Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, before coming to Washington today, I went to Annapolis. The Maryland General Assembly is in session. I had a chance to meet with several of our regional delegations in the Maryland General Assembly, our senators and members of the house, and obviously the question that was asked the most is, What is happening in regard to the Federal Government? What is happening in regard to the fiscal year 2018 budget? Will the government be funded past midnight tonight?

I must tell you, I was talking to both Democratic and Republican members of the Maryland General Assembly, and there was a common concern. You see, the Maryland General Assembly will shortly be receiving from Governor Hogan the fiscal year 2019 budget. A good part of any State's budget is the Federal funding programs. Neither the State of Maryland nor any of our local jurisdictions had the fiscal year 2018 budget, let alone a blueprint for likely action by Congress for the fiscal year 2019 budget.

The budget should have been passed by October 1 of last year. That is the beginning of the fiscal year. We have been operating under continuing resolutions during the entire part of this year. In fact, we have been operating under continuing resolutions for years, and it is causing significant damage to this country.

The Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and they can't pass a budget for our country. So when the Republican leadership asked us in September of last year for a continuing resolution to have more time to negotiate a budget for fiscal year 2018, we had no choice but to go along with the continuing resolution to give more time. But then on three additional occasions the Republican leadership has come forward saying: We need additional time.

I remember the debate we had in December before the holidays. The leadership was very clear that this would be the last continuing resolution that was going to be needed. They were close to working out deals, et cetera, only to find out today that we are still no closer to getting it resolved.

Here is the tragedy: Our agencies cannot exist on continuing resolutions. They hit a point where they are no longer able to carry out their mission in the best interests of the American people. We heard that last night on the floor of the Senate when the representative of the Department of Defense indicated that our Nation's preparedness, readiness, cannot be maintained by a continuing resolution with last year's budget.

You see, a continuing resolution does not reflect our current priorities. It is where we were the last time we passed the budget, which was over a year ago. Those are the spending priorities an agency must comply with.

For the Department of Defense, a lot has happened during that period of time. Look at what is happening in North Korea. Look at what is happening with Russia. Look at what is happening around the world. Our Department of Defense needs to have a current-year budget, not another continuing resolution. We have to reach this decision.

So here is our concern: If we just continue to go along with these continuing resolutions, we are going to hurt our national security. We are going to hurt our agencies' ability to get their work done. It is going to cost the taxpayers of this country more money, and they are not going to get the services they need.

To me, there is an alternative to this date that we need to consider, and that is, let's complete our work. I know we have a deadline of midnight tonight. I know the government will shut down unless we get something done. I must tell you, we should make sure the government stays open. No one wins when there is a government shutdown. But we are not doing anyone any favors if we don't commit ourselves to get the job done.

What I would urge Leader McConnell to do is to allow us to vote on a very short-term continuing resolution and keep us here over this weekend; keep us here until we get the basics of the fiscal year 2018 budget complete. That, we can do.

We know that there have been reported conversations between the leadership on the Appropriations Committee and the leadership in the Senate and that there is a deal here. There is a deal that can be made, but we have to have a deadline.

Here is the danger of another long-term CR, another month CR, without having that. We hear that there is a group in the House of Representatives that is controlling the debate over there. They don't represent a majority in the House--far from it. They certainly don't represent the views of the majority of the Members of the U.S. Senate or the American people. But unless we have a deadline now and get this done, we are going to be faced with the same concerns a month from now, and we are not going to be able to get a budget done so that we can deal with the problems of this country.

We should not have a shutdown. All of us should be committed to pass a short-term CR to keep us here and avoid a government shutdown. Everyone loses on a shutdown.

I have the honor of representing one of the largest numbers of Federal employees of any State in the country. Maryland is the proud home to many incredibly important Federal facilities and installations and many talented Federal workers who are on the frontline of public service. They work very hard for the American people every single day. I am proud to represent them in the U.S. Senate.

Our Federal workforce has already sacrificed on behalf of our budget. They have gone through too many continuing resolutions that compromise their ability to get the job done. They have gone through too many threats of sequestration, too many pay freezes or pay adjustments that are inadequate, at additional costs to their pensions. They have contributed. What they expect from us is to keep the government open and to give them a budget so that they can get their mission done.

For the sake of our Federal workforce, let's keep the government open.

It is a real hardship if we miss this deadline. It is not without cost. Let me make that clear to my colleagues.

If there is a government shutdown, hard-working Federal workers aren't going to get a paycheck, yet they still have to make their mortgage payments and support their families. Those who are not excepted will go on unpaid leave. That is wrong.

People who depend on Federal contracts in order to keep their businesses going will not have that assurance and will be faced with the prospect of laying off workers.

Individuals who need government services are going to find it much more difficult, if not impossible, to be able to get those Federal services, whether it is tracking down a check they desperately need, getting the type of assistance they need in order to process a concern with the VA, or whether it is a matter of security and they need to contact our government. All of that is going to be put at risk, and the taxpayers of this country will be left holding the bill.

We have gone through government shutdowns before, and we have done analyses each time, and every time it costs the taxpayers more. It costs the taxpayers more.

All of us who are concerned about fiscal responsibility need to find a path forward to make sure we don't shut down the Federal Government. It makes no sense.

I have introduced legislation that I urge my colleagues to make sure we pass. You may be surprised to find out that if we miss the deadline and we go a few days and then we get it done, those Federal workers who are put on furlough will not be paid for our negligence in not keeping the Federal Government open. That is not right. Each time we have corrected that by legislation, but there shouldn't be that uncertainty for the Federal workforce.

I urge my colleagues to pass the legislation I have authored. I have the support of over 20 of my colleagues who have cosponsored this legislation to make sure that our Federal workforce knows they will receive their full compensation.

It is also important that we move forward on getting this budget done and getting work done. If we just take the House's approach and we say ``OK, everything is fine,'' we will be back in 28 days, and we will see this movie again. We have issues that cannot wait to be resolved. We have to resolve these issues.

There are a lot of issues out there, but the one that has gotten a good deal of attention is the Dreamers. This shouldn't be a problem. I agree with some of my colleagues who say: Where is the problem? Well, the problem was created by the President of the United States last September when he set a 6-month deadline on the removal of the Dreamers.

We didn't have a problem until then. We needed to fix our immigration system; don't get me wrong. But we didn't have a date on the backs of individuals who know no other country but the United States. As to their shelf life here in the United States, we didn't have that until the President initiated this problem.

When the President did that in September, I applauded colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, who said: Let us come together and fix it in the legislation. We need that, and I agree with that. We should have legislation for the Dreamers, so they have a pathway to citizenship and know that America is their home and their future is here. That should be done.

We had bipartisan legislation ready to go. We were ready to move forward on it, only to find out that while the President said that he was for legislation, he then said: Well, we have to deal with other issues. I have this wall I am concerned about and border security I am concerned about.

So the bipartisan group entered into good-faith negotiations with the President, and they narrowed the issues that needed to be resolved to a few. They talked about border security. They talked about the issues concerning the family and family reunification and dealing with the lottery system on diversity visas. They took up those issues, and they reached a bipartisan agreement as requested by the President and, they thought, with support of the President of the United States. Yes, it does protect the Dreamers, and I am proud to say it also protects those in temporary protected status.

Maryland has a large population from El Salvador and Haiti that are on TPS status. They are all protected under this compromise that was reached. Everybody thought ``Oh, my goodness, we have finally resolved this issue; we can go on to the next issue,'' only to find that the President of the United States flipped his position on it.

I want to be engaged with the President. As the majority leader said, he has to sign bills. I get it. But it is tough to negotiate with someone who tells you one thing on one day and then does the exact opposite on the next day.

We have a responsibility to act. We have a bill that is bipartisan and has enough support to clearly pass the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. It protects the Dreamers. It protects those with TPS status, and it deals with border security. We need to get that done now also.

We all know we have healthcare extenders that need to be completed in addition to CHIP. CHIP is very important to get done. It should be made permanent, I might tell you. We also have community health centers and many other issues that need to be dealt with in this legislation.

We have disaster relief. We have talked about this many times. We come together as a nation to help those who have been distressed through natural disasters--the people of Texas and Florida and Puerto Rico and those who have been affected by the wildfires.

Then, of course, the issue I hear the most about is the opioid crisis. We need to make sure that the Federal partnership is strong to deal with this national crisis.

What should we do? Well, let's work together. I must tell you, my constituents, your constituents are not interested in a blame game. They are interested in making sure that their Federal workers have a check to pay their mortgage payments. If they are in need of VA services, they want to make sure those services are available to them. They want to make sure they are getting the best value for their tax dollar, and they want the U.S. Senate and the Congress to work and resolve these issues.

They expect us to pass a budget, and they expect us to deal with these issues. We have a game plan to get all that done in a matter of days if we make the commitment to get it done. That is why I have suggested to the majority leader that there is support for us to stay and get the job done. Keep us in session. Keep government open, and we will get the work done.

Let us come together with a truly bipartisan budget that reflects the will of the American people and the input of all Members of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, a budget that makes sense for our Department of Defense, makes sense for those doing the research at the National Institutes of Health, those who are keeping our food safe at FDA, and those who are on the frontlines of the Social Security Administration, handling the issues of our seniors. Let's give them the tools they need in a budget that makes sense for this country.

Let's make sure that we pass these open issues that are urgent, some of which have been created by the President, such as the immigration issues. We have a path forward to resolve those issues now. Let's do that. If we do all of that, then we really are serving the interests of the American people.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that our first responsibility is to the people of this country. Let's not blame each other. Let's stay together and do something that we don't do enough of: Let's listen to each other. Let's get our work done, keep the government open, and do what is right for the American people.

With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the Dreamers are part of this country. They are America's future. They are helping to build this great Nation, and they need our attention now.

The Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. One of their principal responsibilities is to pass a budget. We are now 4 months into the fiscal year and we don't have a budget and we are talking about another continuing resolution through mid-February.

A couple weeks ago, we were told on the floor to give it a couple more weeks and we would work some of these issues out, but that time has now come, and we still do not have a budget. We should not be going into February without dealing with the problems of this country. We need a deal on the budget. We need a deal for an agreement on the Dreamers. We have so many issues that need to be addressed. There is no excuse why the Republican leadership has not brought these issues to the floor of the Senate for action.

I want to start, in regard to the Dreamers, by commending the bipartisan work of a group convened by Senators Graham and Durbin. They have come up with a good plan that addresses key issues needed for a compromise on immigration reform. I was pleased to see they put on their website a summary of the proposed legislation that deals with the Dreamers. It deals with border security, deals with diversity visas, those who are in temporary protective status, and family reunification and migration.

The draft legislation we saw would provide a 12-year pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, with up to 2 years of credit for time with DACA. The qualified Dreamers must have entered the United States by June 15, 2012, when President Obama and the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the DACA Program. I think most of us know DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program.

Let me just talk a few minutes about the Dreamers. These are individuals who entered our country as minors, when they were brought here by their parents to seek a better life. Under the DACA Program, they were entitled to a 2-year renewable work permit and the ability to remain in this country without fear of deportation. Each one has to go through a criminal background check. They need to be enrolled in school. They must either be high school graduates or in the U.S. military.

In the United States today, we have 800,000 who are registered under the Dreamers. There are about 10,000 in my State of Maryland, and they are contributing half a billion dollars to Maryland's gross domestic product. They are a key part of our economy. They are the next generation of teachers, doctors, engineers, and entrepreneurs. They are going to help build America. Most know no other country but the United States, which is their home, and our values, which make America the great Nation it is.

We are a welcoming country. We are a country in which people have come over the years to build this great Nation. That is America's strength. Let us build on our strength, not run away from it. Are we going to turn our back now on the values that built this country? Are we going to rip families apart? Is that what America stands for? I find that hard to imagine.

At the same time, we would hurt our economy and hurt ourselves. I have met with many Dreamers in Maryland. We had one in my office a few weeks ago who had tears in her eyes. She said: I have an expiration date on my back. She doesn't know what is going to happen when that date occurs. To me--and I hope to all Americans--this country is not a country where someone should have to live under those fears. We need to take action to help the Dreamers.

I have had several roundtable discussions with Dreamers in Maryland. I had them in College Park, Baltimore, and other areas throughout Maryland. Let me just mention two Dreamers I met with. Adam was originally born in Canada. His family grew up in Pakistan. He came to the United States with his parents when he was very young. Becky--who was born in Peru--came here with her parents to the United States. I mention them collectively because they both attend the University of Maryland, College Park.

Our State allows Dreamers to have instate tuition to go to college and get the tools they need in order to succeed. They need work permits because they have to work; otherwise, they never would have been able to get through school. They need a driver's license. Adam explained to me he needed a driver's license to get to a magnet school so he could advance his own education.

That was all possible--the ability to get a driver's license and the ability to work--because of President Obama's Executive order, the DACA Program. Now all of that has been put in doubt because of President Trump's announcement that the program will end. It puts their lives on hold in fear, and they wonder whether they need to go into the shadows of the United States of America.

This is a crisis which was created by President Trump when he announced the end of the DACA Program in 6 months. That will expire in March. President Trump's actions to rescind the DACA Program are wrong. We can correct it. That is what Congress can do and what we must do.

Our university community in Maryland strongly supports the DACA Program. I have heard from the University of Maryland system, Johns Hopkins University, and many other schools in our State. This fall, I received a joint letter from the public school secondary systems of Prince George's County, Anne Arundel County, Howard County, Montgomery County, and Baltimore City. This is what the school superintendents wrote to me:

Maryland is a national leader in providing students with a

world-class education. Essential to our success is our

commitment to providing children in our schools with a safe

and welcoming environment to learn. Termination of DACA will

have direct and damaging effects on the Maryland students who

are current beneficiaries.

The schools' letter continues:

It is a direct threat to Maryland's economic stability and

safety, as it will strip students of their ability to work

and drive legally, pay taxes, and pursue post-secondary

opportunities. Parents who lose work authorizations will face

deportation or be moved into a dangerous underground economy,

causing financial uncertainty for their families and harmful

stress on their children--our students.

In addition, the DACA decision could impact our ability to

motivate our youth to remain committed to their education and

pursuing college or careers, and will lead to worsening

economic hardships of our DACA community.

This is from our school systems in Maryland.

I heard similar concerns from law enforcement officials. Tom Manger, who cochairs the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force and is the police chief in Montgomery County, wrote:

Our support for a legislative solution for Dreamers is

consistent with our longstanding support for bipartisan

reform of our immigration system. We support measures

allowing law-abiding people to feel safe and secure in their

communities, which reinforce trust and cooperation with state

and local law enforcement. Beyond the significant

contributions Dreamers make to our communities, we are

concerned that, absent action by Congress, the Dreamer

population will be driven back into the shadows and be

hesitant to report crimes and cooperate with investigations.

Such an outcome would risk undermining community safety. When

Dreamers, and all immigrants, feel safe engaging with local

police, all of our communities are safer.

I certainly agree with Chief Manger.

A group similar to the Dreamers are those who are here in temporary protected status, or TPS. There are 437,000 people in America from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia,

Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. In Maryland, 22,500 people are here from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti. The largest number is from El Salvador. Our TPS population in Maryland exceeds the DACA population. My own State's recipients contributed $1.2 billion to the gross domestic product of my State, so this is a major part of the Maryland economy.

This is a very similar situation to the Dreamers. They get a 6- to 18-month extension. They have been here for decades because the underlying conditions in the countries from which they came still exist. I have been to Central America. I can tell you that it is not safe for people to return to those gang communities. They have the same situation--they know no other country but America. If they are required to go back to the country in which they were born, it will tear families apart. We need to act. We need to act in order to protect this group of citizens.

I want to acknowledge legislation that was introduced. I join my colleagues, Senators Van Hollen, Feinstein, and others, who will provide a legislative fix, S. 2144, the SECURE Act. I am pleased that the outline of the Durbin-Graham compromise immigration legislation includes relief for TPS recipients. The legislation will make changes to the diversity visa lottery program and reallocate half of the annual visas to recipients of TPS. That would amount to about 27,000 visas annually.

Under the draft, TPS recipients would maintain legal status and work authorization while awaiting visas. This would give TPS recipients protection from deportation, work authorizations, green cards, and ultimately a pathway to citizenship. After the TPS backlog is cleared-- which could take roughly a decade to do, given the 300,000-plus recipients of TPS in the United States today--the annual visas would be allocated to nationals of priority countries.

In the past few months, the Department of Homeland Security has placed termination dates on TPS for those from El Salvador and Haiti and has extended the deadline for a decision on Honduras. These individuals are at risk. We need to act.

Maryland has a large number of El Salvadorans. I am gravely concerned about what will happen to these individuals--many mixed-nationality families who have been part of American communities for so long. For nearly a decade, El Salvador has consistently suffered per capita murder rates that have been among the worst in the world. In 2016, the people of El Salvador were victims of over 5,200 homicides--an alarming rate of more than 80 per 100,000 and the highest globally. El Salvador has limited capacity to absorb the nearly 200,000 individuals who could be subjected to immediate deportation. We welcomed these individuals to America to save them from danger.

As another example, although Haiti has made important strides toward reconstruction, its capacity to effectively manage repatriation efforts has faced substantial setbacks, including the continuing cholera epidemic and devastating hurricane in late 2016. Additionally, conditions in Haiti were further complicated by two category 5 hurricanes--Irma and Maria, which struck in September. These recent developments exacerbate already fragile conditions in Haiti.

As the Department of Homeland Security's own internal memorandum from April 2017 outlined, an estimated 30 percent of the population-- approximately 3.2 million people--suffer from food insecurity, and 40 percent of the population lacks access to fundamental health and nutrition services.

In other words, it is not safe for those individuals to go back to Haiti. They have been here. This is their home. They want to make this their home, and we should give them that opportunity.

Let me conclude by again quoting Becky, one of the Dreamers I met at the University of Maryland, College Park. She said that the best present she ever got was on her 13th birthday when President Obama executed the Executive order that gave her legal status and hope here in America.

Well, we can give her an even better present right now. We can give her the present of Congress acting to provide protection for the Dreamers and for those on TPS so they don't have to worry again and they know they have a home here in America.

I urge my colleagues to pass legislation that will protect the Dreamers and TPS.

Mr. President, I certainly hope we will do the minimum that the Congress of the United States can get done, and that is to pass a budget before the deadline of tomorrow evening.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I will take this time to go over with my colleagues the reasons why I unequivocally oppose the Trump administration's decision to allow oil and gas drilling along our Atlantic coast.

There are many reasons why I oppose this policy. One is that the risk to the environment is too great. The Atlantic coast contains some of the most pristine coastlines in America. This region is very much aware of the importance of the Chesapeake Bay and how fragile the Chesapeake Bay is and what an oilspill off the coast of the Atlantic could do to the Chesapeake Bay.

There are also reasons to oppose this because, quite frankly, the amount of suspected reserves are just not great enough to warrant this risk. We also know that already there are significant lands that have been devoted and are available for oil exploration that will meet our needs, but a lot of it has not even been explored yet because of the current economic realities.

Lastly, when we are talking about an energy policy that makes sense for our country, exploring for new oil off the coast of the Atlantic makes no sense whatsoever. In November 2016, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management wisely did not include any parcels in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf in the 2017-2022 plan to lease offshore land the Federal Government controls.

The following month, former President Obama used his authority under section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953 to withdraw unleased Outer Continental Shelf lands from future lease sales. This makes sense.

In June of 2017, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that U.S. oil output will hit 10 million barrels per day in 2018, breaking the alltime 1970 record--all without drilling off the Chesapeake Bay. The previous record was 9.6 million barrels a day in 1970.

So we are at a record pace on bringing oil out of the ground. Yet we take a look at the amount of oil that is projected to be available for exploration off the Atlantic Coast, and it is a relatively small amount. When we recognize the risk, it is just not worth the risk to explore for that amount of oil with the potential of causing devastation to our environment.

Last March, officials from the Spanish oil company Repsol and its privately held U.S. partner Armstrong Energy announced the discovery of 1.2 billion barrels of oil in Alaska's North Slope, which was previously viewed as an aging oil basin. That amount exceeds the projected entire reserves along the Atlantic coast. Production could begin as soon as 2021 and lead to as much as 120,000 barrels of output per day. This is the biggest onshore discovery of conventional oil in the United States in three decades.

In addition to these massive onshore discoveries, as of fiscal year 2016--the last year for which data is available--only 47 percent of the public lands already held by oil and gas industries are under production. In other words, half the lands are still yet to be produced. The industry also has a glut of drilling permits, with more than 7,900 approved but unused permits on the book. In fiscal year 2016, the Bureau of Land Management issued 2,184 drilling permits, of which only 847 were used by the industry. So they have a big backlog. They don't need another area to explore.

As the Wilderness Society reported last month, leasing more lands than industry could possibly develop or seems interested in developing allows companies to stockpile land while they wait for a more favorable market, but stockpiling prevents these lands from being used for popular pastimes like hunting, fishing, hiking, and conservation, while leaving them open to the risk of drilling.

There is an Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf site known as lease sale 220. It has been proposed for oil and gas development previously. Lease sale 220 is located off the shore of Virginia. It is a 2.9 million- acre, triangle-shaped site. NOAA tells us that 72 percent of the time the prevailing winds in this region blow toward or along the coast--72 percent of the time. Coupled with the way the Gulf Stream flows and local currents, if lease sale 220 is developed and there is an oilspill, the likelihood of oil washing up on the shores of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Outer Banks is quite high. The mouth of the Chesapeake Bay is just 50 miles away from this site. It is hard enough just dealing with the existing pollutants that come into the bay from agriculture, development, and storm runoff. Add oil into the mix, and it would set us back decades in order to restart our oyster crops and help our watermen with blue crabs and to help the rock fish return and thrive.

We have spent a lot of energy in the U.S. Congress as a Federal partner with the Chesapeake Bay Program. I remember my days in the State legislature where Governor Hughes provided the leadership for the development of the Chesapeake Bay Program. We worked with governments from six States and the District of Columbia, the Federal Government, and private sector partners--all so we could preserve and reclaim the Chesapeake Bay, a national treasure. It has been declared so by many Presidents. We spent a lot of effort. We asked our farmers to do more. We asked our developers to do more. We asked our local governments, in the way they treat their wastewater, to do more. Now, if we allow drilling off the Atlantic coast, all that effort could be put at risk.

Drilling off the coast of Maryland would interfere with our naval Atlantic Test Range, preventing our military from developing next- generation fighter aircraft, sensors, and weapons to keep us safe. We have a large military presence along the Atlantic coast.

Adding insult to injury--or, perhaps I should say, heaping injury on top of injury, this move to open up the Atlantic coast to drilling came just 1 week after President Trump repealed safety regulations President Obama implemented to prevent another Deepwater Horizon disaster. Deepwater Horizon was a $600 million state-of-the-art rig, but it failed, causing the greatest accidental oilspill in history. Eleven crewmen lost their lives. Up to 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed from the broken well for more than 3 months, eventually fouling over 570 miles of gulf shoreline and killing thousands of birds and other marine life.

The long-term effects of the oilspill and the 1.8 million gallons of dispersants used on it remain unknown, but experts say they could devastate the gulf coast for many years or even decades. Dolphins continue to die, fish are showing strange lesions, coral in the gulf have died, and oil still remains in some marsh areas. The oil could remain in the food chain for generations to come. An oilspill entering the Chesapeake Bay would be a similar disaster.

Whatever happened to Interior Secretary Zinke's promise during his confirmation process to be highly mindful of local input when managing public lands and waters? Opponents of offshore drilling flooded the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management with more than a half million comments. The list of opponents included more than 1,200 local, State, and Federal officials, including the Governors of Maryland,

Delaware, Virginia, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Oregon, and Washington; more than 150 coastal municipalities; and an alliance of more than 41,000 businesses and 50,000 fishing families. President Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke cavalierly ignored the widespread public opposition to expanded offshore drilling and the time and effort the public dedicated to making their dissenting voices heard.

It is reckless, even wanton, to jeopardize so much--the livelihood of those who depend on fishing and tourist industries, our fisheries, and our military readiness--along the Maryland coast and Chesapeake Bay when there is so much more oil and gas in other parts of the country where production is already well established and locally supported.

My concerns aren't limited to the Chesapeake Bay or Maryland's beautiful coastline, even though both are priceless national, not parochial, natural resources. The international scientific consensus regarding human contributions to climate change is clear. Greenhouse gas emissions are a huge problem. Yet the Trump administration is determined to double down on burning fossil fuels when we need to be diminishing, not increasing, our reliance on them. Instead of promoting an energy policy for the 21st century, President Trump is pushing policies from the early 20th century. This isn't just ill-advised, it is deadly. We have little time to lose when it comes to cutting fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. Politico recently reported:

Last year was the third hottest on record in 125 years of

record-keeping, and the U.S. faced record-breaking losses

from weather and climate disasters. . . . A NOAA study found

that hurricanes, wildfires and other events did $306 billion

worth of damage to the U.S. economy, factoring in destroyed

property and lost business activity in affected areas. . . .

The most expensive storm of 2017 was Hurricane Harvey, with

an estimated $125 billion in costs, followed by Hurricane

Maria at $90 billion and Hurricane Irma at $50 billion. As

for wildfires, they burned through more than 9.8 million

acres in the West and caused close to $18 billion in damage,

tripling the previous record. The U.S. in total saw 16

separate events with losses exceeding $1 billion each in

2017, tying a record set in 2011 for most billion-dollar

disasters in a single year.

NOAA scientists also found the five warmest years on record

for the U.S. all have occurred since 2006.

For all these reasons, I urge President Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke to reverse course on this ill-begotten plan immediately. What we really need is a permanent moratorium on oil and gas drilling off our Atlantic coast. The potential rewards of such drilling--problematic as they are--don't come anywhere close to equaling the risks to the Chesapeake Bay and Maryland's and our Nation's irreplaceable shorelines and coastal communities.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I wish to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday the Nation celebrated yesterday. Dr. King once said: ``The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.'' These words are a specter, speaking to us now as though written for political moments precisely like the one we find ourselves in today. These words reflect the wisdom and tenacity of a man who deftly shaped his own moment and made our country better, fairer, and more just in the process.

Dr. King was a remarkable figure, perhaps most of all because he was an ordinary man--a husband and a father like so many others--who made extraordinary choices. In the face of a society that told him he must sit down, he chose to take a stand. In the face of evil and systemic bigotry, he chose to embody the tenets of love and peace. In the face of improbable odds, he chose to fight. As a result, his legacy of tolerance, respect, and equality is forever cemented in the very foundation of this country, and we are all the better for it.

Right up until the moment his life was taken from him, 50 years ago this year, Dr. King fought for an equal society, an equitable society, wherein we would judge one another not by the color of each other's skin, but by the content of our character. He was a shining beacon for all those who had come before him and all those who would come after, who, at tremendous risk to their own lives and livelihoods, have fought ceaselessly in the name of civil rights, fair wages, the eradication of poverty, and the right of all Americans to vote.

His wisdom still guides us even now, so many decades removed from his time here. When, in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court dismantled the Voting Rights Act that Dr. King was instrumental in passing, many of us vowed to persevere, to pass new legislation, knowing that is what Dr. King would have expected and would have done himself. Discriminatory practices such as voter identification requirements have made a resurgence in recent years, making it more difficult for citizens to exercise their most basic, fundamental right. Bigoted, hateful rhetoric has sadly continued into our lifetime, threatening the livelihoods and the dignity of people of color all across America. Misunderstanding of those from other countries or backgrounds all too often guides our politics, and fringe groups are all too often successful in stoking that fear into hate.

Despite all of this, I am optimistic about our future because, as Dr. King put it best, ``The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.'' That is the other half of Dr. King's legacy: hope-- pure, undiluted, undeterred. We have tremendous challenges before us, just as he did then. I am hopeful when I watch Dreamers march on the U.S. Capitol, asking us to live up to our own promise as a nation. I am hopeful when I see women of all races, creeds, orientations, and backgrounds rally together as one, demanding to be heard, to be believed, to be counted. I am hopeful when I watch Black Lives Matter organize incredible, peaceful protests, keeping us all accountable, and I am hopeful when I see Americans of all different stripes join them.

Today both Dr. King's message and methods are as relevant as ever. He lives on in the footfall of peacefully marching protesters and in every word spoken in opposition to inequality and injustice. He lives on in the diversity of our college campuses and the all-too-slow, but steady, representation of people of color in our government. He lives on in all the ordinary men and women of this country who, every day, make extraordinary choices, like meeting hate with love, and the darkness of our troubled times with the light of their own hope.

Even in difficult times, through violence and denial, Dr. King maintained his dream, and as he said in the last sermon he gave in Tennessee, through every plight, he saw the Promised Land upon that great mountaintop. As we come together to celebrate his birthday, let us pledge to follow his footsteps up that mountain, to carry on his dream, until we meet him there.

Mr. President, I take this time to share with my colleagues a report I released yesterday, which is the product of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The report is called ``Putin's Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security.''

I commissioned this report to be done early in 2017. I had to make a decision on the allocation of resources, and I thought it was extremely important that the American people and the international community understand the breadth of Russia's campaign against democratic institutions.

Yes, we saw it in 2016 in the U.S. elections, but that was only one part of a much broader design, and I recognized we needed to devote the resources at that time in order to make this report work. It is how Russia has interfered not just here in the United States but in Europe.

I want to start with the statement that this is not a partisan report. Yes, I commissioned it as the Democratic ranking member because decisions had to be made early in 2017 on the allocation of resources. I know the Presiding Officer knows, I worked very closely with Senator Corker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and throughout the development of this report, I have kept Senator Corker informed.

The work of this report has relied upon the work of many Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. In fact, I think the Presiding Officer will recall the work we did--Democrats and Republicans--in the passing of legislation in 2017 that held Russia accountable for its maligned activities. I was proud that I had the strong cooperation and support and leadership in developing that legislation from Senator McCain, Senator Graham, and Senator Rubio, who contributed greatly to the enactment of that legislation, and on the Democratic side, Senator Menendez, Senator Shaheen, and Senator Durbin.

This report is the accumulation of a year's work. It had professionalism and dedication and patriotism of the very talented staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I want to acknowledge that because I know all of us recognize that our staffs are critically important to the work we do in the Senate.

Damian Murphy was our captain on this project. He was the one who provided the leadership to make sure we had a thorough report, that we had an accurate report, and that our recommendations would be tailored to make our Nation more secure. Terrell Henry provided incredible help throughout the entire year. Laura Carey was an instrumental part of getting this done. Megan Barkley helped us with making sure all of the sources were properly cited.

I also want to acknowledge my Democratic staff leader, Jessica Lewis, who really was the one who decided early that we could get this done and encouraged me to move forward.

Lastly, this report has received considerable attention since I released it yesterday--considerable attention--because this is the first comprehensive report that has been authored that deals with Russia's maligned activities, which are global in nature. Sean Bartlett was capable of making sure this story would be heard. I thank him for his professional work in the way we were able to get this report circulated.

Following the 2016 elections, I thought it was important that we shed more light on the Russian Government's efforts to interfere in democracies beyond our own. Anyone who thinks the threat posed by Russia is limited to hacking emails or the American election in 2016 is missing the real story, and that is what this report shows.

We wanted to describe the scale and scope of this threat to make the American people aware that the Russian Government's interference in the 2016 elections are part of a pattern of behavior and warn that Russia could attack again in 2018 and 2020. The Kremlin is a learning organization, and they are constantly perfecting and improving their techniques.

This report is the first government report to lay out in detail exactly how the Russians operate. Mr. Putin employs an asymmetric arsenal that includes not just military invasions--and they do use their military--but cyber attacks, disinformation and propaganda, and support for fringe political groups. They have employed the weaponization of energy resources. They have a network of organized crime, and they have a system that is fueled by corruption.

This threat existed long before President Trump and will remain following his tenure, unless he takes steps and we take steps to address it.

Our report examines how the Russian Government has sought to interfere in 19 countries across Europe. Many lessons are to be learned from our allies in Europe that have shown his behavior can be deterred. While many in the executive branch understand the threat and have taken steps to address Mr. Putin's asymmetric arsenal, Presidential leadership has been absent. Never before has a U.S. President so clearly ignored such a grave and growing threat to our national security, and without Presidential leadership, the United States will remain uncoordinated in its response.

The Washington Post reported in December that the National Security Council has not had a meeting on countering malign Russian influence-- more than a year after the intelligence community assessment that Russia interfered in our elections.

Mr. Putin's rise to power in 1999 was cynical and opportunistic. He capitalized on a war in Chechnya and apartment bombings in Moscow to shore up his image as a strong hand that could steady the country after the rocky 1990s.

To do so, this former KGB officer emboldened his security services to play an outsized, criminal role in running the state. Mr. Putin's regime used violence to stop those who opposed him in and outside of Russia, cheated his way through the Olympics, and, through his security services' connections with organized crime and money laundering, has emboldened cyber theft and racketeering that has real-world implications for U.S. companies and citizens.

Mr. Putin developed his techniques first at home against his own people. In Russia, he repressed independent civil society, journalists, and political opposition, while manipulating cultural and religious influences, the media and information space, and a corrupt crony capitalist system to shore up his own regime.

The tools in Mr. Putin's asymmetric arsenal are drawn from a Soviet playbook but updated with new technologies. These include propaganda and disinformation, cultivating political fringe, religious and cultural groups as influencers, and weaponizing crime and corruption as a system of governance.

In Europe, Mr. Putin's Russia has invaded countries, attempted coups, cut off countries from energy in the middle of winter, temporarily crippled governments with cyber attacks, created a whole new way to exponentially spread fake news using bots and trolls, and used dirty money as a weapon to attempt to buy candidates and political parties. The report illustrates these events in more detail in the 19 countries across Europe.

The international response to the Kremlin's arsenal has been a patchwork. Some European countries have shored up their democracies in ways the United States has yet to do, in a strategic, whole-of- government fashion. Europe's experience with Russia's meddling shows it can be deterred, and the United States must take steps to deter Russia now, as laid out in the report's recommendations.

The report helps us to understand why Mr. Putin is doing this. He is doing this because that is all he has. Russia's economy is faltering. It has a limited military capacity. It doesn't have many friends around the world. Its economy is about 7 percent the size of the U.S. economy--ranks No. 12 in the world. It is smaller than Italy or South Korea or Canada, but we have to acknowledge he has had success with the use of these tools, with the use of these weapons.

He has accumulated, by reported sources, more than tens of billions of dollars of stolen wealth. He has a propaganda machine that has been able to make him popular at home and accomplish many of his objectives in other countries. He has slowed down Serbia's integration into the EU and Ukraine and Georgia's ability to join NATO because of Russia's troops located in its countries.

The report highlights the lessons we have learned from our Europeans. It is interesting, the Europeans understood this risk before we did and took action. The Brexit campaign in the UK, Russia was clearly engaged in it. Prime Minister May has made a resolute public statement that Russia's meddling is unacceptable and will be countered.

France looked at what happened in 2016 in the U.S. elections, and they took steps. The Macron campaign was subject to cyber attacks with emails from President Macron during the campaign. They were released shortly before the runoff election, but France was prepared, and they were able to counter that. The French Government worked with independent media and political parties to expose and blunt the dissemination of fake news.

In Germany, we saw the famous ``Lisa case'' that was fabricated by Russian-sponsored news outlets in order to incite the Russian-German community for an anti-migrant-type protest. The German Government bolstered democratic cyber security capabilities, particularly after the 2015 hack of the Bundestag, and the Interior Minister proposed creating a Center of Defense Against Misinformation. Germany has acted.

In the Nordic countries, the states have largely adopted a whole-of- society approach, with an emphasis on education that teaches critical thinking and media literacy. They have a curriculum in their school for their schoolchildren to be able to differentiate between what is real and what is fake in the news.

In Lithuania, the government diversified its supplies of natural gas. All the Baltic governments have worked to integrate their electricity grids to reduce dependency on Russia for energy needs.

In Spain, the Spanish Government has investigated, exposed, and cut off significant money-laundering operations by Russia-based organized crime.

So what do we do about this? Russia has this plan to compromise our democratic institutions. What do we do about it? Well, the report spells out many, many recommendations. I am proud to say that many of these recommendations have been championed by Members on both sides of the aisle.

First, we call upon Presidential leadership. We need President Trump to acknowledge the threat and establish a high-level interagency fusion cell to coordinate all elements of U.S. policy on the Russian Government's malign influence operations. The President should present to Congress a comprehensive national strategy and work to get it implemented and funded.

Second, the U.S. Government needs to support democratic institution building and values abroad. We need stronger support for these programs. The United States should provide assistance to help bolster democratic institutions in European states.

Members of the U.S. Congress should conduct hearings and use their platform to make democracy and human rights an essential part of their agenda. I am proud of the work we have done in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Working with Senator Corker, we have highlighted human rights throughout the year, but we need to do more. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has recommended to the full Senate that we pass legislation so we can start evaluating every country and its ability to fight corruption, patterned after the ``Trafficking in Persons Report'' on human trafficking. We need to get that bill enacted into law.

Third, we need to expose and freeze Kremlin-linked dirty money. We should declassify any intelligence related to Mr. Putin's personal corruption and cut off Mr. Putin and his inner circle from the international financial system. We know that the elite class in Russia does not want to hold their money in rubles; they want dollars. We have to deny them that opportunity. They also would like visas to visit the United States; they don't want to be stuck in Russia. Those sanctions have an impact, and we need to make sure they are enforced.

Fourth, we need to create a ``state hybrid threat actors'' designation and impose a sanctions regime. The United States should designate countries that employ malign influence operations to assault democracies as ``state hybrid threat actors.'' Those designated would fall under a preemptive escalating sanctions regime that would be applied whenever the state uses weapons like cyber attacks to interfere with a democratic election or disrupt a country's vital infrastructure. We need to make it clear that, yes, we want relations with all countries, constructive relations, but if they are going to use these weapons against our democratic institutions, we need to be prepared to increase our sanctions against these countries.

Quite frankly, what we must understand is the importance of democracy against what Mr. Putin is trying to do.

Fifth, we have to defend the United States and Europe against foreign funding that erodes democracy. We need to pass legislation to require full disclosure of shell company owners and improve transparency for funding of political parties, campaigns, and advocacy groups. We have bipartisan legislation to do that. Let's get that passed. We know that shell companies are shielding illegal funds. Let's make sure that Russia's game plan is not funded through shell companies that are located here.

Sixth, we need U.S. leadership to build global cyber defenses and norms and to establish a rapid reaction team to defend allies under attack. We should push NATO to consider the implications of a cyber attack within the context of article V and our ability to defend each other. We should also lead an effort to establish an international treaty on the use of cyber tools in peacetime, modeled on the international arms control treaties.

Lastly, we need to hold social media companies accountable. Government should mandate transparency for funding political advertisements. This is the new way of communications. We have to catch up with technology in our laws. We require traditional advertisers to disclose all this information, but we have left social media alone because we didn't know about it when we passed these laws. We have to make sure that we have full laws on disclosure. Companies should conduct audits on possible Kremlin-supported meddling in European elections over the past several years. Companies should establish civil society advisory councils and work with civil society and government to promote media literacy.

That is just a sampling of some of the recommendations that are in this report. It is pretty comprehensive, but I think it does give us a game plan to understand that we can protect our national security, and we must.

Following the end to World War II, the United States led the world in constructing the liberal international order, underpinned by democratic institutions, shared values, and accepted norms. It protects our shared security, advances our interests, and expands our prosperity. Yet the defense of that system of institutions and democratic principles is anathema to Mr. Putin, who seeks to protect little more than his power and wealth. It is therefore up to the United States and our allies to engage in a coordinated effort to counter the Kremlin's assaults on democracy in Europe, the United States, and around the world.

In closing, we must take care to point out that there is a distinction between Mr. Putin's corrupt regime and the people of Russia, who have been some of his most frequent victims. Many Russian citizens strive for a more transparent and accountable government that operates under the democratic rule of law, and we hope for better relations in the future with a Russian Government that reflects these values. We applaud the courage we saw very recently from the protesters in Russia, who stood up against Mr. Putin because they want basic freedom in their country.

I remember very clearly that when we passed the Magnitsky law that holds those who violated the basic human rights, in Russia, of Sergei Magnitsky, who was just doing his job as a lawyer--that they would be denied our banking system and denied the ability to travel to this country--when that bill was enacted, it was the people who were protesting against the government who said: That law passed by the U.S. Congress was the most pro-Russian bill passed by the U.S. Congress. We stand with the people of Russia.

I am also the ranking Democrat in the U.S. Helsinki Commission. I have worked for the Helsinki Commission for a long time. The Helsinki Commission includes all the countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union, the United States, and Canada. All countries had signed on to the Helsinki Final Act. It talks about basic democratic principles, and it gives each member state the right to challenge the activities of every other member state.

We have an obligation to call out what Mr. Putin is doing because it is not only against our national security interests; it is not only hurting the people of Russia; it is against the commitments Russia made in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

The United States must work with our allies to build defenses against Mr. Putin's asymmetric arsenal and strengthen international norms and values to deter such malign behavior by Russia or any other country.

I stand ready to work with all of my colleagues to protect our national security interests and to recognize the threat that Mr. Putin poses to our democratic institutions. I look forward to a day when we can truly have a better relationship with Russia because they stop this assault on democratic institutions in Europe, the United States, or anywhere in the world.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted to Laura Carey, who is a fellow on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, on loan from the State Department, during today's session.

Mr. President, today, with sadness in my heart, I wish to pay tribute to a very special person, Anne Michele Irby, a member of my staff for over 25 years and a dear friend who died on December 18, 2017.

Anne was born in Baltimore and raised in Parkville. She was the daughter of Basil T. Irby, a sales representative for the Baltimore Stationery Co., and Jean Craig, a homemaker. She attended St. Thomas More School and was a 1979 graduate of the old Seton High School in Charles Village. She received a diploma from what was then Villa Julie College and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Baltimore. Early in her career, she worked for the Baltimore Jewish Council and then became a lobbyist for Associated Catholic Charities of Baltimore.

Anne joined my office in 1990 when I was a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and remained a member of my team when I became a U.S. Senator. She was a dedicated caseworker in my Baltimore office and was an invaluable resource to my staff and the citizens of Maryland. She was an indefatigable advocate for veterans and their families and helped them navigate a complicated system to obtain disability, medical, and educational benefits. She also helped veterans obtain much-needed medical appointments and lost medals. In addition to her work with veterans, she also worked tirelessly to help Marylanders save their homes as the foreclosure crisis spread across the State during the recession.

Anne was very knowledgeable about the agencies and personnel available to serve the needs of my constituents. Agency professionals knew Anne and respected her willingness to assist those constituents in need. Anne considered her position in my office as a career, not just ``a job.'' She was a true professional who wanted to make life better for as many people as she could. That is the essence of public service.

Anne would be best described as a ``gentle soul.'' She was a devoted caregiver to her parents and close family members. She was a huge football fan. I think the only person she ever had a ``beef'' with was John Elway. The Baltimore Colts drafted him in 1983, but he refused to play for the Colts, so they had to trade him to Denver. Even though she was from Baltimore, she later cheered hard for the team from Washington after the Colts left town under the cover of darkness on March 29, 1984. She spent many Mondays talking about how her team fared on Sunday. In addition to her love of football, Anne enjoyed a good book and a hot cup of coffee. She would often visit Washington's Politics and Prose bookstore to pick up the latest bestseller or meet her favorite author. She frequented Baltimore's Woodlea Bakery and was known for bringing their donuts and cakes to the office for the rest of the staff and visitors.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ``To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate

beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.''

Anne Irby left us much too soon, but she succeeded. She touched so many lives and helped so many people and families across the State. She will be remembered for putting the concerns of others before her own. Many people wake up every day hoping to make a difference. We can all take comfort in knowing that Anne Irby actually did make a difference. I send my deepest condolences to her sister Donna Jean Rodgers, her other family members, and her friends. We are all grieving.

I salute Anne for a job extraordinarily well done and pledge today that she will always be a member of ``Team Cardin.''

Mr. President, I thank Senator Durbin for his extraordinary leadership on this issue and so many others.

The Dreamers are part of this country. They are America's future. They are helping to build this great Nation, and they need our attention now.

The Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. One of their principal responsibilities is to pass a budget. We are now 3 months into the fiscal year, and we don't have a budget, and we are talking about another continuing resolution. A couple of weeks ago, we were told on the floor to give it a couple of more weeks, and we would work out some of these issues. I agree with Senator Durbin. The time to act is now. We should not be going into recess without dealing with the problems of our country. We need to deal with the budget problem, and we, certainly, need to deal with the problem of the Dreamers. Let me just talk a little bit about them.

They entered the United States before they were 16 years old--that is required--before 2007. Under President Obama's Executive order of 2012, they were entitled to a 2-year renewable work permit and the ability to remain in this country without being in fear of deportation. Each one has to go through a criminal background check. They need to be enrolled in school. They must either be high school graduates or in the U.S. military. In the United States today, we have 800,000 who are registered under the Dreamers. There are 10,000 in my State of Maryland, and they are contributing a half a billion dollars to Maryland's GDP, or gross domestic product. They are our next generation of teachers, doctor, engineers, and entrepreneurs. They are going to help build America, and they know no other country but the United States, which is their home.

In our values, what makes America the great Nation that it is is that we are a welcoming country. We are a country in which people have come over the years to build this great Nation. That is America's strength.

Are we going to turn our back now on the values that built this country? Are we going to rip families apart? Is that what America stands for? I find that hard to imagine. Would we do this to our own economy and hurt ourselves, as we are growing with their help?

I have met with many Dreamers, not as many as Senator Durbin. He probably has the record. But I met with several Dreamers in Maryland. We had one in our office yesterday who had tears in her eyes. She said: I have an expiration date on my back. She doesn't know what is going to happen when that date occurs.

How would you like to live under that fear in the United States of America? We are not talking about some communist country. We are talking about America, where people are living in fear.

I have had several roundtable discussions with Dreamers in Maryland. I have had them in College Park, Baltimore, and in other areas. Let me mention two Dreamers I met with. Adam was originally born in Canada. His family grew up in Pakistan. He came to the United States with his parents when he was very young. Becky was born in Peru and came here with her parents to the United States. I mention them collectively because they both attend the University of Maryland at College Park. Our State allows Dreamers to have instate tuition so they can go to college and get the tools they need in order to succeed. They need work permits because they have to work. Otherwise, they never would have been able to get through school. They need a driver's license. Adam explained to me that he needed a driver's license to go to a magnet school so that he could advance his own education. That was all possible through President Obama's Executive order. Now all of that has been put into doubt because of President Trump's announcements that the program will end. It puts their lives on hold and in fear, and they wonder whether they need to go into the shadows in the United States of America.

President Trump's actions were wrong. We can correct that, and Congress must act. We must act now before we go home for the holidays.

I wish to talk about a similar group of people in our country--a large number in my State of Maryland--those under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, because it is a similar situation. There are 437,000 people in America from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. In Maryland, 22,500 people are here from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti--from those three countries alone--and 90 percent of the TPS people in this country are from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti, the three principal countries. My own State's recipients contribute $1.2 billion of our gross domestic product. This is a very similar situation to the Dreamers. They get a 6- to 18-month extension. They have been here for decades because the underlying conditions in the countries from which they came still exist today. I have been to Central America. I can tell you that it is not safe for these people to be returned to those gang activities. They have the same similar situation. They know no other country but America. If they are required to go back to the country in which they were born, it will tear families apart. They have been disadvantaged by the President's actions where he is now threatening to end these programs.

We need to act. We need to act in order to protect this group of citizens. I want to acknowledge that my colleagues have introduced legislation on this. S. 2144 provides a pathway to citizenship for those with TPS status. It is sponsored by Senators Van Hollen, Feinstein, and others. We should take that bill up and pass it. Let's provide protections. Let's strengthen American values. Let's do our work. Let's do it now. Let's do it before we go on recess. It is the right thing to do.

Let me just conclude by quoting from Becky again, one of the Dreamers I met. She said the best present she ever got was on her 13th birthday, when President Obama executed the Executive order that gave her legal status and hope here in America.

Well, we can give her an even better present right now before we take the recess for the Christmas holidays. We can give her a present of Congress, acting to provide protection for the Dreamers and for those on TPS so they don't have to worry again and they know they have a home here in America.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I wish to take this time to talk about two matters of human rights, which I know the Presiding Officer has been very much engaged with as an active member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I want to share this information with our colleagues.

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the 2012 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act. Today, with the publication of five new sanctions designations, the citizens of the Russian Federation-- many of whom strive for a future governed by the rule of law--can claim a small victory over oppression. I hope that today's news provides a semblance of justice for the family of Sergei Magnitsky and those who continue to fight against corruption and human rights abuses across the country.

The Magnitsky list now includes 49 names--an important testament to the central importance that accountability and human rights should play in U.S. foreign policy.

I think the Members of this body are familiar with the circumstances surrounding Sergei Magnitsky's death. He was a young lawyer in Russia representing a company. He discovered corruption, and he did what any lawyer should do. He reported it to the authorities. As a result, he was arrested. He was tortured, denied medical care, and died in prison.

As a result of that, legislation was introduced. I was proud to sponsor it with my good friend Senator McCain. It was enacted into law, as I said, 5 years ago. It holds those who perpetrate these violations of human rights accountable by denying them the right to visit our country--visa applications--or to use our banking systems.

The five additions to this list include Andrei Pavlov, Yulia Mayorova, and Alexei Sheshenya for their roles in the Magnitsky case and Ramzan Kadyrov and Ayub Kataev for gross violations of human rights. I appreciate the work of career officials at the Treasury and State Departments for their work in investigating and designating these important cases.

Andrei Pavlov is a Russian lawyer who played a central role orchestrating the false claims used in the $230 million tax fraud that Sergei Magnitsky uncovered. His addition to the Magnitsky list is long overdue, as he played an essential role in the plot.

Yulia Mayorova is the former wife of Pavlov and a Russian lawyer. She also reportedly played a role in helping to facilitate the fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky.

Alexei Sheshenia also reportedly played key roles in both the 2006 theft of the $107 million in taxes paid by RenGaz and in the 2007 theft of the $230 million of taxes paid by Hermitage. I understand that in both tax thefts, shell companies beneficially owned by Alexei Sheshenia used forged backdated contracts to obtain judgments against companies that paid a significant amount of taxes.

Ramzan Kadyrov is a renowned human rights abuser who has brutally run the Republic of Chechnya for more than 10 years. Under his rule, human rights offenders have been murdered, and gay men have disappeared. He has destroyed any semblance of the rule of law in the Republic. Over the course of his time in power, there have been credible allegations of his directing assassinations deployed across Russia and Europe. Human rights groups have documented many cases of torture and extrajudicial killings by forces under his control.

Ayub Kataev is a prison warden and head of the branch of the Chechen internal affairs ministry. Earlier this year, Chechen authorities reportedly set up concentration camps for gay men under his control. He certainly belongs on this list.

Since 2012, Senator McCain and I have conducted rigorous oversight to ensure robust implementation of the Magnitsky law. In 2016, we wrote to the State Department with certain suggestions for inclusions on the list relevant to the death of Sergei Magnitsky. We also expressed concerns that the allegations of torture in Chechnya against gay men and other human rights violations in the North Caucasus should be investigated. I am pleased they took action that was responsive to both of our inquiries.

I want my colleagues to know that I do believe this administration has conducted the review on the Magnitsky list the way it should have been--keeping in close contact with Members of the Senate. I think the result speaks to the quality of work that was done in this year's list.

America's values are our interests. As a country, we must remain steadfastly committed to the principles embedded in the Magnitsky law-- accountability, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. The American people expect U.S. policymakers to advance these principles in all aspects of our diplomatic relations. I welcome today's announcement and also expect the first publication of the ``Global Magnitsky'' sanctions designations this week.

As the Presiding Officer is well aware, we have recently passed the ``Global Magnitsky'' law that applies similar standards for human rights violations globally. That list should be made available, we hope, sometime this week.

Mr. President, a second subject that I wish to talk about today on human rights deals with the collapse in Venezuela. I come to the floor to speak about Venezuela's growing humanitarian tragedy and accelerating economic collapse.

Late last June, here on the Senate floor, I described Venezuela as a nearly failed State, where authoritarian leaders profit from links to corruption and drug trafficking, while the Venezuelan people are subject to precarious humanitarian conditions and human rights abuses. Disturbingly, the situation has only deteriorated since the time I was last on the floor talking about the circumstances.

With Venezuela's humanitarian crisis growing daily, conditions facing Venezuelan children are particularly dire. This week, the New York Times published a heartbreaking investigation of how Venezuelan children dying of hunger. It states:

Parents go days without eating, shriveling to the weight of

children themselves. Women line up at sterilization clinics

to avoid having children they cannot feed. Boys leave home to

join street gangs that scavenge for scraps. . . . Crowds of

adults storm dumpsters after restaurants close. Babies die

because it is hard to find or afford infant formula, even in

emergency rooms.

That is in our hemisphere in Venezuela.

The Catholic relief organization Caritas has determined that over 50 percent of the children are suffering from nutritional deficiencies. They project that 280,000 Venezuelan children could eventually die of hunger without an urgently needed humanitarian response.

As the Venezuelans increasingly suffer the ravages of hunger, the country's hospital system is collapsing. Essential medicines are in short supply, and more than half of the Nation's operating facilities no longer function or have sufficient supplies. Disturbingly, international relief organizations have found that over 60 percent of the Venezuelan hospitals don't even have potable water.

Amid these crisis conditions, Venezuelan President Maduro repeatedly denies the existence of this country's humanitarian crisis. He has even taken to the unprecedented step of setting up a party-controlled food distribution system referred to as CLAPS, and his government now uses food as a tool of political patronage.

The result is that the United States and our partners in the hemisphere now confront the situation where the Maduro regime would rather see its people go hungry than accept the foreign assistance the Venezuelans desperately need. This man-made tragedy is absolutely unacceptable.

Today I have written to Ambassador Nikki Haley, our Ambassador to the United Nations, to urge her to call an emergency special session of the U.N. Security Council to evaluate which United Nations mechanisms, including U.N. Security Council resolutions, should be pursued to alleviate the humanitarian suffering inside Venezuela.

As humanitarian concerns mount, human rights abuses of Venezuela are rampant. Last month, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights told the U.N. Security Council that this year Venezuelan security forces ``systematically resorted to the arbitrary detention of more than 5,000 protestors.''

A more recent report by Human Rights Watch and Foro Penal, a Venezuelan nongovernmental organization, documents how Venezuelan security forces have subjected political opponents to ``torture involving electric shock and asphyxiation.''

In response, Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the OAS, has convened a series of hearings to receive testimony to ascertain whether members of the Venezuelan Government have committed crimes against humanity that should be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. These efforts deserve our attention and our support.

Against this alarming backdrop, we require no explanation for why the United States has received more asylum requests from Venezuela than from any other nationality for 2 years straight.

These challenges will only grow as Venezuela's economy continues to collapse. The country is in a selective default on its bonds. Hyperinflation and rapid currency devaluation are ravaging family incomes. This week, the country's parallel exchange rate reached 12,000 times the official rate, meaning that the average Venezuelan now earns less than $10 a month.

The reasons for this collapse are simple. Venezuela's economy is plagued by endemic corruption and gross mismanagement. As this calamity grows, Senators need to be aware that Venezuela will eventually need a major IMF program that may well surpass the $17 billion intervention that Ukraine required in 2014. The international community will have to respond, which will also include, of course, the United States.

We also need to recognize that Russia and China are now major stakeholders in Venezuela, in our hemisphere, and will be at the table as the international community copes with the pending collapse.

Russia, in particular, is playing geopolitics with the situation-- refinancing Venezuela's debt, offering loans in return for financial stakes in U.S.-based CITGO, securing stakes in Venezuela's oil industry, and expanding its influence in our hemisphere.

In response to these growing challenges, the Trump administration has applied greater pressure by imposing targeted sanctions against a number of individuals, including President Maduro. With this designation, President Maduro has joined the list of notorious heads of state on U.S. sanction list, including the likes of North Korea's Kim Jong Un, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Zimbabwe's former President Robert Mugabe, and Panama's former President Manuel Noriega.

President Trump has also imposed financial sanctions blocking the issuance of new bonds to fund the Maduro regime's ongoing repressive and economic mismanagement. The bond market has been one of the last lifelines for the Maduro government. Investors are right to lose trust in Venezuela's ability to pay its debt.

We must recognize, however, that sanctions alone will not resolve the challenges the people of Venezuela are facing. We need a comprehensive strategy that utilizes all elements of U.S. diplomacy. We must provide critical foreign assistance to help mitigate the humanitarian crisis and bolster essential support for human rights and democratic civil society.

In May I introduced S. 1018, a bipartisan bill that lays out a comprehensive strategy for U.S. policy. My bill includes humanitarian assistance and funding to protect and promote human rights and democracy. It also includes a more aggressive approach to tackling the endemic corruption.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives approved its version of this bill. It is time for the Senate to act. While I see an opportunity for bipartisanship in the Senate on U.S. policy toward Venezuela, I must say that I was alarmed by President Trump's statement in August about a potential military option. Such cavalier comments are not helpful and, once again, call into question whether he has the temperament and judgment for dealing with serious national security challenges.

We must rise to the challenge of Venezuela as a great nation, bringing our full diplomatic resources and skills to bear and avoiding stooping to mere saber rattling.

I urge our colleagues to take on this challenge, to help the people of Venezuela, who are suffering from this humanitarian crisis, and to allow America's entire toolkit to be used to help resolve this problem in our hemisphere.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the American people understand this bill. They understand this bill will hurt middle-income families, and they know this bill will add to the deficit. They understand the Joint Committee on Tax has scored the bill as adding to the deficit. I hear so many of my Republican friends talk about these deficit hawks. We follow the recommendations of our professionals. This bill will add to the deficit. That is why the American people believe this tax bill, which has been advertised by Republicans as a tax cut, is not good for America. It is an extraordinary thing to get the majority of Americans against a bill that is purported to be a tax cut, because they understand it is not a tax cut for middle-income families.

Let me give one number. The corporate tax rate under this bill will be reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent. That is a substantial reduction in the corporate tax rate. Now, understand that only about 5 percent of the largest businesses in America pay the corporate tax rate. It isn't a rate paid by small businesses. This is paid by megacorporations. They are getting a tax cut.

When we look at the cost of that tax cut as scored by the Joint Committee on Taxation--the professionals--it is about $1.5 trillion of business tax relief. Guess who pays that $1.5 trillion. It goes on our national debt, and middle-income taxpayers are going to be asked to foot the bill.

They get that. They understand this doesn't help middle-income families. You are not helping middle-income families when you raise the estate tax limits so fewer families pay the estate tax, which already affects only the 0.2 percent wealthiest in America. They are getting a break. Already, we have a concentration of wealth in America. The top 1 percent owns close to 40 percent of the wealth in America. They understand that doesn't help middle-income families because they understand that we have seen in America the shrinking of the middle class and that we have had an increase in income and wealth disparity in America.

That is not good for our economy. That is not how you grow an economy or how you grow a middle class. This bill will not grow a middle class. This bill will make even more extreme the income and wealth disparities in this country.

They also get it when we talk about what is temporary and what is permanent. I really appreciate my friends talking about the deficit. Of course, they don't include the fact that many of these tax provisions are only temporary, such as the major tax relief for individuals. That is temporary in nature. The business tax is permanent.

I hear my Republican friends saying that we will just extend it. If you extend it, the deficit is even larger than the $1.5 trillion. As to the individuals and the middle-income families who get some of the benefits of this bill, when we add it all up, they lose. The benefits they get are temporary, but business tax relief is permanent. This bill is an assault on middle-income families.

When we take a look at how we are going to have to pay off that deficit and who is going to pay off that deficit, it is going to be middle-income families left holding the bill. We know that. That is why this bill is not popular. That is why we know that it is not good for middle-income families and it is not good for our economy.

But they even go further. It has been pointed out in the Senate that they have added a provision that is now in the conference report which takes out an essential part of the Affordable Care Act on individual responsibility that would ultimately leave about 13 million Americans without health insurance.

Why was this done? It was done for two reasons. First, Republicans have been trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and these 13 million people who have benefits today are going to lose it. But a second thing is that you can use those savings--and they are not real savings; we are talking about less money being used to help people get health insurance--to provide additional tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations. So you are knocking 13 million people out of health insurance and using that money in order to extend these tax breaks for higher income and businesses. That is unconscionable.

What is going to come next when you are not even subtle about this? They now are going to say that the deficits are bigger than previously expected. I hear my friends on the Republican side. They are deficit hawks. Well, you are not deficit hawks when you deficit-finance a tax cut. That is not helping this country.

So what comes next? Well, we are going to have to cut Medicaid and Medicare. Who suffers when you cut Medicaid and Medicare? It is going to be middle-income families again.

Then we have to take a look at the Federal budget. We have heard some of my colleagues already talk about this. I see plans right now that we are going to take it out on the Federal workforce--the Federal workforce, which has already contributed about $182 billion to the deficit, through getting pay adjustments below the cost of living, having freezes, going through continuing resolutions, sequestration, and government shutdowns, asked to do more with less.

We are talking about critical services to the American people, whether it is research done at the National Institutes of Health, whether it is food safety, whether it is veterans services, or whether we are talking about dealing with the opioid crisis in America. All of that is in jeopardy, and we know that. We know they are coming back with cuts in these programs because we now have a bigger deficit as a result of giving corporations these big tax cuts--not all businesses, just the biggest businesses--and giving the high-income people this tax relief. That is why the American people do not like this bill.

We talked about creating jobs. I heard my friend again talking about creating 1 million jobs under this tax bill--spending $1.5 trillion and creating 1 million jobs. We had bipartisan legislation in the last Congress that took a couple hundred billion dollars of one-time only revenues and said the responsible thing would be to use that to seed infrastructure. If we could get

that up to about $300 billion, we create 4 million jobs. So that is 4 million jobs for $300 billion. Here we have 1 million jobs, by their own number, and spending $1.5 trillion. It is a terrible investment for the American people. We can do better.

This bill is also an attack on our States. It is an attack on Marylanders. It is an attack on the State of Maryland. Marylanders will come out much worse under this bill. There are many reasons for it, but one of the major reasons is that the bill eliminates the deduction for State and local taxes. I am going to talk for a moment about that because I did serve in the State legislature, as did many of the Members of this body. I believe we should respect State and local government. It is the same taxpayer who pays local taxes, pays State taxes, and pays Federal taxes. Ever since we adopted a Federal income tax, one of the only provisions that remains intact throughout the entire history of the income tax is to say that we are not going to tax on tax. We are not going to impose taxes on State and local taxes. That, of course, was one of the reasons why a constitutional amendment was changed, to allow income taxes, and now we are breaking that commitment on Federalism.

We are really breaking the constitutional spirit to tell our State and local governments that we are going to impose taxes on taxes and make it more difficult for them to raise the revenue they need in order to finance State and local services.

In Maryland, about 45 percent of Marylanders use the State and local tax deduction. We happen to rank No. 1 in the Nation on the number of taxpayers that use State and local tax deductions on their Federal income tax returns.

The average amount in Maryland on deductions for State and local taxes is $12,900. That is the average. So the average taxpayer in Maryland is going to pay more taxes as a result of the $10,000 limit imposed in this bill. But it even gets worse for Marylanders, and I think this is going to be typical in a lot of States around the Nation. Maryland has an itemized deduction. It has standardized deductions on their income taxes, as many States do. But I think Marylanders are going to be surprised to find out they may not qualify for itemizing their deductions at the Federal level because, as a result of the changes that have been made here, only about 5 percent of the people in this country will still use the itemized deduction.

So go and do your Federal taxes, then go do your State taxes, expecting to be able to deduct the State items, only to find that if you haven't deducted at the Federal level, you can't deduct at the State level because we harmonize in our enforcement with the Federal Government. You didn't think about that when you put this provision in the bill.

I heard my friend say we had hearings. We didn't have hearings on that provision. We have never had a hearing on that provision. We never brought State people into our committee and say: What happens if we raise the deduction? What impact does it have on the States? What are the impacts on the States if we eliminate State and local tax deductions? We haven't had those discussions.

Quite frankly, it is going to be more challenging for our States and local governments to meet their needs. They have the primary function for educating our children and keeping our communities safe. That is a primary function of local government, and sanitation and dealing with public health. It is going to be much more challenging for our State and local governments to be able to do their finance. Did we consider that when we took up this bill? The answer is no. There are so many consequences to this bill that have not really been thought out. Let me just give a few.

There is a reason why people concerned about the real estate industry are concerned about this bill. The limitations we put on the deductions of property taxes and the limitations that have been increased on the amount of interest you can deduct on mortgages will all have an impact on property values. Properties that Americans own will be less valuable with the passage of this bill because they will not be able to get the same tax advantages as they had prior to it. Have we thought about that impact? Have we thought about what that does to wealth and middle- income families? Have we thought about what impact that has on assessed evaluations on local governments that depend upon property taxes? There has been no consideration of that.

I met this week with leaders in our nonprofit community in Baltimore. We went over some of the issues they deal with in providing help to our community. Several were faith-based-type charitable groups. I went over what impact it is going to have with the restrictions on the number of people who are now going to be using itemized deductions.

One of the charitable faith-based groups I met with told me that the overwhelming majority of their givers are in the middle income. Today, they are able to take a deduction because they use itemized deductions. Under this bill, most of those families are going to fall within the standard deduction and will no longer be itemizing their deductions on their Federal tax returns.

Now, they don't know what impact that is going to have. But when their givers find out there is no tax advantage to that gift, you know it is going to have an impact. We know that. Charitable giving is going to be down. I hear my colleagues talk frequently that a lot of what we do to help people is that we rely upon the private sector. We rely upon the charitable groups. Did we have the courtesy to bring them into a hearing to understand the impact this is going to have? No, it is going to have a negative impact on our nonprofit charitable groups, and that is another consequence of this legislation, that we don't have the full impact to understand.

Let me talk just a minute about this 20 percent deduction on passthrough income. Just so people in this country understand, this is a rather complicated provision that was added to the bill. It provides additional tax relief for businesses that do not use the C tax rate. These are our partnerships, our S corporations, our limited partnerships, and our sole proprietorships. Understand what we are trying to do here. Because we have cut the corporate rates so low--down to 21 percent from 35 percent--we recognize that other businesses now are going to be at a disadvantage. That is true. So we are trying to figure out some way to give them tax relief.

Now, I have heard my colleagues talk about simplifying the Tax Code. This provision does anything but simplify the Tax Code. It has what is known as guardrails as to how we calculate how much you can take, up to the 20 percent of the distribution, as a nontaxable event. That guardrail affects the type of business you are doing, it affects the amount of assets you have, it affects the amount of salaries you give, the labor that is done within it, whether it is actually services performed by the partnership or not. My goodness, it is a minefield for accountants and tax lawyers to now develop shelters.

I am old enough to remember the 1986 tax debates here in the United States Congress. I was not part of the Congress. I was in the State legislature at the time. I remember the effort to get rid of shelters, because shelters are an inefficient way that you set up business structures in order to minimize taxes. Well, this passthrough provision is going to be used as shelters. There is no question about it. We have had no hearings at all as to how we are going to deal with that problem.

Then I heard one of my colleagues on the Republican side talk about how this is going to bring all these jobs back home.

Let me make this clear. What this bill does is move toward a territorial tax system. What does that mean? That means companies today that outsource some of their work to another country will be able to pay only that country's tax rate rather than the U.S. tax rate. That means that in some cases they will be able to pay less in taxes. What they can now do--because we are harmonizing to a territorial tax, we are rewarding some companies to outsource.

Do we understand what the lower tax rates for corporations--what the net impact will be on jobs in America? All we hear is: Oh, we are going to create new job opportunities because we have lower rates for businesses. But we don't

tell the American people that they can keep those jobs overseas and pay a lower tax rate. Let's be honest about that.

Why didn't we have a hearing on that part? The consequences are far from understood.

I have heard several of my colleagues talk on the floor of the Senate about preserving credits, that we preserve this credit--like you are getting credit for leaving something in the Tax Code. Let me say something. Credits are important. In the city of Baltimore, we have used low-income housing tax credits, historic tax credits, and new market tax credits to generate a lot of economic activity. It is very difficult to put together a major economic program within our urban centers. I could point to West Baltimore and how we have used all those tools for urban redevelopment. I could point to our arts district and how that has been used.

I know this. Credits are not going to be worth as much under this bill as they were before because we have changed the value of a tax credit. What impact is that going to have? I don't know. The problem is, none of us know, but it is going to have a consequence. It is going to affect economic growth, and it is not going to be positive. We haven't taken steps to try to counter that.

I noticed there were some changes in the renewable energy sector. I don't fully understand all the changes, but I do know those who are involved in wind and solar believe that what we have done will make it more difficult for them to get investors. It sort of looks as if, perhaps, this was an effort to help the fossil fuel industry.

When you look at the ANWR provision, which opens up the pristine areas of the Arctic to drilling in Alaska, you know that this bill is tilted toward fossil fuels rather than having a level playing field for America's energy. I worry, is this the first step to mid-Atlantic drilling off the Atlantic coast off of Maryland? I worry about the impact it could have on the Chesapeake Bay.

I must confide that I have been in conversations with some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, asking whether we will cooperate on a corrections bill. I find that amazing. We haven't passed this bill yet, and we are talking about the process to correct the mistakes that are clearly in this bill. That is not the way we should be legislating. We know that we are going to have to revisit the passthrough provisions because we know they are not drafted right. We know the tax credits are going to need additional time. We know the energy provisions are going to have to be revised. We know we have done damage to middle-income families who are going to demand we correct this. Why don't we get it right the first time? Why do we have to look at passing a bill that we know is badly flawed?

The last point I want to make is, there has been a commitment that when we take up a tax bill--don't we want to simplify the Tax Code, so Americans understand it better and feel more comfortable that everyone is being treated fairly? Secondly, the one argument I hear from all stakeholders is: Make the Tax Code predictable so that we can plan. Give us the rules. Don't change the law all the time. Don't put temporary provisions in there because Congress has a habit of missing extender dates. We have already missed extender dates in this Congress, and now we are talking about leaving town this week while we have provisions that have expired, such as the Children's Health Insurance Program.

What does this tax bill do? It has numerous provisions that expire, some within a short period of time, adding uncertainty to our Tax Code and the planning of our Tax Code. This bill is anything but simplifying the Tax Code, and it is certainly not providing predictability.

The American people get it. That is why they believe this bill should not be passed. It is an assault on middle-income families. It is dangerous to our national security because it increases our deficit. It will hurt millions of people who will lose their health coverage, and it should be defeated.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, I want to thank my friend Senator Nelson for his comments from the floor in regard to the tax bill that we will be voting on later this week. The experience I had this morning underscores the issues that Senator Nelson has brought to the floor. I had a meeting with the Greater Baltimore Committee. We had business leaders, labor leaders; we had advocates from different segments of our community; and we had graduate students there. They all expressed concern about our voting this week on a tax bill that we first saw on Friday evening--the latest version.

It is still fundamentally flawed, as Senator Nelson has pointed out. I say that it is fundamentally flawed because it gives significant, big tax cuts to corporations and high-income taxpayers and leaves middle- income taxpayers footing the bill.

The conference report makes it worse because they lower the highest tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent--another advantage for high- income taxpayers. In addition, the estate tax is doubled, which affects 0.2 percent of the wealthiest people in this country. Corporations not only get the lower tax rates cut from 35 percent to 21 percent, but they also get relief from the alternative minimum tax. To make matters even worse, the tax relief for middle-income families is temporary, whereas the tax relief for businesses is made permanent.

It is definitely a tax bill that is going to hurt middle-income taxpayers. In my own State, independent analysis shows that 800,000 Marylanders will end up paying more in taxes. Guess who is going to foot the bill, who is going to pay for the big deficit.

If you look at the corporate tax cut alone, that is somewhere close to the $1.15 trillion we have been talking about, which is baked into the bill to increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion. I think that is unconscionable; I think it is unconscionable to say that we can afford tax cuts when we already have these large deficits that are going to make us borrow more money and make our economy more dependent.

The truth is, even the Republicans are telling us, even with dynamic scoring, we are going to have a $1 trillion tax gap in the deficit. In reality, the $1.5 trillion is conservative. When you look at the individual tax relief, it is temporary; it expires. Some expire in 2 years.

Most of my Republican friends have said: Just extend it. If you extend it,

there will be even a deeper hole in the deficit--closer to $2 trillion. Who is going to pay for that? Middle-income families are going to pay for it. They are not just being left out as far as tax relief is concerned; they are being asked to foot the bill for the tax cuts for corporations and high-income taxpayers.

In addition, it will affect other elements that middle-income taxpayers depend upon. This is a direct attack on Medicaid and Medicare. We see that. We saw that in the budget instructions, where we had to cut Medicare and Medicaid. We see that in the pay-go rules. We see that the next chapter of this tax reform bill will be, well, now we have these deficits, and we have to pay for it. Who is going to be held responsible for paying for it?

We know that it is going to affect our own budgets. I am now hearing that we are going to take it out on our own Federal workforce, deny them a pay raise for next year or have fewer Federal workers to carry out their mission or make them pay more for benefits. We know that is going to come. The argument is going to be that we have these large deficits now, and we have to do this.

How are we going to respond to the issues Senator Nelson talked about on disaster relief when we have these large deficits? We know that we are going to be asking middle-income families not only to make a sacrifice on the tax cut, not only to pay for the deficit created directly by this but, also, in the future, to pay with cuts in government spending.

In addition to that, we have 13 million Americans who will lose their health coverage under this bill because of the elimination of the individual mandate--13 million. That is going to affect 13 million families. It is going to affect more than that. Guess what these families do. They use emergency rooms rather than going to their family doctors. They enter the healthcare system in a more expensive way. They don't have the money to pay for the visits, and it becomes part of uncompensated care. All of us pay higher premiums, and our healthcare system becomes more expensive.

That has been one of the bright spots of the Affordable Care Act-- reducing the number of uninsured. Now we are going to be moving in the opposite direction. The Affordable Care Act has worked. The Republicans tried to dismantle it, and they couldn't succeed. The worst part is, you are counting the loss of insurance of 13 million as a revenue gain for the Treasury and then spending that money. That is unconscionable.

In Maryland, we have particular problems with this bill. Not only will we see a problem for the Federal workforce--a large number who live in Maryland--but also the State and local tax deductions. Maryland has the largest number of taxpayers who take advantage of State and local tax deductions on their Federal tax returns. In other words, you don't have to pay a tax on a tax. That makes sense. It has been in our Tax Code since its beginning because we recognize federalism, and it is morally wrong to pay tax on tax.

Maryland has the most taxpayers who take advantage of State and local tax deductions, close to 50 percent. The average for Maryland--this is the average--is $12,900 that they deduct for State and local taxes. Under the conference report, that is going to be limited to $10,000. That means the average Maryland taxpayer will have to pay taxes on $2,900 more, but think about all those who have a lot more in State and local taxes who are going to be denied that help.

I was talking to some of our local government officials over the weekend. They are going to be disadvantaged by it. It was an interesting analysis. We don't think about what this bill is going to do and all the consequences, but if you are in a State that has its own itemized deductions, like Maryland--we have itemized deductions on our State income tax return, and our standard deduction will be significantly lower than the standard deduction under this conference report.

You are going to have Marylanders who are not going to be able to take their State deductions because you can't take State deductions unless you use the Federal itemized deductions. It is estimated that nationwide only 5 percent of the taxpayers will be using itemized deductions. Guess what. If you don't use the itemized deduction at the Federal level, you can't take the State itemized deductions. This is going to have a direct impact on our State and local governments. Yet that hasn't been considered.

Quite frankly, the consequences of this bill haven't been debated. We haven't gone through public hearings because of the process that was used--the partisan process, called reconciliation. We haven't seen daylight. We haven't had a chance to know what the impact will be. What impact will it have on property values? We now limit property tax deductions, and we have a further limit on interest deductions on mortgages. What impact does it have on property values? What impact does the reduction of property values have on our economy, have on the individual values for people who have loans on their homes? Are we going to be creating a problem? We don't know because we haven't had any hearings on it.

On Friday, I was with a group of nonprofits that do very valuable work. They are worried about what impact this tax bill will have on charitable giving. When only 5 percent of the taxpayers in this country use itemized deductions, it means a great number of people who were able to take advantage of charitable deductions on their tax returns no longer will have that ability. Does that change their charitable giving? If it changes their charitable giving pattern, what does it do for nonprofits? If our nonprofits can't do that, there is additional pressure on governmental services. Have we thought that out? I doubt we know the consequences. Yet we are not prepared to have hearings on this.

One of the major issues that has had very little discussion is the passthrough. You have heard a lot about it. The reason for this is that 95 percent of American businesses don't use corporate tax returns. They use passthroughs, S corporations, individual proprietorships, partnerships, et cetera. This bill provides a lower tax rate for their passthrough business income at 20 percent. Here is the problem. In an effort to make sure that this isn't a way of getting around paying taxes on salaries, there are certain guardrails that have been put into this bill based upon a person's income, based upon the type of business they are in, based upon the assets of the business, based upon the amount of salaries that are paid in the business. And you are trying to tell me that can't be manipulated in order to shelter income? We are creating a whole new industry in sheltering income under this bill.

I have heard so many of my colleagues talk about the fact that we don't want to outsource jobs. None of us want to outsource jobs. Having competitive rates helps us in that regard, but moving toward a territorial tax structure rewards companies for doing their business offshore. Even if tax rates might be the same, they can use labor costs, or some other costs, to outsource jobs.

Have we thought about that under a territorial tax? No. Do we know what impact it will have? No. There are a lot of issues we don't fully understand. We do know there are individual provisions put in here--for example, drilling in the Arctic. That, to me, should not be part of this bill. I worry about that being expanded to the Atlantic coast and other areas. I think we all should be concerned about it.

The bottom line is this. When you do tax reform, you would hope you would simplify the Tax Code and make it predictable. That is what I hear the most: Let's simplify the Tax Code, and let's make it predictable. Neither will be accomplished with this conference report. With all these temporary tax provisions, you know that we are going to have to deal with extenders. You are not going to be able to plan as to whether this Tax Code will stand the test of time. If you think this is simplification, try to figure out whether you are eligible for the passthrough 20 percent on your business taxes. It is anything but simple.

This bill fails in its principle test of helping middle-income families, which it does not do. It is for corporations, big corporations, and high-income people. It is fiscally irresponsible to add to the debt. It makes our Tax Code more

complicated and doesn't give us the predictability we need in the Tax Code, and it should be rejected.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to share my deep concern over the current state of America's global diplomacy. A multitude of decisions made by this administration in the last year have caused me to pause and repeatedly ask why, but in no area have I been more perplexed than the actions that have taken place at the State Department.

Ever since the Secretary of State took the helm, there has been a slow, unexplained erosion of the Department and, along with it, the values that it promotes and the vital role it plays around the world. By now, many are familiar with the list of concerns that seasoned diplomats, national security officials, and Members of this body have been raising with increasing alarm over the last weeks and months.

More than 30 key ambassadorships remain without named nominees. Dozens of important senior-level posts remain vacant. Career officials are being cut out of important policy decisions or overruled by leadership, including, sometimes, even on legal issues. The Foreign Service is being hollowed out, with a significantly lower number in the incoming classes, putting at risk the next generation of leaders. Opportunities for midlevel employees are extremely limited, with a freeze on most transfers and promotions. Our most experienced officials--the Department's equivalent of 2-, 3-, and 4-star generals-- have been departing or, effectively, forced out and not replaced at the same rate.

I honor the experienced career officials who are stepping in to fill vacancies and are carrying out the Department's important work, but there are limits to what officials can accomplish in an acting role. It is now December. We cannot afford to have a Department that remains hamstrung because of rudderless stagnation at the top.

Let's be clear. This is not just about numbers or unfilled positions. The numbers do not tell the full story. While the employees at the State Department and USAID can and have been carrying on, it is not an easy task when employees feel that the message they receive from the top is that they and their work are not valued. Understandably, this has an impact on morale, which is now devastatingly low.

In embarking on what has been dubbed a ``redesign'' of the Department, the leadership at State has regrettably left the men and women who so capably and loyally serve it behind. I have heard from many employees who are not just concerned about their own future or careers but who are concerned about the direction of the Department itself and the viability of its legacy. The State Department's leadership has had more than enough time to assess what can be improved. It is beyond time to show the men and women serving at State and USAID that they are not only a valued but a vital part of our national diplomacy and national security strategy.

For weeks, Secretary Tillerson has promised to announce significant progress on his plan to move the Department forward. Tuesday, in a speech to the State Department and USAID personnel, the message was once again underwhelming. Secretary Tillerson continues to tinker around the edges while the Department's core functions are deliberately hollowed out.

While I am encouraged to see him announce a few small but important steps in the right direction, I am worried that he still has not gotten the overall message. Despite calls from me and others on the Foreign Relations Committee and pleas from current and former employees, diplomats, and military leaders, Secretary Tillerson has yet to lift the hiring freeze that remains in place. He announced it would be lifted for the family members of employees--a welcome step but not enough. Freezing or limiting opportunities for family members to join their spouses who are serving abroad never made sense in the first place.

I am, therefore, still left wondering why the hiring freeze has been in place at all, when nearly every other Federal agency lifted it earlier this year. I cannot understand how it has benefited our foreign and civil service. So again I am left asking: Why? Why should we tolerate a massive exodus of diplomatic and development expertise at the State Department and USAID? Our President said recently that we do not need to worry about the fact that many of the senior-level positions at the State Department remain unfilled because when it comes to foreign policy, his opinion is the only one that matters. Why on Earth would he say that? For the thousands of Foreign Service officers around the world working to advance the ideals of the United States, this was a horrible and offensive message.

I am concerned that this administration does not understand how critical a role the State Department and USAID play in our national security policy. They are every bit as vital and critical an element of our national security as the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, our law enforcement, or the countless others in the Federal Government who work tirelessly every day to protect our security, extend our prosperity, and promote our values.

We put our country in danger when we do not give adequate voice and resources to all of our country's national security tools. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: ``In a turbulent and perilous world, the men and women of the Foreign Service are on the front lines every day, on every continent for us.''

Diplomacy is an investment we make so that we don't have to go to war. Nickel-and-diming it is not in our national security interest.

I made no secret about my deep concerns regarding the current management practices of the Department's leadership, the reorganization and budget debacles, the current senior-level vacancies, and the deep costs that our Foreign Service and development professionals are paying. The United States' foreign policy leadership around the world is also paying the price, and we will continue to pay the price if things aren't turned around quickly.

Even with the few changes Secretary Tillerson announced this week, I believe there are still multiple issues that need to be addressed. I raised many of them recently in a letter to the Secretary with my fellow Democratic colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If the Secretary truly wishes for the State Department and our country to succeed, he will seriously consider the following concerns:

First, improve transparency. All Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee should receive regular briefings that thoroughly address proposed reorganization plans and decisions.

Second, we need to know the details and timeline for reorganization. The Department must provide a clear timeline--something it has failed to do to date--and provide details about what it is planning.

While there are some parts of the reorganization that we find to be positive, such as improving information technology, I remain concerned that the reorganization may be marginalizing or eliminating critical bureaus and offices that help to inform U.S. foreign policy. I understand that many of these ideals may not come to fruition, but it is essential for us to receive details in a timely way so that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can carry out its critical oversight function. Again, we are now in the eleventh month of this administration, and we don't yet know when they are going to be submitting their plans for reorganization, and we have not been kept adequately informed.

Third, I would mention filling senior vacancies. The Department must prioritize key senior vacancies and work with the White House to swiftly move forward qualified nominees. The significant vacancies for senior-level management and policy positions in such critical bureaus as Counterterrorism and Political-Military Affairs are deeply troubling. Approximately 30 countries still do not have named Ambassador nominees, including South Korea, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Despite claims that the Senate's slow pace is to blame for the lack of confirmed nominees, the fact is that the Foreign Relations Committee has promptly processed the vast majority of nominees, and only a handful are currently awaiting a Senate vote. We cannot confirm nominees who have not been nominated.

Finally, let me talk about the need to uphold the mission of the Department. The Department's mission statement must continue to reflect the values we hold as Americans. Proposed changes send a troubling signal about the administration's vision for the Department and its role in foreign policy. The promotion of democracy and respect for human rights around the world must remain a central part of the State Department's overall mission.

I agree that improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Department is critical to our national security given the countless challenges we face as a nation. Reforms to information technology, human resources, and procurement systems are long overdue, and I support the efforts of the Department to streamline special envoys and special representative positions.

I hope, moving forward, the Department will consider Congress as a partner in these endeavors, as well as broader efforts to strengthen America's diplomatic capabilities. However, if the Department continues down its current path, I can assure you that my colleagues and I will use every legislative option we have to address these concerns.

My goal is to ensure that the employees in the State Department have all the resources and support they require to complete their tasks and ensure that the United States remains a global diplomatic leader. I will do everything in my power to guarantee that this goal is accomplished.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.