Bill Nelson

Mr. President, I add my congratulations.

Mr. President, it is my understanding that Senator Schumer wants to speak, and then I will seek recognition later.

Madam President, Syria has been a mess and a concern for quite a number of years. By putting in a small footprint now of a little over 2,000 special operations troops, the United States has been considerably successful when you think of what a chaotic place it was and still is and that it was especially inimical to the interests of the United States just a

few years ago. Remember the horrible images of U.S. citizens being executed by ISIS. Remember all of the trauma we have seen the Syrian Government perpetrate on its own people.

Remember the successful efforts of a combination of forces that ultimately took on ISIS, that removed it from its headquarters of its caliphate and caused it to disperse if it were not eliminated at the time. A lot of that was led with Kurdish fighters who were fighting alongside U.S. special operations advisers. Even though complicated because of the Russians' being there and the Turks' having interests and Assad's trying to hang on to power, the United States has been successful in not eliminating but in lessening the influence of ISIS.

Then came the shocker--the shocker of the President's announcing unilaterally that, all of a sudden, he was going to pull the special operations troops, as advisers, out of Syria. This would likely cause immediate instability. It would certainly allow for ISIS to reconstruct itself, and it would cause chaos with the Kurdish troops who fought alongside the Americans, with the Turkish Government's going after a number of them.

This is an ill-advised and probably a non-advised decision by the President, and it should be reversed. This Senator calls on all of the national defense, national security, and national intelligence professionals who are within the administration to get the President to reverse this unilateral decision that he has made. Otherwise, U.S. interests are going to be ill-served.

Madam President, my concluding remarks are about an early Christmas present that I received this past Monday at a staff going- away party that occurred in Florida, where all of our Florida staff came together to wish each other well. Little did I know that a special guest was going to appear. He was none other than one of the chefs of the catering company that was catering this holiday going-away party. Let me tell you the story of this 34-year-old chef and what happened 34 years ago.

At the time of the middle 1980s--1985 to be exact--this Senator was a young Congressman. A husband and wife, who were constituents of mine in East Central Florida, came to me in great distress because their infant boy had been born with a defective liver.

The advance of medicine at that particular time was that there was no known cure except to do a liver transplant. Thirty-four years ago, organ transplants were still in their infancy, and 34 years ago, there was no organ registry being maintained in order to try to find a family who had lost a loved one so that a loved one's organs could be harvested and then be available for those who were on a registry waiting for them. None of that existed 34 years ago.

Only since then have we seen this miraculous organization set up whereby people who need organ transplants can get on the list. Then, whenever an organ becomes available, no matter where it is in the country, that match--that organ--is immediately packed in ice and is flown to the receiving hospital where the organ transplant is going to occur. None of this existed. It was a catch-as-catch-can to find an organ to transplant. This was especially true with a liver transplant because a liver transplant, at the time, had to have the identical blood type, and it had to be the identical size of the recipient's liver.

Here was a few-months'-old child who was desperately clinging to life and needed a liver transplant to survive. At the time, we were in session. There was a particularly major bill that was up, and its passage in the House of Representatives was in the balance--within just a handful of votes. The bill was proposed by President Reagan. I had already decided that I was going to vote for the bill, which was in favor of the President's position, when I saw an opportunity to maybe save this child's life. So I held out and declared my position as ``undecided'' in my knowing that the votes were coming down to just one or two at passage.

Actually, we must have been out for the weekend before this vote was to have occurred, because I received a phone call from President Reagan while I was at my home in Florida. The President greeted me and told me what he was asking me to do.

I said to him: Mr. President, I have already decided that I am going to vote for the bill, and I know that it is welcome news to you. I wish you would do something for me--possibly save a child's life.

I then told him the story of the need of a liver of a certain blood type and of a certain size for a transplant in a minor child. The President said he would do that.

Shortly thereafter, the Secretary of Health and Human Services called, who was a former colleague from the House--Secretary Margaret Heckler of Massachusetts. She said: At the President's request, I am going to have a press conference to put out this information that this child is in need of this specific type of transplant.

Margaret Heckler did that. A donor was found because of that press release in 1985 in California. They raced that harvested organ, by jet, to the hospital in Pittsburgh. Ryan Osterblom, with his parents, was then flown to the hospital. The successful transplant occurred 34 years ago.

Early last Monday, you can imagine the Christmas present I received when there at our going-away party for our staff, the chef of the catering company was none other than 34-year-old Ryan Osterblom. That was the best Christmas present I could have.

I yield the floor.