Floor Statements

Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Madam President, I understand the Chair has an announcement.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that S. 5068 be discharged from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it recess until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, November 30, and that following the prayer and the pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the Velez-Rive nomination; further, if any nominations are confirmed during Wednesday's session, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.

Madam President, for the information of the Senate, there will be two rollcall votes beginning at 11:30 a.m. and two rollcall votes at 2:15 p.m.

Madam President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand in recess under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Portman.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we start the vote now.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, this leasing requirement would be in addition to the leasing that is already required by this bill, with 75 percent of offshore leased acres not yet being used to produce oil and gas. Opening up more acres to leasing is unnecessary. The main thing is that the passage of this amendment would jeopardize the whole package.

Therefore, I urge a ``no'' vote.

Madam President, I raise a point of order that the pending amendment violates section 4106 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018, H. Con. Res. 71, of the 115th Congress, the Senate pay-as-you-go point of order.

Vote on Motion to Waive

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I object.

Mr. President, I object.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the nominations of Dr. Lester Martinez-Lopez to be the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Dr. Agnes Schaefer to be Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, and Mr. Franklin Parker to hold the same position within the Navy.

The office Dr. Martinez-Lopez is nominated for is responsible for ensuring that we are medically ready to fight and win wars. This is a critical role for our national security at all times, but, of course, it is even more important during a pandemic.

Leaving this office without leadership jeopardizes our ability to respond to this health crisis and prepare for the next one. Having spent more than two decades as an Army surgeon and commander of medical centers at major U.S. military bases both stateside and overseas, and more than a decade as a leader of private medical research organizations, Dr. Martinez-Lopez clearly has the experience to fill this position.

The Assistant Secretaries for Manpower and Reserve Affairs across the branches ensure our military and civilian workforce have the education, the training, and the skills needed to meet current and future threats. Mr. Parker, who is nominated to head this office for the Navy, has demonstrated his ability to fill the role and will be able to hit the ground running, having held the position before.

Dr. Schaefer, nominated to head this office for the Army, will bring firsthand knowledge from her 15 years at the RAND Corporation, where she specialized in military personnel policy, reserve component issues, national security strategy, and emerging threats.

All three of these positions play important roles in our national security. All three nominees to fill them were voted out of committee-- a committee on which the Senator from Missouri serves--without objection--without objection--4 months ago. But all three remain vacant.

The Senator from Missouri, as someone who serves on the Personnel Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, I know would know better than most the issues our military branches and the troops face. These include recruitment and retention challenges, ensuring safe workplaces, including implementing IRC reforms to prevent and respond to sexual assault and sexual harassment within the ranks, and addressing the high suicide rate among troops and veterans--all issues which impact military readiness. But there is a hold on all DOD nominees.

I am unaware of any substantive objections to these nominees based on their qualifications or their ability to serve, reasons which we have a constitutional duty to review based on our advice and consent role.

My understanding is that the Senator from Missouri is implementing a blanket hold based on general policy disagreements with the Biden administration. In addition to our advice and consent role, the Senate has oversight responsibilities, and that is a place where the Senator from Missouri, as a member of the Personnel Committee of the Armed Services Committee, has the responsibility of oversight of the three offices that we are discussing today. He has a way to ensure that once these three nominees are confirmed, he and his colleagues can evaluate their performance. With acting, nonconfirmed officials in these roles, that oversight authority is undermined.

As a Senator, we are afforded extraordinary powers to advance policies or even just to make a point, but these powers should be used in accordance with our constitutional responsibilities. The President of the United States has the responsibility to nominate qualified individuals to fill these roles, and he has. These individuals are qualified, and now we have the responsibility to confirm them so that they can get to work for our servicemembers and for the American people.

I will now yield to my friend and colleague Senator Kaine.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the scheduled vote occur immediately.

Mr. President, last month, the U.S. Department of the Interior released an investigative report on our country's Indian boarding school system. From 1819 to 1969, more than 400 of these schools operated across what today are 37 States. The Indian boarding school era is one of the darkest periods in American history and one that we as a nation have not properly reckoned with.

For nearly two centuries, the U.S. Government took Native American children as young as 6 from their families and sent them to boarding schools, but these schools were not solely for the purpose of teaching the children. They humiliated these children, and they harmed them. Indian children were forced to change their names, to cut their hair, to stop speaking their Native languages. They did military drills three times a week. Every day, they were assigned hours of grueling work that violated child labor laws: They had to raise livestock, sew clothes, work on the railroads. Those who resisted were punished with whippings and solitary confinement. Those who resisted were punished with whippings and solitary confinement. Often, older children were forced to punish the younger ones.

The conditions of these schools were awful: three to a bed, dirty water, no working plumbing. Disease and malnourishment were common. Physical and sexual abuse was rampant. We don't know how many children died at these U.S. Government-funded and -run schools, but the Interior Department estimates that the number is in the tens of thousands.

And all of this occurred for one reason--to steal Native land.

As far back as the 1700s, U.S. Government policy was officially to dispossess and break Tribes so their territories could be taken for American expansion. Erasing Native culture through assimilation was key to this.

As one official said, ``The love of home and the warm, reciprocal affection existing between parents and children are among the strongest characteristics of the Indian nature.''

So the Federal Government acted accordingly. The Departments of War and Interior oversaw this forced assimilation. Congress passed laws appropriating school funding to ``civilize'' Native children. When families refused to send their kids to these schools, Congress made the food rations that were negotiated in treaties contingent on their doing so. To fill the schools, the government enlisted religious organizations, paying them on a per-child basis. A majority of this money came from Federal Indian trusts--money that was supposed to help the Tribes--and the Supreme Court ruled that all of this was legal at the time.

The result of these actions was a multi-generational trauma for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities and families that continue to this day. Adults who attended boarding schools are more likely to have everything from arthritis to depression. They are three times as likely to have cancer. Studies have found worse health outcomes for the ancestors of people who went to these schools, and there are 53 known child burial sites and an unknown number yet to be discovered.

We can't undo this history, but we have to acknowledge it. That starts with examining the full scope of this atrocity unflinchingly, with clear minds and with fresh eyes. We need to keep investigating Indian boarding schools, and the findings should be taught in every school and be known by every future generation of Americans. As recommended in the report from the Department of the Interior, we must also support Native language revitalization. We cannot continue to neglect these programs and further erase Native culture.

We have to understand and undertake a path toward healing, not in the abstract but in a concrete and meaningful way. We must work hand in hand with Native communities on a respectful and restorative process. We have to empower these communities through increased Federal investments in Native healthcare and housing and economic development. We must reject our centuries-long pattern of Native suppression and, instead, begin one of reconciliation. We owe the survivors of the Indian boarding school era, their families, and their communities nothing less.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.