Floor Statements

Madam President, I wish to recognize an excellent

former member of my staff, Ian Jannetta, who is leaving Capitol Hill after 8 years of service. Having worked for his home State Senator Casey of Pennsylvania, on the Joint Economic Committee, as part of my team in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and finally with Senator Heitkamp of North Dakota, Ian has many friends on Capitol Hill and will be missed.

During his time in my office, Ian never hesitated to roll up his sleeves and get the job done. He worked tirelessly on issues ranging from providing equal rights for all people, protecting our environment and the Chesapeake Bay, to building an economy that works for all Americans. His strong communications skills, coupled with his kindness, calm presence, and sense of humor, served my team and the people of Maryland well for over 4 years.

As Ian tackles his next project at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, he continues his commitment to public service, a proud tradition set by his mother Heather and his father David, who both started their careers in the U.S. Air Force and continued their service in State government. I know he will make a tremendous impact. I join his many colleagues, friends, and family to wish him well, and I look forward to hearing about the extraordinary work he does next.

Mr. President, I am proud that the Senate has passed the FIRST STEP Act. As a cosponsor of this bill, I am heartened that Republicans and Democrats came together to address an issue that affects millions of Americans and their families.

Although one of my colleagues across the aisle has said that we have an ``under-incarceration'' problem, that is simply not the case. The United States represents only 4.4 percent of the world's population, but we hold approximately 22 percent of the world's prisoners. Over the past decade, Americans and Congress have taken a long hard look at who we incarcerate and why. This review has made us realize that too many elements of our criminal justice system are based on prejudice and have inflicted unnecessary harm in communities across the country. We should strive to ensure that ``liberty and justice for all'' is not just a phrase we say, but a promise we keep to all Americans.

The FIRST STEP Act allows prisoner rehabilitation so that they can return home ready to contribute to their communities. Education and job training opportunities provide individuals with a real second chance.

The bill incorporates important provisions that allows for the retroactive application of the Fair Sentencing Act, which removed the sentencing disparity between the crack-powder and cocaine. We were able to include provisions that prohibit the use of solitary confinement of juvenile offenders, prohibit the shackling of pregnant and postpartum women, and ensure that prisoners are placed in prisons closer to home. The bill also offers low and minimal-risk offenders the possibility of supervised release, home confinement, or release to halfway homes.

The three amendments offered to the bill by Senators Cotton and Kennedy do not protect victims, are redundant, and are so broad as to subvert the bill's purpose. The first amendment requires mandatory notification to crime victims of an offender's impending release. However, current law and agency policies already allows victims to choose if they want to receive these updates. Mandated reporting harms victims who do not want to receive this information. That is why this amendment is opposed by organizations such as the Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice and the Fairness, Dignity & Respect for Crime Victims & Survivors Project.

The second amendment will require wardens to notify victims of early release and review victim statements prior to determining if an offender is eligible for pre-release custody or supervised release. Again, this amendment diminishes the rights our current laws give victims by allowing them determine if they want to receive this information. Victims already have the right to submit statements of opposition or support prior to parole or early release. Additionally, prison wardens should not be burdened with calculating risk assessment. The bill establishes an independent review committee that will recommend and assess the best evidence-based tools to ensure that risk assessments are bias-free and objective.

Lastly, the expanded ``crime of violence'' definitions offered are vague, redundant, and would exclude the very population the bill is designed to help. On its face, the final amendment seems to be common sense but the language is so vague that one analysis claims that only low-level drug offenders and white-collar criminals would be eligible for earned credit. The amendment has a catchall to prevent anyone who has been convicted of any offense that involved substantial risk of physical force against a person or their property from receiving pre- release. The U.S. Sentencing Commission estimates that this amendment would exclude 30,000 prisoners from participating in the program. I believe that the goal of criminal justice reform is rehabilitation and reducing recidivism and restricting incentives would defeat that purpose. The bill has been carefully crafted to only include low-risk offenders.

The FIRST STEP Act is by no means perfect. For example, the bill does not include provisions to address the flaws in the money bail system or the discrimination in housing or employment that many offenders face upon release, nor does it prohibit the use of private prisons or address discriminatory loopholes in our Tax Code that make it harder for released offenders to finance their education.

But the bill's name is clear: This is the first step and not the last in our commitment to reform our criminal justice system.

Mr. President, the United States must fundamentally reshape our relationship with Saudi Arabia. Whether it is the catastrophic war in Yemen or the brutal murder of a U.S. resident, Saudi leaders believe they can behave recklessly and criminally without any consequences. We simply cannot continue business as usual with the Kingdom, specifically with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

President Trump has enabled Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman's most egregious behavior. After our intelligence community assessed that the Crown Prince was implicated in the murder of U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, Trump responded, ``it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event--maybe he did and maybe he didn't!'' Once again, the President has chosen to trust the word of a brutal autocrat above that of his own intelligence community. Once again, Trump has cast aside our Nation's values.

Even more tragically, the devastating and brutal war in Yemen rages on, pitting the reckless Crown Prince against the Houthis. The Crown Prince's actions have driven the Houthis even farther into the hands of their Iranian backers and, inadvertently, strengthened Tehran's position. The result is the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed. More than 8 million Yemenis are on the brink of starvation. The worst cholera outbreak in modern history has afflicted over 1 million people, including over 600,000 children. Millions more are displaced from their homes. As the years wear on, and with no end in sight, the cycle of desperation, destruction, and death continues unabated.

Though the administration recently suspended aerial refueling for the Saudi-led coalition, it claims that munitions sales and targeting assistance provide leverage in the conflict; yet President Trump seems unable and indeed unwilling to use this leverage to place meaningful restraints on the Saudi attacks in Yemen.

So we must ask ourselves these questions: Why is the United States complicit in this endless war? Why is the President providing cover for the Saudi Crown Prince, at all costs? Finally, what must we do to reset this relationship?

I believe there are two clear, near-term actions we must take to answer these questions and reshape our relationship with Saudi Arabia.

We took our first step today. In an historic moment, the U.S. Senate voted to suspend military support for the Saudi-led operations in Yemen. The administration should heed this clear signal and end all military support, including supplies of U.S. spare parts and technical support. We must refocus our efforts to help broker an end to the conflict.

Second, the United States must send a clear message to Saudi Arabia or any other autocratic regime: We do not tolerate the slaughter of political dissidents. We must hold accountable all those responsible for murder of Jamal Khashoggi. That means we must impose sanctions on the Crown Prince himself.

The Senate's vote today sends a clear message to Saudi Arabia and President Trump: We will hold you accountable, we will not trade away our Nation's values, and we will not abdicate our responsibility in decisions of peace and war. S.J. Res. 54 reins in the President's largely unencumbered war-making powers and ends unconditional U.S. military support for the Saudi campaign in Yemen without an authorization from Congress. For these reasons, I was proud to vote in support of this resolution.

Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the tremendous service of Stephen ``Ski'' Sucharski, who joined our staff as a Brookings Fellow this year. Ski's expertise in defense, veterans, and homeland security issues was invaluable, helping to ensure we met the needs of constituents throughout our great State of Maryland. Ski came to our office with a wealth of policy knowledge from his civilian work at the Department of Defense and his many years serving our country in the U.S. Army. Ski's years of service enhanced our office in many ways, perhaps most notably in veterans affairs. I am particularly grateful to Ski for his dedication to improving services for veterans in our State and across our Nation. Ski's generosity, willingness to pitch in wherever needed, and sense of humor made him a great colleague and terrific staffer in my office. We owe him a debt of gratitude, and we will miss him greatly. My whole staff and I wish him well as he embarks on his next journey in service to our country.

Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the resolution sponsored by Senators Tester and Wyden to overturn the Treasury Department rule.

We have heard loud and clear from the American people that they are sick and tired of the hundreds of millions of dollars of special interest money going into our elections. They are especially sick and tired of all of the secret dark money going into our elections.

What do I mean by that? I mean when wealthy individuals can contribute to organizations and the American public has no idea who those individuals are, while those organizations go on to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to influence the votes of our fellow Americans.

We have all seen those commercials that come on TV that say they are sponsored by the Committee for a Better America, the Committee to Support Mom and Apple Pie, and the public wants to know and has a right to know who is spending all of that money to try to influence their votes.

The vehicle of choice for these shadowy, dark money organizations has been organizing their entities under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

We will soon--probably in January but early on--we will see a bill coming over to the Senate from the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives because their No. 1 priority is electoral reform, including getting rid of secret money, making sure the public has that right to know who is bankrolling these entities.

What the Treasury Department did took us in the opposite direction. Currently, 501(c)(4) organizations have to report to the IRS the information about their donors, but currently the IRS keeps that information confidential. It does not share it with the public. We should share it with the public, and that is what the DISCLOSE Act that the House will pass will do.

What this Treasury rule does is it takes us in the opposite direction. It says to those 501(c)(4)s that they no longer even have to provide that information to the Treasury Department on a confidential basis. So it heads in the wrong direction. It is especially outrageous because it will take away one of the key tools the Treasury Department has to prevent foreign money from being spent in our elections, because right now that information is made available to the Department of the Treasury.

If you are a 501(c)(4), you have to confidentially report who is giving you money and how much. Now the Treasury Department says: We don't want that information. We don't want to see anything. We don't want to know if foreign governments are putting money into 501(c)(4)s. We don't want to know if the primary purpose of these funds is for electing or defeating candidates as opposed to social welfare--which is the requirement for a 501(c)(4) organization under our law.

I think a lot of people are wondering why it is that this administration--and now maybe the Senate--wants to actually cover up for those who want to spend their money secretly to try to elect or defeat candidates. One thing we know is that across the board, whether they are Republicans or Democrats or Independents, Americans believe-- and I agree with them--that they have a right to know who is spending all of that money to try to influence their vote. So let's pass this resolution to overturn the Treasury rule in defense of secret money, when we need more transparency and more accountability.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, last week the Senate passed a second continuing resolution for fiscal year 2019, providing short-term funding for

many Federal Government agencies that have not yet received full year funding.

Several outstanding issues need to be resolved in order to complete the final seven appropriations bills, and I am hopeful that the hard work of the Appropriations Committee will not be in vain by resorting to a year-long continuing resolution for the remaining bills.

Congress must act in order to fully fund essential transportation and housing programs, environmental protection efforts, the Appalachian Regional Commission, NASA programs, the Census, FEMA relief programs, and to prevent President Trump from freezing the pay of over 2 million Federal civil servants, by enacting the 1.9 percent cost of living increase for Federal workers that the Senate passed on a broad bipartisan basis.

While I am glad this short-term continuing resolution will provide for an extension to keep the flood insurance program from unnecessarily lapsing, I want to see Congress enact a long-term reauthorization. This year's flooding of Ellicott City shows that we need a long-term solution. That is why I am an original cosponsor of the SAFE act, which provides for a 5-year extension for the program, in addition to important program enhancement as well as the Federal Flood Risk Management Act that ensures that federally owned or funded buildings, housing, and infrastructure, be made more weather-resistant and resilient so that we can protect our communities and our investment of Federal tax dollars.

As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I look forward to working with my colleagues over the next 2 weeks to complete the committee's fiscal year 2019 work.

Mr. President, President Trump has nominated Bernard McNamee to be a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,

Mr. President, there has been a lot of activity in the Senate today, and I wish to cover a couple of topics, starting with the nomination of Thomas Farr to be a U.S. District Court judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. I understand we will not be voting on that nomination today.

I hope our colleagues will take the time between now and whenever we may cast a final vote on that nomination to take another look at the record because a number of very informative things have come out in recent days about Mr. Farr's record.

I want to take us back to a moment where this Senate Chamber was back in 2006. Back in 2006, the U.S. Senate passed the Voting Rights Reauthorization Act by a vote of 98 to 0. Ninety-eight Senators in favor of the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization--none opposed. The House passed the same bill by a vote of 390 to 33. President Bush signed that bill into law.

Fast forward to 2013, we have a case in the Supreme Court, Shelby County v. Holder. The Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, took a big bite out of the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act. They eliminated the preclearance provisions. What we saw within a matter of weeks and months were States around the country that had previously been subject to the preclearance provisions beginning to enact laws putting up barriers to people's ability to vote, especially minority voters. Texas enacted legislation and North Carolina enacted legislation, among others.

I want to focus for a moment on what happened in North Carolina because in North Carolina the State legislature passed a bill that put up all sorts of obstacles that made it much harder--for African Americans especially--to cast their vote, to exercise their right to vote. When that bill was appealed to the Fourth Circuit, the Fourth Circuit found that North Carolina State legislation had targeted African-American voters with almost ``surgical precision,'' and they threw out that North Carolina law.

Well, just a few days ago, this Senate confirmed a nominee to be legal counsel at the Department of Agriculture, Stephen Vaden, who was one of the people who filed and coauthored an amicus brief in support of the North Carolina law that was overturned. The Senate acted, and we did that.

It turns out that just a few days later, we have a nomination not for the general counsel for the Department of Agriculture but for somebody to be on the U.S. courts who was the architect and the defender of these North Carolina laws, Thomas Farr. That same law which the Court said targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision, trying to deny them their right to vote, was also found by the Court to be ``the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crowe.''

Thomas Farr wasn't just a key player in that case in defending North Carolina's discriminatory law, he was also a key player in passing other North Carolina laws that have been thrown out because of their discriminatory impact. He was in the middle of North Carolina's effort to redraw State legislative lines for both State House districts and State Senate districts that the U.S. Supreme Court threw out on the grounds that it was racially discriminatory, but his history in trying to put up barriers to minority voting rights goes back even further.

I have in my hand a memorandum, dated June 19, 1991, from within the Justice Department. It was during the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush. It is a memo recommending that the United States bring a lawsuit against the North Carolina Republican Party and the Helms for Senate Committee--that would be Jesse Helms, former Senator--for conducting a postcard mailing program designed to intimidate and threaten Black voters throughout the State of North Carolina in order to discourage them from participating in the November 6, 1990, general election.

I urge all of my colleagues to read this memorandum from the Justice Department during the time George Bush was President. I especially direct them to page 12. There is a footnote on page 12 that talks about Thomas Farr's work in this area of trying to put up barriers to voting, going way back to not just the 1990 election but back to the 1984 election of Senator Jesse Helms.

In fact, this Department of Justice memorandum states that Farr was the primary coordinator of the 1984 ``ballot security'' program conducted by the North Carolina GOP and the 1984 Helms for Senate Committee. He--referring to Thomas Farr--coordinated several ``ballot security'' activities in 1984, including a postcard mailing to voters in predominantly Black precincts which was designed to serve as a basis to challenge voters on Election Day.

I don't know what has happened to the Senate between 2006, when it unanimously voted to extend the Voting Rights Act, and today, when we have on the floor the nomination of Thomas Farr, who has a history of being the point person in trying to limit the ability of Americans to exercise their right to vote and, according to the Fourth Circuit of the United States, did so with ``surgical precision'' in denying African-American voters.

How can we in good conscience put someone on the Federal Court of the United States who has that history? How can people who come before that court have the confidence that the person--that judge--is really going to uphold their rights?

I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination.

Mr. President, I also want to take us back to 2006 for another reason. Back in 2006, we had many of our Republican Senate colleagues recognizing the dangers of doing nothing about the mounting costs of climate change. Back in 2006, there was a bill in the U.S. Senate by Senators McCain and Lieberman, a bipartisan group, designed to finally take action. Here we are so many years later from 2006 and, my goodness, have we regressed.

We now have a President of the United States, in response to a report that came out from 300 scientists in the U.S. Government about the dangers of climate change, who says: Well, I don't believe it. They tried to bury this report, releasing it the day after Thanksgiving, but it backfired because it was a slow news day and people realized what was up. They realized this was a deliberate attempt by the administration to deep-six something that is important to all Americans and something all Americans can see with their own eyes, which is the escalating impact of doing nothing about climate change, whether it is forest fires or floods or rising sea levels.

If you look at the report, if you live in the Chesapeake Bay area, you have to be really worried: increasing precipitation, increasing storm events. We already have flooding in Annapolis, the home of the U.S. Naval Academy. If you talk to the Superintendent there, he is already worried about the impact. This report makes clear that we are going to have rising sea levels, a rising Chesapeake Bay, and we are going to see islands in the Chesapeake Bay disappearing, all because this body refuses to take any action and decides to instead kowtow to the President of the United States.

I would like to quote the President very quickly. When asked about this the other day, he said the following. When he was asked why he doesn't believe in climate change--this is the President of the United States: ``One of the problems that a lot of people like myself--we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not necessarily such believers.''

He goes on to say:

And when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are

very small. And it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we

take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the

time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the

Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And

it takes many people to start off with.

Then he goes on in this bizarre answer. This is the President of the United States responding to a question about the reality of climate change.

I hope we will get back to where we were on climate change in this body in 2006 and work on a bipartisan basis to do something, because the cost of doing nothing is rising every day and hitting Americans and people across the world.

Finally, when it comes to denying the facts, including the facts presented

by his own administration, we have a President of the United States who apparently doesn't believe his intelligence community. This is just another rewind-the-tape moment. We remember after Helsinki, when the President sided with President Putin and said: No, the Russians were not involved in the 2016 elections--despite the unanimous conclusions of all the U.S. intelligence agencies.

Now we know from reports that the CIA has determined with a high level of confidence that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia was involved and helped orchestrate the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Instead of accepting the conclusions of the CIA, the President instead has become the mouthpiece for the Saudi regime. Early on, he played into all their cover stories.

Just yesterday, we had a briefing of the Senate. We had the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. Guess who did not show up. The Director of the CIA. It is pretty clear that the administration did not want the Director of the CIA telling Senators from both parties what her findings are, but they have been reported in our newspapers.

When you have the Secretary of State write in the Wall Street Journal complaining about what he calls ``caterwauling'' in the U.S. Congress about what happened, you bet people in the Senate are upset about the fact that an American resident--a writer for a major American newspaper--got murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and the President of the United States wants to not only just look the other way but is actually complicit in providing the cover story for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. So there is a lot of caterwauling going on.

The President made another bizarre statement that began with the sentence ``The world is a dangerous place'' and then went on to somehow justify ignoring Saudi's conduct and the murder. Yes, the world is a dangerous place, and it is made a lot more dangerous when the President of the United States looks the other way when one of our so-called allies--and they have been an important ally in some respects--is actually complicit in the murder of an American resident overseas. That makes the world much more dangerous for all Americans and all people around the world.

It is important that the United States act to hold the Crown Prince accountable. It is also important that we stop giving Saudi Arabia a green light on all sorts of other conduct. This is a Crown Prince who kidnapped the Prime Minister of Lebanon. This is a Crown Prince who blockaded Qatar against our best interests. This is a Crown Prince who essentially threw out the Canadian Ambassador because she had the temerity to tweet about Saudi human rights abuses against women in Saudi Arabia. The reason the Crown Prince thought he could get away with killing an American resident in Istanbul is because this President has given him a blank check to do whatever he wants, and that includes Yemen.

Mr. President, the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims commemorates the millions of people killed and injured on the world's roads. It is also a day to thank emergency services for their role in saving lives; to reflect on the impact of road deaths on families and communities; and to draw attention to the need for improved legislation, awareness, infrastructure, and technology to save more families from the tragedy of losing a loved one.

Since the United Nations recognized the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, its observance has spread to a growing number of countries on every continent. The day has become an important advocacy tool in global efforts to reduce road casualties, and the theme of this year's World Day of Remembrance is ``Roads have Stories.'' Additionally, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3.6 calls on governments and their stakeholders, including NGOs and private citizens, to address the personal, medical, and financial burdens associated with road deaths and injuries. More than 1 million people die from road crashes every year and tens of millions are seriously injured. Road traffic crashes are the number one killer of young people aged 15-29 and the eighth leading cause of death among all people worldwide.

Rochelle Sobel, president of the Association for Safe International Road Travel, said, ``The World Day of Remembrance is an important opportunity to stand together with the global community to commemorate road victims and call for an end to the crisis on our roads. No one should have to go through the needless, preventable loss of a child, a brother, a mother, a friend, killed in a road traffic crash. This year's theme reminds us that roads and streets are more than connections from point A to point B. They tell stories, some of them tragic, which are worth remembering. We owe it to our loved ones to do what we can to educate our children, drive responsibly and advocate with our governments to implement and enforce policies that will protect road users and prevent more families from suffering the pain of losing a loved one on the road.''

We all need to do our part to take action to prevent these avoidable tragedies and to save lives.

Mr. President, President Trump nominated Stephen Vaden to be General Counsel for the Department of Agriculture. In that role, Mr. Vaden will oversee all of the legal services for all operations and programs of the Department and 250 attorneys nationwide.

Most of Mr. Vaden's experience is not in agriculture or natural resources issues. Much of his work at the law firm Jones Day focused on election law, and during the 2016 election cycle, he coauthored amicus briefs in States where State legislatures had enacted discriminatory voting laws designed to suppress minority votes following the Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. State legislatures in North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia took full advantage of the Shelby County ruling that removed previous preclearance requirements.

In North Carolina, the legislature passed a law changing various State voting procedures. The legislature utilized racial data on voting practices in drafting the law, and where they saw voting practices that were predominately utilized by African American voters, they changed those voting practices.

Mr. Vaden was one of three attorneys who submitted an amicus brief in support of the State of North Carolina, for Senators Tillis, Graham, Cruz, Lee, and the Judicial Education Project. The Jones Day amicus brief argued that ``North Carolina's race-neutral regulations of the time, place, and manner of its elections do not violate Section 2 [Of the Voting Rights Act].'' They further wrote, ``Quite to the contrary, North Carolina allows all citizens to vote. Although members of minority races may disproportionately choose, for socio-economic or other reasons, not to take advantage of this equal opportunity, North Carolina's practices are not the proximate cause of this phenomenon.''

In its published opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals strongly disagreed with that argument and found that the North Carolina State election law ``targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.'' The court further stated, ``We cannot ignore the evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,'' and ``Faced with this record, we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions with discriminatory intent.''

At the November 9, 2017, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry hearing to consider Mr. Vaden's nomination, I questioned him about his role in the amicus brief in the North Carolina voting rights case. I am a firm believer in the right to vote and deeply troubled by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals findings that the North Carolina case involved voter discrimination.

I did not find Mr. Vaden's answers to my questions to be sufficient. When I asked him if the Judicial Education Project paid Jones Day in full for their work on the North Carolina case, he simply said, ``As an associate I did not have access, nor did I participate in the billing function of the firm.'' I find this answer insufficient.

Also, I noted in my questions to Mr. Vaden that, in my experience as having been an associate at a law firm, if an associate indicated to a partner that they did not want to participate in a case, the firm would certainly defer to their wishes. When I asked Mr. Vaden if he expressed any concern with participating in the voting rights cases to his partners at Jones Day, he replied that he did not.

I also note Mr. Vaden's lack of experience in the area of agriculture. Prior to joining USDA last January, Mr. Vaden had no particular involvement in any agriculture-specific issues or any agriculture-specific clients during his tenure at Jones Day. His nomination is a significant departure by the Trump administration from the background and experience of previous USDA General Counsel nominees, Republican or Democrat. For example, during the Obama administration, Jeff Prieto was a longtime attorney at the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division before becoming USDA General Counsel. His predecessor, Ramona Romero, was an attorney with a major U.S. agribusiness company involved in a wide range of agricultural policy and legal issues. Going back to the administration of George W. Bush, Nancy Bryson was a long-time environment and natural resources attorney both at the Justice Department and in private practice.

I am also troubled to learn that the American Federation of Government Employees, AFGE, came out in opposition to Mr. Vaden's nomination, citing that one of Mr. Vaden's first official acts at USDA was to terminate the labor contract between the office and its staff of 250 lawyers and legal professionals nationwide. In their statement, the AFGE stated that, due to his lack of collaboration and partnership with Office of General Counsel workers, they believe he will ``continue creating an agency culture that results in even more unprecedented levels of poor worker morale, with the potential to negatively impact the quality of services provided to virtually all Americans.''

For these reasons, I opposed Stephen Vaden's nomination for General Counsel of the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. President, as the late Senator John McCain once wrote, ``We are a country with a conscience. We have long believed moral concerns must be an essential part of our foreign policy, not a departure from it.'' He believed, as I do, that human rights and the rule of law are the cornerstones of a just and free society.

More than any President before him, however, President Trump has shirked our Nation's values. This is especially true in his engagement abroad; across the globe, President Trump has embraced autocrats and derided our democratic allies.

The Kingdom of Bahrain is no exception to this disturbing trend. Just 2 months into his tenure, President Trump lifted all human rights conditions on a multibillion dollar sale of American fighter jets to Bahrain, imposed by President Obama. President Trump has attached no human rights conditions to any successive arms sale to Bahrain, including the arms identified in S.J. Res. 65.

The message President Trump has sent is clear: Bahrain has a green light to act with total impunity against its citizens. The Trump administration's decision coincided with an intensified government campaign against civil society and peaceful political opposition. In its 2017 Human Rights Report, the State Department cited Bahrain's unlawful killings by security forces, arbitrary arrest and detention of civilians, restrictions on freedom of expression, arbitrary citizenship revocation, and limits on Shia political participation, among a litany of other abuses by the state.

I recognize that, in every relationship, the United States must carefully weigh our national security interests. Bahrain is an important strategic partner and hosts our Navy's Fifth Fleet. The arms identified in S.J. Res. 65 are intended for Bahrain's territorial defense, which I support. However, I reject the notion, supported by this President, that our values and our interests are at odds. Our values, our willingness to consider the human costs of our actions, are what make the United States and what keep the United States exceptional. President Trump should not have abandoned human rights conditions in our arms sales to Bahrain, which is why I voted against the motion to table S.J. Res. 65.

Mr. President, today I wish to recognize the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, USU, as the Nation's first ``National Stop the Bleed Campus.''

USU is located in Bethesda, MD and is one of our Nation's greatest treasures. As our country's only Federal health sciences university, USU educates, trains, and prepares uniformed health professionals, scientists, and leaders to support the readiness of our Armed Forces. USU is a global leader in state-of-the-art research in traumatic brain injury, posttraumatic stress disorder, precision medicine, rehabilitation and prosthetics, emerging infectious diseases, tropical medicine, and cancer, and its researchers generate high-impact militarily relevant discoveries and products to protect the health of our Forces and strengthen the national health security of the United States.

USU is leading efforts in a nation-wide ``Stop the Bleed'' campaign, launched by the White House on October 6, 2015. This initiative involves several agencies, Federal and private entities, public health groups, and medical societies working collaboratively to educate and empower our citizens on how to stop life-threatening hemorrhage after traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, acts of violence, and natural disasters. Today trauma is the leading cause of death in the U.S. for people between the ages of 1-40. Hemorrhaging, in particular, accounts for almost 40 percent of deaths in the first 24 hours after a traumatic injury.

``Stop the Bleed'' aims to teach our citizens how to save lives from major traumatic events, just as a bystander would know how to use CPR to save someone in cardiac arrest. Through this campaign, the goal is to ensure that the general public knows the ``Stop the Bleed'' phrase and logo and has access to effective personal and public bleeding control kits that will allow even an untrained person to effectively apply a tourniquet just by learning on the spot.

``Stop the Bleed'' directly translates important lessons learned on the battlefield to benefit the American public and is based on a decade of research by the U.S. military. As our country faced a record number of vascular trauma and extremity injuries from high-velocity gunshot wounds and explosive devices during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military began to quickly reassess and revamp its tactical combat casualty care. They began to equip troops with individual first aid kits containing tourniquets and newly-developed hemostatic dressings to control severe blood loss. Simultaneously, they revamped training to educate both our medical and nonmedical forces, emphasizing the importance of immediate recognition and control of blood loss with these newly designed tool kits. These efforts paid off. Military studies demonstrated that immediate control of severe blood loss, in fact, saved many lives on the battlefield.

With this knowledge, the military joined forces with members of the Hartford Consensus, a committee formed in the wake of the tragic Sandy Hook school shooting. Together, they worked to push these vital lessons out to the public. That effort led to the White House's launching the ``Stop the Bleed'' campaign.

As part of this initiative, USU sent teams of its staff and students out into the community to educate the public on how to ``Stop the Bleed.'' Their researchers have published studies looking at the layperson's ability to apply tourniquets and measuring which tactics are most effective for teaching the public how to apply tourniquets. They are conducting a study looking at the usability of several types of dressing to control severe blood loss in the hope of determining which would be easiest for the lay person to apply. USU researchers have found that the layperson will know what to do to ``Stop the Bleed'' about 50 percent of the time with ``just-in-time'' training, learning on the spot. If they have just 15 minutes of web-based training, combined with ``just-in-time training,'' the success rate for applying tourniquets rises to 75 percent.

USU researchers have taken the lead in this initiative and developed a mobile ``Stop the Bleed'' app for the public to use for education on how to stop severe blood loss and for emergency reference in case of a traumatic event that results in life-threatening bleeding. They have developed a website, https://stopthebleed.usuhs.edu, with information and resources aimed at bystander education and saving lives. In

addition, the university has installed ``Stop the Bleed'' kits throughout every floor on its campus, both in Bethesda and local satellite offices, and its regional offices in San Antonio, TX, and San Diego, CA. These kits contain tourniquets, instructions on how to apply them, and other lifesaving tools needed in an emergency.

Because of their ongoing efforts to educate our Nation's citizens about this lifesaving initiative, I would like to recognize USU as our Nation's first ``National Stop the Bleed Campus,'' to encourage others across the country to follow in their footsteps and, ultimately, continue to improve national preparedness in response to traumatic events.

Thank you.

Mr. President, today the Senate will complete work on a new 2-year authorization for the U.S. Coast Guard, the Federal Maritime Commission, and on regulations related to vessel discharges and other matters.

This bill is intended to give our Coast Guard the certainty it needs to operate in a constantly changing environment, and I appreciate the significant bipartisan work that has gone into the legislation we vote on today. Maryland is

home to the Coast Guard yard in Curtis Bay, our Nation's facility for maintaining and repairing the Coast Guard fleet, and I am proud of the work they do every day to support the security of our Nation and ships at sea. However, I remain concerned with title IV of this bill, the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act, VIDA, which would regulate ballast water discharge from ships in the United States. While these provisions have improved since they were first brought to the floor, the title continues to preempt State authority on ballast water discharge from ships. The State of Maryland currently has a more protective standard that is critical to maintaining a healthy Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Bay Watershed is enormous: 64,000 square miles, part of six States and the entire District of Columbia, and almost 18 million people.

The Chesapeake Bay is one of Maryland's crown jewels, and it is of upmost importance to me that we continue the progress in cleaning up the bay. The Chesapeake Bay is a delicate ecosystem that is particularly sensitive to invasive species that can be spread through ballast water discharge. These invasive species could compete with our native species in the bay like blue crab, oysters, and striped bass.

There are many provisions of this bill that I will support through the conference process, including additional funding for operating expenses and acquisition funding and $30 million for environmental compliance and restoration. The Coast Guard yard in Curtis Bay is currently on EPA's National Priorities List and the Coast Guard's priority list and is eligible for this funding.

The bill also includes a provision that allows for incentive payments to go to Curtis Bay's wage-grade employees who demonstrate improvements in performance or delivery during a project.

I hope to gain clarity on section 310 of the bill, which claims to provide more flexibility to choose where ship alterations or repairs can occur. I am concerned that this provision may have unintended consequences in certain situations, particularly with respect to the Coast Guard yard. As this bill moves to conference and eventually the President, I hope to work with my colleagues to clear up this provision and will continue to advocate for the rights of States like Maryland to protect their clean water.

I will vote no today, but believe that we can continue to improve this bill in the conference process. I look forward to working with my colleagues to do so.

Mr. President, today, on the week we celebrated Veterans Day, I wish to pay particular tribute to our Nation's women veterans. Maryland women served our Nation long before they were permitted to serve in the military, from Mary Digges Lee, who collected money and supplies to support the Revolutionary Army, to Harriet Tubman who spied for the Union in the Civil War. Today Maryland is home to over 50,000 women veterans. Our Maryland National Guard is led by the extraordinary Adjutant General Linda L. Singh and, for the first time this year, an all-woman command staff.

As we honor our veterans, we must also keep the promises we made, as a nation, to them. That requires understanding and addressing the unique and complex needs of our women veterans. We know that they suffer higher rates of PTSD and suicide than their civilian counterparts and have medical issues that are too often overlooked or ignored. Later this week, I will be meeting with some truly heroic Maryland women who have served their Nation and continue to serve each other. I look forward to their insight on the programs and services they use and the ways we can expand the networks that might deliver the support our women veterans deserve.

This Congress has worked on a bipartisan basis to support our Nation's veterans, and we must continue those efforts. There is still much to do, from ensuring that the VA system delivers the care and programming that Congress has authorized, to assessing the feasibility of peer-to-peer assistance for women veterans, with emphasis placed on women who suffered service-related sexual trauma or who are at risk of becoming homeless.

We live in freedom because of those brave Americans who have chosen to take up the mantle of service in uniform; they deserve our full support in making the transition to civilian life, on an equal footing, regardless of gender, after that service is finished. Women veterans should not face unequal treatment; we need to broaden the discussion and strive to make things better for America's daughters who have served. Every veteran must know that they have our respect and gratitude and that we will support them as thanks for their sacrifice.