. DeVos has never been a public school superintendent or a public school principal or a public schoolteacher. She has never attended a public school. She has never sent a child to a public school. Mrs. DeVos has no formal background in education, no classroom experience, and no demonstrated commitment to supporting public education whatsoever.

In fact, Mrs. DeVos has a long history of actively undermining public education. She and her family have spent millions of dollars advocating for an ideology that would steal funds from public schools in order to fund private and religious education. Let's take a moment to talk about what that means.

Mrs. DeVos ran a political action committee called ``All Children Matter,'' which spent millions in campaign contributions to promote the use of taxpayer dollars for school vouchers. The argument was that these vouchers would allow low-income students to leave the public school system and attend the private or religious school of their family's choice. Mrs. DeVos has described this as ``school choice,'' claiming that it would give parents a chance to choose the best school for their children, but that is not how it works. In reality, most school vouchers don't cover the whole cost of private school tuition, nor do they cover additional expenses like transportation, school uniforms, and other supplies, which means the vouchers don't create more choices for low-income families; they simply subsidize existing choices for families who could already afford to pay for private school.

As it happens, we have a real-life test case that we can look at to determine whether Mrs. DeVos's argument holds water. Mrs. DeVos heads up a voucher program in the State of Indiana, and guess what happened. Today, more than half of the students in the Hoosier State who received vouchers never actually attended Indiana public schools in the first place, which means that their families were already in a position to pay for private school. Indeed, vouchers are going to families earning as much as $150,000 a year.

I am sure these families appreciated the extra help, but as of 2015, nearly half of Indiana's children relied on free and reduced-price lunch programs. These are the kids Mrs. DeVos claims would be helped by school vouchers; instead, taxpayer dollars were taken away from public schools that remain the only choice for these low-income families and given to families who could already afford private school, who were already sending their kids to private school. That is the reality of school vouchers.

That is why after Mrs. DeVos developed a similar proposal for a voucher program in Pennsylvania and an analysis projected that, just like in Indiana, the vouchers would mostly benefit kids already enrolled in private schools, voters rejected it on multiple occasions. Yet Mrs. DeVos and her family continued their fight for school vouchers. In fact, she has been such a fervent advocate that her political action committee, ``All Children Matter,'' received the largest fine for violating election law in Ohio's State history--a $5.3 million fine that nearly a decade later she still hasn't paid.

Why do this? The evidence is clear that Mrs. DeVos's voucher obsession doesn't help low-income families. Quite to the contrary, it represents a serious threat to the public school system--a system that as many as 90 percent of the children rely on--but Mrs. DeVos describes as ``a dead end.''

The truth is that Mrs. DeVos's education advocacy isn't really about education at all. She describes her goal as follows: to advance God's kingdom. Now many families choose to send their children to religious schools, and many children receive an excellent education at religious schools, but it is the public school system that the Secretary of Education is supposed to focus on, and that is not the part that Mrs. DeVos and her family have put at the forefront of her advocacy.

Mrs. DeVos spent a decade serving on the board of the Acton Institute, which seeks to infuse religion in public life, beginning with public education. She and her family have devoted millions to promote the institute's work, including promoting ideas like this:

We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain

independence for Christian schools until we train up a

generation of people who know there is no religious

neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no

neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in

constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious

order which finally denies the religious liberty of the

enemies of God.

Those are the words of Gary North, a Christian Dominionist for whom the Acton Institute serves as a forum.

Of course, not everyone who believes in the potential of parochial schools shares his view, but this is the kind of stuff Mrs. DeVos and her family have spent millions and millions of dollars promoting. It is fine for someone to hold strong religious views and to advocate for those views and to spend their family fortune encouraging others to adopt, but it is entirely fair to ask whether the mission of building a Bible-based social, political, and religious order is compatible with the mission of the Department of Education. So, yes, based on Mrs. DeVos's radical ideology, I was skeptical when her nomination was sent to the Senate, but I understand that others in this body may not have shared my discomfort.

Within this Chamber we have important differences when it comes to education policy and, for that matter, the appropriateness of using taxpayer funds to advance God's Kingdom. And do you know what? That is fine. But we all have the exact same responsibility when it comes to vetting the President's Cabinet nominees.

Each of us is called upon to determine not just whether we agree with the nominee's ideology but whether that nominee is free from relevant conflicts of interest and, critically, whether the nominee is competent, whether he or she is capable of doing the job. Making that call is our job, and that is why we have the process that we have. It is why we ask to see the nominee's financial information. It is why we ask them to submit written answers to questionnaires about their experience and their record. And it is why we have them come to the Senate to sit in front of committees and to answer our questions.

Unfortunately, during her hearing, Mrs. DeVos proved beyond a shadow of a doubt not only that her ideology is fundamentally incompatible with the mission of the Department of Education but that she is fundamentally incompetent to be its leader. Throughout the hearing, she was unable to answer basic questions about her views on important issues, she was unfamiliar with basic concepts of education policy, and she was unwilling to make basic commitments to continue the Department's work on behalf of our most vulnerable children.

Let me give you one example of what I mean. During my 5 minutes of questioning, I asked Mrs. DeVos to weigh in

on the debate about measuring growth versus measuring proficiency. I am going to take a few moments right now to make sure that everyone here and everyone watching at home understands what this debate is about and just how central it is to the future of education policy. The difference between the two approaches, proficiency and growth, is very easy to explain.

Let's say a fifth grade teacher has a student who comes into the classroom reading at a second grade level. Over the course of the school year, the teacher brings the student up to a fourth grade level. If we are measuring growth, we would say: Well, that teacher brought that student up two grade levels in 1 year. That teacher is a hero.

If we are measuring for proficiency, we would say: Well, that student is still reading below grade level. That teacher is a failure.

That is the difference between measuring growth and measuring proficiency. It took me all of 30 seconds to explain that, but I could spend all night talking about what this debate means for students, teachers, school leaders, and our entire education system.

Everyone agrees that there should be accountability in our education system--accountability for school systems, schools, teachers. We want to know we are getting results. That was the core idea behind all the standardized testing in No Child Left Behind. The problem was that No Child Left Behind set up a system in which we assessed student learning by measuring proficiency and only proficiency. As the law was implemented, all sorts of problems emerged from taking this approach.

For example, teachers in Minnesota would tell me how measuring proficiency would lead to what they called ``a race to the middle.'' See, measuring proficiency only measures whether or not students are performing at grade level--at this line of proficiency, at grade level--and a teacher is measured by what percentage of her students or his students are above proficiency or at proficiency. A teacher does not get credit for helping kids who were already well above grade level to perform better, and they don't get credit for helping kids who are way below grade level start to catch up. So we had this race to the middle because it is a yes-or-no question: Did this student achieve proficiency or not? A teacher's entire career could depend on how many of his or her students met that arbitrary goal.

So under this system, understand this, please. A teacher had a strong incentive to ignore all of the students at the top who were already going to meet proficiency. No matter what you did to that kid, that kid was going to beat proficiency in the No Child Left Behind test at the end of the year. They had a strong incentive to ignore all the kids at the bottom because, no matter what you did, that student wouldn't reach proficiency. The only thing--or one of the only things--I liked about No Child Left Behind was the name. And we were leaving behind the kids at the top and the kids at the bottom because of the insistence on proficiency.

I can't overstate how central this issue is to education, and I can't tell my colleagues how important it is to educators across America. If you talk to any State education secretary, any district superintendent, any local school board member, any principal, any classroom teacher-- and, heck, parents--they will have an opinion on measuring growth versus measuring proficiency.

So when Mrs. DeVos came before the HELP Committee, I asked for her opinion on this very basic--this extremely basic--extremely important question, and she had no idea what I was talking about. Let me be clear. She wasn't reluctant to declare her opinion. She wasn't trying to strike a middle ground. She did not know what I was talking about.

We would not accept a Secretary of Defense who couldn't name the branches of the military. We would not accept a Secretary of State who couldn't identify Europe on a map. We would not accept a Treasury Secretary who doesn't understand multiplication. In fact, in nearly any circumstance, if a candidate for a job is asked a question that basic and that important and simply whiffs on it the way that Mrs. DeVos did, there is no second question. There is just a thank you for your time, and we will let you know, and will you please send in the next candidate.

Earlier this year, the University of Minnesota hired a new head football coach. I wasn't there for the interview. But imagine if the first question for a candidate for football coach of your university was as follows: How many yards does it take to get a first down? And imagine if the candidate answers as follows: Thank you for your question, Mr. Athletic Director; I can pledge to you that I will work very hard to get as many first downs as possible to make sure, we hope, that we lead the team to touchdowns.

This wasn't the question. The question was this: How many yards does it take to get a first down?

Well, thank you again for the question. I can tell you this: I will look forward to working with you to prevent the other team from getting first downs also.

Understand, that is how basic my question to Mrs. DeVos was, and that is how shocking it was that she simply didn't know enough about education policy to answer it.

This inexplicable failure alone was enough for me to conclude that Mrs. DeVos lacked the knowledge and understanding that should be a bare minimum for anyone seeking the position. But the entire hearing--the entire hearing--was a showcase for her lack of qualifications. I would urge any of my colleagues who haven't had a chance to watch it. I urge you to do so before casting a vote for this nominee. It was one of the most embarrassing scenes I have witnessed during my time in the Senate. In fact, I believe it may have been one of the most embarrassing performances by a nominee in the history of the Senate.

Asked about the right of children with disabilities to get a quality public education, she didn't know that this right is protected by a Federal law--the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Asked about guns in schools, she suggested that maybe guns should be kept on hand in case grizzly bears attacked. This was in answer to a question from Senator Murphy, who in Congress represents Sandy Hook and who, as a Senator, represents those parents. That was her answer to him.

Asked about whether she would hold private parochial schools that get taxpayer funding to the same standard of accountability as public schools, she couldn't or wouldn't say.

Asked about a family foundation that has donated millions of dollars to an organization promoting conversion therapy for LGBT youth, she claimed she had no involvement, which is ridiculous. Even if Mrs. DeVos's own role as vice president of that foundation was a 13-year clerical error, as she now claims, she herself has donated approximately $75,000 to support that anti-LGBT organization's work.

Now, understand that none of these were difficult questions. None of these were gotchas. All of these failures took place during a single 5- minute-per-Senator round of questioning, because after that first round, the hearing was cut off and our chairman refused to allow any further questions.

By the way, I would like to say a word about that move to cut off questioning. I have great respect for the chairman of the HELP Committee, Lamar Alexander. We have worked together, and he worked with Senator Murray on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, changing it to ESSA, the Every Student Succeeds Act. I respect the chairman tremendously. But his decision to end that hearing was wrong, and his rationale was simply false. Our chairman insisted that because Secretary Duncan and Secretary King had been subject to only a single round of questions, there was a precedent to deny the minority a second round of questioning of Mrs. DeVos. That simply isn't so.

First of all, as I discussed earlier, both Ernie Duncan and John King were experienced education professionals with long records of public service. Even if Republican Members had occasion to disagree with them on policy matters, there was no question that their backgrounds had prepared them for the job of Secretary of Education, and that is the bigger point here. There were no further questions. In both cases, committee members weren't denied the opportunity for a second

round of questioning. They simply chose not to engage in one. Indeed, when I asked the Congressional Research Service, they confirmed that those hearings did not establish the precedent that our chairman claimed.

Instead of allowing us to question Mrs. DeVos further, the chairman invited us to submit additional questions in writing, presumably so that she could get some help from her Trump administration handlers in answering them. Even so, her written responses only served to further expose her own lack of understanding of how education policy affects Americans.

For example, I asked Mrs. DeVos in writing about the effects of trauma and adverse childhood experiences on education. This is a subject I have been interested in for a long time. A lot of kids in our country live in extreme poverty. Some may have a parent in prison or a parent who has passed away. These kids may also experience physical abuse or emotional abuse or neglect. There may be some drug or alcohol abuse taking place in the house. Some have witnessed domestic violence in their home or street violence in their neighborhood. Some have seen siblings shot and killed right in front of them. Decades of research have shown that the trauma that comes from such adverse childhood experiences actually changes a child's brain chemistry and affects their behavioral development, their mental and physical health, and their chances to succeed in school and in society longterm. But research has also shown that these challenges can be overcome and that the kids who do overcome them are the most resilient kids you have ever met.

Our public education system was designed to give these kids a shot. Teachers and administrators often lack the resources they need to give these children the chance they deserve. Because Mrs. DeVos's crusade for school vouchers would further rob our public schools of these limited funds, I wanted to know her thoughts on this important issue.

This is take-home. Her written answer was brief and superficial. She wrote that she had heard that children are impacted by trauma and that trauma can cause difficulties in a child's education. That was it. Was she unfamiliar with the literature? Was she unwilling to acknowledge that poor kids face special challenges? Would she be remotely interested in addressing these challenges as Secretary of Education? I guess we may never know.

I also asked Mrs. DeVos in writing about her vision for education in rural communities. As the Presiding Officer knows--the Governor and now Senator from South Dakota--many of our children in America attend school in rural America, 10 million American kids, schools that struggle with teacher shortages and transportation challenges. I asked how would her school choice agenda help them. In her response, she pointed to online schools, which are often run by for-profit companies, many with questionable records. In fact, one of the country's biggest online schools recently agreed to a $168.5 million settlement in California for allegedly defrauding families--a $168.5 million settlement.

But even online schools that aren't out to rip off students often wind up failing them. A 2015 Stanford study showed that, on average, kids in online schools lose the equivalent of 72 days of learning in reading and 180 days of learning in math, and that is for each 180-day school year, which means that kids in online schools can fall up to a year behind in math.

Of course, as the Presiding Officer knows, many rural communities lack reliable broadband access. I have been on rural education tours where I find students who go to a McDonald's parking lot so they can get WiFi to read their public school assignment or get materials to study. This is another answer that wasn't an answer at all, yet another piece of evidence that Mrs. DeVos is simply not up to this job.

Like many Americans, I have serious concerns about many aspects of the Trump administration's agenda. Still, I believe that as a United States Senator, it is my job to evaluate each nominee on his or her own merits. That is why I voted for nominees like Secretary Mattis and Secretary Chao, even though I disagree with them on important issues. General Mattis, for example, has nearly a half century of military service under his belt, he has earned the respect of leaders on both sides of the aisle, and I believe he will be a much needed voice of reason on the Trump administration's foreign policy. Ms. Chao has a lengthy background in public service, including as Secretary of Labor and Deputy Secretary of Transportation. I believe she will bring significant and valuable experience to her important role. I may well take issue with the decisions they make and the agenda they implement as members of President Trump's Cabinet, but at the very least, each illustrated during their confirmation hearings that they have a basic understanding of the issues they will be responsible for. Mrs. DeVos is different.

I have heard from Minnesotans about many of President Trump's nominees, but the outcry over this nomination far surpasses anything else. As of a week ago, my office had received 3,000 calls about this nominee. A grand total of 12 were in favor of her confirmation. Additionally, we received more than 18,000 letters and emails, and again the overwhelming majority of them have urged me to oppose this nomination.

For example, a woman from Brainerd, MN, wrote to say that she never contacted one of her representatives before and didn't consider herself very political--in fact, she was neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but she has a daughter in second grade and a son beginning kindergarten in the fall, and she wanted me to vote against Betsy DeVos. ``How,'' she asked, ``is someone who has never had any experience in public education supposed to competently preside over it?''

A mother of two public school students in Faribault, MN, wrote of Mrs. DeVos: ``As I watched her during the hearing, I was in disbelief that she would be appointed to such an important position.''

Another constituent from Warren, MN, wrote: ``This woman is so unqualified, it's scary.''

Last week, I went to dinner with Vice President Walter Mondale at his favorite restaurant. Afterward, he took me into the kitchen to greet some of the men and women who worked at the restaurant. One of the guys in the kitchen--I am a little unclear of whether he was taking dishes to the dishwasher or he was washing dishes. He is not a teacher, he is not an education advocate, just a guy who works in the kitchen. He said: ``Please vote against DeVos.''

There is a reason why this nomination has been met with such overwhelming resistance on the part of the American people, and I know I am not the only one who has heard it. In fact, two of my Republican colleagues and fellow HELP Committee members who sat through that hearing, Senator Collins and Senator Murkowski, have stepped forward to announce they cannot vote for this nominee. They don't agree with me on every aspect of education policy, but, believe me, when we put ESSA-- Every Student Succeeds Act--together, the committee voted unanimously. There is a lot of agreement on education policy on our committee, but Senator Collins and Senator Murkowski saw the same hearing I did. Like me, they saw a nominee who simply does not understand the needs of the students our Secretary of Education is supposed to serve.

I will let my colleagues speak for themselves as to the reasons why they will be joining me in voting against this nominee, but I would like to close by asking a few questions of my colleagues who are still considering a vote in her favor.

If Mrs. DeVos's performance didn't convince you that she lacks the qualifications for this job, what would have had to have happened in that hearing in order to convince you? If you cannot bring yourself to vote against this nominee, is there anyone President Trump could nominate for any position that you could vote against? If we cannot set party loyalty aside long enough to perform the essential duty of vetting the President's nominees, what are we even doing here?

The Constitution gives us the power to reject Cabinet nominations specifically so we can prevent fundamentally ill-equipped nominees like Betsy DeVos from assuming positions of power for which they are not qualified. Let's do our job. For the sake of our children, let's do our job.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Will Senator Murray yield for a question?

Thank you. As Senators on opposite sides of the aisle, we have philosophical differences, but one thing I think we all agree on is that our Cabinet Secretaries must be qualified and up to the challenge of running an agency.

Betsy DeVos has demonstrated that she is not qualified to run the Education Department. I would say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, if you watched her confirmation hearing, you would know that. It was the most embarrassing confirmation hearing I have ever seen. She could not answer the most basic questions about education. So I ask my Republican colleagues, if Mrs. DeVos's performance in this hearing didn't convince you that she lacks qualifications for this job, what would have had to have happened in that hearing in order to convince you?

If we cannot set aside party loyalty long enough to perform the essential duty of vetting the President's nominees, what are we even doing here?

Let's do our job for the sake of the children and for the sake of our Nation's future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise in opposition to the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to serve as our Nation's next Attorney General.

The U.S. Attorney General has a job like none other. Our Nation's top law enforcement officer doesn't enforce just the laws designed to protect national security and keep the public safe but also the laws designed to protect Americans' civil rights and civil liberties, the laws that guarantee each and every American access to the same opportunities and to participate fully in our democracy.

I know Senator Sessions. He and I have served on the Judiciary Committee together since I joined the Senate back in 2009, and I have a good relationship with Senator Sessions. I respect him as a colleague. But as anyone who has observed Senator Sessions or me in a Judiciary Committee hearing could probably tell you, he and I have very different views about many of the issues that he stands to influence as Attorney General, particularly matters of equal justice. So once the President announced his nomination and after Senator Sessions submitted his material to the committee, I reviewed his background carefully, and I paid special attention to how he described his work on civil rights. I noticed some discrepancies in the way he described his involvement in civil rights cases filed during his time as U.S. attorney. Those discrepancies stood out to me, and they didn't just stand out because civil rights is an issue I care about personally or because it is an issue I know Senator Sessions and I have disagreed about in the past; the discrepancies caught my attention because the information seemed to misrepresent the nominee's record, and that is something Senator Sessions himself promised not to do.

You see, back in 2009 when Senator Sessions became the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, he was interviewed about how he would approach the committee's work in general and nominations in specific. Senator Specter, who was serving as the ranking Republican at the time, had just changed his party affiliation to join the Democrats, and so the gavel passed to Senator Sessions. Some people, particularly on my side of the aisle, were anxious about how Senator Sessions would lead the committee's Republicans given his more conservative views, but during that interview with the National Review, Senator Sessions indicated that Democrats should expect him to be an honest broker, to be fair to the Democratic nominee.

Senator Sessions cited his experience before the Judiciary Committee back in 1986 when President Reagan nominated him to serve on the Federal bench. The committee rejected his nomination then, and Senator Sessions felt that in doing so, the committee had distorted his record. He said: ``What I learned in that process is that we're not going to misrepresent any nominee's record, and we're not going to lie about it.''

Senator Sessions said, as ranking member, that nominees before the committee would be ``entitled to explain the charges against them. That doesn't mean I'll accept their explanation or agree with it.''

In my view, that seemed like a fair way to conduct the committee's business. When I set about the task of reviewing Senator Sessions' record and the materials that he provided to the committee, I expected that those materials would not misrepresent his record. I took him at his word.

So when I noticed discrepancies regarding the nominee's record, I gave Senator Sessions an opportunity to explain them. I asked him about his claim to have filed 20 or 30 desegregation cases, a claim he made in that same 2009 National Review interview. In response, in the committee hearing Senator Sessions said: ``The records do not show that there were 20 or 30 actually filed cases.'' Of the claim, he said: ``The record does not justify it.''

I then moved on to question him about four cases he had listed on his committee questionnaire, which asked him to list the ``10 most significant litigated matters [he] personally handled.'' Among those 10 cases were three voting rights cases and a desegregation case.

I know Senator Sessions, and I know his record on voting rights. He is no champion of voting rights. He has called the Voting Rights Act ``intrusive'' and complained about States with a history of discrimination being subject to preclearance. But here his questionnaire seemed to tout his personal involvement in three voting rights cases and one desegregation case. It seemed to me that, given his previous experience before this committee and given the concern the civil rights community had expressed about his nomination, perhaps the transition team or others managing Senator Sessions' nomination had attempted to revise some of his history and recast him as a civil rights champion.

I questioned Senator Sessions about the questionnaire's claim of personally handling those four civil rights cases. I mentioned that the Department of Justice attorneys who had worked on three of those four cases wrote an op-ed stating that Senator Sessions had no substantive involvement in those cases. Two of those attorneys also submitted testimony to that effect, explaining that Senator Sessions had no personal involvement in some of the cases that he had listed among the top 10 matters that he had personally listed.

I asked Senator Sessions about this. In my view, he deserved an opportunity to explain himself. I asked him whether these attorneys had distorted his record by stating that with regard to three of those four cases: ``We can state categorically that Sessions had no substantive involvement in any of them.''

Senator Sessions said: Yes, he believed they were distorting his record. He said that he had supported the attorneys, and he had signed the complaints they had brought.

Senator Sessions' reply mirrored answers he provided in a supplement to his initial questionnaire. In that supplement, which he filed 2 weeks after his initial questionnaire, the nominee clarified that his role was to ``provide support for'' DOJ attorneys. He said he ``provided assistance and guidance'' and ``cooperated'' with DOJ lawyers--not quite ``personally handled,'' if you ask me. I suspect that is why he felt the need to file the supplement.

It is also worth noting that all four of the civil rights cases at issue--the ones at issue here--had either concluded or were still active back when Senator Sessions first appeared before the Judiciary Committee in 1986. But 30 years ago, when he submitted his questionnaire, which also asked him to list the ``ten most significant litigated matters which [he] personally handled,'' Senator Sessions did not list a single one of these four cases--not a single one. I wonder what changed between 1986 and now that caused these four civil rights cases to take on new significance for the nominee. Look, the fact of the matter is that Senator Sessions simply did not personally handle the civil rights cases that his questionnaire indicates he personally handled. His questionnaire overstates his involvement in these cases and the supplement he filed makes that perfectly clear. As I said, in the Judiciary Committee, Senator Sessions would not have tolerated that kind of misrepresentation, and no Member of this body should either. Senator Sessions said in 2009:

We're are not going to misrepresent any nominee's record. .

. . They'll be entitled to

explain the charges against them. That doesn't mean I'll

accept their explanation or agree with it.

And neither do I.

The Senate has an important job to do. It requires that each and every one of us understand the nominee's record accurately. The duties and responsibilities of our Nation's top law enforcement officer demand that the President nominate an individual who puts country before party and who is willing to pursue justice for the most vulnerable among us. But I do not have confidence that a nominee whose submissions to the Judiciary Committee inflate and exaggerate his handling of the critical issues--issues such as protecting the right to vote--is, frankly, capable of pursuing equal justice under the law.

I questioned Senator Sessions about voting rights during his hearing. I asked him about an extraordinary claim by the then President-elect. In late November, President-Elect Trump tweeted: ``In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.'' Let me repeat that: ``the millions of people who voted illegally.''

Let's be clear. President Trump lost the popular vote by 2.86 million votes--the popular vote for the President. He is the President of the United States, but he lost the popular vote by 2.86 million votes. When he says, ``I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,'' he is saying that at least 2.86 million people voted illegally.

That is a pretty extraordinary charge. During Senator Sessions' hearing, I asked, do you agree with the President-elect that millions of fraudulent votes had been cast?

He responded: ``I don't know what the President-elect meant or was thinking when he made that comment, or what facts he may have had to justify his statement.''

Senator Sessions didn't say whether he agreed. I asked him whether he had talked to the President-elect about that issue. Senator Sessions said: ``I have not talked to him about that in any depth.''

Under the Attorney General's leadership and direction, the Department of Justice is tasked with protecting the right to vote and with prosecuting fraud. It seems unusual to me that the President-elect would make such an outrageous claim, backed with no evidence, asserting that a fraud of truly epic proportion had occurred and that he wouldn't bother to discuss it with the man nominated to lead the Justice Department nor that the man tasked to head the Justice Department wouldn't ask him about it and ask what his evidence was so that when he became Attorney General, he could prosecute this voter fraud.

But, in my questioning, none of this seemed to bother Senator Sessions. I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise, because another thing that didn't seem to bother Senator Sessions was the speed with which States previously covered by the Voting Rights Act, covered by preclearance, moved to restrict voting rights after the Supreme Court's Shelby County decision. He and I discussed this at his hearing. I pointed out that after Shelby County, States moved quickly to enact new restrictions, but he didn't seem concerned.

We discussed North Carolina, which enacted restrictions that the Fourth Circuit eventually described as targeting African Americans with ``almost surgical precision''--targeting African Americans with almost surgical precision to make it harder for them to vote, to suppress their vote, which suppressed African-American votes in the 2014 election. So this had happened.

But it didn't seem to bother Senator Sessions. All he said was ``every election needs to be managed closely and we need to ensure that there is integrity in it, and I do believe we regularly have fraudulent activities occur during election cycles.''

Now, let's be clear. Claims of apocryphal voter fraud are used to justify voter suppression. Claims of bogus fraud are exactly what States cite when they enact laws designed to keep certain people from voting.

So understanding Senator Sessions' views on voting rights and understanding how he responded to the President-elect's outrageous claims of fraud--and is there anyone here in this body who doesn't believe that the President's claims are outrageous and, indeed, pernicious? Keeping Senator Sessions' views on voting rights in mind and understanding how he responded to the President's claims is important to helping us assess whether he is capable of filling one of the Attorney General's most important duties, protecting the right to vote.

That is how we all got here. We won elections. That is how the Presiding Officer won an election in Alaska, fair and square. This is so basic. The Fourth Circuit ruled that North Carolina had surgically targeted African Americans, and because of the Shelby decision, the Justice Department couldn't review that, couldn't do preclearance, couldn't prevent African Americans from having their votes suppressed. That should bother us.

That should bother every one of us. It really should. We are here. We had some arguments over the last evening. The ones having the arguments were all elected. Protecting the franchise is the most basic duty in a democracy. And whose job is that? That is the job of the Attorney General.

Think about how basic and fundamental this is. It is all the words that are said here on the floor, they are said by people who won elections. I won an election by 312 votes. Every vote is important. To suppress votes, to surgically target a race of people, how fundamentally wrong is that? It should make us shiver. It should, I would hope, clarify to my colleagues why there is so much fear in this country, when a man who is President of the United States says there are 3 million to 5 million votes fraudulently cast. I wonder how he got 3 million. Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that he lost the popular vote by 2.86 million? How did he bring that figure out of the air?

What are the American people supposed to think when the President makes these laughable claims, faced with no facts whatsoever?

He told the story about a German golfer in line in Florida. Do my colleagues remember this? He heard this story thirdhand. This is his proof to the congressional leadership. I believe Senator Cornyn was actually there. I think he was part of the group who went there as the leadership of the Senate. The President said that part of his evidence was this story that this German golfer in line had three Hispanic people in front of him and three in back. The President then went into conjecture about what Latin American countries they could be from. Then he said that none of them were pulled out of the line; only the German golfer, the famous German golfer. He has won some PGA tournaments. He is a great golfer. He is not registered to vote in the United States.

The story was apocryphal. Doesn't this send a chill down the spine of every Member of this Senate who cares about the franchise?

Think about it. This is the fundamental building block of our democracy--the franchise.

Now, Senator Sessions said during his hearing that he believes we regularly have fraudulent activities during our election cycles. That might explain why he didn't talk with the President-elect in any depth about the now-President's claim that millions of fraudulent votes were cast. Perhaps Senator Sessions didn't find it alarming because he believes there is a kernel of truth in the claim. There is not. That claim has been fact-checked to death. Nearly 138 million votes were cast in the 2016 election. State officials found virtually no credible reports of fraud and no sign whatsoever of widespread fraud.

In 2014, a comprehensive study examined elections over 14 years, during which more than 1 billion ballots were cast, and they found just 31 incidents of in-person fraud, but that didn't stop President Trump. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. He again claimed that he won the popular vote and continued to claim it and asked for an investigation.

This is so profoundly disturbing. I ask my colleagues, doesn't it bother you?

The President went on to tweet about this ``major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal, and even, those registered to vote who are dead, and then (and many for a long time).''

I know on my deathbed, which I hope is many, many years from now, surrounded by my family, my grandchildren, and hopefully my great- grandchildren, if they say: Grandpa, Great-grandpa, any last wishes, I would say: Yes, I want to, before I leave this world, ``slip my mortal coil,'' or whatever Shakespeare said; I want to make sure that I unregistered to vote because I was a U.S. Senator and I wouldn't want to commit voter fraud, so, please, somebody, call the county clerk. I am too weak to do that.

But I want to unregister because clearly anyone who doesn't unregister to vote before they die is committing some kind of fraud, and clearly anyone who is registered to vote in two States is committing fraud--people like Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, the Press Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary designee, the President's daughter Tiffany, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. We really should investigate them.

The President has said the administration would form a commission led by Vice President Pence to investigate this voter fraud.

This raises serious concerns, not the least of which is whether such an order or commission would serve as a pretext for nationwide voter suppression. Before my colleagues vote on Senator Sessions' nomination, we deserve to know whether the President intends for the Attorney General or the Justice Department to lead or participate in these investigations.

When the President of the United States lies about the existence of massive, widespread fraud, it is the job of the Attorney General to call him on it. It is the job of the Attorney General to call him on it. The Attorney General has an obligation to tell it like it is. Senator Sessions may have said it best himself. When Sally Yates was nominated to be the Deputy Attorney General, Senator Sessions questioned her during her confirmation hearing. He said: ``You have to watch out because people will be asking you to do things and you will need to say no.''

Do you think the Attorney General has a responsibility to say no to the President if he asks for something that is improper? A lot of people have defended the Lynch nomination, for example, by saying: Well, he will appoint somebody who is going to execute his views. Well, what is wrong with that? But if the views the President wants to execute are unlawful, should the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General say no?

Ms. Yates responded: Senator, I believe the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution, to give their independent legal advice to the President.

As everyone here should agree, that is exactly what Ms. Yates did last week--I think it was last week. These weeks seem long. This Nation owes her a debt of gratitude. She did exactly what Senator Sessions asked if she would do, but I fear Senator Sessions has not demonstrated that he is capable of fulfilling that obligation, and his record, as demonstrated by the fact that he did not discuss these claims with the President, suggests that he is simply not willing to speak truth to power.

Now, Senator Sessions has a long record, not just during his time as U.S. attorney and as Alabama's attorney general but here in the U.S. Senate. But regardless of the posts he held, Senator Sessions has not exhibited what I would characterize as a commitment to equal justice.

In my view, it is the obligation of elected officials, law enforcement officers to recognize injustice when they see it and stand in opposition to it, but on far too many occasions, it seems that Senator Sessions has not followed that obligation.

In 2009, the Senate debated the Matthew Shepard and James Senator Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the bill that extended Federal hate crimes protections to people targeted on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In the hearing on that bill, Senator Sessions said, ``I am not sure women or people with different sexual orientations face that kind of discrimination. I just don't see it.''

Senator Sessions repeatedly opposed a bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, the landmark law combating domestic sexual violence. The bill would have expanded the law to protect LGBT people, Native American women, and immigrant women, but he voted against it three times. He said that ``there are matters put on the bill that almost seem to invite opposition.'' I raised this with Senator Sessions prior to his hearing, and I pointed out that Native women experience an epidemic of sexual and domestic violence, much of it at the hands of non-Indians--most of it--a large majority of it. That is not a new development. But Senator Sessions said to me that at the time he voted on the issue, he didn't understand the gravity of the problem. He must not have seen it.

In 2006, when the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, Senator Sessions said there is ``little present day evidence'' of State and local officials restricting access to the ballot box. He complained that the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement unfairly targeted certain States. He said, ``Alabama is proud of its accomplishments, but we have the right to ask why other areas of the country are not covered by it.'' Now, the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement forced States with a history of enacting discriminatory measures to get Federal approval before changing their voting practices. That is why Alabama was subject to preclearance, but he just didn't see it.

During this hearing and in his responses to written questions, Senator Sessions has said that ``all Americans are entitled to equal protection under the law, no matter their background.'' He has said that, if confirmed, he would ``enforce the laws passed by Congress.'' But time and time again, Senator Sessions has demonstrated an inability to recognize injustice--whether it is discrimination faced by LGBT people, discriminatory barriers to the ballot box, or violence against women. If he can't see injustice, what assurance do we have that he will act to stop it?

The communities we represent should be confident that the Nation's top law enforcement officer is capable of recognizing the challenges they face and will help them overcome those challenges. Before the Senate moves to confirm this nominee, it is important to understand whether Senator Sessions is able or willing to acknowledge those challenges and to take steps necessary to address them, not turn a blind eye. I am not confident that he is, and I will be voting against him.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam Clerk, how am I recorded?

I vote no--

--on behalf of the more than 2.3 million Minnesotans who can no longer be discriminated against because of the ACA.

Mr. President, like my colleagues here today, I rise to talk about the Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. I have been talking to a lot of people in Minnesota who have health insurance, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, or whose lives are changed by the protections in the ACA that benefit every American. Frankly, they are scared, hard-working people for whom this is literally life or death. If their health insurance is taken away, they do not know what they are going to do.

Today, on their behalf, I have one request for my Republican colleagues: Show us your health care plan. You must have one. We would like to hear it. We would like to see it now. You can understand the question, right? If your child had cancer and the Affordable Care Act was the reason you could get health insurance, you wouldn't want to rip up the ACA before knowing what would replace it. I am not the only Senator with constituents whose lives are on the line here, so I know that you don't intend to rip up the Affordable Care Act and leave them with nothing. You have to have a plan, right? So let's just see it.

Last week, President Obama said that if Republicans produce a plan that is ``demonstrably better than ObamaCare,'' he would support it, and so will I. Just show it to me. President-Elect Trump clearly has a plan. He laid it out, laid it all out during his campaign. His plan was, he said, to ``repeal ObamaCare and replace it with something terrific.'' That is what he said. Then he went into a little more detail and explained that ``something terrific'' would be ``so much better, so much better, so much better.''

Terrific. So much better. That sounds great. Let's see it. One of Trump's top advisers said on MSNBC: ``We don't want anyone who currently has insurance to not have insurance.'' Great. Neither do we. Speaker Ryan said that there will ``be a bridge so that no one is left out in the cold, so that no one is worse off.'' That is wonderful. No one being worse off is exactly what we want to see.

I am sure Speaker Ryan's staff was mistaken when they later told a reporter that the ``no one worse off'' applied only to the transition period, not to the replacement period. Show me the plan, please. Please show me the plan that keeps coverage for the 20 million people who have gained coverage that would continue to bend the cost curve so the cost of the entire health care system continues to grow less quickly than it did before ACA was adopted, the plan that would ensure that nobody gets denied coverage when they need it or has to unfairly pay more than someone else because of their gender or a preexisting condition. Show me that plan.

I know Republicans have put forward some different plans, a lot of different plans, but a lot of plans is not a plan. A lot of plans is not a plan. We want to see the plan, you know, the one you have been working on for 6 years. I was here in 2009 when we passed the ACA. I know how hard it was. If I could, let me offer you something. Some of your Republican friends actually did come up with a health care plan a while ago. It all started at the Heritage Foundation, which is a bona fide conservative think tank.

Over at Heritage, they did not like the idea of single-payer health care insurance, where the government is everyone's insurer. So what they wanted to come up with was a way to use the magic of the marketplace to solve the problem of providing everyone access to insurance.

Here is what they came up with, a three-legged stool. The first leg is, insurance companies can't deny coverage to people with a preexisting condition. They can't charge them more. We can all agree on that, right? President-Elect Trump and I agree on that, for sure. It is a great idea--great idea--but there is a catch. If you can not turn people down because of preexisting conditions, you cannot charge them more, well then everyone would just wait to buy health insurance until they get sick and need care. But the whole idea of health insurance is that at any given moment, most of the people paying premiums are healthy. So their premiums cover the cost of the people who are sick.

If the only people with insurance are sick, the premiums will skyrocket. So you need a way to get healthy people into the system to bring the cost of insurance down, which brings us to leg No. 2. Everyone has to be insured, otherwise known as the individual mandate. Everyone has to be insured. The Heritage Foundation said that. They called it the free rider syndrome. They said, no, everyone has to be insured.

This is what conservatives now say they hate; that the government says everyone has to buy insurance. But if you have to sell everyone insurance, then everyone has to buy it or the cost explodes. Now, look, if you have a better way to keep people covered and keep costs down, show me the plan. Show me the plan. But this is the best one the Heritage Foundation could come up with.

But wait, what if someone can't afford that health insurance? That brings us to the third leg. The government will subsidize insurance for people who can't afford it. Voila. There you have it, the Heritage Foundation plan, which a Republican Governor then implemented in a State to huge success.

Let me ask you, my Republican friends, is that your plan? Because if it is, it works for me. Guess what. Then we don't even have to repeal the Affordable Care Act in order to replace it with this plan because this plan was the model for the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act is not perfect. Premiums went up a lot this fall for people buying insurance through the marketplace.

It is often ignored that subsidies cover the cost increases for about 70 percent of those folks, but for many those increases genuinely hurt. That is a real problem. Then the solution to it is to recognize that subsidies don't provide enough help and don't go to enough people. Let's fix that. There are places where there is not enough competition. The best and most direct solution that I know of is to introduce a public option.

If my Republican colleagues have another idea about how to address these costs and competition issues that would ensure that people don't lose their coverage, I am ready to roll up my sleeves and go to work. While we are honest about the shortcomings, let's not forget the bottom line. As a primary care doctor for Indiana University's Health Physicians said, ``I've been a registered Republican my whole life, but I support the Affordable Care Act because it allows patients to be taken care of.''

For 6 years, you have been blasting the ACA, promising to replace it with something better. Let's see what you have, but don't just tell me your plan. I want you to join me on a trip to Minnesota to see Dolly. Dolly is one of my constituents who wrote to me about her husband's pulmonary embolism. Before the ACA, she and her husband both had jobs that did not offer health insurance, but once the ACA passed, they were able to buy insurance and go to the doctor.

The doctor discovered her husband's embolism and saved his life. I would like you to look Dolly in the eye and explain how your plan--your plan--will ensure that her husband's life will not be endangered.

I would like you to join me in talking to Gina. Before the ACA became law, Gina's father was undergoing treatment for leukemia. Then one day he was told he had hit the lifetime maximum on his insurance coverage. From that point on, the family would have to

pay for his treatment out of pocket, but they did not have the money so they stopped treatment. Gina's father died 3 days later.

Since then, Gina's fiance was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. So I want you to explain to Gina how exactly under your plan Gina will not face the same kind of impossible financial situation with her future husband's condition that she did with her dad. Sit down with Gina and tell her that.

Now, once you are done calming Gina's concerns about what your plan might do to her family, we will go over and talk to Leanna. Leanna's 3- year-old son Henry has been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. His treatment will last until at least April of 2018. He often needs around-the-clock care to manage his nausea, vomiting, pain, and sleepless nights. Little Henry's immune system is so compromised that he is not supposed to go to daycare. So Leanna has left her job to take care of him. They are supported by her spouse, but they could not pay for his treatment on one salary.

Leanna says:

It is because of the ACA that Henry gets proper health

care. Henry can get therapy and the things he needs to

maintain his health and work towards beating cancer. Henry is

still with us because of the ACA.

Let me say that again. ``Henry is still with us because of the ACA.'' I want you to sit down with Leanna, as she holds her precious 3-year- old son, and explain how Henry will still be with us under your plan. Show us your plan. Show us your plan.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the funding for the Department of Homeland Security and the continuing need for immigration reform.

We need to fund the Department of Homeland Security and we should pass a clean DHS funding bill. That is the only bill that can pass the Senate, and that is the only bill that should pass the Senate. Once that bill has passed the Senate and the House and becomes law, then we can and should move on to consider immigration legislation.

Republican leadership in the Senate has wasted a lot of time over the past month politicizing immigration and mixing it up with the issue of funding this Federal agency that helps to protect the United States from terrorists and other threats, and those threats are real. Just this past weekend, the terrorist organization al-Shabaab issued a threatening video suggesting that the Mall of America in my State of Minnesota could be a target for a terrorist attack.

Look, this issue is not something we should be politicizing. We should enact into law a clean funding bill for DHS, and we should fund the Department for the whole year and not make the Department run for a short time on a continuing resolution and just revisit the issue in the near future. That is not what we want. And then we should and can debate immigration.

I have always believed the best way to accomplish meaningful and sustainable immigration reform is through congressional action. In the last Congress, the Senate took such action. As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I was very proud to play an active role in the comprehensive immigration bill the Senate passed with broad bipartisan support. For me, this was a model of how the Senate was supposed to work. Four Senators from each side of the aisle, known as the Gang of 8, came together and crafted a bill which we then marked up in the Judiciary Committee, and I was very pleased that a number of my amendments were included in the bill, which then went to the Senate floor and passed with 68 votes. That bill would have provided a real and comprehensive overhaul of our broken immigration system.

It would have significantly strengthened our border security, and it would have helped a lot of people--from small businesses to families in our legal immigration system to the many undocumented immigrants who would have an opportunity, through a tough but fair path, to get right with the law. There are millions of people in our country who want the same things that all of us want--a steady job, excellent education for our children, and a brighter future for their families. But they are living in limbo and often in fear. Our bill would help them come out of the shadows and get right with the law.

The Senate passed our bill in June of 2013. I was very hopeful the House would take up and pass the Senate bill. If the House had allowed a vote on the Senate bill, it would have passed the House and been enacted into law. That would have meant real and lasting reform to our broken immigration system. Unfortunately, over the course of the next year and a half the Republican leadership in the House failed to act on the bipartisan immigration reform bill passed in the Senate--again, with 68 votes. The President took a step forward that will help a lot of people and will help to address fixing our broken immigration system.

While I still believe Congress needs to act, I think we need to keep the Executive actions in place until we do. I will not support any legislative effort to undo President Obama's Executive actions. We are presented with a choice. Once we pass a bill into law to fund the Department of Homeland Security, we can take a step forward and help a lot more people by passing comprehensive immigration reform or we can take a step backward and harm a lot of people without getting any closer to the comprehensive immigration reform we need.

I will vote to move forward, not backward. We need a fully funded Department of Homeland Security, and we need a comprehensively overhauled immigration system.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Murphy be recognized for up to 5 minutes following my remarks.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about an amendment I have offered with Senators Stabenow and Manchin, which is amendment No. 17 to S. 1. Our amendment recognizes the importance of the iron and steel industries in our country and ensures that if the pipeline is built, it is built with American iron and steel so we can create more jobs and strengthen our economy.

Congress has had a long history of using ``Buy American'' provisions in order to maximize the economic benefits of infrastructure projects. ``Buy American'' provisions ensure that more goods and manufactured items used in infrastructure and other projects are

produced here at home. In fact, as recently as 2013 Congress passed a provision in the WRDA Act--the Water Resources Development Act--to require the use of iron, steel, and other domestically produced goods in water infrastructure projects. That is important because it means that we keep jobs and profits here at home instead of sending them abroad.

Unfortunately, there is no such requirement when it comes to construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. In fact, according to TransCanada itself, half of the pipe for the U.S. portion of the pipeline would be sourced from foreign countries. And for the other half that would be put together here in the United States, much of the raw material, such as the steel that goes into the pipe, could be sourced from overseas. This is the problem our amendment addresses. Our amendment would require the use of domestic iron, steel, and other manufactured goods in the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, provided the material is readily available and affordable.

If adopted, the amendment would create jobs for iron ore miners, such as the ones across the Iron Range in my State of Minnesota. It would create more jobs for shippers who ship the ore across the Great Lakes or by rail or down the Mississippi River. It would create more jobs for our steelworkers who work in steel mills across this country.

At the same time, we specify in our amendment that these requirements would be implemented consistent with our trade agreements.

Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have said we shouldn't put such restrictions on a private company. But we have to remember that this isn't your typical private company. The underlying bill to authorize the pipeline would throw out the established approval process for the construction of a cross-border pipeline by a foreign corporation. That means all of the important assessments regarding things such as safety and the environment that our Federal agencies might have made on this project are tossed by the wayside. So if Congress is going to intervene on behalf of this foreign company, then the least we can do is to make sure the company building the pipeline uses American-made iron and steel.

This is a very pragmatic amendment. We all have different views on the approval process for this pipeline, and while I believe Congress should not circumvent the approval process we have in place, I think we can all agree that we want jobs here in America. So I invite my colleagues to stand up for our domestic iron and steel producers by supporting my amendment.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Amendment No. 17

I wish to urge my colleagues to oppose any motion to table my amendment. My amendment is about making sure that, if we do build the Keystone XL Pipeline, it is built with American iron and steel. Those are jobs. I don't wish to short-circuit the process here, but if the pipeline is built, it should be built with American steel.

The Presiding Officer's State produces a lot of American steel and very often with iron ore from my State. These are American jobs.

TransCanada has said that 50 percent of the iron and steel will be outsourced from other countries, and the iron and steel for some of the other pipes could come from other countries. They also said they can use those pipes in other projects, including other projects in Canada.

I agree with Senator Cornyn when he said these construction jobs that will help build the pipeline are real jobs. Just because they are not permanent jobs does not mean they are not real jobs. Providing the iron and steel and other manufactured products for this project will also provide real jobs. Our amendment will do this entirely and consistently within the language of the bill and within our trade obligations.

I ask that my colleagues not vote to table this amendment because a vote to table this is a vote against American jobs. It is a vote against jobs in Ohio and Minnesota. It is a vote against the shippers who ship our iron ore over the Great Lakes or by rail or over the Mississippi so it can be used to make steel. We have done ``Buy America'' legislation before. We just did it in 2013 on the WRDA bill. I ask that my colleagues please not vote against American jobs.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I have the greatest respect for the Senator from Alaska. I wish to say a few things about this private company. This company is asking us to do an extraordinary thing. We are debating this on the floor because they are asking us to circumvent the environmental and safety process here and possibly expose the United States--and the path of this pipeline--to tremendous environmental damage. This is very different.

The Senator asked: Why won't this extend to every private enterprise? This is something we are here debating and voting on, and that should say something about the nature of this issue.

The United Steelworkers have endorsed my amendment. This is about American jobs. The question is: If we do build this pipeline, should it be built with American steel or should it be built with steel from other countries?

Again, in the bill, we make sure this is compliant with our trade obligations. There is nothing to stop us from doing this. This is a private foreign company that is asking us to circumvent our normal processes, and because of that, I feel we have the right to say this should be made with American steel and with jobs in the State of Ohio and in the State of Minnesota--American jobs. If this is about American jobs, let's make it about American jobs.

Again, this is a company that is asking us to circumvent our normal processes. So all I will say is that TransCanada has said the pipes that have been made for this can be used in other projects in Canada.

If we are going to build this project, let's make it about American jobs.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Caitlin Murphy, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the 114th Congress.

I want to echo what everyone has said. I had the honor of traveling on a codel with Chairman Levin to Pakistan, Afghanistan, when I had been here just a few weeks. So I was traveling with the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. The respect he got from everyone--from the generals down to the privates, especially in Afghanistan--was remarkable. Carl fought to increase the ratio of our troops to contractors. When we took the majority back in 2006, Carl started doing the kind of oversight of the contracting that had led to a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq. He has used PSI in the way it was intended by Harry Truman. I thank him especially for the work he did on the credit rating agencies, Wall Street credit rating agencies. Right now Standard & Poor's is being prosecuted by--or sued by the DOJ for about $5 billion. Part of what they are using are emails the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations obtained, in which basically the credit rating agencies internally were saying we better give this a AAA rating; otherwise, we are going to lose our business. That in no small way led to the meltdown we had because all this junk was getting AAAs and those were bets on bets on bets on bets and that is what led to the meltdown.

Carl always seems to go to where that kind of top-down fraud or malfeasance is going. When we talk about--as

he opened, as Sherrod mentioned when he talked about the disparities and how this is rigged very often from the top down, talking about the offshoring and the work they did in PSI, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--that is, on tax havens on inversions--and I hope to take that up as Carl leaves.

Carl leaves a lot of unfinished business. Everything that has been said is who Carl is. Everyone should know that. One thing that has not been said is hamisha. Carl, you are one of the most hamish men I have ever known. Thank you.

I yield the floor.

I rise to talk about Senator Harkin. As the soon-to-be Chairman of the HELP Committee, Senator Alexander is right about the HELP Committee, it is an important committee. Sometimes I say it is not that important unless you care about your health, your kids' health, your parents' health, your kids' education or your education, if you want to work sometime in your life, and you plan to retire. Other than that, it is not very important.

But I want to talk a little bit about Tom Harkin, not as a Senator but as a staffer. We have seen today when the Senators give their final speeches, they talk about their staff. Tom came in 1969 as a staffer for Neal Smith from Iowa. The staffers, as much as we treasure our staffers, they love this work for their Member and they love working in this institution, and they love working in Congress--at that point he was in the House. So at this point he is, I believe, 29 or 30 years old. This was during the Vietnam war, and there was something called Vietnamization. President Nixon asked a congressional delegation to go to Vietnam to look at how Vietnamization was working and what was going on. While Tom Harkin was there as a staffer, a couple of Congressmen were told about some conditions on an island called Con Son where there were prisoners that the South Vietnamese Government was abusing very badly. The Congressmen requisitioned a plane to go to Con Son, about 100 miles off the coast of the mainland of Vietnam, and I believe the supervisor of the group who was there to talk about the Vietnam prison system said this was sort of like a Boy Scout recreational camp--that is exactly what he said.

So when they landed there, Tom took a couple staffers and Members, got a map from someone who had told him about this secret prison, and found it, where there were people being horribly abused. Tom took pictures. Tom was told to turn over the film. Tom didn't turn over the film. Tom was then told that his employment in the Congress depended on him turning over that film--a 30-year-old staffer at the beginning of what most staffers hope is a career. That film showed up in ``Life'' magazine and had a profound effect, and Tom's career was over.

That takes a lot of guts. That takes courage. That takes the courage of your convictions, and that is what I have seen in Tom Harkin. I learned about this when Franni and I went with Ruth and Tom on a codel to Vietnam. I just spoke about Carl Levin and talked about a codel with him, and I talked about this codel with Tom. I have got to go on more codels, I just figured out.

This is what I observed, because this was the Chairman of the HELP Committee, and I got to watch that courage and that courage of his convictions, as well as what Lamar talked about, working well across party lines.

I hold the seat that Paul Wellstone formerly held. I would say that Tom was Paul's best friend. Tom every once in a while talks about his brother and the experiences behind Tom's signature achievement, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Paul Wellstone led on mental health and mental health parity, and that was because of his brother. And that is the legacy I want to carry on. I have not had Paul here to be a role model, but I have had Tom Harkin, and it has been a privilege.

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I was a part of that class. I was a little late getting here, my colleagues will recall. But I was part of that class and campaigned with the class, and I remember being with Mark Udall and Tom Udall and Mark Begich at a campaign event, and they kind of looked at me and said: So your dad wasn't like a public servant.

I said: No.

And they said: Well, that is unusual.

No, no, that is fine.

What a lot of people don't know about Mark is his father died very famously in a plane crash.

Mark is the only Member of this body, I believe, who did not graduate from college, did not go to college.

There are a lot of things about Mark--and Mark Warner just referred to it--he was a chief executive.

We need more mayors here. Sometimes we say we need more diversity. Sometimes we say we need more women. God knows we need more satirists-- but mayors, wow. Having that mayor's perspective--Cory Booker looking a little smug--is very useful.

Mike Enzi, a mayor--am I forgetting a mayor?

Bob Corker.

Whom are you pointing at? Tim, were you a mayor?

Oh, Richmond, you just kept saying Richmond. I don't know anybody named ``Richmond.''

So he was a lieutenant governor too--OK. So he is the most qualified.

This is what it is like when we are together. Being a Senator, a lot of people ask: Is being a Senator as much fun as working on ``Saturday Night Live?'' The answer of course is no. It is not close, but it is the best job I have ever had.

It means so much to us what we can do for our State, and no one knows more about his State--and I know Mary Landrieu is sitting here, no one knows more than Mary and Mark--and that it is an incredibly long flight he took every weekend to go back to Alaska.

Minnesota had a happy warrior, one of the great, great Senators who has ever served this body, Hubert Humphrey. We may have noticed during Mark's speech he teared up a few times, the most when he was talking about his wife.

That is good for you. That works out well.

But Hubert Humphrey said: ``A man who has no tears has no heart.''

This man has a tremendous heart. Humphrey was a happy warrior, and this guy is a happy warrior--and you brought joy, humor, and optimism to this body, and I thank you, my friend, for that.

Mr. President, I thank the generous Senator from Michigan, and I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for her remarks about the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act.

I have held college affordability roundtables around my State of Minnesota ever since I got to the Senate. It is astounding how hard students work while they are also in college. I remember speaking to the student governing body from MnSCU--the Minnesota colleges and universities student body--and I asked: How many of you work 20 hours a week? They all raised their hands. They were in the governing body. I said: How many of you work 30 hours a week? A few raised their hands. I said: How many of you work 40 hours a week? A couple raised their hands. These students work while going to college.

In Minnesota students graduate with more than $30,000 in student loan debt. We are about fourth in the Nation. I heard Senator Shaheen say they are second in the Nation. This bill would help over 550,000 Minnesotans and 25 million Americans cut down their debt and keep more of their hard-earned checks.

A few months ago I had a roundtable at the University of Minnesota, and I met Joelle Stangler. She happened to be the student body president at the University of Minnesota. She was the valedictorian of Rogers High School in Minnesota with a 4.12 GPA. She doesn't lack motivation. Both of Joelle's parents were teachers. In fact, she comes from a long line of educators going back six generations.

You will see why I am telling this story.

A couple of years ago Joelle's mother Cassie Stangler made the tough decision to quit her job as a fifth grade teacher to go to work in the private sector because she could make more money in the private sector. She needed to do this because she had four kids in college. Among the fifth grade classes in Mrs. Stangler's school district, her students showed some of the highest rates of improvement in test scores. This is what I am talking about--we lost a great teacher because of the expense of postsecondary education.

Even with her mom's sacrifice, she has $12,000 in student loans, and she estimates that her total debt will be around $30,000 by the time she graduates.

There are so many students such as Joelle who are drowning in debt in Minnesota and across the country. Student debt totals are over $1.2 trillion, and it is a threat to our economy. We are seeing young people delay decisions to start a business, to start a family, to buy a home, or make other types of purchases that make an economy grow. But there are commonsense solutions, and they are contained in our Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act.

Our bill simply allows students and graduates to take advantage of lower interest rates and refinance their loans. That is what people with mortgages, car loans, and business loans can do. They can take advantage of lower interest rates and refinance their loans, but the government will not refinance student loans, and that is just not right.

In the summer of 2013 we came together in Congress to prevent the interest rate on new student loans from doubling. Thanks to that effort, undergraduate students taking out new loans now pay a lower rate. Our bill would enable students and graduates who are saddled with higher interest rates on their undergraduate loans to refinance at the same lower interest rate. The bill would similarly enable Americans with graduate student loans or PLUS loans to refinance at lower rates.

Student debt is holding Americans back, it is holding back our economy, and that is why we need to pass this bill.

I thank the Presiding Officer and yield to the Senator from Michigan.