Floor Statements

Mr. President, last night, President Trump began his speech with an appropriate reference to the anti-Semitic attacks that have occurred all over the country. Two bomb threats were called into a Jewish community center in the New Haven area in Connecticut. I visited that center and the staff and the kids of that center, who are now being housed in a nearby synagogue. He also condemned, in strong terms, the murder of a young man in Kansas City, the victim of an apparent hate crime, targeted for simply being a foreigner or being of a different religion. We can't know exactly what the reason was, but it was an attack based on hate.

I want to tell my colleagues a little bit about that young man, to begin with, as a means of, once again, coming to the floor of the Senate to tell my colleagues about the victims of gun violence in this country--the 86 or so

people every day who are taken by guns, suicides, and murders and accidental shootings; the 2,600 people a month whose lives are taken through gun violence, and the 31,000 a year. By the way, that number is just the number of people who are killed. Those are the lives that are eliminated. There are another 75,000 every year who are injured by gun fire, whose lives are irrevocably altered by that act of violence.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla was a 32-year-old engineer. He was working for Garmin. He was just hanging out at a bar. It was Austin's Bar and Grill, and he was enjoying the company of friends. Witnesses saw a man enter the bar. He was agitated, and he was drunk. He was a patron of the bar. He had left and he reentered, and he began shooting at Srinivas and his friend. Witnesses say that the shooter told Srinivas to ``get out of my country'' before killing him and then critically injuring his friend and an unbelievably brave bystander who tried to stop the shooter.

Hundreds of grief-stricken family members and friends gathered in his hometown in India for this young man's funeral. In accordance with Hindu tradition, his body was carried on a carriage and his ashes were laid to rest. Friends said that his mother was absolutely wailing as the carriage went by.

His mother had wondered whether America was a safe place for her son. Months before the shooting, she asked him to return to India if he was feeling insecure, but he told her he was safe, that he was fine. His wife also wondered how safe it would be to stay in the United States, but she said that Srinivas always assured her that only good things could happen to good people.

He undoubtedly was a good person. His family members remember him as the kindest person you would meet. He was, in their words, ``full of love, care and compassion for everyone. He never uttered a word of hatred, simple gossip, or a careless comment.''

His friends and family members remember him as ``brilliant, well- mannered and simply an outstanding human being.''

He was ``a very sharp, top-of-his-class kind of guy,'' said one of his classmates at the University of Texas at El Paso where Srinivas earned a master's degree in electrical and electronic engineering. He was also an avid cricket player and a big fan of cricket as well.

He was 32 years old. He was sitting at a bar, enjoying time with his friends when a man who was at the bar, who probably saw Srinivas, thought that he looked different from him and, filled with hate, walked back into the bar and shot and killed him.

That is only one story from that day. On average, there are 85 other stories across the country in which people lose their lives to gunfire. What made me so mad last night was that after that moment--that appropriate moment in which President Trump talked about this horrible shooting--moments later, he referenced the daily slaughter that happens in our cities. He spoke in front of the joint session for, it seemed, nearly an hour and a half and offered absolutely no solutions to do anything about the cascading gun violence that is enveloping our Nation.

Irony of all ironies, the same week that he is lamenting, eulogizing Srinivas's death in Kansas City, he is signing a law passed by this body that would allow for more people with serious mental illness to get their hands on guns.

We don't know the full story of Adam Purinton yet, but you have to imagine that this was someone who was deeply disturbed. Maybe he was just drunk, but in order to decide to pull out a gun in a bar and shoot someone just because they look different than you do probably means that there is something going on--more than a few beers. Mr. Purinton probably had some stuff going on. He might have been mentally ill.

When I got here, I thought that one of the few things we agreed upon--Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives--was that if you were seriously mentally ill, you probably shouldn't be able to buy a weapon, not because people with a mental illness are inherently dangerous--that is not true at all--but because erring on the side of caution when it comes to someone who is seriously ill would probably be the safe thing to do. That used to be a bipartisan commitment.

A few weeks ago, this body passed a law to allow tens of thousands of people who have serious mental illness, who have been judged by a government agency to be so sick that they can't manage their own financial affairs, they literally can't cash a check, their Social Security check has to be sent to someone else because they can't manage their affairs--we passed a law to allow those people to buy guns.

Spare me your concern for the victims of gun violence if you are not willing to do anything about it and, in fact, you are going to take steps to make gun violence more likely rather than less likely in this country. So 31,000 people a year, 2,600 a month, 86 a day--there is no other country in the world in which this happens. There is no other country in the world in which these numbers of people are dying from guns. It is our fault because week after week, month after month, year after year, we do nothing about it, and now we are making it worse.

In the 4 years after Sandy Hook happened, I went back to tell people that we had done nothing. That was embarrassing enough. Now I have to go back to the families of Sandy Hook and tell people that when Congress thinks about gun violence, we think about making changes in the law to make gun violence more likely, to put more guns into the hands of dangerous people. We are going backward now.

Teresa Robertson owned a floral shop in a beauty shop in Fairfax, OK. Fairfax is a really small town, a really tight-knit community. It is still on edge because about a week ago, Teresa's estranged husband walked into the store, started shooting at Teresa, and then barricaded himself inside city hall, firing shots at the local police, who returned fire, fatally killing Teresa's husband.

She had filed a protective order against her husband about 2 weeks before because she feared for her life. She filed for divorce a week later, and a week following that, he shot her.

Laws can protect against something like that, right? We have the power to stop that. In Connecticut, if you file a protective order against a spouse who you believe is going to harm you, the police have the ability to take those weapons away for the period of time in which you were adjudicating that protective order.

If that law had been in effect in Oklahoma, maybe Teresa Robertson would still be alive today and maybe her husband would still be alive and maybe their two kids--ages 13 and 16--wouldn't be without both of their parents.

The fact is, every single day, domestic partners--women primarily-- are killed or are shot by boyfriends or estranged husbands. It often plays out just like this: protective order, divorce filing, murder. That is on us.

We have the ability to protect women from their estranged husbands. There are laws. We can't stop every shooting, but it certainly can cut down on these numbers.

Two days later, emergency responders found 26-year-old Michael ``Shane'' Watkins bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the head on Berkshire Avenue in Bridgeport, CT. He died shortly after arriving at the hospital. The police are still investigating the shooting, but they believe that Shane was an innocent victim of a robbery that went bad.

His friends said that Shane was someone who was always laughing, who was always smiling, who had a good heart, was a caring person. A neighbor said that Shane was ``always upbeat, always joking, always smiling.'' This was a good kid.

He was a dedicated family man. He was a long time employee of the local Stop & Shop. He was 26 years old. This was a robbery gone bad. Shane Watkins was one of those 86.

Twelve-year-old Kanari Gentry Bowers was playing basketball with friends in Chicago, IL, at Henderson Elementary School. A stray bullet hit her on February 11. For 4 awful, agonizing days, Kanari sat lying unconscious in the hospital with a bullet lodged in her 12-year-old spine before she died on February 15.

Her family released a statement that said: ``Please keep your children close and do whatever it takes to protect them from the senseless gun violence in our city.''

That doesn't sound exceptional, does it? ``Please keep your children close and do whatever it takes to protect them.'' Think about that idea. Think about the idea that you can't let your children get far away from you in Chicago today because they are not at risk of getting lost; they are at risk of being shot.

The little girl had dreams of becoming a judge. That is not something that a lot of 12-year-old girls are thinking about, but Kanari wanted to be a judge. She was described as a vivacious young girl.

I hear President Trump talk about Chicago all the time. He talks about Chicago as though he cares, but he doesn't propose anything that would reduce the trajectory of gun violence, the horror of living in neighborhoods that you can't let your child stray more than a few feet from you without fearing for their lives. He has proposed nothing to do with making that city safer.

People say Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the Nation, yet it is one of the most violent places. Exactly, exactly: Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the Nation. New York City has some of the toughest gun laws in the Nation. They are still violent places. Why? Because the vast majority of guns in those cities, the illegal guns that spread throughout the city like poison ivy come from outside of Chicago. They come from Indiana. In New York, they come from South Carolina. They come from North Carolina. They come from places in which it is easy to buy a gun without a background check at a gun show or on the internet. They flow into these cities and become used in murder after murder.

If you don't have a Federal requirement that background checks have to be conducted wherever you buy a gun, no matter how strong the laws of Chicago are, they can't be protected; 12-year-old girls can't be protected.

This was all in February, by the way. This was all in the last 3 weeks.

On February 20, some friends got together at a local church in Pomona, CA, and all of a sudden, gunshots started firing through the windows and the walls of this church--a drive-by shooting.

You know who was dead at the end of that? An 8-year-old little boy named Jonah. He was adopted from an orphanage in Taiwan. He had been in the United States for only 3 years. His adoptive parents and his friends--you should read what they say about this kid: ``He had an infectious smile and loved everyone and everything.''

He was still learning English, but with his playful demeanor, he had adapted almost immediately to life in the United States. He loved wrestling with his adoptive dad, running, laughing. He loved superheroes. He was always injuring himself jumping off of something. He loved living in this country.

He was a 5-year-old in an orphanage in Taiwan, and then he was in the United States with a dad and with superhero action figures, and now he is dead because somebody fired bullets randomly into a church in Pomona, CA.

Why don't we do anything about this? We are not so coldhearted as to be unable to understand what life is like for a mom and a dad who lose an 8-year-old child. We are not so brain-dead as to not be able to comprehend the fact that every time someone is shot, there are at least 20 people whose lives are permanently altered.

The post-traumatic stress involved in one shooting has enormous ripple effects. I have talked at length on this floor about the constant grief that envelopes my town of Sandy Hook because of what happened there. It will never end.

Now, instead of defending the status quo, we are talking about making it easier for deeply mentally ill people to get guns. A bill was just introduced on the floor of the Senate this week that would allow for someone to carry a concealed weapon anywhere in the Nation, regardless of what that local State jurisdiction wanted. If you had a concealed weapon permit in Texas, you would be able to walk into Manhattan without any way for the local police to check you out. There is even an effort to make silencers legal.

Mr. President, 31,000 a year, 2,600 a month, 86 a day. I have come down to the floor I don't know how many times--certainly not as many as Senator Whitehouse but many times to tell the stories of the victims. I told a few more this afternoon because if the data doesn't move you-- again, only in this country; in no other country in the world does this happen--then maybe the stories of these victims will move you. Maybe being able to put yourself in the shoes of a mom who lost a child, of a husband who lost a wife way before their time, will move you to action.

This is only controversial here. Ninety percent of the American public wants us to move forward with the universal background checks. The majority of Americans think these super-powerful military weapons should stay in the hands of the military and law enforcement. Everybody out there wants to give law enforcement the tools and the funding necessary to carry out the existing law. It is not controversial out in the American public; it is only controversial here.

It is about time that we do something about this epic level of carnage that continues to plague our Nation and have some response to these voices of victims that seem endless.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, believe it or not, there are some smart people out there in America who are not billionaires. I know it doesn't seem like it as we debate yet another megarich Wall Street titan to head another department in the Federal Government, but billionaires do not actually have a monopoly on wisdom in this country.

But it doesn't seem that this is what our new President thinks. If they all get confirmed, Donald Trump's Cabinet will have a net wealth that is greater than one-third of all Americans. Think about that for a second. The Cabinet of the United States will have a net wealth all together that is greater than one-third of every single American--the poorest third of Americans--if you put them all together.

He has nominated millionaires and billionaires to head the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce--the nominee we are now debating--and the Department of Health and Human Services. He even nominated two of his rich friends to head the Army and the Navy.

I heard President Trump talk over and over the past 2 years about how he was going to drain the swamp once he got here. As far as I can tell, all he has done thus far is just sell the swamp to his rich friends.

I am not saying that billionaires like Wilbur Ross aren't smart. You have to be pretty savvy in order to make all of that money for yourself or for your investors. There is honor in making money. That is the American dream--to have the opportunity, if you want it, to become very rich, to become very affluent, to create a business that makes you, your family, and maybe those who invested in it very well off. I have a lot of friends who have made a lot of money in and around Wall Street. I don't begrudge the fact that they did it. But making a lot of money for yourself doesn't automatically equate to the ability to run an agency or to run a country.

President Trump made a whole bunch of money for himself, but his first month on the job as President has been a series of not just domestic embarrassments but international embarrassments--writing Executive orders without even checking with the Cabinet to see if what he is doing is legal or illegal; not being able to fill positions in the White House or in Federal agencies--the number of foreign diplomats who tell me they have no idea whom to call right now in the Federal Government is as embarrassing as it is maddening--getting into public spats with even our most reliable allies like Germany and Australia; spending most of his time in pitch battles with the media and his own staff, rather than working with us on trying to solve the problems of this country.

Donald Trump is good at making money for himself, but those skills, as we have found, do not translate very well to running a country. Maybe that is because when the entire focus of your entire life is making as much money as humanly possible for yourself, you cannot pivot on a dime all of a sudden and start putting all of your energy into helping other people. Maybe life doesn't work like that. So that is what really worries me about these billionaire nominees.

A few weeks ago, I was on the floor talking about the now-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He spent his career at Exxon helping to build a very successful business, but in doing so, he hurt a lot of people. Exxon deals with horrible dictators who used those oil revenues in order to help murder thousands of their people. That was good for business, but it was awful for humanity.

Andy Puzder, who is no longer a nominee for the Department of Labor, openly mocked his workers. He suggested they just got in the way of the efficient operation of his business, and he pined for the day when robots would replace them.

Now we are debating Wilbur Ross to be Secretary of Commerce. Wilbur Ross made a lot of money for himself, but he has taken advantage of the very bad trade deals that this body has passed in order to offshore thousands of U.S. jobs. One such company that he owned, a textile company, employed 4,700 workers in factories in North Carolina and South Carolina. That was inefficient in Wilbur Ross's desire to make as much money for himself as he could. So he took those 4,700 jobs and he shipped them to Guatemala. He said: This project will benefit from Guatemala's realistic wages.

When Mr. Ross acquired an auto parts factory in Carlisle, PA, a decade ago, in order to make more money for himself, he took a hard line with the workers, demanding cuts in wages and benefits that were worth between 25 and 30 percent of the workers' earnings. That is what he needed to do in order to squeeze as much money out of that company to make himself a few extra million dollars. When the union rejected the demands of Mr. Ross and when the workers rejected those demands, he shut the plant down and moved their work to North Carolina, to Canada, and to Mexico.

Wilbur Ross, Rex Tillerson, Steve Mnuchin, and Andy Puzder spent their entire lives obsessed with making as much money for themselves as possible and not letting anyone's good fortune get in their way. They fired workers, they foreclosed on people's homes, they shipped jobs overseas, and they supported brutal dictators--all of it justifiable as long as it meant they would make more money for themselves and for their investors. How on Earth has that become a qualification to serve the public, to serve at the highest level of the U.S. Government?

I am on the floor today to oppose the nomination of Wilbur Ross to be Secretary of Commerce--not because he didn't do a good job enriching himself through the myriad of businesses that he owned and operated during his time in the private sector but because during that time he trampled on the rights of workers, he offshored jobs, and he eliminated people's livelihoods in order to make more money for himself. All of the things that Candidate Trump talked about taking on were the things that Wilbur Ross was doing as he took advantage of these trade agreements to kill jobs in the United States and offshore them to other places.

President Trump said he was going to fight for the working guy. He isn't. He is doing the exact opposite. He is turning the keys of this government over to his wealthy friends so that they can potentially profit off of taxpayer dollars, so that they can deregulate the industries that, by the way, they are going to return to when their term is

up. They will get richer, just like they have through their entire lives, while the rest of us pay for it.

It is time for us to recognize that billionaires in this country do not have a monopoly on wisdom. Sometimes the very skills that allow you to make a fortune for yourself don't equate to the skills necessary to fight for everybody else through public service. I would urge my colleagues to oppose the nomination of Wilbur Ross to be Secretary of Commerce.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Thank you, Mr. President.

Once again, let me extend my gratitude to all of the staff who are pulling yet another overnight. I know this isn't easy, and I feel like every time we have done one of these I have been on the floor during the late night or very early morning hours to express my gratitude to those who are making this possible.

While I am grateful for those who are here, I think it is also incredibly important and vital that we are here. This is exceptional to have so many late nights, to have pushed through the evenings, to stay in session 24 hours and 48 hours at a time. I understand that last week we engaged in the longest session--second longest continuous session in the history of the Chamber, and I think we are doing so because we are living through truly exceptional times today.

We are living through a moment where this administration is simply not prepared to govern, and many of the individuals who are being appointed to Cabinet positions, being selected to serve in this administration simply aren't ready to get the job done.

We saw that with respect to Michael Flynn, who was named to quite possibly the most important position in the national security Cabinet. The National Security Advisor is, on most days, the first person and the last person the President talks to about national security, about protecting the Nation. Many of us raised alarm bells when Mr. Flynn was selected for the job because of his radical statements on Islam, his questionable connections to Russia, having sat next to Vladimir Putin in a celebration of Russian propaganda didn't seem right to us, something didn't smell right to many of us. We expressed those objections when Mr. Flynn was chosen. Our objections did not prevail, and within 30 days Mr. Flynn was fired from his position. It is still unclear as to why he was fired. The President was out in front of the cameras, bizarrely defending Mr. Flynn to the cameras having just fired him 30 days into the job, but it seems that it was some combination of undermining a sitting President by attempting to coordinate with the Russian Ambassador right after President Obama had levied sanctions on Russia, potentially making some promises to the Russians that they didn't have to worry about it because once the Trump administration got into office, they would modify or lift those sanctions or perhaps it was lying to the Vice President and others in the White House about what the substance of those conversations were.

Regardless, within 30 days, maybe the most important person in the security Cabinet, who many of us thought

was unqualified, was fired from his position in the shortest tenure that anybody could discover for National Security Advisors.

More news in the last 48 hours is that there were a host of other White House officials who were unceremoniously ushered out of the White House because they couldn't pass their criminal background checks. Why on earth they were in the White House working in positions if they hadn't already taken criminal background checks, that is a very important question we should get answers to, but yet another example of selection of people to serve in sensitive posts who weren't ready for the job.

Betsy DeVos wasn't ready for her confirmation hearing. She came to the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and didn't know the basic facts about Federal education law. She couldn't tell the difference between measuring proficiency and measuring growth, and maybe for most people you don't know the difference either, but if you are going to be the Secretary of Education, you have to know the difference between measuring for proficiency and measuring for growth. She was confused about the Federal law that guarantees children with disabilities an equal education. She told Senator Kaine and Senator Hassan it would be OK for States to ignore that law or ignore that protection. That actually is not the case. Every State has to observe the individuals with disabilities law as it pertains to students.

Just this week, we had a nominee withdraw after a drip, drip, drip of allegations regarding his personal conduct and his business practices made it pretty clear that somebody whose restaurants are half the time in violation of Federal labor laws, somebody who has employed undocumented workers probably isn't suitable to be the chief protector of workers in this country as the Secretary of the Department of Labor. It just doesn't seem that a lot of thought has been put into some of these selections.

So we are taking our time. We are using our prerogative as Members of the minority party to make sure there is a full, complete debate on all these nominees to make sure, at the very least, the American public knows what they are getting.

Our worry is not just that these nominees are often woefully unprepared for the job, it is that many of them appear to be fatally compromised. I listened to a lot of what President Trump said on the campaign trail, and I heard him spending a lot of time attacking the way business had historically been done in Washington, DC. Maybe some of us privately cheered him on when we heard him say that because we have watched corporate America own this town for a long time.

I watched the drug industry essentially have veto power over health policy in this town. I have watched the oil and gas industry run the show. From a personal basis, nothing aggrieves me more than seeing the gun industry get whatever they want from this Congress. If you have a couple hundred million dollars of market capitalization and a good lobbyist and a political action committee you can get a lot done in Washington.

So maybe when I tried to think of that silver lining to the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, something that was deeply morally objectionable to me, it was that maybe there is a possibility to take on some of these special interests, to say enough is enough, the size of your wallet shouldn't have anything to do with the amount of influence you command here, but then those hopes were dashed as we watched who President Trump decided to nominate for the Cabinet.

Over and over again, billionaires, sometimes millionaires, but more often than not billionaires were selected for this Cabinet, many of whom had ties to the very special interests or were members of the very special interests that Donald Trump told people he was going to take on when he became President of the United States.

So we had one of the biggest fast food operators being installed in the Department of Labor--somebody who attacked workers and said that break time was a nuisance, that robots should replace his employees, we had an oil executive nominated to serve as our chief diplomat, and now we have an individual who has very publicly and unapologetically done the bidding of big energy companies being enlisted to be the chief environmental protector in this country.

So we are here tonight because the nomination and selection of Scott Pruitt to be the next Administrator of the EPA fits neatly into a pattern of behavior by this administration in which very, very rich people or people who have very close ties to powerful interests are being put in the government, and our worry is that they are being put there not to serve the American people but to serve those interests.

Scott Pruitt has a very interesting history of defending the oil and gas industry, which I admit is important to his State of Oklahoma--more important than it is in my State of Connecticut--but he has a very interesting history of defending that industry against the EPA. Scott Pruitt has sued the EPA to overturn standards to curb mercury and other toxic air pollutants, standards that would prevent 11,000 premature deaths and up to 130,000 asthma attacks per year.

He sued to void standards to reduce soot and smog pollution, projecting to prevent up to 15,000 nonfatal heart attacks, to prevent 34,000 premature deaths, and almost 400,000 asthma attacks every year.

He sued unsuccessfully to overturn the EPA's scientific danger determination that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping air pollutants are harmful, and he even sued to block water pollution into the Chesapeake Bay which has no connection to Oklahoma.

Scott Pruitt has been a crusader. He has been a crusader on behalf of the energy industry against environmental protection, and he would probably tell you there is a choice to be made between protecting our environment and protecting our economy. That is ridiculous. That is patently ridiculous.

If we don't protect our planet, if we don't protect the quality of our air and the quality of our water, there will be no planet for businesses to grow in, and every kid who suffers through a lifetime of asthma is a fundamentally less productive worker to be able to add value to the American economy. When you are attacking health standards that would reduce asthma attacks by over 500,000 a year, you are attacking the economy, not just the environment.

It is really hard for a kid to learn and become an entrepreneur or a business creator if they are not healthy. Frankly, it is really hard for a family to be able to manage their own economic affairs when they have kids who are that unhealthy. So Scott Pruitt, in continuing to attack the EPA, continuing to stand up for the oil and gas industry, is weakening our economy.

Maybe even more importantly, when you are standing up for only one segment of the energy industry, you are ignoring all the potential jobs that come through a true energy transformation. I get it that today there are a lot of oil jobs in Oklahoma, but there could also be a lot of wind and solar and advanced battery and fuel cell jobs in his State as well. Frankly, as you look at the jobs that will be created over the next 50 to 100 years, not just in this country but across the globe, the real job growth in the energy sector is not just going to be in the oil and gas sector, it is going to be in this broader renewable energy sector.

I don't know if these statistics are up to date, but a few years ago, I read that, of the top 10 solar companies in the world, the United States has one of them; of the top 10 wind turbine companies in the world, the United States has one; and of the top 10 advanced battery companies in the world, the United States has two. There are going to be millions and millions of jobs to be had all across the world in the renewable energy economy.

So long as our energy policy is only about protecting oil and gas and coal and not about truly advancing renewable energy, we are hurting our economy; we are preventing massive job creation from happening; and we are letting other countries eat our lunch because 9 out of those 10 top wind turbine companies and top solar companies and 8 out of those top 10 advanced battery companies are in other countries--other countries that have decided to have policies that create internal markets for those new renewable technologies, unlike here in the United States.

Germany is pumping out wind turbines and is selling them all over the globe, not because Germany has any more wind than the United States but because they have decided to pursue a policy in which they give advantage to those renewable energy companies. The United States has decided to pursue policies, by and large, through giving advantage to fossil fuel companies.

In making his name as a crusader against the EPA, not only is Scott Pruitt endangering the health of our kids, but he is endangering the health of our economy as well. It is not guesswork when it comes to the connection of Scott Pruitt to the industry. If he had really studied the facts and if he had sat down and sort of weighed the benefits of the industry's claims against the benefits of the claims of 99 percent of the scientists in this country, it would be worth a listen.

But, as attorney general of Oklahoma, he sent a letter to the EPA, skewering its efforts to limit methane leaks from oil and gas companies. He didn't write the letter. Nobody on his staff wrote the letter. Oklahoma's Devon Energy Corporation wrote the letter. Pruitt's office changed a few words and sent it on to the EPA on the attorney general's stationery. That is how close the relationship is between Scott Pruitt and these energy companies. He just takes what they write--what they say--and forwards it on under his own signature. If you were to do that in a classroom, that would be plagiarism, and you would get kicked out of school; but if you were to do that as the attorney general of Oklahoma, you would get nominated to be the Administrator of the EPA.

It might get a lot worse. You might find out that it is a lot worse on Tuesday of next week because, for some reason, Scott Pruitt has been hiding email correspondence between his office and these energy companies. He has put up roadblock after roadblock to try to stop freedom of information requests to get these emails, this correspondence.

Finally, yesterday, a judge ruled that you cannot stop that information from coming out--they are public documents--and on Tuesday of next week, they are going to be made public. I don't know what they were going to say, but as I suspect with Donald Trump's tax returns, when you are expending great effort to hide something from the American public, there is probably a reason you are hiding those things. There is something incredibly damaging, embarrassing, or illegal in those tax returns, and there is, probably, something very damaging, embarrassing, or illegal in those emails.

So we are rushing through a nomination of Scott Pruitt tomorrow, which will not allow us to see this email correspondence that is going to come out next week. That is a shame because it, likely, will show us how close that connection has been between the next Administrator of the EPA and the energy companies that he has been regulating and will be charged to regulate.

I get really concerned about Scott Pruitt when I think about the kids in my State. I will tell you about one very specific way in which I think about it, and then I will talk a little bit more broadly.

We have talked a lot about lead, mostly in the context of this tragedy that has played out in Flint, MI, but, in Connecticut, the tragedy of lead poisoning plays out every single day. Why? Because we have really old housing stock; we have old infrastructure; we have lead that is in paint; we have lead that is in pipes; we have lead that is in fixtures that exist in old homes.

While our State has been just plugging along, trying to do better to remediate these old homes and clean up lead and test kids earlier, lead poisoning has been a reality for us in Connecticut for a very, very long time. Boy, there are a lot of awful things that can happen to you as a kid in this country, but lead poisoning is at the top of the list. Watching a family go through the horror of serious lead poisoning is nothing that you want to witness because, once lead gets into your system--once it gets trapped inside your brain--it is impossible to reverse.

In his confirmation hearing, Mr. Pruitt was asked whether there was any safe level of lead in drinking water. If you are going to be the Administrator of the EPA, you should probably know the answer to that question. The answer is, no, there is no safe level of lead in drinking water. Given all of the tumult and attention over what happened in Flint, you would think that would be something he would be prepared for. His response was: ``That's something I have not reviewed nor know about.''

Lead is a neurotoxin that can have devastating, long-term effects on the lives of children. The correct answer, of course, is that there is no level of lead that is safe in drinking water.

I don't want to be too tough on him because I don't expect somebody who hasn't spent his lifetime in the field to know every answer about environmental standards, but this one was a pretty important one. For those of us who do think he is, ultimately, going to do the bidding of industry rather than the bidding of kids, not having an awareness about something as simple as acceptable lead levels in water makes us wonder whether he is really prepared to do his homework because on the other side of the lead fight are special interests. This is one that has special interests too. Whether it be the home builders or other folks who might have to pay a little bit of money out of their pockets to fix up old homes, there are people who are not always with us on this.

More broadly, I worry about my kids. My kids are not going to suffer from lead poisoning, but if we don't get serious about the pace of climate change now--in the next 5 to 10 years--the problem may not be available to solve for my kids. It may be too late, once they become of age, to try to do something about it as a public servant, as a scientist, as an activist. Any scientist can explain the reason for that.

The reason is that, for many greenhouse pollutants--carbon dioxide, in particular--as they get released into the atmosphere, they stay, and they continue to warm--heat up--as time goes on. There are some pollutants that don't act that way. There are these things called fast- acting climate pollutants, like methane, frankly, that are released into the atmosphere, that are powerful heaters for a short period of time, but then they dissipate. Carbon dioxide is different. That one sticks around forever and ever--a long, long time--and continues to heat and continues to heat and continues to heat. So, if you don't reverse the trajectory of the human contribution to climate change soon, it may be too late.

As folks have read, just in the last 60 days, that phenomenon is playing out in parts of the globe that are already at a pace that was unimaginable just 5 years ago. In the Arctic, we are seeing just unthinkable warming.

I don't make policy by anecdote, but about a year ago, I was in the Arctic. I was on a submarine, doing an exploration under the ice--a truly amazing thing to be a part of. I was on the USS Hartford, which was a ship that was made in Connecticut, and the port is in Connecticut. We were up there as part of an exercise called ICEX, which was an exercise to try to understand what is happening in the Arctic so as to try to understand what the implications are for humans of this massive melting of arctic ice.

There were supposed to be two weekends of exercises in which there was a camp on a very stable piece of ice. Experiments were happening at the camp, and a submarine was helping to engage in those experiments. We were part of the first weekend's exercise. Then, the next weekend, another group of Congressmen was going up to witness that second weekend's exercise. The second group of Congressmen did not make it. They were literally on a van to the plane when they were told there was an emergency evacuation of the camp because the ice was melting underneath the camp. This was a spot that was picked because of how stable they thought it was. In the short period of time in which the camp had existed on the ice that March, it had started to break up and melt underneath them, and they had to engage in an emergency evacuation.

That is just one story. I understand we don't legislate or regulate by anecdote, but when you piece it together with all of the other evidence that tells you that every single year is the warmest on record, that shows you this massive trend line of melting in the Arctic. Even scientists who were of that 1 percent, who were sort of judged or deemed to be climate skeptics, are now

saying: Whoa, there is clearly something nonnatural happening in the Arctic, resulting in this massive melt that happens season after season.

If that melt that is being mirrored in Antarctica continues at this pace, it will be too late for my kids to do something about it. In my State of Connecticut, a coastal State--a State in which the majority of our economic assets are buffered right up against the water of the Long Island Sound--we cannot survive in a world in which sea level rise doubles compared to what it has been over the last 1,000 years.

We cannot survive in a world in which, by the end of this century, the average temperatures will be 8 degrees higher than they are today. When I came to Congress in 2007, the worst case estimates were that, by the end of this century, the global temperature rise would be 6 to 8 degrees beyond what it is today. Those are now mainstream estimates. It is not politicians, and it is not activists. Those are scientists-- mainstream scientists--who are making those estimates. Yet, we are going to put somebody into the EPA who proudly has been a mouthpiece for the idea that climate change is a hoax--a hoax.

There is this tiny group of scientists who say: Well, it is not really clear whether human activity is leading to climate change. There is a tiny group of scientists who say that. Ninety percent of scientists agree that humans are contributing to climate change.

But Scott Pruitt goes further than that. Scott Pruitt has said that climate change--he has said it over and over again--that climate change is a hoax. What does that mean? Does that mean it is an intentional campaign by people to try to fool people into believing that climate change is happening? That is an extreme position. I don't even know how you explain what the genesis of the hoax is. What benefit do people get from trying to create this fiction? And of all the people out there who could possibly be the EPA Administrator, President Trump chose someone who calls climate change a hoax.

He had a confirmation conversion. He backtracked on that and said something before the committee about not being completely sure about the human contribution to climate change, but acknowledging that it probably exists. It is not the first confirmation conversion we have had. The Presiding Officer and I were at a very interesting hearing yesterday in which the nominee to be Ambassador to Israel essentially recanted everything he had ever said that was strong in tone about people he disagreed with on the position of U.S.-Israel relations.

So Scott Pruitt has changed his rhetoric in order to get confirmed. But he said that climate change is a hoax enough times to understand that likely, in his gut, that is what he still believes. It was a convenient position to have if you were an attorney general concerned with doing the bidding of big energy companies and special interests, which fed into their narrative as well.

These are exceptional times. I am sorry that we are back on the floor overnight again. But we are deeply concerned that this special interest Cabinet--this billionaire Cabinet--is not being put in place to do right for the American people. It is being put in place to do right for big corporations that don't need any more allies here in Washington. For all the rhetoric about upsetting the way things are done in Washington, President Trump is doubling down on special interest influence by handing them the keys to the Secretary's offices and major Departments, now including the Environmental Protection Agency.

That was not a President at that press conference yesterday. That was hard to watch, I imagine for both Democrats and Republicans. It was not a higher calling to public service for anybody in this country. Maybe there was 20 percent of the President's base that the press conference played to, but that was not an advertisement for America.

These are exceptional times, and they do command those of us who are worried about the direction of this country to use all the power we have to try to get the facts out there and on the record.

I was standing next to Senator Angus King at a press conference shortly after we were sworn in, talking about this issue of climate change and our responsibility as public servants to protect the quality of our air and the quality of our water. We were recalling how this wasn't as partisan an issue 40 years ago as it is today.

The EPA was established under a Republican President. The Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act had bipartisan support. There was a time in which Republicans were for environmental protection, and now we are nominating somebody to be the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who made his name fighting environmental protection, who made his name suing the Agency that was established by a Republican President, who has called the global climate change phenomenon, supported by 99 percent of scientists, a hoax.

It is disturbing to many of us how deeply politicized this issue is because it used to be relatively nonpartisan. It used to be that for all of the things we disagreed on, we at least recognized that one of our responsibilities as stewards of this sphere that we live on is to make sure that it exists in the same shape that it is today for our kids.

What Angus King said that day in that press conference, as always, stayed with me. Senator King said that in Maine they have the rototiller rule. If you borrow a rototiller or, frankly, any piece of equipment from your neighbor, you have an obligation when you are done with it to return that piece of equipment to your neighbor, or return that rototiller to your neighbor, in at least as good a condition as you found it. That makes sense. You borrowed the rototiller. If you break it you probably should fix it before you hand it back or you just use it in a way so that you are careful with it so that you don't break it, so that when you give it back to your neighbor, it is in that same condition. Senator King applied that standard to the standard that we should hold ourselves to when it comes to protecting this planet.

My kids are going to inherit this planet. My grandkids, hopefully, will inherent it from them. Our charge should be to hand this planet to our kids in at least as good a shape as we found it. If we break it, if we damage it, we should fix it before we hand it over.

We are breaking this planet right now. We are releasing so much pollution into the atmosphere to have compromised its integrity for the next generation. We have broken the rototiller, and the rototiller rule tells you that before you give it back to your neighbor, you should fix it. And we have it in our power to do it.

When we damaged the ozone layer through the release of CFCs, we got together and fixed that problem. We engaged in a global conversation to regulate CFCs through something called the Montreal protocol. We were able to attack that problem, fix it at no significant cost to the economy, and show that if we really do care about the quality of this globe, there is nothing that is outside of our power. There is no choice to be made between observing the rototiller rule--protecting our planet--and growing our economy.

But if Scott Pruitt becomes the next Administrator of EPA and the oil companies and the gas companies essentially get whatever they want, well, their bottom lines probably will be improved, shareholders in those companies will probably do a little bit better, but our kids' health, our larger economy's future will be compromised.

So that is why we are here on the floor objecting to Mr. Pruitt's nomination. That is why we have asked for this nomination to be delayed until later next week so that we can see what is in these emails, where we already have some pretty concerning evidence of this deep connection between Mr. Pruitt and the companies he will regulate at EPA--a letter that they wrote for him that he sent under his name. What if there is more information like that in this correspondence?

What if there is more evidence that he, as attorney general, was just a mouthpiece for industry rather than a mouthpiece for consumers? What if that is predictive of his behavior at EPA? I think that would be something that both Democrats and Republicans would be concerned with because I think I know my colleagues, and while my colleagues have certainly been more protective of industries' interests than Democrats have been, we both agree that the industry shouldn't have

an unnatural advantage in these agencies above the public interest. I am pretty sure we agree on that. And in just 4 short days, we will get a better understanding as to whether that is definitively the case for Scott Pruitt.

So I would urge my colleagues to either delay this vote that is happening later today or to vote against the nomination.

I appreciate, again, everyone who has been part of facilitating another very late night on the floor.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have heard my Republican friends tell those

of us who want the laws of this country changed to protect our constituents against gun violence that what we should focus on is enforcing the existing law; that we don't need any new laws, all we need to do is focus on enforcing the existing law.

Senator Wyden said he wished he had a nickel for every time he has been told our focus should be on background checks. Well, I wish I had a nickel for every time my colleagues told me we should focus on enforcing the existing law. Yet I would also be a rich man if I had a nickel for every time Republicans came to the floor and tried to undermine the existing law, tried to rewrite the existing law to make it harder to enforce it.

The Appropriations Act is, on an annual basis, loaded up with riders that hamstring enforcement agencies, don't allow them to actually enforce existing laws. The CRA we have before us today will make it harder for the Federal Government to do what we have told them to do for decades, which is to put dangerous people and people who are seriously mentally ill on the list of those who are prohibited from buying guns. That is the existing law. The existing law says that if you are convicted of a serious crime or you have a serious mental illness and you have gone through a process by which a determination has been made by a government agency as such, that you should not be able to buy a weapon.

Why do we have that law on the books? Why have we come together as Republicans and Democrats to say that people with serious mental illness or people who have been adjudicated of a violent crime shouldn't be able to buy weapons? It is because the evidence tells us over and over again that if you have committed a violent crime, you are likely--more likely than if you haven't committed a violent crime--to commit another one. And over and over again, as we have seen these mass shooters walk into places like Sandy Hook Elementary School or a movie theater in Colorado or a classroom in Blacksburg, we know that people with serious mental illness in this country can go buy a very powerful weapon and do great damage with it.

That does not mean there is an inherent connection between mental illness and violence. In fact, we know the opposite to be true. If you are mentally ill, you are probably more likely to be the victim of violence than you are to be the perpetrator of it. But we do know that in this country, given the fact that weapons are so easy to come by, people with mental illness--serious mental illness--who have an intersection with visions of violence often do great harm. So we made a collective decision as Republicans and Democrats that if you have a serious mental illness, you probably shouldn't be able to go and buy an assault weapon. That is what the law says.

Section 101 of the NICS Improvement Act is titled ``Enhancement of requirement that Federal departments and agencies provide relevant information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.'' That is a piece of legislation which both Republicans and Democrats supported. It commands that Federal agencies provide relevant information to the criminal background check system.

What is relevant information? ATF defines someone who should not be able to buy a gun as one who ``lacks the mental capacity to manage his own affairs.'' So there is the existing statute. The existing statute says that relevant agencies should forward information to the criminal background check system on individuals who are prohibited from owning guns, and that is defined in part as an individual who ``lacks the mental capacity to manage his own affairs.''

That is exactly what the regulation proffered by the Obama administration at the end of last year does. It says that individuals who have filed a claim for disability, who meet the requirements of one of Social Security's mental disorders listing of impairments, have been found to be so severely impaired that they are unable to work, and have been found, with due process, to be incapable of managing their own benefits and have had a representative appointed to them to manage their disability benefits, that those individuals meet the definition of someone who lacks the mental capacity to manage their own affairs.

If you are supporting this CRA today, then you are undermining the ability of law enforcement to do their job to enforce the law as Congress has passed. So spare me this rhetoric about passing no new laws because we should just focus on enforcement. Once again, with this CRA, you are undermining the ability of the Federal Government and of law enforcement to enforce the law.

Let's be clear about what the danger is. It is correct to state that there is no inherent connection between being mentally ill and being dangerous, but the risk is not just that an individual is going to buy a gun and use it themselves; the risk is that someone who literally can't deposit their own paycheck probably can't or likely can't responsibly own and protect a gun.

I could sit here for the rest of the day and recite the number of times a gun owned by one individual got used in an accidental shooting, got taken illegally, stolen from their premises, and used in a crime. The danger of an individual who has severe mental incapacity is not just that they are going to take that weapon and fire it but that they are not going to own, keep, and protect it responsibly. If you can't manage your own financial affairs, how can we expect that you are going to be a responsible steward of a dangerous, lethal firearm?

We are talking about a very limited group of individuals here--who, by the way, under the regulation, have due process to contest the determination. First of all, they have an ability to contest the determination by Social Security that they shouldn't be able to manage their own financial affairs, and then the regulation secondarily gives them the ability to specifically contest their limitation on gun ownership. So there is full ability for the individual or for the family to contest this limitation, which makes it completely constitutional. Nonsense that this is a restriction of a constitutional right.

The Heller decision, which does hold that an individual has a right to gun ownership, also makes it explicit in Justice Scalia's opinion that there are limitations on that right, and the Scalia decision itself lists as one of those conditions the restriction of gun ownership by people who are seriously mentally ill.

The law is clear that Federal agencies are required to upload information onto NICS of those individuals who cannot manage their own financial affairs because of mental illness. The Supreme Court is clear that this is entirely constitutional. So why are we doing this? Why are we having a debate about rolling back the criminal background check system when 90 percent of Americans support it?

No matter what State you live in, sit down with your constituents and tell them that you voted to allow people who are seriously mentally ill to be able to buy guns. You are not going to get a lot of takers. And it is not because people don't have compassion for people with mental illness. I have worked for the last 2 years to pass the most substantial mental health reform act that this body has seen in a decade. I have spent as much or more time than anybody in this Chamber advocating for the rights of people with mental illness and for their treatment. But I also understand that when people are so mentally ill that they can't manage their own financial affairs, they probably shouldn't buy a gun. That is a small class of people.

What makes me so angry about this is I have no idea how to go back to the people whom I represent in Connecticut and tell them that in the 4 years since the massacre in a smalltown elementary school, not only has Congress passed no law, made no change in statute to try to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of would-be shooters, but that today we are doing exactly the opposite. The response to the epidemic of mass shootings in this country is to make it easier for people with serious mental illness to get guns. How do I explain that to people in Connecticut?

How do the folks representing areas where shootings are a regular occurrence explain that Congress has done nothing to address mass shootings, to address the epidemic rates of gun violence in our cities, and yet we think it is so important to undermine the criminal background check system--not strengthen it, undermine it--that in the first month of this new administration and this new Congress, we are

rushing through this repeal of a commonsense regulation? That is deeply offensive to the majority of Americans, who think we should be strengthening our criminal background checks system, not undermining it. Ninety percent of Americans think we should have universal background checks. Not only are we not listening to them, we are undermining the criminal background checks system today.

I get that the gun lobby is pretty powerful in this place. I get that they have stood in the way of changes in our criminal background checks system that were supported by 90 percent of Americans. But even I wasn't cynical enough to think they had so much power that they could get Congress to roll back, to undermine the criminal background check system in the wake of this continued horrific level of gun violence all across the country.

Senator Wyden is right. The danger in this is not just that it has the immediate impact of undermining the criminal background check system, but it potentially blocks our ability to get this right in the future. We don't know what the precedent is for CRAs because we haven't done them before. What we know is that it says you can't pass any regulation that is substantially similar to the regulation that you legislated on. Well, what does that mean in the context of keeping people with serious mental illness off the criminal background check system? Does that mean we can't ever legislate or regulate on the narrow issue of individuals who have had their right of financial affairs restricted through Social Security, or is that a broader prohibition that limits the administration's ability to regulate on strengthening of the criminal background check system in a much more comprehensive way?

We are playing with fire here because this is a precedent we know nothing about. We are playing with fire because we are potentially limiting the ability to ever get this issue right in the future when 90 percent of Americans want us to work together on it.

I understand this issue is a sensitive one. Having spent my entire career working hand in hand with committed advocates for people with mental illness, I understand the danger of conflating mental illness with violence. But this is a narrow category of individuals who by definition fit the parameters in existing law for those who are supposed to be on the NICS system.

For all the things that we disagree about on gun policy--I don't suspect we are going to get a meeting of the minds this Congress on whether all gun sales should be subject to background checks. I don't suspect we are going to figure out a way to work together on restricting access to high-capacity magazines or assault weapons. I thought at least we agreed on keeping the background check system that we have.

The existing law says that individuals who lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs should be included on the list of those who are prohibited from buying weapons, and today we are undermining that existing law. We are undermining the enforcement of current statute-- something Republicans have said over and over again they are not interested in doing.

I strongly urge my colleagues to vote against this measure.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am going to be brief. I want to build on some of the comments Senator Warner made. It is unclear what President Trump's position is on repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act. He has made all sorts of commitments all over the map, suggesting that he wants to deconstruct the act in full, suggesting that he wants to keep some elements of it, making promises that whatever comes next will be just as good, will be better than what consumers have today.

I think what you are going to hear consistently from our side is a willingness, a desire, an enthusiasm to engage in a conversation with Republicans about how to strengthen our health care system, how to repair the parts of the Affordable Care Act that are broken, but keep the majority of that legislation, which is delivering lifesaving care to people as we speak, and not descend into health care chaos by repealing this legislation with no plan for what comes next.

The genesis of our opposition, of my opposition, to Tom Price's nomination to be the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is that he has been, in the House of Representatives, the face of the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act with absolutely no plan for what comes next.

There were many other choices that could have been made for selections to head the Department and lead the conversation about the Affordable Care Act and its future that could have signaled that we were going to have an ability to come together. But when I was a Member of the House of Representatives, I watched my colleague, Tom Price, be the leader, the face of the campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act, with absolutely no replacement, which would descend our entire health care marketplace into chaos.

That is chiefly why I stand here in opposition to his nomination today. He did offer a token plan to replace it, but it had nothing of value to the people of Connecticut. It would have repealed Medicaid expansion with no plan for what came next. It would have repealed the insurance protections for people who are sick with a $3 billion high- risk pool that would never have met the needs of those who have serious illness and disease and who cannot find insurance.

Our worry is that we are on the precipice of repealing an act which has saved thousands of lives, which has insured 20 million people, and the results will be health care chaos for everyone, whether they are on the Affordable Care Act or not.

Tom Price has been the face of the repeal effort in the House of Representatives. He has been the face of the irresponsible position of getting rid of this law with nothing that comes next. And it simply doesn't give us confidence that there is going to be a rational bipartisan conversation about how to improve our health care system.

This isn't politics. I just want to underscore the point that Senator Warner made. This isn't about scoring political points. This isn't simply about numbers. This is about human lives that are affected if Tom Price gets what he has been asking for during the last 6 years, which is a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act without any plan for what comes next.

This is a picture of Mark and his family from Westbrook. This is a picture of his daughter Dominique. Dominique has a profound intellectual disability. She also has cerebral palsy. She doesn't have the use of her left arm. She walks with an unsteady gait. She also cannot chew food, so she takes liquid nutrition. But she has an amazing spirit. She loves school. She loves music. She loves singing to Disney movies. She plays soccer, buddy baseball, and rides a horse for therapy, but Mark and his wife used to spend $40,000 a year out of their own pocket for her care. The Affordable Care Act saved this family from potential bankruptcy. The Affordable Care Act now, through Medicaid expansion, allows Dominique to get care that is socially insured. And Mark asks:

After all, who are we as a people and a country if we

cannot take care of those who for no fault of their own

cannot take care of themselves? Dominique didn't do anything

wrong, she was born this way and deserves to have a

fulfilling life.

That is the whole concept of insurance: The idea that we should socialize the cost of caring for kids and adults who, through no fault of their own, get sick. But without the Affordable Care Act, this family bears the burden of caring for Dominique by themselves. And there is no replacement. There is no plan on the table today--certainly not Tom Price's reputed replacement plan in the House of Representatives--that offers any help to this family if the Affordable Care Act goes away.

Let me introduce you to one more family. This is a picture of Angela. She

is hiding here--Angela from New Canaan. Angela is 49 years old. She was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in 2015. The good news is that Angela is winning the fight against breast cancer, but she would face the inability to get health care insurance if not for the Affordable Care Act because if this family ever lost continuous care, they would be uninsurable. So the protections built into the law allow them to pay reasonable prices. She says:

Would President Trump or any member of Congress who voted

to repeal the ACA be willing to write to my 12 and 9 year old

boys, and explain to them why they let their Mommy die? I

doubt they even give a damn.

I don't think she is right on that. I think that everybody in this Chamber cares about this family, but it is a reminder that there are really personal consequences for millions of Americans if Tom Price, as the leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, leads a campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act without any replacement.

We talked about the damage that will be done to these families, but for the entire marketplace, there is nothing but chaos if Tom Price gets his way. I opposed his nomination right from the start because I knew who he was in the House of Representatives. I knew that he had led this campaign of health care destruction for families like those that I just described.

Frankly, his hearing just compounded my worries. These ethical lapses that have been raised over and over again just draw even more question as to whether he is going to use this position as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services to protect and advance the health care of my constituents or he is going to use that position to enrich himself and his family.

Those are serious accusations. I get it, but these were serious ethical lapses that were uncovered, not by us but by an independent journalist raised as part of these hearings. I would hope this body would consider rejecting Tom Price's nomination so we can find someone to lead that agency and lead our conversation on the floor of the Senate about the future of health care, so that instead of continuing what has been a bitterly divisive issue over the last 6 years, we can finally find a way to come together and answer Angela's concerns that Donald Trump and the Republicans who support him don't care about her and her family, are willing to let her die.

I don't think that is true, but by putting someone in this position as the head of the Department who has campaigned on repealing this act, taking away from Angela the protections that allow her to succeed and to live and to continue to beat cancer, without any idea for what comes next, it suggests that the division will continue and catastrophe will be in line for families like hers.

I will oppose this nomination. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, let me just express my thanks to all of those who have facilitated the floor staying open through the evening. We still have a ways to go. I know that puts a lot of pressure on staff here and on all of the folks who make this place operate. We thank you for that. These are, in the minds of many of my constituents, very exceptional times and they call for exceptional tactics and probably a few more exceptional moments on the floor of the Senate. I appreciate everyone here staying through this long evening.

When I was a kid, I took an art class at a little one-room schoolhouse on Wells Road in my hometown, where I grew up, of Wethersfield, CT. That little one-room schoolhouse is still there. It is iconic. It is a part of Wethersfield's history. The town is really proud of it. There is not a lot that happens in that one-room schoolhouse any longer.

But once upon a time there was a lot that happened in that one-room schoolhouse. That is where the kids of Wethersfield, CT, the oldest town in the State of Connecticut, got their education. You know, wrapped up in the

identity of this country is this association with those little one-room schoolhouses that were peppered throughout the landscape of New England and, indeed, across the country, as our new Nation progressed west.

It symbolizes the deep connection that this country has had with this very unique idea of public education. I say that as a means of trying to explain to folks why we are here at 4:20 in the morning, why this nomination--the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education-- has commanded this kind of exceptional attention, why the switchboards here at the Capitol have been experiencing a volume never before seen in the history of this place.

There is a special connection between our constituents and the idea of public education, because it is rooted in some of the founding ideals of this country. This country stands for the notion that you can come from anywhere, you can be of any background, and you will have a chance to make it here in the United States.

We did not just say that; we lived that value. We built a society in which people could actually take that idea of succeeding, despite any built-in impediments they may have faced, and we turned it into a reality. Public education from the very beginning of this country has been at the root of that uniquely American idea--the idea that you can succeed despite any barriers that may have been presented in front of you by circumstance or by birth.

Public education at the outset was in those one-room schoolhouses. Everybody packed into one place, all sorts of ages and learning abilities, and one teacher, normally a female, at the front of the classroom. But over time, this country adapted. We learned from others. It was Horace Mann, the famous Massachusetts educator, who borrowed from ideas that he had found in Prussia and brought to the United States, the idea of the professionalization of public education, the professionalization of teachers, the sorting of students into grades, the idea that it wasn't just enough to put a whole bunch of kids into one classroom, that we needed to actually think through pedagogy. We needed to put some time into making sure there were high-quality teachers and instruction in all of our classrooms.

You can go around the country and find a lot of schools named after Horace Mann because what we have today springs forth from many of his ideas, from his commitment to high-quality public education.

The system that he helped create is the one in which many of us grew up in. I went to public schools in Wethersfield, CT. My mother went to public schools in Wethersfield, CT. My father went to public schools in Wethersfield, CT. They met in public schools in Wethersfield, CT. My wife went to public schools in Fairfield, CT. My kids go to public school today. So when I try to figure out why my office got 13,000 phone calls and emails with regard to this nomination, I think it is because public education is so deeply connected to who we feel we are as a country. We feel we are the most powerful, the most affluent Nation on Earth because of our unique commitment to public education; this idea that in order to succeed, you need first to have access to learning, to the ability to read and write, to do arithmetic, to be able to think creatively about science and the history of your country and your people, but also because public education is personal.

When we talk about who we are, when we all think about our own personal biographies, it starts with where we went to school. Not everybody went to public school, but the vast majority of people in this country went to public school.

When you think about who you are today, almost everybody's story runs through a great public school teacher. The things that you learn that make you who you are today, they probably come first and foremost from your parents or from whoever raised you, but, boy, you learn an awful lot about how to relate to people, about values. You make mistakes; you correct those mistakes in school, whether it be in the classroom or out on the playground.

For me, it was my fifth grade teacher Ms. Evanisky, who instilled in me a love of learning but also a discipline about how to learn. I don't know that teachers would do this today, but Ms. Evanisky had a list of all the assignments each week on the chalkboard and had our initials next to each one we had completed. There were 20 or 30 each week, and she would erase your initials and move it to the next one. It probably was a little bit too much of an exercise in public shaming for the kids who fell behind, but, boy, there was accountability because every day you walked in, you saw whether you were keeping up with the assignments that week or you were falling behind. There was a rigor to it that attracted me and made me a better learner.

There were two male teachers I had in high school and middle school: Mr. Hansen, my eighth grade social studies teacher, and Mr. Peters, my junior-year American history teacher, who got me thinking about government and the effect it has on my life and the life of people around me.

My family did not have a history of politics or public service. My love of public service, my interest in government comes from teachers who inspired me to care about the role people played in our common history.

So when I think about why I am here today, I think about teachers. I think first and foremost about my parents, but I think about teachers, and so do millions of other people around the country.

Our common experiences are rooted in our public schools, and, of course, it is still personal today for millions and millions of folks in my State and across the country because they have their kids, as I do, in public school, and they are seeing the great benefit that comes to their kids, the growth that happens in our public schools, and the continued learning that happens for our educators.

Public education is different today than it was when I went. We learned things, that we can't just focus on teaching basic skills, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, but today we have to teach other skills, like social and emotional skills. We are getting better all the time in public education, and that is why people are so proud of it.

So when presented with a nominee for the Department of Education who says that public education is a ``dead end'' for students in this country, people take it personally. It feels different than when they listen to the nominee for Secretary of the Treasury talk about banks or when they hear the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services talking about health insurance.

When you say that public schools are a dead end and then, as Mrs. DeVos has, spend your entire career trying to empty out public schools and put kids into private schools, it hurts. It hurts because, well, we all know public schools can be better. We all have our critiques of the public education we got or the public education our kids have gotten. We know it is not a dead end.

Public education wasn't a dead end for me. I get to be a U.S. Senator because of the public education I got. It wasn't a dead end for my mother, who grew up in the housing projects of New Britain, CT. Because of the public schools that challenged her as a very poor little girl growing up in New Britain, she got to be the first woman in her family to go to college. It wasn't a dead end for my father, who went to public schools and ended up running one of the biggest companies in Hartford, CT. And I hope it won't be a dead end for my kids, who are getting smarter and smarter every single day they go to public schools.

Public schools aren't a dead end. They can always get better. But to have someone in the Department of Education who doesn't believe in the way that most public school parents, most public school products believe in public education, it is offensive, and that is why our offices have received this unprecedented volume of correspondence.

I represent a pretty small State. Connecticut isn't that big. But I got 13,000 letters and emails opposing Mrs. DeVos's nomination in a short period of time. She was only nominated a couple months ago. I don't know that there is any other subject in the entire time that I have been in government in which I received more correspondence over a short period of time like that. I received 13,000 pieces of correspondence, and almost all of them are in opposition to it.

That is the other thing. There were a few people who called who support her nomination, but almost without exception, people are calling in to my office and to Republican offices telling us that she is not the right fit.

I am writing to you as the mother of two children in

kindergarten and first grade. My son is 5 and is autistic. I

watched the recent nomination hearing on Betsy DeVos, and I

am left sick to my stomach. I implore you to not support this

woman for Secretary of Education.

I am beyond worried at what this might mean for our school

systems, and particularly what this would mean for the

education and development of my son. We fight every single

day for my son. We work for the services he needs. I spent 2

hours on the phone yesterday with health insurance companies

trying to get his occupational therapy covered. With Betsy

DeVos in charge of the public schools, I can't even imagine

the roadblocks we would face.

As a parent, all I want is for my son to grow and develop

and thrive like any other child. It is hard enough doing this

with his disabilities, knowing our President openly mocks

those who are disabled. Please, please, please do not support

his nominee. I fear for my son.

Another piece of correspondence from a college student from Old Lyme,

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

Mr. President, as I began last night at 4 in the morning--

now 5:30--I thank the staff, both the nonpartisan staff and those in the majority and minority for enduring another late night. These are exceptional times. Thus we are here again in the early, early morning to talk about a nomination to the President's Cabinet.

This is my first time on the floor since Senator Warren was gaveled down last evening. Let me just speak for a moment about my deep, deep disappointment at the events of early last evening. I want to put this in the context of the political moment that we are living in.

We have a President of the United States today who is a bully, who is using his office to try to stifle and quell debate. If you dare oppose him--frankly, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat--you are going to be called names, you are going to be mocked in an effort to try to silence you.

In the last week, we have seen President Trump attempt this tactic on members of the judiciary. When he got a ruling he didn't like from a judge in Washington that temporarily halted his ban on Muslims entering the country, he started personally attacking this judge, sending a signal to those in the judicial branch that, if you dare oppose him, you are going to be singled out for ridicule.

The President of the United States is going to try to destroy your reputation and your career as a judge, as a jurist, as an impartial arbiter of the law if you rule against his political interests. It is an exceptional moment. It is an exceptional moment in which the President of the United States is trying to bully judges into ruling in his favor. It is an exceptional moment, though we have been watching it for the last 2 years, in which the President is trying to bully Members of Congress to cow to his interests.

I want to be very careful about how I talk about this because I have great respect for the parliamentary rulings of this body. But I don't understand why our majority leader chose to gavel down Senator Warren when she was simply reading a letter from Coretta Scott King.

We celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King with a holiday every year in this country. In the pantheon of individual greatness in the United States of America, it doesn't get any higher than Martin Luther King. His widow wrote us a letter expressing her objections to the nomination of Jeff Sessions based upon the belief that he would not live up to the legacy of her husband and his work in civil rights.

Nothing could be more relevant to this discussion than the opinion of a member of Martin Luther King's family on whether or not this nominee was going to enforce appropriately, vigorously the civil rights laws of this Nation, and Senator Warren was silenced.

Now, I don't know what the motive was, and it certainly would be inappropriate for me to guess at it. But the effect of the majority leader's action is to stifle debate, to make it less likely that Members of the Democratic minority will raise objections to Senator Sessions' nomination and record objections as to his conduct.

I am not trying to equate what happened here last night with what our President has done, but there is a practice now. There is a pattern of behavior among Republicans, trying to stifle and quell opposition to this President. The President uses the bullying power of Twitter, and the majority leader now is twisting the rules of the Senate.

I say that because, while it may be true that technically the rules of the Senate don't allow you to talk about the conduct of a fellow Senator, how on Earth can you debate a nominee from this body to the Cabinet without questioning their conduct?

So technically, the rule may say that you cannot talk about the conduct of a fellow Senator, but how on Earth can this body operate when Members of it are nominated to important positions if we cannot talk about the conduct of fellow Members and we cannot criticize the conduct of fellow Members?

Now, I appreciate the fact that Senator Merkley was able to come down to the floor and read the full letter into the Record overnight. I appreciate the fact that Senator Booker was able to read into the Record testimony from another civil rights hero, John Lewis, without being similarly gaveled down for his conduct.

But this effort, this continued effort to try to stop people who oppose President Trump and his agenda from speaking truth to power is not right. It is not right. And it will, frankly, have the opposite effect.

You have seen what happened overnight on our side. We are not going to stop talking about Senator Sessions' record and how we believe it is disqualifying for his nomination for Attorney General. The protests and the numbers of people gathering around the country to object to the policies of President Trump are getting bigger and bigger the more that he bullies and bullies. This isn't going to work.

So I am going to speak to Senator Sessions' record. I am going to speak to how I believe it does not qualify him to be Attorney General, and that doesn't mean that I don't have great respect for him. I have worked with Senator Sessions on a number of issues. But if I can't talk about Senator Sessions' record, if I can't talk about his conduct as a Senator, as it relates to whether or not he can be the chief law enforcement official in this country, then there is no use in having this debate at all.

Senator Sessions has publicly called the Voting Rights Act intrusive. In response to the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in Shelby County, AL, v. Holder, which gutted section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Senator Sessions called it a good thing for the South.

That decision made it vastly more difficult for the Federal Government to protect individuals from racial discrimination in voting. The Supreme Court effectively substituted their political judgment on the status of racism in America for the judgment of this Congress. Effectively, the Supreme Court was saying in that decision that in our belief, racism is no longer a problem in the way that it was when the Voting Rights Act was passed, and, thus, there is no longer an imperative for section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows for the Federal Government to oversee the voting laws of a select number of counties with patterns of racial discrimination.

That was an absurd ruling.

I have great respect for the members of the Supreme Court, but they live inside the ivory-ensconced marble of the Supreme Court chamber. They don't have experience on the ground, like the elected Members of this body do, to understand the reality of racism in America today. I wish it were gone, but it is not. Blacks and Hispanics are still discriminated against.

You just have to look to see what happened in North Carolina to understand the truth of that. North Carolina passed a number of laws which, on their face, they argued were not discriminatory. They were just, in their words, voter protections, buffers against voter fraud. And then, when we read the correspondence of the members of the State legislature to pass that law, what we learned is that they were specifically intended to try to stop African Americans from voting. The people who were passing those laws were talking to each other trying to figure out how they could most effectively target laws to stop African Americans from voting. That was their clear intent, even though they argue that there was no racial bias implicit in the passage of that law.

Racism is not dead in America. You don't wash away discrimination in just one generation--a generation and a half, maybe--after laws that separated the races with respect to public accommodations and restaurants and drinking fountains and bathrooms. That doesn't just vanish in one generation later. Everybody understands that.

Poll after poll will show you that there are still people in this country who believe that African Americans and Hispanics are inferior. I wish it weren't the case, but it still is. So we still need the Voting Rights Act. We still need the Civil Rights Act. And we are about to vote on a nominee to be Attorney General who calls the Voting Rights Act intrusive, who says that a Supreme Court decision that guts the Voting Rights Act is ``a good thing for the South.'' It is not a good thing for African Americans in the South. It is not a good thing for Hispanics in the South. It may be a good thing for the people who wrote those discriminatory laws, but it is not a good thing for those who are trying to vote who have

witnessed and lived through decades of discrimination.

Let me talk about Senator Sessions' record on immigration. In 2007, Senator Sessions referred to a comprehensive immigration reform bill as ``terrorist assistance.'' He has been a leading voice in Congress in arguing against immigration reform. In two decades in the Senate, Senator Sessions has opposed every single immigration bill that has included a pathway to citizenship. He has favored, similar to President Trump, an ideological test for admission to the United States. He said this:

Immigration policy must be guided by our understanding that

western society is unique and special. Our values, our rules,

our traditions are what make our society succeed where others

fail. It is necessary and proper to choose who among the

world's 7 billion people will be granted the high honor of

immigration to the United States on the basis of confidence

that they share our values.

That is a radical idea. Why don't we think about that for a second. The Attorney General of the United States will make important decisions about the enforcement of immigration law in this country. Much of what happens in immigration policy happens in the Department of Homeland Security, but the Attorney General makes important decisions about upholding the law on immigration policy, and we are about to vote to confirm a Member of this body who has said that there should be an ideological test for admission to the United States and that you have to share our values. I don't know what that means, but the greatness of the United States is based on the fact that we have been able to bring people from a variety of different backgrounds, a variety of different value sets, a variety of different religions--bring them into this country and allow them to keep part of their heritage, part of their belief system from the places they came from, whether they be Ireland or England or China or Mexico, and then also assimilate into the whole and adopt part of this country's short history of tradition over the last 240 years. What makes America great is that we allow people to bring values different from ours into this country, which in turn strengthens our collective set of values. We are constantly challenging ourselves with new ideas, with new perspectives.

Senator Sessions has been an opponent of Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. This is commonly referred to as DACA--the idea that if you are a child who came to this country when you were very young, knowing nothing other than the United States, an American in name if not legal status, then you should be able to stay in this country. It is cruel and inhumane to take a young man or woman who came to this country when they were 3 or 4 years old and send them back to their country of birth, and I think Democrats and Republicans of goodwill generally agree, if not on the broad aspects of the pathway to citizenship, that for these kids, these DREAMers as they call them, they should be able to stay in the United States. Senator Sessions has vigorously opposed this policy and many DACA-protected immigrants now fear deportation under a Department of Justice that is led by Senator Sessions.

His conduct tells us that he opposes protections for young men and women who know nothing other than the United States and want simply to have a shot with the American dream. That conduct is relevant to whether he is qualified to be Attorney General.

On criminal justice reform, Senator Sessions has personally blocked the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which is a bipartisan effort spearheaded by Senators Grassley, Lee, Cornyn, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. As Attorney General, Senator Sessions will have the power to direct Federal prosecutors throughout the country to pursue the harshest penalties possible for even low-level drug offenses, a step that would further exacerbate our national record of incarcerating nonviolent offenders, the vast majority of whom can be successfully treated at far lower cost to society with appropriate health care treatment for their addiction or mental illness. Senator Sessions' conduct in this body has been to oppose efforts to try to treat with more compassion and commonsense offenders in this country who would be better served through treatment than through incarceration, so it is relevant to his nomination to be Attorney General where he will have broad discretion to lock up people for low-level offenses.

In Connecticut, we made the decision to divert people who are convicted of crimes but have serious mental illness or addiction into treatment. We have made the decision to reserve our prison system for the worst of the worst, mainly for violent offenders, for those who are convicted of serious crimes.

Connecticut has seen its prison population fall to a 20-year low. On September 3, 2016, the prison population in Connecticut dropped below 15,000 for the first time since January of 1997. At the same time, rates of reported violent crimes have plummeted in Connecticut. So the proof is in the pudding in my State. My State has reduced its prison population and at the same time has reduced its level of violent crime and many States can tell the same story. Yet we can predict through his record on the floor of the U.S. Senate that Senator Sessions may use his power as Attorney General to reverse that trend line and lock up more of my constituents, which I would argue will have an upward effect on the rates of violent crime. Why? Because those individuals, having gone through the process of incarceration and coming out unreformed, untreated, will be no less of a danger to society.

Finally, I want to talk about the issue of gun violence in this country. Obviously this is very personal to me, still watching the community of Newtown spiral through ripples of grief associated with the trauma of December of 2012. Senator Sessions and I clearly have differences about the way in which the Federal Government should restrict the flow of firearms in this country.

You know, it has to be relevant to the decision that I make. This is the chief law enforcement official of this country, so the views on firearms are relevant. Whether or not the Attorney General has the discretion to make policy on the issue of what firearms are legal and what aren't or what sales are subject to background checks and what aren't, there is a bully pulpit associated with the chief law enforcement official that carries weight, so Senator Sessions' beliefs on firearms policy are relevant. His record and his conduct in the U.S. Senate on the question of gun violence is relevant as to whether he should be our next Attorney General. Senator Sessions has lined up with the gun lobby over and over again against commonsense reform of our gun laws that are supported by 90 percent of Americans.

He has voted against expanding background checks to cover sales at gun shows or online. He has voted against a bipartisan effort in the Senate to make sure that if you are on the terrorist watch list that you cannot purchase a weapon. He has voted against efforts to try to restrict sales of high capacity magazines and assault weapons, the kinds of magazines and the kinds of weapons that were used in the horrific crime in Sandy Hook. What Senator Sessions has said is that, if he were confirmed, he would take on the rising homicide rates in some American cities by working against illegal firearms use. He has pledged that he will enforce the law. Yet, again, coming back to his conduct and his record in this body, he has been part of an effort to try to strip from the Department of Justice and its appendages the tools they need in order to enforce the law. Every year we have on our appropriations bills riders that specifically stop the ATF from enforcing existing law. We restrict their ability to do inventories of gun dealers. We prohibit them from keeping modern databases on gun sales across the country.

The policy that Senator Sessions has backed and voted for in this body runs contrary to the statements that he has made. He has supported efforts to rob from the Department of Justice the ability to enforce the existing law on guns, yet he says when he gets there that he is going to use all efforts to enforce the law. Further, he has opposed efforts to give new tools to the Department of Justice to try to keep our streets safer. Shortly after Sandy Hook, he specifically debated on this floor legislation that would make it a Federal crime to traffic in illegal guns. I don't know how much less controversial you can get when it comes to gun policy. We all agree that you shouldn't

be able to walk into a store, buy guns, say they are for you, and then go out on to the streets and sell them to criminals. It happens all the time in our cities.

Somebody goes and buys a mess of guns at a gun store or gun show and then goes into a city and sells them out of a trunk of a car to criminals who couldn't otherwise go buy these guns because of their criminal background.

So we proposed a simple Federal law that would make it a Federal crime to do that, and you need that, because States can't enforce that on a State by State basis because these guns are often trafficked across State lines. Senator Sessions voted against that. He is not going to be a champion for enforcing the gun laws of this Nation. His record is not going to magically transform when he becomes Attorney General. I have great respect for Senator Sessions, but he has been a chief opponent of making the gun laws of this country more amenable to proper and appropriate and efficient enforcement, and that is not going to change when he becomes Attorney General.

So I am going to vote against his nomination later today, and I encourage my colleagues to do so as well. His record on civil rights, on criminal justice, on immigration, and on gun policy do not qualify him to be Attorney General.

I am deeply sad about what happened here last night with respect to the letter read into the Record by Senator Warren. I understand that things seem to be breaking down a little bit in this Chamber, that nerves are frayed and people are acting in ways that maybe they wouldn't have acted a few years ago. These are exceptional times. I have never seen a President like this, trying to divide us from each other, using his position to bully and intimidate his political opponents. Raving about a brutal dictator in Moscow who murders people. We have never seen a moment like this. We should be really careful that we don't model that behavior here in the Senate.

What makes me sad is that it looked to me like that is what happened--that in this body the majority party tried to use the rules of the Senate in order to bully Members of the minority into silence. It is not going to work. If we want to get back to being able to function as a body, then we better be OK with being able to have some open, honest conversations about the future of this country and the future of this body.

I am going to vote against Senator Sessions today. That doesn't mean that I haven't enjoyed working with him on a number of subjects, but he is not the right person to be Attorney General--not close, frankly--and I hope that over the course of the day my colleagues continue to talk about his conduct, continue to talk about his record, and continue to explain why it does not qualify him in any way, shape, or form to be the chief law enforcement official in this country.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I would like to congratulate the Mattatuck Drum Band, the oldest continually operating marching band in the Nation, on its 250th anniversary. The Mattatuck Drum Band's performances have captivated audiences in Connecticut since before the founding of our Nation and deserve recognition for continuing this important musical tradition over so many years.

During the marching band's formative years in the early 1770's, it was known as the Farmingbury Drum Band. The group performed at Farmingbury church events, where churchgoers were called into services by drumbeat--a common practice for churches without a bell. During the American Revolution, many members of the band served as wartime fifers and drummers, providing military field music for soldiers fighting for American independence. Shortly after returning home from the war, the band grew in popularity and changed their name to the Wolcott Drum Band.

In the 19th century, many band members continued their service to the military during the War of 1812 and in the Civil War, participating in rallies and recruiting events to ``drum up'' support for the militia. Following the Civil War, however, many band members relocated, and interest in the group waned. The group was revived in 1881, when the remaining active members of the band moved the group to Waterbury and renamed it the Mattatuck Drum Band. The uniform first donned by this group in 1884 is still worn by the Mattatuck Drum Band today.

As the band continued into the 20th century, their main purpose shifted from rallying support for the militia to bolstering the morale and feelings of patriotism amongst the public. Although many Mattatuck Drum Band members enlisted to serve their country during World War I and World War

II, the musicians still found ways to practice and keep the group active. In 1961, the Mattatuck Drum Band travelled to Washington to participate in the inaugural parade of President-Elect John F. Kennedy. They received a standing ovation and applause for their performance.

Today the Mattatuck Drum Band performs at many parades and celebrations, using their powerful drum beats to continue the patriotic tunes and traditions that have inspired so many Americans over generations. I would like to congratulate the Mattatuck Drum Band on their incredible history of service and inspiration. It is my hope that the band continues this incredible musical tradition for many more years to come.

Mr. President, since assuming office on January 20, which is just 11 days ago--I don't know, it kind of feels to me like it was 11 months ago; this is going on in a horrible, nightmarish slow motion--the Trump administration has assumed responsibility for our Nation's national security. There are a lot of jobs the President has, this new administration has, but that is at the top of the list-- guaranteeing this country's security and, frankly, being the guarantor of global security.

Leaving aside some of the broader systemic challenges that we face in the world, let's just look at what has happened since the inauguration.

Yesterday, Iran reportedly conducted another ballistic missile test. President Trump criticized President Obama on Iran for being too soft. Now it is his turn to get China and Russia to agree to a Security Council resolution condemning this test and taking punitive action.

On Sunday, extremist groups all around the world celebrated the Trump administration's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. Comments that were posted to pro-Islamic State's social media accounts predicted that the Executive order would serve as a recruiting tool for ISIS. One posting said that Trump's actions ``clearly revealed the truth and harsh reality behind the American government's hatred towards Muslims.'' Another posting hailed Trump as ``the best caller to Islam.'' Another one talked about the ban being a blessed ban, which is a reference to what militant leaders called the invasion of Iraq, which was hailed then as the blessed invasion, becoming the cause celebre, as the intelligence community called it, for the global jihadist movement.

Immediately following the first phone conversation between Trump and Putin, the conflict in Ukraine flared up. Likely not coincidentally, 8 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 26 were wounded just since Saturday.

In the Balkans, where Russia has been just recently again steadily increasing in influence, as Europe is pulling up the doors on its new perspective members, Serbia sent a train emblazoned with the motto ``Kosovo is Serbia'' up to the border of Kosovo. It turned around, but as a result, troops and security forces reportedly scrambled to the border from both sides.

I am not suggesting that all of these bad things happened because Donald Trump was inaugurated. I listened to my colleagues explain all of the world's troubles for 8 years through the lens of responsibility to the Obama administration. But this is all an advertisement for a very simple idea--that this is probably the absolute worst time to have the first American President with no government experience and no diplomatic experience pick the first Secretary of State with no government experience and no diplomatic experience. This is not the moment for on-the-job learning. Yet that is what we have so far.

Granted Mr. Tillerson is not in place, but President Trump's foreign policy up to this point has been tragically amateurish. Witness the invitation for the Mexican leader to come to the White House, worked out in painstaking detail, an opportunity to show, despite the furor and rhetoric of the campaign, solidarity between the American and Mexican people, and then Donald Trump sends out a tweet daring the Mexican leader to cancel the meeting, which he promptly does, erupting threats of a trade war.

Witness Friday's Muslim ban, which now has Muslim nations all around the world rethinking their relationship with the United States, sending this dangerous message to people all around the world that you have no home in the United States if you practice one particular faith.

It begs the question as to whether Mr. Tillerson is going to be able to right this ship, having no experience working on almost every single one of these issues that confront us around the world. It is not the same thing to run a global business and run the State Department.

Frankly, I would argue that Mr. Tillerson's experience--even if you believe he did a good job for Exxon, it doesn't advertise him as a good candidate for Secretary of State. In fact, we have reason to fear that Mr. Tillerson would run the State Department like he ran Exxon, where he repeatedly worked against U.S. national interests.

Mr. Tillerson opposed sanctions levied against Russia in the wake of their invasion of Ukraine. He tried to pull one over on the committee, telling the committee this ridiculous story of first not lobbying Congress on sanctions, then not knowing if Exxon was lobbying for or against sanctions. That just doesn't pass the smell test. He called the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to express his misgivings about sanctions. He personally lobbied Congress against the sanctions. His company spent millions of dollars lobbying against the sanctions.

When asked by President Obama and his administration to refrain from attending a major economic development conference hosted by Vladimir Putin in the middle of the Ukraine crisis, Tillerson thumbed his nose at America. He intentionally embarrassed his own country and our allies by sending his top deputy to that conference--and it gets worse--and standing next to Russian officials to announce major new contracts with Russia. Think about that. We begged Exxon to stay away from that conference. Not only did they go, but Tillerson had his No. 2 guy announce new contracts in the middle of the sanctions, in the middle of the worst of the crisis with Ukraine. It is not surprising that he was awarded the Order of Friendship by Vladimir Putin 3 years ago.

Just an aside, I have listened to my colleagues castigate President Obama for being weak on Russia for years. Frankly, the only thing that has been consistent about Candidate Trump and President Trump's foreign policy has been a marshmallow-like softness on Russia. At every turn, Trump has previewed for you that he is going to be easy on Vladimir Putin. Tillerson's testimony cemented that. He was asked over and over whether he would commit to holding the line on existing sanctions, whether he would commit to imposing new sanctions based on Russian interference in the U.S. elections. He was asked by the Presiding Officer if he would, at the very least, commit to holding in place the sanctions on the individuals who were named as those interfering with the U.S. election. He wouldn't commit to any of it, and so it is hard for me to understand how all of the Republicans who have been eviscerating President Obama for 8 years for being soft on Russia are now supporting the nomination of Rex Tillerson, who has basically advertised that they are going to withdraw the line the Obama administration had taken and enter into a new relationship with Russia, in which they likely get everything they want. I hope that is not true, but we have asked over and over again for this nominee to give us some signal that they are going to at least maintain the policies we have today, and we have gotten no satisfactory answer.

Lastly, maybe most concerning about this nominee, is the potential for him to carry with him from Exxon a total lack of concern for ethics. I understand business ethics. That sounds really harsh, right? I understand there is a difference between business ethics and government ethics, and human rights is not something you are going to care about in a business to the extent that we care about it as those who run and advocate for American foreign policy. But I asked Mr. Tillerson if there was any country in the world he wasn't willing to do business with as the leader of Exxon. He danced around the answer a little bit, but the simple response was no, and that is plain as day. We can look at the countries they did business with, including Syria through subsidiaries, including Iran. There was no human rights record that was bad enough for Exxon to say: Hey, no. This isn't something we want to touch.

We have been told by those who are supporting his nomination that we really shouldn't pay attention to everything he did at Exxon because he is going to be a new man when he comes to State. I guess you can understand that. Plenty of people take on new priorities when they come into new jobs. Plenty of people argue for something they argued against once they have a new boss, but he had a chance before the Foreign Relations Committee to tell us how serious he was about human rights. He got asked over and over again what he thought about human rights violations by some of the worst offenders around the world. His answers to those questions were, boy, they were disturbing and troubling. He wouldn't name Saudi Arabia as a human rights violator. Saudi Arabia is locking up political dissidents left and right. They don't allow women to drive. I understand they are an ally, but they are also a human rights violator. Everybody knows that. He wouldn't commit that President Duterte in the Philippines, who has been openly bragging about murdering thousands of civilians with no due process--wouldn't name him as a human rights violator, wouldn't say that what Russia has done in Aleppo is a war crime. I understand that maybe you don't know all the facts when you are just coming through the process, but you just have to pick up a newspaper to figure out what is going on in Manila or what is happening in Aleppo. It doesn't take a lot of research to know that Saudi Arabia is violating people's human rights. He knows that country very well.

It suggests that this lack of concern for ethics and human rights is going to carry over to the State Department, and of course he is working for a President who is never going to tell him to care about human rights. The President has openly talked about his affection for torture; how he thinks that strong leaders are the ones who kill journalists who oppose them.

So it looks as if we are seeing a preview of an abdication of America's historic role in promoting and pushing human rights around the world. We have a President who has openly mocked human rights, who has supported vicious dictators, and a Secretary of State who has made a career of doing business with some of the worst human rights violators in the world and who couldn't name human rights violators when he appeared before the committee.

Senator Markey is right. Mr. Tillerson is an accomplished businessman. He is smart. He is savvy. I don't say any of this to impugn his character. He had a job to do at Exxon, and he did it well on behalf of those shareholders. Frankly, he didn't have to take this job. He didn't have to subject himself to this spotlight, to the constant second-guessing that awaits him as the next American Secretary of State. So I give him credit for making this decision to step up to the plate and do this job. I think his motives are pure. I guess I can't assume anything else. I know there are people who question those motives, but I am going to assume that he is doing this because he wants to help his country, and I look forward to working with him.

He needs to be an advocate for the State Department. He needs to be an advocate for the nonmilitary tools that have not historically been available to the President. We have had a ``military first'' mentality as a country. We think every problem in the world can be solved through military intervention. Even under President Obama, there was a bent toward military solutions. A Secretary of State can be the chief spokesman here for the ways in which you solve problems that don't involve attacking and invading, but I don't think somebody who has done one thing with one set of priorities and values for 40 years just suddenly does an about-face, and adopts a totally different set of priorities and values for his career's capstone job. If that were the case, he could have previewed that for us in the committee hearing. Yet

over and over again, when we asked for evidence that his priorities and his values were changed, his answers didn't measure up.

As I said, in addition to those concerns, this is just not the time for a Secretary of State with no diplomatic experience whatsoever. It is not a time for our new Secretary of State to learn on the job.

I will oppose his nomination and I hope others will join me.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there is a French farmer by the name of Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. He immigrated to the United States from Normandy, France, in 1759, and he settled in the Hudson Valley. He married an American woman. The astounding diversity of those who settled around him, his fellow farmers, was shocking to him. He said: It is ``a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes.''

There was one family he knew who had an English grandfather, a Dutch grandmother, an Anglo-Saxon son who had a French wife, whose four sons all married women who were from different places of different nationalities. Hector said: ``From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans has arisen.''

He asked: ``What then is the American, this new man?''

This farmer who came to America from Normandy in 1759 wrote this:

He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient

prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode

of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the

new rank he holds. The American is the new man who acts upon

new principles. . . . Here individuals of all nations are

melted into a new race of men.

George Washington told us that the bosom of America is open to the oppressed and the persecuted of all nations and religions.

That great American philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, that observer of American life, said in a letter:

Imagine, my dear friend, if you can, a society formed of

all the nations of the world . . . people having different

languages, beliefs, opinions: in a word, a society without

roots, without memories, without prejudices, without

routines, without common ideas, without a national character,

yet a hundred times happier than our own.

I am not sure if any of those are completely accurate descriptions of what an American was or is or whether those are commensurate with our understanding as to the foundations of this country, but they speak to this founding ideal of America, this place where you could come from any part of the world with any set of beliefs, with any religion, with any skin color, and become something that is uniquely new.

There were people here before those who traveled from far-off lands, but to be an American is in many ways an invention--an invention of the amalgamation of faiths of peoples from all over the world.

Both Hector and de Tocqueville talk about the leaving behind of prejudices when you come to this new country. Inherent in that idea is this belief of new Americans that the discrimination they faced in other places could be washed away upon coming to a country, a land at that time in which everyone was equal, everyone started from the same place. Of course, that has to be true because this country was founded by individuals who were fleeing religious persecution, who thought that America was a place in which they could practice their religion freely. They could be who they knew themselves to be.

The reason why you hear such anxiety and anger and sadness from many in this Chamber and from many people we represent is because what happened on Friday is an abandonment of American originalism. It is a walking back of the faith that we have held since the days in which Scotch and Irish and French and Dutch and German and Swede came to this country believing that they could leave behind prejudices. It feels as if we are shrinking as a country before our eyes.

A young woman from Stamford, CT, wrote me this beautiful letter, and I want to read some of it to you. She encapsulates in modern language what Crevecoeur, Washington, and de Tocqueville were saying centuries ago. She said:

I am the proud descendant of Syrian immigrants. My great-

grandparent's sacrifices to resettle in Rhode Island have

shaped my entire life. I've grown up very close to my

grandfather, the first generation of his family born in

America, and I know what my ancestors did to be here and

how far we've come from them being persecuted and

subjected to religious violence in Damascus. I was able to

grow up around Syrian culture and appreciate how great-

grandparents made it possible for my entire family to be

where they are now.

To give you an idea, my grandfather went on to receive a

master's degree and was a high school teacher and guidance

counselor. He is also heavily involved in the Roman Catholic

church and quietly serves communion in hospitals each Sunday.

My father, second generation, also received a master's,

serves on hospital boards, and has had a successful career in

human resources. With their encouragement, I have begun a

career as a journalist, one I have dreamed of since I was in

high school.

In 2012, on the 100-year anniversary of my family's arrival

in the United States, I was the third generation in my family

to graduate from high school and enroll in college. . . . I

tell you this because this moves me every day when I go to

work. How amazing it is that my family has gone from being

persecuted for their religion to being able to hold jobs

protected by the First Amendment? Surely, this is something

my great-grandparents never could've dreamed of when they

came here, and I embrace my career with the intention to

honor their sacrifices. . . . Recently, my heart broke at the

executive order to suspend the entry of refugees,

specifically from Syria. I have looked into this extensively

and recently worked on a story about the vetting process. . .

. Trump's order is nothing but xenophobic and racist. I was

preparing to report on a family that was supposed to be

coming to a community near me, but it seems that family won't

be coming now. How truly American it would've been for the

descendant of Syrian immigrants to welcome a new generation

of Syrians into this country.

This is for many cataclysmic because everything they thought about this country seems to be disappearing in front of us. I understand that President Trump tries to sell this as something less than it is; that it isn't a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, it is just a ban on Muslims from a select set of countries. But these are countries that encapsulate over 230 million Muslims. That is almost two-thirds of the population of the United States of America, including some of the most populous Muslim nations in the world, and it is directly targeted at people of Muslim faith.

It is simply not credible to say that this isn't a ban on members of one religion from entering the United States because it selects countries that are majority Muslim and then includes a caveat that if you are not of the majority religion, if you are of any religion that is not the majority religion, you can get around the ban and will be given priority to come to the United States.

This is a Muslim ban--a Muslim ban that applies to over 200 million Muslims around the world. It makes us smaller and weaker and less great as a nation. It also makes us weaker from a national security standpoint as well.

Let's step back for a second and understand the context here. This country does face a threat, a serious threat. There are religious extremists around the world who have perverted the religion of Islam and tried to turn it into

a doctrine of violence. They are attempting today to do great violence in the Middle East and in other parts of the world, and they are trying to recruit attackers here on U.S. soil. But you are not likely to be killed in an act of terrorism in this country. In fact, on average, there have been about three Americans killed every year by terrorism.

I am not trying to underplay the threat. People feel fearful. As a body, we need to respond to that fear. They see these awful things happening on TV, and they want us to make sure it will not happen to them. You are more likely to be killed in this country by lightning or by an elevator malfunction than you are by terrorism.

If you really want to talk about securing this Nation, about protecting Americans, then the conversation has to be bigger than just banning individuals from one country but recognizing the real threats that are posed.

Let me guarantee you this: If this ban goes into effect, if President Trump is successful, with the support from the Republican Congress, in sending a message to the world that America is at war with Islam, then that number of three Americans killed by terrorism every year will jump, it will skyrocket. More Americans will be killed by terrorism. Why? Because today ISIS is on its heels. It is in retreat. It has substantially less territory than it ever has before, and that has robbed from it one of its primary rationales for existence, one of its primary arguments to those it is trying to recruit into its fold--the idea that ISIS is forming a caliphate, an area of geographic control in the Middle East.

That argument doesn't work any longer because the supposed caliphate is shrinking. The amount of territory they control is getting smaller and smaller. Most folks can see the writing on the wall, that it is just a matter of time before the Islamic State as a state is gone. But they have this second rationale for existence, this second argument that they proffer to would-be recruits, and that is that there is a war between East and West, that this is really about a long-term struggle between Islam and Christianity. You need to sign up with us because they--the West, America, the Christian world--are coming for us.

We know that is not true, and we have watched Presidents of both parties make it very clear to the world that this is not the fight that we seek to engage in. Famously, immediately following the 9/11 attacks, President Bush said:

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.

He said:

That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.

Yet the message that is being sent with this ban on Muslims from these seven countries entering the United States is clear. The message is that the United States is at war with this religion, that we are at war with people of the Muslim faith.

As we speak, these recruitment bulletin boards are lighting up with arguments being made as to the true nature of America's intent against the Islamic people. One posting on one of these message boards said that Trump's actions ``clearly revealed the truth and harsh reality behind the American government and their hatred toward Muslims.'' Another posting on one of these extremist Web sites hailed Trump as the ``best caller to Islam.'' Another message said that the leader of ISIS, ``Al Baghdadi[,] has the right to come out and inform Trump that banning Muslims from entering America is a blessed ban.'' That is a phrase with very meaningful connotations. To the extent that these messaging boards are calling this ban on Muslims entering from seven countries a ``blessed ban,'' it is rooted in a different phrase, something called the ``blessed invasion.''

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 became the starting point for the very insurgency that we are fighting today. It was that invasion that was called by Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the affiliated extremist groups that were drawn into the fight the ``blessed invasion.'' Today on extremist Web sites, the ban on Muslims entering the United States is being called the ``blessed ban.''

This order is making this country less safe hour by hour. It is giving a pathway to rebirth for the very terrorist organizations that we had made such progress in pushing back and fighting back. In Iran specifically, it will lead to this country and our allies in the Middle East losing the fight against hardliners who pose a threat to the United States, to stability in the Middle East, and to our sacred ally of Israel. In Iran, there is a contest between moderates--and that is a relative term within the Iranian political space--and hardliners who chant ``Death to Israel'' who don't fear a world war or a conflict with the United States.

With the signing of the Iran nuclear agreement and the lifting of a handful of sanctions on Iran, the moderates won a victory. The population of that country--which is surprisingly pro-American and supported that nuclear agreement--was ascended, potentially foreshadowing a day in which that country would no longer be a provocateur in the region and instead could join in conversations about how to bring stability to the Middle East. Now the hardliners have been handed a gift, a gift which proves that America is an enemy, not just of the Iranian state but of the Iranian people.

Remember, when we think of actions that we take against governments that we don't like, we first try to start with actions that specifically identify individuals in the government, so that we make it clear that it is not about the people of that country but about their leaders. If that isn't strong enough, then we go to sanctions against commercial interests, against the economy writ large. Yes, those sanctions do filter down and hurt real people, but the sanctions are levied at the economy or against commercial actors.

When you enact a specific ban on the people of a country being able to travel to the United States, you are levying that punishment directly on those individuals, who, by and large, bear no ill will toward the United States. You are telling them that it is their fault, and the Iranian people will turn against the United States, will turn toward the hardliners based upon this action.

This ban makes us less safe. It will allow for terrorist groups to rebound. That is not just me saying it. Senators McCain and Graham have said the same thing. National security experts of both stripes have testified as such. Tonight I think back to the moment in which I first heard that Candidate Donald Trump was proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. I remember the universal bipartisan derision that met that announcement. It was almost laughable at that point in time during the campaign. If you remember, Candidate Trump was flailing. He was weak. He needed to reassert himself. He needed to make news, and so he grabbed for the most controversial, most outlandish proposal he could make. Republicans and Democrats here in Congress condemned it.

Speaker Ryan tweeted this:

A religious test for entering our country is not reflective

of America's fundamental values. I reject it.

Governor Mike Pence said:

Calls to ban Muslims from entering the United States are

offensive and unconstitutional.

A religious test for entering this country is not

reflective of America's fundamental values. I reject it.

Calls to ban Muslims from entering the United States are

offensive and unconstitutional.

I give credit to a small handful of Republicans here in the Senate and a small handful of Republicans in the House who have raised serious concerns about this ban with respect to what it says about American values or what it says about American national security. But there is utter silence from Republican leadership. Republican leadership--who only months ago claimed that if there were a religious test for entering our country, they would reject it--today are quiet. The idea that individuals could come to this country without regard to their religion or their national origin or their set of beliefs has never been a partisan issue. Of all the things that divide us, that idea has been one that unifies us.

My hope is that there is still a chance that both parties can come together and recapture the essence of American originalism, can put this country on firmer national security footing, and can continue the relentless drive against extremist groups like ISIS that now find themselves at a point of potential rebirth.

You have heard a lot of stories on the floor of the Senate today. It is interesting. We have these incredibly compelling stories from real people who are caught today in the middle of this reckless ill-thought- out ban. There are 67,000 refugees who are currently in the pipeline to come to this country right now. This isn't about 100, 200, 300, or 400. This is about tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing persecution, terror, and torture. This is about the 230 million Muslims who live in those seven countries, who have been told that they are lesser. Frankly, every other Muslim in the world believes the message is being sent to them as well.

These stories that we tell you are--the tip of the iceberg isn't even accurate. This is a pinprick. Fadi Kassar and his family--here are his two girls. They left Syria in 2011 due to the epic levels of violence that Fadi was sure would kill his two little girls if he didn't leave. His family went to the UAE, or the United Arab Emirates. But the way in which the UAE works is that if you have a job, you can stay, but if you don't have a job, you leave. When he lost his job, they were kicked out and that began an epic journey for Fadi and his family.

These girls actually were born in the UAE, as I understand. He was fleeing Syria to protect his family and his future children, yet they were kicked out of the country they went to. Fadi then began a journey to try to find a home for him and his family. He tried to get to Europe via Tunisia, but he was detained and sent back to Turkey. He eventually flew to Brazil. He made his way to the United States by crossing the border with Mexico. Upon entry, he was detained. He was transferred to Miami. He was released and eventually found his way to Connecticut. He applied for asylum that was granted in December of 2015.

Fadi's relatives in Syria were tortured and had been detained by the regime. His neighborhood was dangerous and deadly. Fadi and his family were exactly the kind of people whom this country historically has been able to rescue from war-torn countries, from terror, and from torture. His family had experienced torture. His children were later returned to Syria and would face potential death.

He went through all of the processes that we asked him to go through. He didn't go into the shadows. He didn't hide. He applied for asylum status. It was granted in 2015. He filed forms that would allow for his wife and two daughters to follow. Those visas were issued last Tuesday, on January 24.

Originally, they had a flight that was scheduled to bring his wife and these two little girls to the United States today, but last week, when Fadi learned of the potential for this Executive order, he paid $1,000 to move their flight up to Friday. His two little girls and his wife got on a flight from Jordan to Kiev, Ukraine, and eventually to the United States. But once in Kiev, their passports and their visas were taken from them. They were sent to CBP. Their visas were rejected, and they were returned to Jordan.

These two little girls are back in their old apartment, but they got rid of all their furniture. They got rid of all their clothes. Their neighbors have temporarily given them mattresses to sleep on. They don't even know where their suitcases are. Their father, who is ready to greet them at the airport here in the United States, may never see them.

They are scared to death. I have two little boys who are the exact same age. I have an 8-year-old. I have a 5-year-old. I think about what these two little girls went through, getting ready to finally go see their dad who had gone through an epic struggle to try to find someplace in this world where his two little girls could be safe. He found it. He found it in America. He found it in my State of Connecticut.

He found it, just like hundreds of thousands of other people who fled war-ravaged Europe, who fled the bombing in Vietnam, who left Albania and Kosovo to come live a better life just like they found. He was ready to go to the airport to welcome his two little girls, and they were told that they are not leaving. You are not going to see your dad. You are going to go back to Jordan and, potentially, eventually back to Syria.

Imagine what those little girls went through. Imagine millions of other little boys and girls like them who had in their mind this place called America, a place that would welcome them, who would rescue them from the disaster that had become their lives.

Imagine that dream that was literally hours away for these two little girls extinguishing, and extinguishing for millions of others like them all around this planet. It is up to us whether that light which flickered off on Friday relights. It is up to us as to whether we rekindle the American dream, that idea of America from our founding. This is not irreversible. These two little girls, you could bring them here. We could choose to bring them here. It is up to us.

There is legislation on the floor of the Senate right now as we speak that would rescind this order. It is our decision, right? There are 100 of us. There are only 435 down the hall. There are only 535 of us. It is our decision whether these two little girls come to the United States or they go back to their war-ravaged home that their father left. It is up to us. It is not up to the President of the United States alone. He does not get to make these decisions by himself.

Democracy allows for us to make a different decision. It is up to us. I believe we can do it. I believe we can bring these girls here. I believe we can undo the damage that has been done to this country's security. I believe we can get back on a path such that ISIS remains on its heels. I believe we can recapture that idea of that farmer who came to this country from a far-off land who looked in amazement at the amalgam of cultures and peoples and religions that was America.

I know this sounds like hyperbole. I know there are a lot of people out there who say: Wait a second. This is only temporary. It is only for a few months. It is only for a few countries. But people are listening and watching. Which direction are we heading? Do we really care about the things we have always cared about? Millions upon millions of people, all cross this country and all across this world are watching. What do we do?

Is this a partisan issue or can we commit ourselves together to stand up for those basic ideas of America's founding? There are two little girls who are watching most closely, who are watching to see if we can rise above partisanship and deliver to them the promise that has been made real for millions and millions of Americans who call this place home.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I oppose Mr. Pompeo's confirmation to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency because I believe he will take the CIA in a dangerously wrong direction.

America needs a CIA Director who will uphold American values by resolutely condemning torture and mass surveillance. Mr. Pompeo's last- minute attempt to walk back his opposition to torture is very disturbing and suggests the Trump administration is readying to abandon our commitment to international human rights.

Second, Mr. Pompeo's enthusiasm for bringing back programs that sweep up massive amounts of Americans' private information is deeply troubling. I have no confidence that Donald Trump would sufficiently protect the private emails of Americans if he had access to them, and Mr. Pompeo's support for large-scale data collection programs is inconsistent with the bipartisan reforms of the PATRIOT Act that passed in the last Congress.

Third, I am very worried that Mr. Pompeo, as CIA Director, will continue the trend of covert agencies usurping the power of the State Department and the Defense Department. Mr. Pompeo, under questioning, refused to acknowledge the longstanding precedent of diplomatic embassies having primary authority for final signoff on overseas operations. This suggests Mr. Pompeo could lead a rogue agency that will frustrate rather than aid our diplomatic objectives overseas.

Madam Clerk, how am I recorded?

This is cruel and inhumane.

I vote no.

Mr. President, I would like to congratulate my good friend Joseph Crisco, Jr., on his outstanding 24 years of service representing the 17th district in the Connecticut State Senate. Joe has shown an incredible commitment to working for the people of Connecticut over his long career, and I thank him for all that he has done for our State and, in particular, the towns of Ansonia, Beacon Falls, Bethany, Derby, Hamden, Naugatuck, and his hometown of Woodbridge.

Joe is a graduate of Wilbur Cross High School and the University of Connecticut, where he credits many of his early lessons to his time spent as an athlete on the football field. His outstanding career as a player at both institutions earned him a place in the Wilbur Cross Athletic Hall of Fame, and his experience as a standout guard on the UConn football team in 1956 and 1957 helped forge a lasting commitment to his alma mater and shaped the ethic of teamwork and dedication that would follow him to the Connecticut State Senate.

First elected to the senate in 1992, Joe's commitment to his constituents and his community has never wavered. It is no exaggeration to say that his district would not be what it is today if not for the many grants and public projects he has been responsible for bringing home, from recreational centers and trails, to libraries, animal shelters, and affordable housing. The 17th district's most important institutions--like Griffin Hospital, Quinnipiac University, the Sterling Opera House, the Troop I Barracks of the Connecticut State Police, the former Bethany Airport, and the Metro-North Waterbury branch line--have always had a dedicated friend and advocate in Joe. And the annual senior fair in Ansonia's Warsaw Park, which Joe ran throughout his service in the senate, has provided assistance to thousands of senior citizens over the years and become an iconic event in the Naugatuck Valley.

But more than simply serving the people in his district, Joe distinguished himself in the Connecticut General Assembly as one of its most effective and hard-working legislators. He served as chair of the Appropriations Committee and the Insurance & Real Estate Committee and had a hand in some of the most important legislation in a generation to support Connecticut's economy and the welfare of its citizens. He led the creation of the Biomedical Research Fund, which has devoted millions of dollars towards research efforts in the State to fight heart disease, cancer, smoking-related illnesses, Alzheimer's, stroke, and diabetes. He championed investment tax credits for economic development and public safety, secured a cost-of-living adjustment for beneficiaries of the ConnPACE Program for seniors, and fought passionately to expand the reach of health insurance coverage. After only 6 years in the senate, Joe pioneered the founding of Family Day; an initiative close to his heart as a father of 6 and grandfather of 18. And the legacy he leaves with his lifesaving work to improve and expand coverage for breast cancer exams, creating a new international standard for insurance coverage, is a special achievement of which Joe should be particularly proud.

I am also personally thankful for Joe's dedication to his position in the general assembly because I have seen it up close. During my time representing the 16th district, Joe and I sat next to each other in the senate chamber, and I remain incredibly grateful for his willingness to act as a mentor and friend in the early years of my government service.

Once again, congratulations to Joe, his wife, Pat, and his entire family for a long and successful career in the Connecticut State Senate. It is my hope that the general assembly will use Joe's career as an example and continue to work diligently and passionately for the people of our State in the years to come.

Mr. President, once again, congratulations on your election. I haven't gotten a chance to talk with the Presiding Officer in detail about his path to the U.S. Senate, but I have had a chance to talk to a lot of my colleagues about how they got here, and I think we can all agree it is not often a real pleasant experience. You get your name dragged through the mud. You get called all sorts of names. You have to call lots of friends and strangers and ask them for money. It is no walk in the park to run for political office or to put your name out there and be the subject of both praise and a lot of ridicule.

It is not surprising the reason that people do this. The reason that the 100 of us have decided to run for office and to put ourselves out there in the public spotlight is because we deeply care about our neighbors, about the people who live in our States. We are doing this job, to a man and woman, because we want to make life better for people; in particular, people who have been just thrown big curveballs by life.

I grew up in a pretty economically secure house, but I understand a lot of kids don't have that opportunity, and I feel like both Republicans and Democrats are here because we want to lift those kids up. I have had a pretty healthy life, a few bumps and bruises along the way, but I feel like both Republicans and Democrats are here because we get that other people aren't as fortunate. They got sick. They got diagnosed with something terrible. Our role should be to try to help get them some cures or some treatments.

We are here not because we think it is fun to run elections, we are not here because we like the look of our name on the door, we are here because we care desperately about people. I think this is what Senator King was getting at in his remarks. All of the tabloids and the TV news shows, they spend 80 percent of their time focusing on politics, and we end up chasing our tail off in here because if the daily political rags and the cable news shows are talking about politics, then maybe we should be talking and thinking about politics as well, but that is not why we decided to do this. We decided to run for the Senate because we care about people.

Why we are here tonight is pretty simple. Ultimately, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, with no replacement, with no plan for what comes next, will hurt millions of real people in very real ways. In the end, I don't believe that my Republican colleagues want to cast a vote that will do that.

This tall guy right here is Josh Scussell. He lives in Connecticut. He is from Guilford. He is standing next to his bone marrow donor and her boyfriend. This is Josh's wife. Josh was diagnosed with stage IV non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2012.

Here is what Josh says. He will tell you the unvarnished truth. Josh says: ``The ACA is entirely responsible for me still being alive.''

He relapsed after an additional diagnosis before he turned 26, and the only way he was able to get insurance was because of the Affordable Care Act, which allowed him to stay on his mother's insurance up until he turned 26. During the course of his treatments, he underwent stem cell transplants, which could be up to $200,000 each. Because of those transplants, he needed ongoing weekly treatments at a cost of $10,000 per treatment.

He recalled how he was getting his first stem cell transplant and he was in the hospital during the Supreme Court deliberations on the Affordable Care Act. He said, ``I was in a hospital bed watching the TV, when the Supreme Court approved the ACA, and just the feeling I had in my body was a feeling that I had never experienced before because I knew that I was going to be taken care of.''

Josh is in remission. In a few more years of being cancer-free, the doctors tell him he might be out of the woods. He says, ``I'm more fearful for other people in my position. . . . Because there's no way I would have been able to afford any of those treatments'' if it wasn't for the Affordable Care Act.

This little guy, his name is Rylan. This is his mother Isabelle. Rylan was born with a congenital heart defect. One day he had to be rushed to Connecticut Children's Medical Center for emergency open- heart surgery to keep him alive. Isabelle says that she never really thought about health insurance. She knew she had it, but she didn't really think about it until Rylan went for that emergency surgery. She thought: Oh, no, is our insurance going to cover it? Will they cover all the treatments he needs going forward now that he will have had a preexisting condition? She found out that the Affordable Care Act protected her because it eliminated a common practice of insurance companies to cap the amount of coverage you get in any one given year or over the course of your lifetime.

Isabelle tells it plainly. She says:

Without the Affordable Care Act, we would have never been

able to afford the care for Rylan. We would have had to make

awful decisions--decisions about whether we kept our house,

kept our car, whether we could still afford to work.

It was the Affordable Care Act that protected her and her family.

Finally, this is John. John is a hero in my book. John was born with cystic fibrosis. John tells the story about how health care is the most important thing to him in the world. It is more important than salary. It is more important than his job. It is more important than friends. He struggles every day to live. The only way he lives is that he is able to take medications that allow him to continue to breathe and that allow his lungs to continue to function amidst this crippling disease and diagnosis.

John is on the Affordable Care Act, and John will tell you, just as plainly as Josh and Isabelle, that without the Affordable Care Act, he would die--not 2 years from now, not 3 years from now. John would die within a matter of weeks because without his medications, he cannot live.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that the absence of the Affordable Care Act is a matter of life and death. John will tell you that without the Affordable Care Act, he doesn't have insurance. Without insurance, he cannot afford the medications to keep him alive. Without the medications to keep him alive, John disappears from this Earth.

These are real people. I care about them because I know them, and I have had the chance to meet John and Isabelle and Josh. But you have these people in your State as well. My Republican colleagues have just as many of them. Some of the biggest numbers of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act aren't in States represented by Democrats; they are in States represented by Republicans. And this mythology that the Affordable Care Act hasn't worked or that it is in some death spiral is just political rhetoric. It is not true.

This is an AP fact check story from today, I believe. Here is the beginning of it. It says:

President-elect Donald Trump says that President Barack

Obama's health care law ``will fall of its own weight.''

House speaker Paul Ryan says the law is ``in what the

actuaries call a death spiral.''

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says that ``by

nearly any measure, ObamaCare has failed.''

The AP says:

The problem with all these claims: They are exaggerated, if

not downright false.

The Affordable Care Act has not failed for the 20 million Americans who have insurance now because of it. The Affordable Care Act has not failed for the millions more who are paying less because insurance companies can no longer discriminate against them if they have a preexisting condition. The Affordable Care Act has not failed for seniors all across this country who are on Medicare and are paying less for prescription drugs.

There is no doubt that the Affordable Care Act isn't perfect. Medicare wasn't perfect when it was passed. We amended it 18 different times. The Affordable Care Act needs to be amended and perfected, as well, but if you really care about people instead of political headlines, then the prescription here is simple: Stop. Take a step back. Don't

lurch the entire health care economy into chaos when you don't have to.

I am pretty sure that Donald Trump is going to be President for the next 2 years. I am pretty sure that Republicans are going to control the Senate and the House of Representatives for the next 24 months. You have time. You don't need to prove some point to the political talk show hosts and the conservative radio commentators. You can step back and rescue these real people from the fate that you are about to subject them to by--instead of engaging in a partisan repeal with no replacement for what comes next--reaching out across the aisle and working with Democrats to try to fix this law.

I have been here the last 6 years. I was part of the passage of this law when I was in the House of Representatives. I have listened to my colleagues say, literally tens of thousands of times in Washington and across the country, that their priority was to repeal and replace this law. I watched on TV our President-elect say in response to a question about the process for health care repeal going forward:

No, we are going to do it simultaneously [repeal and

replace the law]. It'll be just fine. We are not going to

have, like, a two-day period and we are not going to have a

two-year period where there is nothing. It will be repealed

and replaced.

There will not be a 2-day period in between repeal and replace. And that is what I heard from my Republican colleagues: Put your vote where your mouth has been because the alternative is a death spiral.

The Associated Press calls the mistruths out and says: No, the Affordable Care Act is not in a death spiral. But those same health care economists who are quoted in that story will tell you that if you repeal this bill without any replacement for what happens next, that is what creates the death spiral. Why? Because when you put a clock ticking on the life of the Affordable Care Act, then a couple of things happen. First, people who need some procedure done rush into those exchanges and they drive up the actuarial cost, and insurers just look at themselves and say: Why would you hang around for that? And they bolt. So the Affordable Care Act falls apart if you telegraph to people that you have only 1 year or 2 years left.

You don't have to do this. You don't have to visit that kind of harm on real people. I know that is not why Republicans ran for office. I know we have philosophical differences on how to get health care to people, about how to insure more people, but let us sit down and figure out a middle ground so we can save the lives of all these people who are relying on us.

What we are doing right now is extraordinary. This is absolutely extraordinary. We were sworn in less than a week ago. The new President has not even been inaugurated. There isn't even a conceptual plan for what will replace the Affordable Care Act, and we are rushing forward with repeal. There is an enthusiasm to this cruelty that is hard to understand.

I hope that some of the Republicans who just in the last 24 hours have called for a delay in this debate are heard by Republican leadership. I know that Democrats will continue to be on this floor to make this case. I guess I am still optimistic enough about what is still a pretty broken town that, in the end, my Republican friends aren't so cold-hearted, aren't so barbaric as to take away insurance from people like those we have been talking about here today when there is an alternative, when there is another way, when there is no political imperative to do this kind of damage to people right now.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, what is happening on the floor right now is absolutely extraordinary. It is absolutely extraordinary that Republicans are using the budget process, the reconciliation process, in between the swearing in of the new Congress and the swearing in of a new President, to rip away from 20 million Americans health care insurance, to drive up rates for one-third of consumers in this country who have some form of preexisting condition--a sickness that without this law would make their rates go higher--and to throw the entire health care marketplace into chaos.

It is absolutely exceptional what is happening right now. No one in this body should normalize it. No one outside of this body should perceive this to be just politics as usual.

I was here when the Affordable Care Act passed. I was in the House of Representatives. Since then, I have heard my Republican friends say over and over and over again that they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it. I can't tell you the hundreds of times I have heard that phrase, ``repeal it and replace it.''

President-Elect Trump talked about that throughout the campaign, and then 2 days after he won the election, on Thursday night, he went on national television to double down on the promise that there would be an immediate replacement. He said: There will not be 2 hours between the Affordable Care Act being repealed and it being replaced with something better.

That is the second part of the argument the Republicans have made. The Affordable Care Act, in their minds, was deficient, despite the fact that there are 20 million people who have insurance today who wouldn't have it otherwise and despite the fact that there are hundreds of millions of Americans across the country who don't have to worry about them and their loved ones having their insurance rates jacked up because they are sick, and despite the fact that seniors are paying thousands of dollars less in prescription drugs than they were.

The Affordable Care Act isn't perfect--it never was--but the enthusiasm of Republicans to take away from Americans their health insurance and to drive rates up for millions more is really unthinkable.

We heard over and over again that the priority was to repeal it and replace it. Now we are repealing the Affordable Care Act with no plan for what comes next. We are driving forward with a repeal vote with no plan for how we keep the health care system together, how we prevent it from falling into chaos, how we continue to insure the millions of Americans who rely on it.

There is a cruelty to this enthusiasm for immediate repeal that is a little bit hard to understand--it is really hard to understand.

I think about somebody like Jonathan Miller. He lives in my State. He lives in Meriden, CT. He was born with cystic fibrosis. He is insured today through the Affordable Care Act. Here is what he said:

For me, I was able to live a relatively normal life growing

up, wonderful family and friends, but health has always been

the most important thing in my life. I spend even in a good

health year probably one or two hospitalizations each year

that require IV antibiotics, I am on a whole suite of

medications, each day I take about 15 to 20 medications, some

of those are pills, some are breathing treatments, and then

there are the shots. Healthcare is the number one priority in

my life, it's more important than income, more important than

anything else, being able to maintain my health.

He is insured by the Affordable Care Act today, but he also receives the benefit of the insurance protections because Jonathan, without the Affordable Care Act, even if he had insurance, would lose it--probably a couple of months into the year--because of a practice prior to the Affordable Care Act of capping the amount of money you would be covered for in a given year or in a lifetime. Jonathan would have blown through that in a heartbeat.

It is not hyperbole when he says: ``Without the Affordable Care Act, I'd probably be dead within months.''

That is the reality for millions of people across this country. Without health insurance, they cannot survive. They can't afford their medication.

So this isn't just about politics, this isn't just about the words on the page, these are people's lives. This is about life or death, and the casualness of throwing out a law without any concept of what comes next--I have read so many quotes in the paper over the last few days of Republicans admitting they don't know yet what they are going to do in its place, but they still feel the need right now, in the lameduck session, to begin the process of repealing this law without any concept of what comes next.

Why do it now? Why not take one step back? Why not reach across the aisle to Democrats and say: Let's try to work to make this better. Let's try to answer the concerns the Republicans have, that President- Elect Trump has. Let's take some time to work through this, reform it in a bipartisan way. No. Instead, we are rushing forward with repeal, stealing health care for millions of Americans, plunging the health care system into chaos, with no guarantee that there is anything that is going to emerge in its place.

Senator Kaine and I have a very simple budget point of order. Senator Kaine has talked about it. It would prohibit the consideration of any legislation as part of budget reconciliation that would, No. 1, reduce the number of Americans who are enrolled in health insurance; No. 2, increase premiums or total out-of-pocket costs for those people with private insurance; or, No. 3, reduce the scope and scale of benefits that people have.

I have heard my Republican friends say: We are going to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and we are going to replace it with something better. We are not even committing you to replacing it with something better. We are just saying, if you are going to replace it, let's guarantee now that legislation is not going to take anybody's health care insurance away who has it now who wants it, it is not going to raise costs, and it is not going to reduce benefits.

I am going to be honest. The replacement isn't coming. It is not coming, and even if it comes, it can't meet those three tests. There is no way there is a replacement coming that is going to maintain the 20 million people who have insurance now, that is going to maintain cost controls and maintain benefits. It is not happening.

News flash to the American public: This law is being repealed under a budget reconciliation process that shuts out Democrats, and it is not going to be replaced by something that is equal in quality or better. At the very least, we can all put our names and our votes to a budget point of order that commits Republicans to the promise that they have made for 6 years, which is that if they repeal this, they will not put a piece of legislation before this Congress that doesn't guarantee that everybody keeps their health insurance, costs don't go up, and benefits don't come down.

I urge, when this comes up for a vote, a positive vote from my colleagues, and I urge my Republican friends to honor the promise they have made.

I thank Senator Kaine and others for joining me in offering it.

I yield the floor.