Floor Statements

Last year the most profitable company in America was ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil made about $44.9 billion in profit last year. America's student loan program did better. America's student loan program last year made a profit of right around $50 billion, eclipsing the profit of ExxonMobil, of Apple, of JPMorgan Chase. In fact, of every U.S.-based company, none of them ran a profit as high, as steep, as generous as the U.S. student loan program did.

Why I am coming down to the floor to support a 1-year freeze on student loan rates is because, as you have led this argument, that is the discussion we should be having. Why on Earth do we allow our student loan program to make profits greater than any other American company makes today? Why are our students being asked, more so than almost any other population in our country, to bear the burden of paying down our deficit? It doesn't make any sense.

It is time then that in the context of the Higher Education Act, which we are hopefully going to debate later this year, we have that broader conversation. This bill on the floor now, giving us a 1-year freeze to keep students where they are today, paying a 3.4-percent interest rate, just makes sense--both in the short term to try to make sure students don't have to pay upward of $5,000 over the course of the repayment of their loan but then allows us to start to have a conversation with ourselves as to whether we want to allow the student loan program to be the most profitable company in the United States on the backs of students.

This matters to me because I am one of the millions of young Americans who is still paying back my student loans. My wife and I are paying them back as we speak. Of course, with two young little boys at home, we are also scurrying to save as much as we can to pay for their future college costs.

I am not going to stand here and complain because between my wife and I we make a pretty good salary. We can afford to pay back our student loans, and we can afford to squirrel a little bit away for our two little kids. But our story is not the reality for millions of other young families who can't afford to do both of those things.

The average college graduate in this country has a much lower unemployment rate than other Americans, somewhere around 4 or 5 percent. Young college graduates today stand at an 8.8-percent unemployment rate and an 18.3-percent underemployment rate. That is the stuff we don't talk about enough. There are a lot of young people who are working part-time or temporary jobs that don't bring in enough money in order to pay back their student loans, which on average today are somewhere around $30,000. That is the average. Everybody can point to a neighbor or a friend who is walking out of their undergraduate education today with $100,000 or more.

The fact is there are millions of families in the position of my family. We are squeezed between paying back the debt we owe and trying to put away money so our kids don't have to have the same kind of debt we do. That is money that doesn't go into the main street of our economy, doesn't go to fix up your house and put a carpenter to work, and doesn't go to the local grocery store or to the restaurant around the corner. Instead, it is money that gets sent, by and large, to the big banks. It doesn't make sense. This bill on the floor allows us to have this bigger, broader conversation.

I will say this though. We are fooling ourselves if we think the solution to our higher education affordability crisis is only the interest rate we pay on loans. It is not. Shame on us if coming out of the resolution of this debate, which I hope comes in the next couple of weeks, we don't step back and say there is so much more that this Senate and this Congress can be doing to take on the broader issue of affordability.

Students took out about $113 billion in student loans this last year. That is double what they took out just 10 years ago. We can't afford to have the amount of money being taken out in student loans double on a decade-by-decade basis. That will bankrupt not only our students, but it will bankrupt our country no matter what interest rate we put on these loans.

In the context of the Higher Education Act, we ought to start challenging schools to think out of the box when it comes to assessing the cost of education. Wesleyan University in Connecticut has given the option to students to get a degree in 3 years instead of 4. More and more schools are moving to cheaper but still high-value online education.

It is probably time we stepped back and asked even tougher questions about whether it makes sense to award degrees based on a largely arbitrary number of credits, rather than an assessment of the skills you have gained, maybe over 4 years but, frankly, maybe even over 2\1/ 2\ or 3 years.

If college is about preparing students for the workforce, then maybe we should be awarding degrees and costing out degrees based on whether you are ready to enter the workforce, not just based on if you have gone the requisite number of years or taken the requisite number of courses. Maybe 50 years ago we could afford the system we have, but we can't any longer. We can't have that conversation if we don't settle this one.

My hope is we will be able to extend the 3.4-percent interest rate for the time being and that we can have a serious conversation about the issue of profitability in the long run.

Lastly, I will just say this. Senator Alexander has left the floor, but the Republican proposal is temporary as well. He is right to point out that for a certain subset of individuals who don't qualify today for the 3.4-interest rate, the Republican proposal may, in the short run, provide a different lower interest rate. But we know interest rates are going up. We know their proposal is no less temporary than the 1-year freeze we offered, because ultimately in the long run or, frankly, in the medium run, those students who today might qualify for a lower rate are going to be paying a much higher rate in the not-so- distant future.

We are kidding ourselves if we think the benefit of the Republican proposal is that in the long run students are all of a sudden going to gain the benefit of today's interest rates, which is not how things work. It is not how the trend line is going.

Lastly, about 1 month ago I was sitting with a group of counselors at a local afterschool program in Danbury, CT. They were all sort of working part-time jobs and counseling kids at this afterschool program because they believed in the program. These were community-minded kids. They were the salt-of-the-Earth kids who truly cared about trying to help out disadvantaged youth in their neighborhood, but none of them were going to college.

I asked them: Are you not going to college because of the cost?

They looked at me as if I had three heads. They said: Of course, the reason we are not going to college is the cost. We would love to be in college today, but there is no way we can afford it.

The fact is we are looking at 4.4 million students over the next 10 years who are likely to not be able to afford college simply because of the cost. The difference between 3.4 and 6.8 percent can be $5,000 for some students over the course of the repayment of their loan. That is the difference maker for students. We are kidding ourselves if we don't think that 18- and 19-year-old kids aren't doing the math when they are deciding whether they can afford to go to college. They are much more sophisticated than people on this floor think they are. They understand the deal we are potentially giving them on the floor of the Senate is one that will make college unaffordable for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of students. Shame on us if we don't have a better answer for those kids in Danbury, CT, and millions of others similar to them across the country who just want a shot at college and wish to make sure that they alone are not asked to pick up the burden of paying down the deficit of the United States.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, we are now deep in the heart of summer vacation for millions of families and students all across this country. It is a wonderful time, something families look forward to--maybe some parents more so than others. But it is a very strange summer in Newtown, CT. It is the first summer that 20 families are waking up every morning without a 6- or 7-year-old they planned on spending days at the beach or afternoons at the park with or mornings getting ready for what would have been their second-grade year. It is a very different summer, this summer in Newtown, CT.

A lot of people ask me: How is the community recovering? How are they coming back? And while there is some rebound happening, it is still very much a community in crisis. When students go back to school in the fall, they are not going to be going back to Sandy Hook Elementary School. That school is going to be knocked down. There is no way families, teachers, and administrators can return to that place. So once again this fall the students of Sandy Hook Elementary School will be bused one town over to a school that was, up until January of this last year, a place none of them had seen, and they will once again be in a year of transition--once again, for many families, still a year of crisis.

I am not sure any of those families could imagine in the days and weeks after the shooting on December 14 of last year that when they sent their kids back to school--their surviving brothers and sisters-- in the fall of 2013, that in that intervening time, in response to the most vicious mass school shooting in this country's history, the response from the Congress would be nothing, zippo, zero.

This is a summer of crisis in Newtown. It will be another difficult fall. But what leaves people in Newtown shaking their heads is that this place has done absolutely nothing; that when their kids return back to school, the laws of this Nation will be no different, will do nothing more to protect their sons and daughters when they and millions of other kids across the country return to school in September.

And it is not as though we have not seen since Newtown more evidence for why we need to change our laws. I have come to the floor virtually every week since this horrific incident to remind people that the tragedy has not ended; that since December 14, 5,893 people have been senselessly killed by guns. Since December 14, 5,893 people have been killed through gun violence.

I think we should continue to talk about who these people are; that we should give voices to these victims, so that it is not just the 20 6-year-old and 7-year-old children we have all heard so much about-- about Jack Pinto and Dylan Hockley, and Noah Pozner and Grace McDonnell. We know these kids, and I will continue to talk about who they were and who they could have been, but every single day we lose about 30 more people to gun violence.

Last June we saw a mass shooting that was eerily similar to the one in Newtown--a mass shooting in Santa Monica, CA, in which five people were killed; the father and the brother of the gunman, but also three completely unrelated and innocent bystanders who just happened to be in and around the school when this young man, 23 years old, deeply disturbed, started firing, almost indiscriminately and randomly, on his way to and at the campus.

It was eerily similar because, once again, it was an assault weapon, an AR-15 model, the weapon of choice for mass assailants in this country these days. And once again he had high-capacity magazines. Reportedly, 1,300 rounds of ammunition were on his person. Every case is unique, but over and over these mass shootings are occurring with the same type of weapons and the same type of high-capacity ammunition. Yet we do nothing to acknowledge this trend.

Let me talk a second about who these people were who were killed that day in California, because they have stories that are not unlike the 5,800-plus stories I could tell on the floor, if we had time, with respect to the people who have died since December 14.

Carlos Navarro Franco was 68 years old. He was the groundskeeper at the college for 22 years. He was dedicated to two things above all-- that college and his family. That is what the president of the college said after his death--everything Carlos did was for the college and for his family. He was truly a family man, the president of the college said. He was a dedicated husband, a father, and an integral part of Santa Monica's college family. He dedicated his work to the campus grounds and was enjoyed by students and visitors for two decades.

He was with his daughter that day. Marcela Franco was 26 years old and pursuing a degree in psychology at California State University. She had registered to take summer classes at the school where her father worked and she was on her way with her father to buy textbooks that day. She initially survived the gunfire but she never regained consciousness after the attack. She was described by her aunt as smart, beautiful, and outgoing. Her aunt said, ``She was daddy's girl.'' So the blessing is they went together.

Margarita Gomez was the same age as Carlos Navarro Franco. She lost her life that day. She was fondly referred to on campus as the ``recycle lady'' because she could be seen almost every weekday walking around campus, rolling her cart, picking up used bottles and cans. She would plop them in her cart and then take them to get recycled. Obviously, most people thought she was homeless and that she was collecting these bottles and cans as a means to be able to survive, but that wasn't the case. Margarita had actually been diagnosed with diabetes, and it was her doctor's recommendation that she exercise more. She was also an active member of a senior Latino club that met every Thursday at the Virginia Avenue park and she was very interested in the St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital cause--a charity the senior Latino club happened to give money to. So she put these two things

together--a recommendation she should exercise more and an interest in helping this club and the charity it was affiliated with--and decided she would take this cart around town for exercise, pick up cans and bottles, recycle them, and then donate the money to charity.

The ``recycle lady,'' Margarita Gomez, was walking around campus that day picking up cans and bottles so she could donate the money to help sick kids, and she was gunned down by an assailant using an assault weapon with high-capacity ammunition clips. It is a pretty unbelievable story. These three special individuals, along with the father and the son, are among the 5,893.

But it is not just the mass shootings that we are talking about. Frankly, the vast majority of these killings are one-off deals over some of the most petty arguments or disputes one could imagine. But because guns are so easily found, so readily accessible in our neighborhoods, these silly arguments end up in deaths, such as one that happened in my State of Connecticut just a couple weeks ago on June 16.

Isaac Smith was a couple days away from graduating from New Britain High School. He was a great athlete, played football and baseball, and he was hoping to continue playing those sports after high school when he went to college. He apparently talked to his friends a lot about how proud he was going to be to graduate.

On the night of June 16, police received a call around midnight about gunshots. They arrived at the scene and found Isaac Smith--a couple days away from graduation--in his driveway with a gunshot wound to the back of his head. Police are still trying to figure out what happened. Apparently, he was involved in a transaction for a pair of high-end sneakers when something went wrong and the other guy he was either selling the sneakers to or buying the sneakers from, 26-year-old Jonathan Gibbs of Meriden, shot him--over a pair of sneakers.

These are who these 5,893 people are: They are victims of mass violence, they are victims of senseless gunfire, and they all share something in common. They deserve a response from the Senate and the House of Representatives. They deserve us doing something more than nothing.

At least the Senate brought up a bill on the floor earlier this year. We got 55 votes for a bill that wasn't perfect, but it at least said criminals shouldn't have guns and that we should have a system that makes sure that is the case; that gun trafficking--when someone buys a messload of guns legally and then sells them illegally on the streets of our cities--should probably be a Federal crime; that we should have more resources in our mental health system to take care of people who want and need help. We got 55 votes for that, which is pretty unbelievable given the fact that 90 percent of the American public support all of those things. One would think we could have gotten more than 55 votes.

The House of Representatives has done nothing. It hasn't even had a debate.

These numbers will continue to mount. Next week I will be down here, and the number will probably be north of 6,000. Then, after the August recess, it will be creeping up to 7,000. We can't get rid of every single one of these deaths.

I will admit to you that Jonathan Gibbs who shot Isaac Smith was a legal gun owner. He didn't even actually have a criminal history. The fact is, while not every single one of these deaths is preventable, many of them are.

So I will continue to come down and talk about these victims with the hope that someday--perhaps this fall, perhaps next year, perhaps the year after--we can take action in the Senate that will maybe not stop the growth of this number but will at least slow its acceleration.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, we have a lot in common. We share the fact that we are both parents. In fact, I am the father of two little boys--a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old. If they are lucky enough, they might get to live to see the year 2100. They might be around for the end of this century, as opposed to the rest of us who will not see that day. I shudder to think about the Connecticut they are going to have to deal with 80-some years from today if we don't act right now.

This isn't science fiction that we are talking about. In New England we are talking about a 1- to 3-foot rise in sea level by the end of this century. Just a handful of inches is catastrophic in some parts of the globe, but a 3-foot rise in sea level in the State of Connecticut on a shoreline that has already been battered--as Senator

Blumenthal mentioned--by storm after storm would be absolutely cataclysmic.

The Connecticut my children may be living in at the end of this century would bear almost no recognition to the one in which they live now. Every single week and every single month that we don't do something is another step closer to that future world which we now think of as one of fantasy.

Connecticut is also home to some of the biggest property and casualty insurance companies in the country--and, frankly, in the world. I think it is important to recognize the fact that our inability to act is bankrupting this country right now as we speak. The property and casualty industry has paid out $135 billion with respect to extreme weather events in 2012--$139 billion has been paid out. Now, that results in increased premiums, which results in skyrocketing costs for everybody across this country who is paying for property and casualty insurance.

The taxpayers have likely paid about $100 billion in terms of cleanup costs and remediation costs just over the last year alone. Superstorm Sandy, and the events that we have seen hit the gulf and the east coast, are bankrupting our Nation and bankrupting companies and private insurance policyholders as we speak. Those costs are catastrophic.

The reason we have such a big group of Senators down here applauding the President's actions is also because we know the United States cannot do this alone. We know we are going to have to convince countries such as India, China, and developing nations to join us in a global effort. We hope the international climate talks are on pace to get an agreement that could be operative by the end of this decade, in 2020.

The world is still scarred by a unanimous vote in this Chamber to reject the Kyoto protocols. The world is skeptical that the United States really has the courage to lead on this issue.

Even though this body remains paralyzed for the time being on this subject, having the President come out and make the proposals he has today will hopefully give some confidence to the people who will be sitting in Poland at the end of this year. Hopefully, they will work out a climate agreement over the next several years on which the United States--at least with respect to the administration and the Senators down on the floor--is willing to lead.

Finally, I was pleased to hear the President talk about the specific issue of fast-acting climate pollutants today. We are going to have to get a global agreement on carbon dioxide. In the meantime, as we try to figure out a bridge to that 2020 operative agreement, if we are able to work with the international community with respect to the climate pollutants of methane, black carbon, and HFCs, we can make an enormous dent as we get ready for that lasting agreement.

In fact, we just got good news last weekend that the President, along with the head of the Chinese Government, has come to an agreement to try to rework the Montreal protocols with respect to a reduction in the admittance of HFCs, one of the most disastrous and insidious climate pollutants.

This is a very good day. We have given a signal to the international community that we are ready to lead. We have given a signal to millions of kids across the country who hope they might be around at the end of this century and that this country might have some approximation to what we enjoy today.

There will be a big group of us--led by Senators Whitehouse, Merkley, and Boxer--who will be ready to work with this President to enact this very bold plan. As I mentioned, one of the leaders of this effort is my good friend whom I yield to now, with the permission of the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Oregon.

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

Madam President, I rise today to speak on the immigration bill presently before the Senate.

First, I wish to congratulate the leaders who have been able to bring this bipartisan bill to the floor. The Gang of 8, of course, gets all the attention, but Senator Leahy, the majority leader, and so many others who have added both merit and momentum to this bill deserve to be praised as well.

I particularly wish to congratulate Senator Leahy, the majority leader, and the authors of the bill for the transparent process with which we have debated this bill. I don't know the sum total of all the amendments that were considered by the Judiciary Committee, but it was a long markup with virtually every idea and every amendment vetted.

We have been standing on the floor of the Senate for nearly 2 weeks debating this bill. That is right and that is good. This is one of the most important bills the Senate will talk about. This matters to millions of undocumented people all across this country, but it also matters to millions of other individuals, families, and businesses who have been weighed down by an immigration system that doesn't work any longer.

Today we will be debating a new amendment on border security that will, for many of us, be overkill. In order to make sure the perfect doesn't become the enemy of the good, this will bring this very important debate near to a close.

I rise to talk about one additional amendment I am offering that I hope the Senate will consider, amendment No. 1451. It would, very simply, prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from housing children in adult detention facilities.

There is already fairly good law and some good regulation on the books today that protect a lot of immigrant children from being held in difficult detention facilities. Many of these children who are classified as ``unaccompanied alien children'' are required to be transferred to HHS custody within 72 hours. There is some good law and good regulation built up around this issue already.

The data we have been getting over the last several years does tell that current law doesn't work for every child in the system. As we learned recently, ICE data says as many as 1,336 children were placed in adult facilities between 2008 and 2012. Of these children, apparently 371 of them spent more than 3 months in an adult facility--3 months in an adult facility.

I want you to put yourself in the shoes of a little 12-year-old boy who may just be learning how to speak the English language, who maybe came here with his parents and his family but was picked up by himself, somehow through the system was separated from his family, locked up, and his family may have some reluctance to come and claim him because they, themselves, are undocumented. They worry they will be deported along with the child.

Think about sitting, as a 12-year-old little boy, alone, perhaps uncomfortable about communicating, in an adult facility for 1, 2, or 3 days and then imagine that for 1, 2, and 3 months. It is unacceptable.

While DHS disputes some of these numbers and is certainly doing what it can to make sure these children don't spend time in adult lockups, the law can be clear and we can create, with this amendment, a very clear line for all children, no matter how they are categorized, to make sure they do not spend time in adult facilities.

There are some very harsh realities for children who are locked up with adults. We know this because we, unfortunately, do this for documented children--for American citizens. Too often when children are arrested on the streets of this country, they get housed in adult criminal facilities within the American justice system. The National Prison Rate Elimination Commission Report found incarcerated minors are much more likely than adults to be sexually abused, especially when they are locked up with adults.

Sometimes, to try to prevent this from happening, these children are put in isolation in ICE detention facilities. That may protect the child from abuse, but the isolation itself, which can go on for days and days and days, causes serious psychological problems and sometimes, the data shows, can lead to suicide.

Think also of one particular case--Mariana, we will call her--of a 17-year-old who came from Guatemala. Mariana was brought through the Mexican desert by one of these coyotes. The journey was so difficult, the coyote just abandoned her, 17 years old, by herself in the middle of the desert. She managed to find her way to a highway and at that highway the Border Patrol picked her up and took her to one of the holding facilities and threw her in with a bunch of adults.

She was 17 years old, but the Border Patrol officers insisted she looked like she was in her twenties, and she didn't have her birth certificate with her. So the default was to put her in an adult facility and to not believe her. Finally, a couple of kind women in the facility intervened and allowed her to call her mother in Guatemala and get a copy of her birth certificate. Finally, after all this, she was transferred to HHS.

This shouldn't happen. With this amendment we can create a clearer line to make sure children such as Mariana, and the hundreds who are even younger than she, when they are picked up for whatever reason, are not housed with adults. The amendment would require DHS to determine the child's age when there is any notice or suspicion the detainee is a child under the age of 18. Then DHS would have to transfer or release the child, after determining the child's age, so children such as Mariana would not have to wait and struggle themselves to get out of an adult detention center.

My amendment also would make it clear the best interest of the child should be the main concern in transferring or releasing the child. Finally, building on some of the data reporting requirements that are in the underlying bill, my amendment would include a couple of additional categories that DHS is required to report so we know where all these children are, the conditions in which they are being housed, and whether they have a lawyer trying to look out for their interests.

I think this is an amendment that can get bipartisan support. No matter where we stand on issues of border enforcement or a pathway to citizenship, we all believe a child that has been detained by ICE, likely through no fault of their own, deserves to be treated like a child; that they deserve to be housed with other children, if they can't be returned to their family. This amendment would do that and I think would be another way, as we conclude the debate on one of the most important bills this body will take up this year, for Republicans and Democrats to come together around our common values.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum be equally divided.

Mr. President, today I wish to recognize a distinguished and outstanding citizen of the State of Connecticut, Charles J. ``Chuck'' Clarke, on the eve of his retirement from Travelers. In 1958, Chuck joined Travelers as a property casualty underwriter. He has lived and raised a family in the Hartford area since 1963, currently residing in Glastonbury. Chuck's responsibilities grew steadily during his long tenure with the company, as he moved up from the position of underwriter, to vice president, to senior vice president, to president of the Travelers Property Casualty Corp., and most recently to vice chairman of The Travelers Companies, Inc. Chuck is a leader in the insurance industry and a legend among his co-workers at Travelers. For 55 years, he has provided leadership, sound judgment, and a passion for the business of insurance that has benefited Travelers and the State of Connecticut.

I ask my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to this outstanding man. A leader in action and by the example he set for others. A humble man who always referred to himself as ``just an underwriter,'' when those who worked with him knew that he was much more. The State of Connecticut has been enriched by his service, and I truly wish him happiness and enjoyment after his long tenure.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, there is so much good flowing through the veins of this country. We are, by and large, a compassionate, just people. It hurts us deeply to see pain and suffering in places that don't enjoy the relative safety and security of America.

We are, more so than ever before, a powerful people. We are the one remaining superpower with a military that dwarfs all others and a record of throwing our weight around in all corners of the globe.

Mixed correctly, this combination of goodness and power can be a transformation. It can lighten the load of oppressed peoples. It can lift the disenfranchised. It can cure diseases.

There is one fatal trap that comes with these defining characteristics of 21st century America, a tripwire that has ensnared our Nation too many times in recent history. This is the belief that there are no limits to what this combination of goodness and power can achieve. In a word, that trap is hubris. I rise because I fear we are on the verge of falling into this trap once again.

In April, the Presiding Officer and I, as well as several other Members of the Senate and the House, visited the Kilis refugee camps of Turkey and Syria. These were reportedly the best of the refugee camps set up to shelter Syrian families fleeing the blood and carnage of that country's civil war. It is not a place I would have wanted to stay for another hour.

We met a girl who had half her face scarred by a Syrian rocket attack. I met a little orphan boy whose parents had been felled by the ruthless tactics of Bashar al-Asad. We were there for an afternoon, but we didn't need to spend more than 10 minutes in that place to be deeply moved by the case of the refugees.

Of course, Syria presents not only a humanitarian imperative, Syria is of immense strategic importance to the United States. The Asad regime has been a thorn in our side for years, and now his refusal to step down has created a bloody conflict that is in real time destabilizing a region that is critical to our national security interests. Even worse, the fight has drawn in Islamist groups affiliated with al-Qaida. A failure to root out their influence and reduce their presence threatens to hand them a new base of operation with which to plot attacks against Americans.

It is easy to see why American intervention is so tempting. It is easy to see why President Obama has chosen to act: a humanitarian crisis, a strategic interest, a uniquely American blend of goodness and power tells us we can, that we must try to make things better.

Here is the rub. It is not enough for there to be a will. There also has to be a way.

Today in Syria I do not believe there is that way. I do not believe this Congress should give the President the ability to escalate America's role in the Syrian conflict without a clear set of goals and a clear sense that we can achieve these goals.

Let's start with the odds attached to our first objective, overthrowing Bashar al-Asad. The unfortunate reality is that the momentum is with the Asad regime. With the help of Hezbollah and Qasem Soleimani, a senior Iranian Quds Force commander, Asad has driven the rebels from the key town of Qusayr, and his forces are

now battering the rebels' positions in Aleppo.

American-supplied automatic weapons are not going to be enough to change this reality. While antitank and anti-aircraft weapons, along with armored vehicles, could give the advantage to the Syrian opposition, this would, frankly, invite another more sinister problem. The Syrian opposition is not a monolithic force. It is an interlocking, sometimes interdependently operating, sometimes independently operating, force.

Our favored faction is the Free Syrian Army, but they are currently far from the most effective fighting force of the opposition.

Today the most effective fighting unit of the rebels is Jabat al- Nusra, an Islamist extremist group with demonstrable ties to al-Qaida. If we give heavy weaponry to the FSA, there is virtually no guarantee these weapons will not find their way to Jabat al-Nusra, a group that represents the very movement we are fighting across the globe.

In fact, we have been down this road before. In the eighties, we gave powerful weapons to the mujahedin in Afghanistan, freedom fighters that we supported in their war against the Soviets. Of course, as we all know, after kicking out the Soviets, those fighters later formed the foundation of the Taliban, providing a staging ground in Afghanistan for al-Qaida's plans against the United States.

Let's take our second objective. Even if we are successful in toppling Asad, it matters to us greatly who takes the reins of Syria next. I can't imagine we are getting into this fight just to turn the country over to the al-Nusra front or another Iranian- or Russian- backed regime. But if we do care about which regime comes next, and we should, then we need to admit we aren't intervening in Syria for the short run. We are in this for the long haul. Why? Because as we all learned in history class, these upheavals run a pretty predictable course. There is first the revolution and then there is the civil war.

Iran nor Russia will allow a U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army to simply stand up a new government. Certainly, Jabat al-Nusra and other extremist groups are not going to do the lion's share of the early fighting and then just walk away with no role in the new government.

Then we have to admit we are in the medium and in the long term deciding to arm one side of what promises to be a very complicated multifront heavily proxied civil war.

One may say there is still an interest to negotiate the politics and the military logistics of this second conflict. To that I would ask, what is the evidence we have ever gotten this tightrope right in the past? Recent history tells us America is pretty miserable at pulling the strings of Middle Eastern politics. In Afghanistan, after 10 years of heavy military presence, many experts think that when we leave, the place is going to look pretty much like it did before we got there. If we can't effect change with tens of thousands of troops, how are we going to do it in Syria with just guns and cash?

There is a risk that our assistance could actually make things worse. Would it not embolden the Iranians, the Russians or the extremists to fight harder against the new regime if they know they are backed by American money and arms?

As we saw in our disastrous occupation of Iraq, American presence often attracts extremists, not repels them. Our money and arms become bulletin board material for extremist groups around the globe. Why would we want to help al-Qaida's recruitment by putting a big red, white, and blue target on Damascus for years to come?

The bottom line is this: Not everywhere where there is an American interest is there also a reason for American military action. In Syria, with a badly splintered opposition, a potential nightmare follow-on civil war, I believe the odds are slim that U.S. military assistance will make the difference that the President believes it will make. And I worry that our presence could harm, not advance, our national security interests.

There is, thankfully, another way. Given the atrocities occurring within Syria and the potential for further destabilization in the region, the United States cannot and should not simply walk away from Syria. We should dramatically increase our humanitarian aid--both inside and outside Syria. We should help improve conditions at the refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, and help other nations bearing the burden of displaced persons, such as Lebanon and Iraq, deal with the influx of people. Put simply, we should concentrate our efforts on humanitarian help inside Syria and on making sure the conflict doesn't spill outside of Syria's borders.

At the very least, our Nation's role in Syria deserves a full debate in Congress before America commits itself to a course of action with such potentially huge consequences for our national interests. According to published press reports, the administration has indicated it does not intend to seek congressional approval before shipping arms to the Free Syrian Army--at a time, I would note with some irony, when the United States still officially recognizes the Asad government.

The Foreign Relations Committee has done its work here, and I commend Chairman Menendez. We have had hearings, we have held a debate and a vote on a resolution, but now that the President has announced these new steps, it is incumbent upon the full Senate to ask questions of the administration's short-term and long-term goals, and to debate the consequences of American intervention fully. This is serious business, and the American public deserves a full debate.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate the great work my colleagues, Senator Durbin, Senator Schumer, Senator Rubio, and others, have done on the immigration bill. I am going to be pleased this week to support their work. But I came to the floor, as I have most weeks since being sworn in, to talk about the issue that has dominated discussions in my State over the past 6 months; that is, the issue of gun violence.

Last week we commemorated the 6-month anniversary of the deadly shooting in Sandy Hook, CT, in which 20 6- and 7-year-olds, first graders, were gunned down, and 6 of their teachers, including as well the gunman and his mother. A lot of families came down here last week to continue to lobby both the House and the Senate.

The look on their face is a complicated look. It is clearly first and foremost the look of incalculable grief as these families still try to figure out how to live the first summer of their life without their loved one, whether it be a first grader who would have been heading into second grade or a mother or a teacher or a brother or sister.

But there is also, in combination with this grief, this look of shock, this look of shock that frankly gets worse every time they come down here as they try to understand how this place could stand by and do nothing, absolutely nothing, in the wake of the horror that Newtown, CT, has seen.

At least we have taken a vote on the Senate floor. Very much like the description that Senator Durbin gave earlier of his attempt several years ago to pass the DREAM Act, we got 54 votes on the floor of the Senate. Under our Draconian and backward rules, that was not enough to get the bill done. But the House has not even scheduled a debate on gun violence legislation. Families in Newtown, CT, cannot understand that. They cannot understand how Senators and House Members can look them in the eye, can hear the story of their grief and do nothing.

They certainly cannot understand it after, almost to the day of the 6-month anniversary, another mass shooting occurred, this time on the other side of the country. We almost know the story before we hear it: Mass shooting; four dead; others wounded. In Newtown, we did not even have to pick up the paper to know it was going to be an assault weapon; it was going to be high-capacity magazines, once again.

Every story is a little bit different. So this one was an assault weapon that was partially handmade. This time there was a lot of ammunition that may not have been used. But it is a story that gets repeated over and over: Lots of people dead, assault weapon used, high- capacity magazines.

So for those people who say we cannot do anything about it, we can. We can. Because we can keep these dangerous, military-style weapons in the hands of law enforcement and people who are hired and trained to shoot these weapons for a living. We can say that 8, 10, 15 rounds is enough, that you do not need 30 rounds in a magazine, you do not need 100 rounds.

We can do something about our mental health system, try to reach out and give some help to people who are struggling, but we do not. That is what is so hard for the families of Newtown to understand. What is additionally hard for them to understand is this number. Since those 28 people were killed in Newtown on December 14, 5,033 people have died at the hands of gun violence across this country. This chart is a couple of days old, so we can take down the 33 and add a handful more.

I hope people here have gotten to understand the stories of people such as Jack Pinto and Dylan Hockley, Grace McDonnell. I hope people here have come to know the stories of the 20 little boys and girls whom we will never know their greatness because they were cut down in their youth.

But I wish to tell some other stories, about the common, everyday, almost routine gun violence that for some reason we have decided to live with in this country. So I am coming down here every week to tell another handful of stories about victims. Today, instead of telling detailed stories about specific victims, I wish to talk about one weekend in New York City.

About 2 weeks ago, the weekend of May 31 to June 2 was kind of the first truly warm outdoor weekend we had in the Northeast. The police, in places such as New York City and Bridgeport and Hartford, have come to dread that first real hot summer weekend because the summers tend to come with a lot of guns and a lot of gun violence and a lot of shootings in places that maybe not a lot of Americans are used to, living in the safety and security of their neighborhoods.

Let me tell you what happened on that one weekend in one city, New York, NY. That weekend 25 people were shot over the course of 48 hours. Six people were killed over one single weekend in New York City. It started with Ivan Martinez, 21 years old, who was approached at about 3:25 a.m. on Friday night by a 20-year-old gunman and a woman in the Bronx. The gunman shot Martinez once in the head. Then he ran off with the woman.

Over the course of the weekend, 12 people were shot in Brooklyn, 8 people were shot in the Bronx, 4 in Queens. It went like this on Sunday night: At 12:10 a.m., a 21-year-old man was shot in the leg; at 2:36 a.m., a 22-year-old man was shot three times on East New York Avenue in Brooklyn; about an hour later at 3:30, a 20-year-old man was shot in the leg at Bedford Park in the Bronx; at 4:12 a.m. that morning, a 35- year-old man brought himself to Jamaica Hospital with a gunshot wound; at 11:40 a.m., a 15-year-old was shot in the leg and the back--at 11:40 a.m., middle of the day on Sunday, a 15-year-old shot in the leg and the back. At about 3:25, a gunman opened fire at the corner of Bedford and Lenox at Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.

The carnage in one weekend barely made news across this country. Most people would not know it if I did not come down to the Senate floor and tell this story. That is what we have come to accept in this country. This represents a dramatic drop in gun violence in New York City. So far we have had 440 shootings in New York City. That is a 23-percent reduction from last year. This has been a good year in New York City, and 440 people have been shot.

We do nothing about it. We cannot even bring ourselves to say criminals should not have guns, that gun trafficking, done out of the back of vans on the side streets of the Bronx and Brooklyn and Queens should be a crime. We cannot even do that on the floor of the Senate.

That weekend, maybe the most tragic shooting was one that didn't end up in a death, and that was the shooting of a little girl named Tayloni Mazyck.

Three men opened fire in a wild episode that weekend in Brooklyn. People said it sounded as though it was the 4th of July, so many gunshots were going off in this neighborhood. It was likely gang activity, but the consequence of the shooting wasn't a gang member, it was a little 11-year-old girl who was struck through her neck. The bullet lodged in her spine. Although Tayloni lived, she will never walk again.

Listen, I grieve every single morning and every single night for the 20 little girls and boys who died in Newtown, CT. If that is what has prompted us to

finally have a serious discussion here on the floor of the House and the Senate about gun violence reform, then so be it.

This is an average summer weekend in New York, with a little girl getting paralyzed and shootings throughout Saturday and Sunday night. People are getting shot in the middle of broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon. We can do something about it. We don't have the power to eliminate gun violence, we can't make bad people stop doing bad things, but we can pass commonsense laws such as background checks to check if criminals are getting guns or people with serious, dangerous mental illness. We can increase the resources of social workers and psychologists to try to reach some of these kids to try to teach them other ways of dealing with their anger than going in and reaching for a gun. We can lock up anybody who takes a bunch of guns from a gun show, throws them into a sack and sells them to criminals on the streets of New York, Bridgeport, Los Angeles, or Chicago.

We are not helpless. We have power in this place to do something about the mass shootings in Newtown, the mass shootings in Santa Monica, and the 5,033 people who have died across this country since December 14, in the 6 months since. It is not too late. We have a chance to come back to this floor after immigration, perhaps after the summer, let cooler heads prevail and allow this body to do something about the scourge of gun violence that so far this place has had no answer for. It causes the families of Newtown and the families of these victims to leave this place shaking their heads.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I join my colleague from Connecticut on the floor of the Senate to commemorate a sad day; 6 months since the shootings in Newtown took the lives of 20 6- and 7-year-olds and 6 of the teachers charged with protecting them. I know you share in our sadness, Madam President, since it was not too long afterwards that your State went through a tragedy of smaller and bigger proportions.

We have to wonder, 6 months later, after these families, the brothers and the sisters and the moms and the dads of these victims coming down to the Senate, over and over again, including this week, looking Senator after Senator, Congressman after Congressman, in the eye and asking for this place to learn something from this tragedy--we wonder how 6 months later we have done nothing. We wonder how, if 20 little kids dying at the hands of a mad man with a gun over the course of 5 or 10 minutes doesn't move this place to action, what would? What visit to your office, what message, what story, what set of facts could possibly make this place change the laws that have allowed for these slaughters--plural--over and over again to happen?

It is 6 months later and we have done nothing. At least on the Senate floor we raised the bill, we put it on for debate, we got 55 votes, and the rules prevented us from getting it passed. The House down the hall has done absolutely nothing. They have not lifted a finger to move legislation for 6 months, 6 months later, and no answer to these families.

I was there with Senator Blumenthal that afternoon in that firehouse. Those are moments I would, a lot of days, love to have never lived-- things I did not need to see. But it changed my life and committed me to action.

It commands us to understand that the most shallow argument that has been posed, I would argue the most

backward argument that has been posed over the last 6 months, is that, yes, these terrible things happen--the most terrible of them we are marking the 6-month anniversary of--but there is nothing we could do here that would change that; that very bad things are going to happen to good people, to good first grade students, but that nothing here is going to truly change any of that.

That is just flat wrong. It should not be every 6 months that we come to the floor to try to rebut that argument. It should be every day. Because in Columbine, the guns that were bought to slaughter those high school students were bought outside of the background check system-- intentionally so, because the person who bought them knew if they went into a legitimate gun store they would not be able to purchase the guns that were being requested, so they went to a gun show, around the background check system.

We know different laws would change things because in Aurora the shooter went in with a 100-round drum and the shooting stopped and people escaped, including a couple of my constituents, because the gun jammed. They had trouble switching these massive ammunition clips.

In Newtown, we know the power of the gun that was used. These assault weapons are all over the place today. They have become commonplace. But it does not belie the fact that they still have a power to kill that few other guns do, so much so that when Lanza walked into that school that day, fired over 150 rounds, shot 20 kids, not a single one of them survived. Every kid he shot died, in part because of the power of that gun. That same day a very sick man walked into a school in China, armed with a weapon, attacked over 20 children and every single one of them lived. That guy had a knife.

Assault weapons, if we continue to allow them to ripple throughout our streets, lead to mass slaughters. High-capacity ammunition clips, when somebody chooses to engage in one of these massacres, allow more people to be killed. Our failure, over and over again, to pass comprehensive background checks is unacceptable, given the number of criminals and the number of people with severe mental illness who are still allowed to get guns over the Internet or in gun shows; 6 months and we have done nothing.

But I stand here, frankly, more optimistic about human nature than I was 6 months ago, not less optimistic. I might be less optimistic about this place and about the Congress, but I am more optimistic about the indomitable human spirit than I was when this started out.

Senator Blumenthal said it best. That 10 minutes of grievous violence, mental illness masquerading as evil inside that school, was essentially enveloped by the millions of acts of humanity that just flowed forth from Newtown, from Connecticut, from all over the country, whether it was the heroism of those teachers, whether it was the firefighters, the volunteer fighters who stayed at that firehouse for days or weeks on end with no pay or just the thousands of gifts--teddy bears, small tokens of appreciation of the community that came from all over the country.

People are good. They truly are. Despite what that young man did, it reaffirmed my faith in who we are.

Last Friday night, the Sandy Hook Fire Department had their big annual fundraiser. Some people wondered whether they would do it. First of all, they said they were going to do it because they were not going to start changing the way they did things and, second, they needed the money because they expended a lot of effort and equipment and resources in responding to this tragedy. On Friday we had an absolute deluge in New England. It was raining cats and dogs all day. There was no reason they should have gone forward on Friday night with that lobster bake at the Sandy Hook firehouse, but they decided to put it on, and I went, despite thinking there were going to be about six people inside that firehouse. It was packed, jammed full of people, not just from Newtown but from all over New England who came down on a torrentially raining evening to show their support for those firefighters, for that community, and for those families. That is what defines Newtown.

Six months later, we know the headlines still read about the 26 kids and adults who lost their lives there. But what we know Newtown to be today is a place full of love, full of compassion, and--though not maybe today yet--a place that will, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years down the line be defined by resiliency.

I wish we weren't down here commemorating 6 months. I wish we weren't down here commemorating nothing having been done over the course of 6 months. But we are not going away. We are not giving up. The families who were down here this week didn't turn into advocates for 4 months, they turned into advocates for 40 years, and they will be back again and again until we have an answer for these mass tragedies and for the 5,033 people who have died at the hands of guns since December 14--6 months ago.

I yield back the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, first let me congratulate Senator Flake on his maiden speech. It was very thoughtful and I think a challenge to this body to get back to the work it has been given by the American people.

I come to the floor to once again talk about the 4,670 victims of gun violence we have seen across this country since December 14.

December 14 is a date that everyone in Connecticut knows but, as time goes by, maybe fades from the memories of other Americans. That is the day in which a deranged young man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and gunned down 20 6- and 7-year-olds, in addition to 6 teachers and education professionals who were charged with taking care of those kids. That is a day none of us will ever forget.

We came to the floor of the Senate in the weeks and months that followed with the intention of passing legislation that would make sure we did everything within our power to assure that another Sandy Hook didn't happen somewhere else in this country. But we also were endeavoring to do something about the all too routine gun violence that has plagued our cities and our suburbs--frankly, almost every community in this country.

This is a stunning number. Since December 14 of last year, in just over 6 months, 4,670 people have died from gun violence, and during that time the Senate and the House of Representatives have done nothing to try to change that reality. I will at least give this body credit; we debated a bill in the Judiciary Committee and we brought it to the Senate floor. Because of the rules of this place, unfortunately, 55 votes was not enough to get a gun violence package passed that would have imposed criminal background checks on thousands of gun purchases that now operate outside that system that would have made it a Federal crime to illegally traffic in guns, that would have placed more resources in the hands of mental health professionals. At least in the Senate we tried to do it. The House, on the other hand, has taken no steps to try to cut down on the 4,670 deaths all across this country just in the last 6 months.

What I have tried to do every week since the failure of that bill is to come down to the floor of the Senate. Instead of talking over and over about the policy implications or the different ways and paths we can get to a gun violence package, instead, I think it is important to talk about the victims. Who are these 4,670 people? Because their stories should be the ones that move this place to action.

One such story as that of Matthew Tarto, age 16, who died just a few days ago, May 24. He was killed implausibly by his father. His 52-year- old father killed his 16-year-old son in an apparent murder-suicide.

Matthew was an amazing young man. He was a backup offensive lineman for his high school, John Curtis Christian School. He was a superior track and field athlete. He was an honor roll student. His friends called him a happy-go-lucky kid. They said he always had a smile. His football coach said:

This kind of thing is unbelievable, that something like

this could happen. The only way we know how to get through

this is with deep prayer. I just feel so heartbroken, not

only for his family but for the kids, his friends and his

teammates.

We talk a lot about the fact that it is important to change gun laws. There are others who say that all of our emphasis should be on early intervention; that our mental health system should be the sole focus of this place so we can stop these murders before they happen. But as we know, often we can't see these things coming.

The case of Matthew Tarto is such an illustration. Neighbors said they never saw any signs of trouble from this household. In fact, one neighbor remembers seeing the father and the son taking walks together through the neighborhood just days and weeks before this happened.

Matthew was an amazing guy: honor roll student, great athlete, friendly, happy-go-lucky kid, but in an awful murder-suicide, he was taken from us, as well as his father.

Another 16-year-old 3 days beforehand was gunned down in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago. Angel Cano was killed with a gunshot wound to the head. He was pronounced dead on the scene, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office.

His father had brought his oldest son to Chicago from Mexico in 2004 in search of a better life. His father said his son just desperately wanted to be someone. His son, at 16 years old, had dreams of becoming a singer or a professional soccer player. He was always down at the local soccer fields playing soccer, endlessly, teaching other young kids how to be better soccer players. At 16, he still had this dream. Yet apparently on the way back from the soccer fields that evening, he was gunned down. The police have said it may be gang related, but the family says that Angel was never, ever affiliated with any gangs.

Then, lastly, the story of Jamica Woods. Ms. Woods was 37 years old. The night before she died, on May 20, her boyfriend uploaded pictures onto his Facebook page of a shotgun, along with pictures of a shotgun shell, that he had recently bought at Walmart. He uploaded the pictures because he had already set about a plan to kill his girlfriend the next night.

According to police, Ms. Woods had taken out an emergency protective order against her boyfriend last December, but she had never gone about the process of finalizing it. She was in the process of kicking her boyfriend out when she got killed. Had she just taken a few more steps, it is possible he would have never been able to buy that gun in the first place. If she had taken those steps to fill out a protective order and if that order had been filed and if the Walmart had run a background check and found that protective order, it is possible she would still be alive today.

Frankly, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women across this country who are alive today because of that law--because of that law that came so very close to saving Jamica Woods: a protective order being filed due to domestic violence, a gun purchase being stopped because of that order.

One of the reasons we have that law on the books today is the advocacy of Senator Frank Lautenberg. Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died this week, made it his life's cause to try to make the streets of his State of New Jersey safer. He was advocating right up until his final days on the floor of this Chamber to enact a ban on high-capacity magazines such as the one that killed 20 little 6- and 7-year-olds in Connecticut.

But he was successful in passing through this Chamber a piece of legislation that keeps guns out of the hands of people who have been convicted of domestic violence. It is a law that has worked. It is a law that has saved the

lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women all across this country. It is a reminder that this place can do something about the 4,670 people who have died since Newtown due to gun violence.

Frank Lautenberg knew this place had the power to save lives by enacting commonsense gun violence legislation--in his case, just a simple rule that if someone has been convicted of domestic violence, maybe they shouldn't get their hands on a gun.

Senator Lautenberg's work is a reminder that whether it is next month, later this year or next year, we still have work to do to try to honor the memories of the thousands of victims of gun violence all across this country.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I would like to thank the chairwoman of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry for her great work in bringing a bill to the floor today that does a lot of justice for families in Connecticut and across the country who are fighting every single day to put food on the table for their loved ones.

The fact is, although people have an impression that our State is a wealthy one, we have a handful of the poorest cities in the country, and we have tens of thousands of people who have been ravaged by this economy. These nutrition programs funded in the underlying bill are an absolute lifeline for families who have been, largely temporarily, hit straight across the brow by this devastating recession.

In Connecticut, though, for some people who don't know our State, it is hard to imagine that 11 percent of the population is today receiving SNAP benefits. One out of every ten people--one out of every ten families in Connecticut--right now relies on food stamps to either pay for their food in whole or in part. That is over 400,000 people in Connecticut.

These are people such as the 87-year-old retiree from Southbury, CT, who lives in a small, very reasonable condo. She lives on about $1,100 a month. She has gone through a $100,000 home equity line of credit, but her condo fees and her electric bill--because she lives in a little condo that is heated by electricity alone--basically eat up the entirety of her budget. She couldn't eat without foods stamps. She couldn't eat without these benefits. They keep her alive, as they do for millions of seniors all across this country.

On the other end of the age spectrum is another Southbury resident. Southbury, frankly--Connecticut, in general--doesn't have a reputation as being a town in need, but they have hundreds of SNAP recipients, just as in every town across Connecticut. Mrs. Smith is an unemployed mother. She made a six-figure salary for decades. When her husband became disabled, she was the sole breadwinner for her family. The recession hit her, just as it has hit hundreds of thousands of others across the country, and she lost her job. It is now the $300 she gets per month in SNAP benefits that allows her to feed her kids.

She is out there doing everything we ask. She is looking for a job. She is trying to get back to work, but she has lost her unemployment benefits. They have been exhausted, and now she needs this money in order to live.

The fact is 61 percent of all SNAP participants are families with children, and 33 percent of all SNAP recipients are families with elderly or disabled members in their families. These are the most vulnerable in our country, and they need a strong SNAP program in this bill.

I am one of a handful of Senators who cast a vote yesterday to add some money back, but the fact is the real comparison is not the difference between the underlying bill and that amendment. The real comparison is between the bill we are debating now and the budget pending before the House of Representatives today.

The House Republican budget would absolutely devastate, eviscerate, obliterate the Food Stamp Program--basically rescinding this Nation's longstanding commitment to making sure kids have enough to eat when their families are out of work or have hit hard times.

One of the reasons Republicans in the House in particular have come so hard, so consistently against foods stamps is because they categorize it as an overly generous handout to people who don't need it. Well, this week I am testing that theory. This week, because we are debating this bill on the floor of the Senate, I decided to see what it would be like to live on the average food stamp benefit for people in my State of Connecticut.

That average benefit in Connecticut is about $4.80 a day. I am finding out--now 3 days into this--even on this budget for just a week, it is pretty hard to eat enough to just not be hungry, never mind eating healthy foods. I went to the grocery store to buy some fruit and vegetables for the week and could barely find anything that fit within that budget. I was able to buy some bananas for 69 cents a pound. I wanted to get some peanut butter, but the only kind of peanut butter I could get was the kind loaded with preservatives because the stuff that is better for you costs a lot more.

Over and over again, people who are right now on food stamps are going hungry, never mind the kind of hunger they would be confronted with if we further cut this program. They have to make choices every day when feeding their kids: Do I give them enough calories so they will go without hunger pains for the day or do I try to get them a smaller amount of food that is maybe a bit better for them? That is what these families have to think about every single day.

I am not suggesting doing this budget for a week allows me to walk more than a few steps in their shoes, but it is an education on how little one gets out of this benefit today, and it is a caution for this body to stand up to the House of Representatives, if the farm bill gets to conference, to make sure these cuts don't get any worse.

The stories of the senior citizen and the unemployed mother in Southbury, CT, are two of millions of stories all across this country. These are people who have paid their dues, who are playing by the rules, but who just need a little help from us in a bad economy. By no means is this program an overly luxurious handout.

Let me tell you, from a very brief anecdotal experience, it is pretty hard to go without hunger on $4.80 a day, never mind trying to provide a healthy meal for your kids.

I just wanted to come to the floor this evening and applaud the efforts of our colleagues who are trying to push through a bill that will get to conference so we can be in a strong position to defend the nutrition titles of this bill which are keeping people--kids, the disabled, and the elderly--alive today.

There are those of us who would have liked to have seen even more support in this bill for nutrition programs. We failed in that attempt earlier this week, but we are united in the fact that a farm bill that comes out of the House and the Senate and goes to the President's desk has to keep the promise we have made to generations of kids across this country--we are going to make sure you have enough to eat.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, it has now been almost 6 months since the horrible shooting in my State of Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary where 20 6- and 7-year-old children lost their lives, and another 6 adults, who were protecting them, perished as well.

We all believed we were going to do something about it here on the floor of the Senate. We thought we were going to come to our senses and finally realize it is in part the laws of this Nation that allow for this kind of senseless killing, whether it be in mass numbers in places such as Sandy Hook or Aurora or Tucson or at the Sikh temple in the State of the Presiding Officer or in just the everyday, average gun violence that has become background noise to this Nation.

It is not just about bad people doing bad things; it is also about the laws of this Nation that have allowed for this to happen because we don't have background checks on every gun purchase so that criminals do not get guns. We still allow for dangerous military-style weapons, such as the AR-15 and 100-round drums of ammunition to be carried on the streets of this country. We don't even have a Federal law saying it is illegal to traffic in guns, taking them out of gun shows and gun stores and then going out and selling them on the streets as straw purchasers to people who shouldn't have bought them in the first place. We had 55 votes in the Senate to do something about that, but we didn't have 60 votes, which is the law of the land here these days.

I have promised to come down here every week and do something rather simple, which is to tell the stories of the dozens of people who are killed every single day by guns, because it is their stories that will eventually move this place to action. I know this place has enough empathy, enough compassion to not be so callous as to allow month after month to go by and do nothing about the 4,243 people, as of today, since Newtown who have died in this country at the hands of gun violence.

Let me cite that number again. Since the massacre at Sandy Hook, where 28 people died, including the gunman and his mother, 4,243 people have died due to gun violence.

I want to spend the next couple of minutes before we get back to the debate on these nominations telling the stories of a few of these people.

On May 15, 2013, about a week ago, five different people were shot in Detroit. Halfway through May and there have been 73 shootings in Detroit, MI. Ten people have been killed, with 8 of the shooting victims being 17 years old or younger.

On that day, May 15, five people were shot. A 24-year-old man opened fire

after a pretty simple verbal altercation on the street. What happened, apparently, was that one parent of one child told the other kids to go home for some reason. Something had happened at their house. That youth returned to the house with some of his family members, including the 24-year-old man who got so upset over this simple altercation about a mom asking some kids to leave her house that he opened fire, killing Allmeter Walls and wounding the others.

It was a pretty bloody 24-hour period in Detroit, where 12 people were shot on that day from 6 a.m. on Wednesday until 6 a.m. on Thursday. There were 73 shootings halfway through May in 1 city alone.

On May 15 as well, Newark police said that an 18-year-old high school student, a senior, at Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ, was killed. He had signed himself out of school because he wasn't feeling well, and he was shot.

Councilman Ras Baraka, who is also the principal of another high school, said: ``We are outgunned and outmanned here on the street.'' There are so many guns on the streets of Newark that principals and law enforcement feel outgunned and outmanned.

Of the young student who was killed, one of his friends said: ``He was a good kid. When he was little, we used to play pool and video games around here.''

In Bridgeport, CT, just before sunrise on Mother's Day, police found 22-year-old Robert Rivera dead in his car from perhaps a dozen bullet wounds. ``He was one in a million,'' a friend said. ``No one will ever be like him.'' Chino was his nickname. He was a good kid. His friend said, ``The good die young here.'' He was 22 years old and was killed in a spray of bullets in his car in Bridgeport, CT.

These are the ones we don't hear that much about because they are in the local papers. But we know there are also these mass killings as well, and before I yield the floor, I want to talk about a handful of victims from the State of the Presiding Officer who were killed at a Sikh temple when someone walked in, in August 2012, and opened fire, because people should know who these victims are as well. There are victims of everyday gun violence, but we have had a string of mass shootings in this country which will not end until we do something about it.

Paramjit Kaur lived for her children. She spent 11 hours a day, 6 days a week in production at a medical devices firm in order to provide for her children. She was praying inside the temple when she learned of the active shooter outside the temple. Instead of being afraid, she showed great courage, bowed down and prayed one last time before she was shot.

Satwant Singh Kaleka was the founder and president of that Sikh temple. He worked 18 hours a day at his family's gas station to provide for his family. His hard work as a small businessman paid off and he acquired eight stations by the end of his career. His attempts to thwart the gunman with a small dull knife gave the group of women, including his mother, a chance to escape.

Suveg Singh Khattra, a former dairy farmer in northern India, came to the United States for a better life. He was a humble and loving man who was a constant presence at the temple. He was a man of habit, waking every morning at 4:30 a.m. to watch a live broadcast from India and engage in readings from the holy book. He died at 84.

Prakash Singh was a pious man with a great sense of humor. He stayed in the priest quarters in the temple, and was excited about the fact he was about to get an apartment outside the temple. They were due to move into their new home at the end of August, a few weeks after he was killed.

Then the two brothers, Ranjit and Sita Singh. They were brothers and Sikh priests who left their families behind to move to Oak Creek for a better life. Ranjit was the more outgoing of the two. His responsibility was to take care of every visitor who came through those doors. But his younger brother Sita was just as fun loving and would wake up every morning at 5 a.m. to read the Sikh holy book. His specialty was to make sure everyone who walked into that temple had enough to eat.

All perished at that Sikh temple. These things are going to happen again. There is going to be another mass atrocity. And there will continue to be these shootings in Detroit and Bridgeport and Newark if we don't do something about it on this floor. I know we have important business, whether it be the farm bill this week or our hopeful attempt at passing immigration reform, but as soon as that is done, hopefully, we will get to come back to this issue of gun violence, because if we don't these everyday urban stories will mount and there will be another mass shooting somewhere across this country.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, on December 14 of last year the world watched in horror as we received news that in Sandy Hook, CT, 20 6- and 7-year-olds as well as 6 of their teachers and professionals who were charged with caring for them were killed at the hands of a gunman wielding a semi-automatic rifle armed with multiple 30-round clips. Twenty-six people died in that school that day, and the world has not been the same since.

The State of Connecticut, as well as many other States, including New York and Colorado, passed some of the strongest gun laws in trying to bring some common sense to our gun laws in a generation. However, this body, in the days since Sandy Hook, has done nothing.

We debated a bill which was supported by 90 percent of Americans that would extend background checks to most all gun sales in this country so we could make sure criminals and people with serious mental illness didn't have their hands on guns. Even though the measure received 55 votes here in the Senate, it didn't become a law because of a strange rule we have requiring 60 votes for most everything that comes through this place.

While everything we have done here has been driven by the memory of what happened to those 20 beautiful little first-graders in our State, the fact is 28 people died that day--including the gunman and his mother--but that is still less than those who die every day in this country at the hands of gun violence.

The everyday deaths that occur in our cities and suburbs throughout our country have become like raindrops in this Nation. We have become callously used to the fact that people die due to guns in our country at a greater rate than almost anywhere else in the world.

I intend to come down to this floor week after week until we get our act together and do what the American public wants us to do, which is to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and try to get the most dangerous weapons back into the hands of law enforcement and the military. I am going to come down here week after week and tell the simple stories of the dozens of people who lose their lives every day due to gun violence.

Since December 14--that awful, terrible day--3,966 people have died at the hands of a gun. By the end of today--depending on how tonight goes across this country--that number could be 4,000. We are averaging about 30 a day all across this country.

While people have gotten to know the people in Sandy Hook due to some amazing reporting that has taken place, people don't know the stories of the people who die every day. So I am going to come down here every week and tell the stories of those people to give voice to these victims.

First I will focus on Hartford, CT, where a few days ago--May 8-- Felix Jesus III was killed when he was simply going to sell a Samsung electric tablet to someone who agreed to buy it over craigslist. His father said this guy kept calling and calling. The guy arranged for my son to meet him, and he said he would be right back.

At around 8 p.m. on May 8, police received a 911 call, and they found him dead in his car suffering from a single gunshot wound.

His father said:

They took my son, my only son. Now his kids are left alone

with nobody except for us, that's just not right.

Felix had two sons, a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old. He was going to sell a tablet computer, and he was shot in the head and died, leaving a 1-year-old and 2-year-old behind. He was doing everything he was supposed to do. He graduated from high school, and he worked at a local hotel. He was engaged to be married and left behind two children.

The day before, on May 7, out in northern California, a 45-year-old man fatally shot his wife and their two young daughters in their home, and he got away. His wife Sandy and their two daughters, Shelby, who was 8, and Shasta, who was 4, had been shot multiple times.

There had been calls out to the home for domestic disturbances in the recent weeks. The kids were pulled out of school. Something was clearly going on in that house. This guy was a dangerous guy. In 2002 he had been charged with distribution of drugs, felony possession of a firearm, and possessing a machine gun, and he pleaded guilty. He had been in prison for 10 months.

We are still trying to figure out, only about a week later, if this guy was supposed to have weapons in the first place. We know, even if he was banned from buying weapons, it would not have been that hard for him to get them. We cannot say for certain how he came across the weapons that killed his wife and two kids. Even if he was, as a criminal, on one of these lists, it would not have been that hard for him to simply go to a local gun show or go on the Internet and buy a weapon. If he went either of those routes, according to current law, it is likely he never would have been checked to see if he was a criminal.

Sandy, 34, Shelby, 8, and Shasta, 4, were killed on May 7.

Steven Jones was killed that same day. He was a lifelong resident of Charlestown, MA. He was 21 years old. His friends said everybody loved him. No one would ever expect something like this to happen to him. He wasn't in the streets. He was into sports and partying. This was a shock. Steven Jones was breaking up a fight when a gun went off, and he was killed. His uncle said he was the definition of a good kid. He was there trying to break up a fight, and he ended up getting shot. He was 21 years old.

By now everybody knows what happened over the weekend in New Orleans. A gunman opened fire on people who were marching in a neighborhood Mother's Day parade. The FBI described it as a flareup of street violence which resulted in 19 people being wounded, 10 men, 7 women, a boy, and a girl. The children were both 10 years old. Luckily they were just grazed by the bullets, and they were reported to be in good condition.

There are so many weapons on our streets today, and most of them are illegal. These shootings happen day in and day out. Mostly it is not the same situation as what happened in New Orleans. Mostly it is not 19 people being shot at a parade. Mostly it is just one-on-one gun violence, but we refuse to do anything about it.

Since the tragedy in Newtown, CT, 3,966 have died from guns, and our response is nothing. It was awful enough to read about the violence at that Mother's Day parade, but I want everybody to know what kind of Mother's Day Nicole Hockley, the mother of Dylan, had on Sunday, what kind of Mother's Day it was for Nelba Marquez-Greene, the mother of Ana, what kind of Mother's Day Francine Wheeler had without her son Ben or Jackie Barden had without her son Daniel.

As awful as it was to think of 19 people being shot in New Orleans at a Mother's Day parade, it was just as horrifying to read an op-ed these four mothers submitted yesterday on Mother's Day. They wrote:

The gravity of the moment that comes with holding your

child for the first time--looking into their eyes, rocking

them to sleep, allowing their breath to fill your heart,

marveling at how nature has taken a part of you and a part of

your husband to create someone uniquely beautiful--the

seriousness of that moment is only eclipsed by the moment you

discover that your little boy or little girl is forever gone,

just a few hours after watching them wave at you from the

school bus window.

These mothers said:

We are constantly asked, ``How do you go on?'' The answer

lies in the promise we made to our children when they were

born, and perhaps more important, the promise we made when

they were so senselessly taken from us.

That promise for those four mothers is to do something and try to make sure that never ever happens again. The promise they made was bigger than that. They are trying to do something for the 4,000 families who have lost sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, husbands, and wives since Sandy Hook happened.

Nicole, Nelba, Francine, and Jackie came to Washington, DC, day after day, week after week, and pleaded with this place to do something. They were joined over that period of time by hundreds of other family members also representing the 3,966 families who have been grieving since then.

There has been some level of optimism that we have the capacity here to revisit this legislation; that sometime later this year we can take another shot at trying to make sure another Sandy Hook doesn't happen. We can take another moment to reflect on whether it is OK that thousands of criminals can go onto the Internet or walk into a gun show and get a gun without ever having to show they have the legal capacity to do that. I hope that is the case.

As a means to getting people to that moment where we can try to have some coming together on behalf of all of these families, I encourage everybody to read this op-ed written by Nicole and Nelba and Francine and Jackie. It is called ``Keeping A Mother's Promise.'' Because if, after reading this, people in this Chamber can look these mothers in the eye and say that in the wake of Sandy Hook and in the wake of 4,000 other deaths since then, our answer in the Senate is to do nothing, then what on Earth are we here for?

Mr. President, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.