Floor Statements

Mr. President, today, I introduced the Protect American Families from Unnecessary Registration and Deportation Act of 2017, or the Protect American Families Act. This critical bill would advance civil and human rights by ensuring we protect American immigrants from being wrongfully targeted by the Federal Government because of who they are or how they worship. I thank Senators Elizabeth Warren, Brian Schatz, Ed Markey, Patty Murray, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Jeff Merkley, Mazie Hirono, and Ron Wyden for joining me on this important legislation.

Enshrined in the Constitution are the ideas that all people are free to practice the religion of their choice and that we will not discriminate because of your faith or national origin. Creating a Federal immigration program that requires people to register their status with the Federal Government on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, national origin, or citizenship is contrary to those values. Because the United States is the world's beacon of democracy, we must lead by example and live the values we preach.

Yet, in troubling times we have not always stayed true to our values. During World War II, soon after Imperial Japan attacked United States Naval Base Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. That order authorized the Secretary of War to designate particular areas as military zones, which allowed for the removal of Japanese Americans from certain parts of the United States. Subsequently, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to internment camps.

Similarly, in 2002, the year following the tragic terrorist attacks on September 11, the Federal Government created the National Security Entry-Exist Registration System, NSEERS. This Federal program required non-citizen visa holders from certain countries to register with the Federal Government. The registration process included fingerprinting, photographs, and interrogation. Once an individual registered, NSEERS required the person to regularly check in with immigration officials. Finally, NSEERS monitored people who registered with the program to ensure that no one remained in the country longer than the law permitted them.

Inconsistent with the American values of religious freedom and nondiscrimination, the NSEERS program wrongly targeted males over 16 years old from the following countries: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and North Korea. Thus, 24 out of the 25 countries listed in the NSEERS program were Arab and Muslim countries. This was another moment in our nation's history where our leaders succumbed to the politics of

fear and adopted a program that tore at the very fabric of our country.

Immigration-registry programs do not make the public more safe. The purpose of NSEERS was to identify and capture terrorists. Yet, despite registering over 83,000 people, the program yielded zero terrorism convictions. Without proof of a single terrorist related conviction, the NSEERS program did not do its job of keeping the homeland safe.

But immigration-registry programs do result in discrimination. The fact that NSEERS led to the forced registry, interrogation, and deportations of immigrants from predominantly Muslim or Arab countries is proof that broadly defined enforcement programs often result in racial and religious profiling. That is why the United Nations and major American civil rights groups condemned NSEERS for unfairly singling out Muslims. By targeting Muslims, NSEERS sent the wrong message that America does not welcome immigrants from certain lands.

While the Obama administration dismantled the NSEERS program, this alone will not prevent the incoming administration from attempting to follow through on its threats to create a registry based on religion or national origin. On the campaign trail President-elect Trump called for a ``total and complete shutdown'' of Muslim immigrants entering the United States. Additionally, he has called for ``extreme vetting'' of immigrants reminiscent of NSEERS. It is incumbent upon congressional leaders to ensure that the United States does not sacrifice its values in the face of fear.

Today, I introduce the Protect American Families Act to ensure that America protects the rights and liberties of American immigrants from overly broad, ineffective, and discriminatory registry programs. This bill would prohibit the Federal Government from requiring noncitizens to register or check in with the Federal Government simply because of their religion, race, ethnicity, age, gender, national origin, nationality, or citizenship. Banning the creation of a discriminatory registration program is not only consistent with our democratic values, but it allows law enforcement to focus resources on the real threats to our safety.

The bill has commonsense exemptions. Data collection is critical in our fight against terrorists, and the bill allows the government to collect routine data on the entry and exit of noncitizens. The bill would also protect important immigration programs like Temporary Protected Status, Deferred Enforced Departure, the Visa Waiver Program, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This provision makes clear that legitimate Federal programs that confer immigration benefits are not prohibited by the ban on enforcement immigration programs that target immigrants and other vulnerable Americans.

In his First Inaugural Address, President Roosevelt said that ``the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'' Unfortunately, he failed to live up to that statement when he issued Executive Order 9066. But we have a chance to fulfill that vision. We have a chance to stand up against fear and stay true to our American values in the face of hardship. I am proud to introduce the Protect American Families Act today, and I urge my colleagues to support its speedy passage through the Senate.

Mr. President, today, I introduced the Protect American Families from Unnecessary Registration and Deportation Act of 2017, or the Protect American Families Act. This critical bill would advance civil and human rights by ensuring we protect American immigrants from being wrongfully targeted by the Federal Government because of who they are or how they worship. I thank Senators Elizabeth Warren, Brian Schatz, Ed Markey, Patty Murray, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Jeff Merkley, Mazie Hirono, and Ron Wyden for joining me on this important legislation.

Enshrined in the Constitution are the ideas that all people are free to practice the religion of their choice and that we will not discriminate because of your faith or national origin. Creating a Federal immigration program that requires people to register their status with the Federal Government on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, national origin, or citizenship is contrary to those values. Because the United States is the world's beacon of democracy, we must lead by example and live the values we preach.

Yet, in troubling times we have not always stayed true to our values. During World War II, soon after Imperial Japan attacked United States Naval Base Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. That order authorized the Secretary of War to designate particular areas as military zones, which allowed for the removal of Japanese Americans from certain parts of the United States. Subsequently, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to internment camps.

Similarly, in 2002, the year following the tragic terrorist attacks on September 11, the Federal Government created the National Security Entry-Exist Registration System, NSEERS. This Federal program required non-citizen visa holders from certain countries to register with the Federal Government. The registration process included fingerprinting, photographs, and interrogation. Once an individual registered, NSEERS required the person to regularly check in with immigration officials. Finally, NSEERS monitored people who registered with the program to ensure that no one remained in the country longer than the law permitted them.

Inconsistent with the American values of religious freedom and nondiscrimination, the NSEERS program wrongly targeted males over 16 years old from the following countries: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and North Korea. Thus, 24 out of the 25 countries listed in the NSEERS program were Arab and Muslim countries. This was another moment in our nation's history where our leaders succumbed to the politics of

fear and adopted a program that tore at the very fabric of our country.

Immigration-registry programs do not make the public more safe. The purpose of NSEERS was to identify and capture terrorists. Yet, despite registering over 83,000 people, the program yielded zero terrorism convictions. Without proof of a single terrorist related conviction, the NSEERS program did not do its job of keeping the homeland safe.

But immigration-registry programs do result in discrimination. The fact that NSEERS led to the forced registry, interrogation, and deportations of immigrants from predominantly Muslim or Arab countries is proof that broadly defined enforcement programs often result in racial and religious profiling. That is why the United Nations and major American civil rights groups condemned NSEERS for unfairly singling out Muslims. By targeting Muslims, NSEERS sent the wrong message that America does not welcome immigrants from certain lands.

While the Obama administration dismantled the NSEERS program, this alone will not prevent the incoming administration from attempting to follow through on its threats to create a registry based on religion or national origin. On the campaign trail President-elect Trump called for a ``total and complete shutdown'' of Muslim immigrants entering the United States. Additionally, he has called for ``extreme vetting'' of immigrants reminiscent of NSEERS. It is incumbent upon congressional leaders to ensure that the United States does not sacrifice its values in the face of fear.

Today, I introduce the Protect American Families Act to ensure that America protects the rights and liberties of American immigrants from overly broad, ineffective, and discriminatory registry programs. This bill would prohibit the Federal Government from requiring noncitizens to register or check in with the Federal Government simply because of their religion, race, ethnicity, age, gender, national origin, nationality, or citizenship. Banning the creation of a discriminatory registration program is not only consistent with our democratic values, but it allows law enforcement to focus resources on the real threats to our safety.

The bill has commonsense exemptions. Data collection is critical in our fight against terrorists, and the bill allows the government to collect routine data on the entry and exit of noncitizens. The bill would also protect important immigration programs like Temporary Protected Status, Deferred Enforced Departure, the Visa Waiver Program, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This provision makes clear that legitimate Federal programs that confer immigration benefits are not prohibited by the ban on enforcement immigration programs that target immigrants and other vulnerable Americans.

In his First Inaugural Address, President Roosevelt said that ``the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'' Unfortunately, he failed to live up to that statement when he issued Executive Order 9066. But we have a chance to fulfill that vision. We have a chance to stand up against fear and stay true to our American values in the face of hardship. I am proud to introduce the Protect American Families Act today, and I urge my colleagues to support its speedy passage through the Senate.

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

Mr. President, I am really proud to stand here, having represented New Jersey now a little bit over 3 years in the U.S. Senate. I have to say that I have developed a great respect for my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I have a deep belief that this is a body that can do good things for the American people. We don't always agree, and too many things are not getting done, but I have seen this body at its best. I have seen our ability to rise to the occasion. Along the way, I have made friendships and found respect for people and my colleagues across the aisle, as well as fellow Democrats.

I have witnessed occasions where Members of both parties have put principle before partisanship and evidenced a willingness to actually embrace personal political risk to stand up for what they believe is right and honorable and in the best interest of our country. Given this, this is a day in which I rise with painful disappointment. Frankly, I feel a deep sense of astonishment and even a sense of crisis. Thus, I feel a deepened determination to fight with everything I have against the efforts of my Republican colleagues that I believe will harm our country as a whole but particularly the most vulnerable people in our country.

This is about the Republican push, really the race--what I believe is a reckless race--to repeal the Affordable Care Act without putting forth any legislation, any proposal, any plan on how they intend to replace it. This is fundamentally dangerous, and it will hurt millions of Americans. I have heard over the past month people rightfully saying: Well, this is how the Affordable Care Act was implemented.

I understand the frustrations that have resulted from that, and people think this was jammed through along partisan lines many years ago using similar legislative tactics. The truth is, that is simply not the case. The Affordable Care Act went through a long and arduous process and received input from doctors, nurses, patient groups, medical specialists, medical professionals of all types.

The Affordable Care Act started with listening sessions, then hearings, then came the advice and counsel of policy experts, businesses, market experts, insurance companies, health nonprofits, hospitals--literally thousands and thousands of people over thousands of hours, often through public discourse, putting forth ideas that actually shaped and changed legislation. I wasn't in the body then. I was a mayor in Newark, NJ, but I know this occupied months of debate.

Years later, Republicans are seeking to undo this work with a kind of plan to move forward. They are saying that they have a plan, but no plan exists.

I am a big believer that there are things we can and we must do to improve health care in America, to improve the Affordable Care Act, but what I have to make clear is that it is profoundly irresponsible to repeal the Affordable Care Act and not put anything in place. There is no plan.

This is at a time that everyone agrees--people in the Republican Party and Democratic Party continue to talk about the achievements of the Affordable Care Act, things that they want to maintain, things they believe make a real difference. Those are things I have heard Republicans praise and even say again they want to protect. These things are making a lifesaving difference for millions of Americans.

Let's be clear. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that we should not give the power back to insurance companies to deny people health insurance because of a preexisting condition. Let's be clear. Most people believe that we should allow young people, young adults to stay on their parents' plans up to the age of 26.

We also believe that requiring health plans cover preventive services is a profoundly important thing to do for individuals in this country, but it actually saves Americans money by pushing people to do preventive care--mammograms, birth control, and mental health care-- without cost sharing. These are logical things that the majority of Americans believe in, such as closing the prescription drug coverage gap, which too many seniors on Medicare and people with disabilities have had to face, known as that doughnut hole. We believe in prohibiting insurance companies from charging women more money simply because of their gender. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in requiring the insurance companies to spend more on patient care and less on administrative costs, and the insurance companies shouldn't be allowed to gouge the American people while making massive profits at the same time.

There is so much that people believe in and want to have preserved, and these are tremendous things for America. There are bank account savings; there are lifesaving policies, all of which are popular with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. They are popular with people on both sides of the aisle in this body.

Some Republicans have said that what they are doing will not threaten these accomplishments, but this couldn't be any further from the truth. The way they are going about this puts the health care system in a perilous position. The health care system is complicated in nuance, and to think you can repeal something without replacing it right away shows a lack of understanding of what is going to happen and what the consequences will be.

What the Republicans are doing now is quite contrary to what the Democrats did before the ACA passed in 2010. Republicans are not putting forth a proposal. They are not speaking to the health care needs of all Americans. They are not inviting professionals from all different backgrounds to help shape a plan for America. They are not even fulfilling what I heard countless Republicans on the campaign trail, including our President-elect, say: They would repeal and then replace. They are just not replacing.

The replace part put forth by the mantra of many Republicans has not materialized. It doesn't exist. There is no plan to replace, no statement of principles, no outline of features, no framework for a plan, no explanation of how they would pay for the things they claim they like. There is no specific timeline for when a plan might materialize or even any substantive hint of what many Republican colleagues plan on doing to address the crisis--the crisis that will surely come as a result of repealing the Affordable Care Act without giving forth any replacement.

I say time and again: Show us the plan before you repeal this legislation. If you do not do that, you will be responsible for pain, suffering, chaotic markets, and for many Americans' health care problems. There are many people who don't understand this. They listen to the political rhetoric, and they think: Hey, you might be that one who, if you are wealthy enough or secure enough, if you are a Member of this body, in fact, this concept of repealing and maybe figuring out a replacement down the road might sound good. But if you are one illness away from bankruptcy, if you know and remember the challenges of having a child with a preexisting condition, if you know that one injury, one unexpected fall could place your family in peril but for the insurance you have, if you are one of the 20 million Americans who used to be uninsured and now you have insurance, you know how perilous this moment is. You know that you can't afford the recklessness of any politician-- a Republican move that equates to jumping off a cliff and then packing your parachute on the way down.

Repealing without replacing is simply irresponsible, it is dangerous, and it is threatening to our country's well-being. People--families, children, the elderly--will suffer.

This is a moment where we need Republican leaders to tell the truth and say: We want to improve our health care system. We may not believe in ObamaCare, but we can't tear it down unless we do the responsible thing and put forth a replacement.

Right now, what we have is political rhetoric that is not just rhetoric. It is perilous. It is dangerous. It is threatening to our Nation. This will inflict immediate catastrophe upon families, causing millions to lose their health insurance, and it will unleash chaos with market uncertainty and cost spikes.

There is no defense for what is being done. I don't understand it. There is no logic here whatsoever. Elections were won. You now have the floor and the ability to put forth your great vision for health care in America, but doing it backward and repealing something and not offering up a plan is truly putting politics before people. This is a move of grand political theater that comes with profound public consequences affecting millions.

As a Democratic Senator, some people will say that this is just political rhetoric, but these are not just partisan words. This is the truth and don't take my word for it. Look at the words of other more thoughtful--other very thoughtful people, Democrats and Republicans, businesspeople and nonprofit leaders, conservative think tanks and nonpartisan groups, speaking with a chorus to the point I am making. Experts across sectors, across industries, and across the country are taking a hard look at what a repeal will mean for the American people without a replacement. People from all across sectors of our country are saying what the Republicans are doing is reckless, and the consequences are dire.

Take the American Medical Association, the preeminent association of physicians. Mind you, this is an organization that opposed the enactment of the Affordable Care Act. They have urged--this chorus of doctors has urged that ``before any action is taken, policymakers should lay out for the American people, in reasonable detail, what will replace current policies. Patients and other stakeholders should be able to clearly compare current policy to new proposals so they can make informed decisions.''

The American Medical Association isn't a political organization. They are thoughtful people whose fundamental concern is the doctors in this Nation and the health care of the people. Another respected organization representing American hospitals made it clear. The American Hospital Association warned that Republican action of repealing without a plan would result in an ``unprecedented health care crisis.''

Are Republicans listening to doctors and hospitals or are they rushing forth, willing to risk a crisis for our country, and for what? They are a President for 4 years, a Congress for 2. What is the rush to put forth a plan and just repeal? Will they listen to these experts? What about the president of America's leading cancer group, the American Cancer Society? Will they listen to them? They urge Congress to ``consider the future of the Affordable Care Act. It is critically important that cancer patients, survivors and those at risk of the disease don't face any gap in coverage of prevention or treatment. . . . Delaying enactment of a replacement for 2 or 3 years could lead to the collapse of the individual health market with long-term consequences.''

This organization is respected by people on both sides of the aisle and is not playing partisan games. They are calling out the truth; that it is a reckless Republican move to repeal without replacing. Will Republicans listen to the American Diabetes Association? Folks with diabetes are Independents, Republicans, and Democrats, and this is an organization respected by people on both sides of the aisle. They say:

The Association strongly opposes going back to a time when

. . . treatment for preexisting conditions like diabetes

could be excluded from coverage; when people could find their

insurance coverage was no longer available just when they

needed it most.

What is the Republican plan to address these concerns and to pay for these concerns? Will they listen to private businesspeople? They, too, join in the chorus of Americans urging that Republicans not endanger the lives and livelihoods of millions.

The Main Street Alliance. We all have main streets in our States and our communities. A group representing these small businesses from across the country urges lawmakers to consider the devastating effect a repeal without

replace would have on small businesses:

Small business owners depend on healthy and vibrant

communities to keep us profitable in the engines of economic

growth. . . . Changes to our current health care system are

needed, but not in the form of cuts to critical programs or

through taking away our health coverage.

There are some Senators who are speaking out. It is not the entire Republican caucus. There are some who are saying exactly what I am saying. Yet we are still rushing toward a vote, even with Republican Senators having the courage to stand up. Just yesterday Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, before voting to proceed to this measure, said: ``It is imperative that Republicans do a replacement simultaneous to a repeal.'' I respect my Republican colleague for saying what is common sense and speaking up against the reckless actions being taken by the Republican Party as a whole, and some fellow Republican Senators have joined him in similar statements, including Lamar Alexander, the chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The Republican from Tennessee, who noted in an interview in November 2016 that when it comes to the ACA, ``what we need to focus on first''--Senator Alexander said--``is what would we replace it with and what are the steps that it would take to do that?''

Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine shared in an interview last month that she was ``concerned about the speed in which this is occurring'' and expressed concern over what would happen to her constituents in Maine who had signed up for insurance through the ACA, saying: ``You just can't drop insurance for 84,000 people in my State.''

I not only talk about Republicans in this body, but there are conservative think tanks focused on our country that are speaking out now as well. The American Enterprise Institute said in a 2015 report that ``repealing the law without a plausible plan for replacing it would be a mistake.''

So here we have it from all over the country, people across the political spectrum, experts, market analysts, insurance executives, doctors, nurses, hospital leaders, patient groups; these people in our country who are beyond politics and even beyond their opinions of the Affordable Care Act when it was enacted are now speaking in a chorus of conviction in one voice: Don't repeal the Affordable Care Act without a clear plan to preserve the things that are making America healthier and more financially strong and secure. Don't recklessly rush into a politically motivated move that would endanger the health care of millions of Americans, increase the costs for millions of Americans, throw insurance markets into chaos, endanger our hospitals' financial stability, and put our most vulnerable Americans into crisis: our seniors, people in nursing homes, retired coal miners, people recovering from drug addiction, the poor and other underserved communities.

We are America, and this is a time that we must call, not to party rhetoric but to who we are and what we stand for. We cannot let this repeal without replacement happen. We must know what the Republican plan is so experts, market analysts, insurance folks, doctors, everyone understands what will happen. Americans will be hurt. It is time to put our country and the people first. There is no rush. The voters gave this body 2 years. It gave the Presidency 4 years. We must now fight these efforts. We must resist. We must call to the conscience of neighbors and appeal to the moral compasses of our Republican leaders to do what they said they would do--put forth your plan. Let the American people know what they are going to do and do not thrust millions of your fellow country men and women off a cliff and shout promises to them as they fall: ``Hey, don't worry. We will figure something out before you hit the ground.'' Where is the honor in that strategy? Call the public together, gather your experts, put forth a thoughtful process, and develop what you think is better, what improves upon what we have now, what doesn't diminish our unassailable gains that we have had but build upon them. Give us a plan, not empty promises. Give America hope. Don't plunge millions into despair and uncertainty. Show decency, not costly craven politics. We know who we are as a country. Profound are the words, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men. . . . `'

This government, this body, the United States Senate, led by Republicans here and in the House and in the White House, must stand for these ideals. Health care is critical to life. We must stand for these ideals. Health care is critical to liberty, our freedom from fear, our freedom from illness, our freedom from deprivation. We must stand for these principles. Health care is critical to the happiness, the joy, the greatness of America. To secure these rights, governments are instituted, and we were elected to stand for the American people, by the American people, to fight to defend our brothers and sisters. This government and actors must put our ideals first, not partisanship and not theater. Do not attack these ideals through a rash and reckless repeal. Be thoughtful. Be kind. Be magnanimous. The well-being of our Nation is in the balance.

May God bless us in this time of crisis. May wisdom prevail over politics.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I support the Student Non-Discrimination Act, a bill first introduced in the 111th Congress and reintroduced again now in the 114th Congress. This bill represents a critical step forward in protecting the rights of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth to receive an education free from bullying and harassment on account of who they are and who they love. I thank Senator Franken for his leadership on this issue, and I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this important civil rights legislation.

Education is the cornerstone of our democracy. In order for our system of government to thrive we must promote the education of our citizenry. It is what allows voters to make informed decisions on who they think is best fit to serve as their Representative, Senator, or President. It is a critical element of public debate and the free flow of ideas and it is what drives our economy forward and makes our country strong.

Given the importance of education, no student should be harassed in school. We must do all we can to make education accessible to all. We must ensure that schools are safe and welcoming to all children so that students can enter the classroom ready and able to learn.

Bullying touches the lives of countless young people. Each school year, LGBT students in New Jersey, and across America, are harassed, bullied, and even assaulted based on their perceived or known status as LGBT. Occasionally, these youth even experience bullying from teachers and administrators. The very people that are supposed to educate and protect these children at times serve as the root cause of the problem. Bullying a student for any reason--but especially for simply being themselves--is simply unacceptable.

The consequences of bullying can be devastating and potentially life threatening. Studies show that discrimination at schools is a major contributor to dropouts, absenteeism, and academic underachievement. LGBT youth are twice as likely as their peers to experience verbal harassment, assault, and exclusion. Suicide rates are disproportionately high among children and young adults that identify as LGBT. In fact, LGBT youth are four times more likely to commit suicide than their peers. Most alarmingly, we have seen bullying and harassment tragically lead to suicides in school districts across the country.

Allowing discrimination of LGBT to go unchecked in our schools deprives our youth from the equal access to education that they deserve. Whether that discrimination is in the form harassment or assault, we cannot stand idly by and watch our children's lives be torn apart.

The Student Non-Discrimination Act is a critical civil rights bill that would ban discrimination against any student on the basis of his or her actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

The legislation expands the Federal definition of harassment to protect the rights of LGBT students. The bill defines harassment to include severe, persistent, or pervasive conduct that would limit a student's ability to participate in a program or activity at a public school.

The bill prohibits harassment of LGBT students as a form of discrimination that is Federally protected.

All of these provisions provide the Federal Government with critical new tools to prevent the scourge of persistent and offensive bullying of youth simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Student Non- Discrimination Act. I urge my fellow Senators to support this bill and promptly pass it through the Senate.

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

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the Smarter Sentencing Act, which I believe is a very critical piece of legislation.

I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this legislation in this Congress, and I thank the bipartisan coalition of Senators who have come together, led by Senator Mike Lee from Utah and Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois. Their leadership on this issue has been absolutely critical.

The Smarter Sentencing Act has essential front-end reforms. These are reforms for when a person gets to the point of incarceration. What they actually do is combat injustices in the Federal sentencing program. They address a real plague in our country; that is, mass incarceration.

Think about this: We are the land of the free. We are a nation that believes in liberty and justice. But we are singular in humanity for an awful distinction: We have 5 percent of the globe's population but we incarcerate 25 percent of the globe's incarcerated people. That is unacceptable unless you believe for some reason that Americans have a higher proclivity for crime, unless you believe we have something in our water that makes us more likely to do wrong, and that is not the case.

The challenge is that we have seen in the past three decades a profound over-incarceration driven by a drug war that has created unfortunate negative consequences to our society. I thank Members of Congress for stepping up in this Congress to speak to this issue. It is un-American that we should hold the largest amount of incarcerated people per population than any other country. It goes against the very strains of our society dedicated to liberty, dedicated to keeping government focused on what it should be doing, not overreaching, not becoming overly aggressive, not surrendering or taking the liberty unnecessarily of other Americans.

I would like to talk for a few minutes about this broken system. What is broken in our criminal justice system? Well, when about three- quarters of our Federal prisoners are actually nonviolent offenders--I am actually one of those people who believe that if you do a violent crime, you should pay a very hefty price for that, that we as a society should have a place where we take stern action against people who promulgate violence, who undermine civil society. But as we look at this mass-incarceration problem where 25 percent of the globe's prison population is in our country, we realize that three-quarters of those people in the Federal prison system are nonviolent offenders.

This is not our history. This is not our tradition. Over the course of all of our Nation's history, we did not have this problem. It has really been the last 30 years where we have witnessed the explosion in the U.S. Federal prison population. In those 30 years alone--think about this--in the last 30 years alone, the prison population at the Federal level has expanded by nearly 800 percent. That is a massive and unacceptable increase, especially when you realize this was driven by the incarceration of nonviolent offenders.

This expansion of our prison population had a harmful effect when those people were released because once someone has a nonviolent felony offense, it is hard to get a job, it is hard to get business licenses, and they cannot get Pell grants. Often those people get caught up and go back to being involved in the drug war. So what happens is that two out of three of those people get rearrested within 3 years.

We are paying for this broken system, this revolving door of arresting nonviolent offenders, releasing them, and bringing them back into our system. It is plaguing the Federal budget and, frankly, State budgets all around our country. Each year more than one-quarter of a trillion dollars is being spent on this broken criminal justice system--money that could be used to empower people to succeed, to repair our infrastructure, or, how about this, it could stay in taxpayers' pockets.

What makes this system worse is that it undermines our American ideals. As I look across the way from the Capitol Building where I stand now and see the Supreme Court, written above the Supreme Court building, at the top, is this ideal of equal justice under law. The ideal that everyone will be treated equally under the law. But this broken criminal justice system has disproportionately impacted certain Americans and not others, which undermines America's core values of fairness and equal treatment for all.

More than 60 percent of our prison system is comprised of racial and ethnic minorities. The painful reality is that if somehow African Americans or Latinos used drugs at different levels than Whites, that might explain the disparate impact. If they dealt drugs at different levels, yes, that might explain it. But that is not the case. African Americans engage in drug offenses at a lower rate than Whites but are incarcerated at a rate 10 times that of Whites.

What is alarming about the mass incarceration is that people are actually not committing more and more crimes. The National Research Council recently released a report confirming what numerous other studies have actually shown: Incarceration rates are actually not tied to crime rates. We have seen incarceration rates going up and up, but now crime rates are coming down.

What is perpetuating this explosion of our prison population? It is the war on drugs that has created over the last 30 years alone an over- criminalization of nonviolent individuals, which stacked our prison population full of Americans, disproportionately minority and disproportionately poor.

Please understand that the people paying the highest price for this are the poor in our country. The New York Times yesterday published an article detailing how our jails have become warehouses made up primarily of people too poor to pay bail or to hire lawyers or too ill with mental health or drug problems to adequately care for themselves. If you look at our prison population, you will see that poverty, race, mental illness--those are the folks who are being disproportionately incarcerated.

If we follow our core ideals of fairness, democracy, and justice-- then we know that mass incarceration is not who we are. That is not right. That the times demand that we examine this broken system and do those commonsense things that are needed to make our justice system just, to work first and foremost for our safety, to not be a gross waste of taxpayer dollars, and to make sure basic ideas of fairness are fulfilled.

This is not just speculation. And what is so powerful about this moment in time, even though all I have said so far is compelling enough, is that we as Federal actors--the 100 Senators here, the 435 Congress men and women, the President and the Vice President--don't need to figure out a way forward, make it up, design legislation based on our own ideas. We actually only have to look at the pathway forward by looking at Governors and legislatures in the States. They are so burdened by the costs of this unruly system, a system that is now plaguing--the Federal Bureau of Prisons is plaguing our country with its cost. What the States are doing to bear that cost is they are finding pragmatic, commonsense, bipartisan ways to move forward.

In fact, what gets me excited as a Democrat is that we just have to look at the red States and what the red States are doing to reduce their prison populations. Let me give an example. States such as Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina are leading on this issue, and the Federal Government should follow.

Texas is a State known for law and order, and known for being tough on crime. Yet Texans realize that being smart on crime means saving taxpayer dollars, using that money efficiently and effectively, lowering crime, and guess what, hey, we can also lower our prison population and empower people to be successful in life and not slip down that slope back toward recidivism. They have made tremendous strides in Texas in adopting policies that are designed to reduce their prison population and lower recidivism.

In 2007, Texas boasted the fourth largest incarceration rate in the country. Faced with a budget projection that estimated by 2012 the State would need an additional 17,000 prison beds--think about that for a second. They saw that they were going to need to build more prisons, house 17,000 more prison beds, and it was going to cost them $2 billion in Texas. The State's legislature said: Enough of this madness. Enough of this craziness.

They enacted bold reforms that would act as a model for us in the Federal legislature. As a result, they passed this broad-based legislation. Texas was able to stabilize their prison population and avert that budgetary disaster.

Texas State Representative Jerry Madden, a Republican, noted in a recent hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations that the crime rate is now at 1968 levels. They were able to close three prisons and six juvenile facilities, and remarkably the Texas prison system is now operating at a 96-percent capacity. Commonsense reforms.

Georgia is another State. They have made remarkable progress. They are showing that reducing the prison population can lead to dividends for taxpayers, and can lower crime. In fact, over the past 5 years, in terms of the racial disparities in incarceration, Georgia has reduced the number of Black men incarcerated in the State by 20 percent. And they haven't seen crime go up--quite the contrary. They have seen it go down.

These States are proving that they don't have to lock up more people to create that safety we desire. States such as New Jersey, Texas, California, Virginia, Hawaii, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Colorado, New York, South Carolina, Alaska, and Georgia have all seen drops in crime rates as they have been implementing commonsense criminal justice reform.

So let's be clear. I am advocating for the Smarter Sentencing Act, but we should also be moving for bold, broad-based criminal justice reforms, copying the successes of red States with Republican Governors. We should be looking at their innovations and following their commonsense solutions and mirroring their success at the Federal level.

I am speaking of reforms at the front end when people get arrested; reforms behind the wall--inside the prison system to address what goes on in prison and helping these people, and reforms on the back end when they come out of prison, to ensure they stay out of prison.

Front-end reforms going on around our country are exciting, such as sentencing reform. What about radical ideas such as letting judges make decisions about sentencing and stop trying to legislate it? Judges are the experts. They know of the brutality of a person's circumstances. They can design sentences.

These policy initiatives should address the entire system. Behind- the-wall efforts should focus on initiatives to change the way prisoners experience life behind bars. To get treatment and job training so they don't commit future crimes. This is commonsense stuff. We shouldn't send people to prison and have them become criminalized or undermine their ability to be successful adults when they come out.

We should also focus on that back end, this idea that we need reentry policies to help people get jobs, reconnect with their families, and become strong, full-fledged American citizens. I am speaking of things such as parole reform.

To move forward we need to think big. This is what I will be advocating for. We can tackle this by taking a systemic approach. We must look at a broad-based reform agenda.

I love the fact that we have conservatives and liberals united on this issue--Republicans and Democrats, red Staters and blue Staters. Criminal justice reform is not a partisan issue, it is an American issue.

In 2010, Senators on both sides of the aisle came together to improve our justice system by passing the Fair Sentencing Act, which the President signed into law. This was a bipartisan piece of legislation that reduced the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine--drugs that are pharmacologically indistinguishable. They changed it from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1, and I thank Senators Durbin, Grassley, Leahy, and Graham for their leadership on this issue.

Last year I joined with Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky. I don't know how many sentences are used by people that contain the names Cory Booker and Rand Paul in them, but we agree on this issue. We have common ground, and we introduced the REDEEM Act. This legislation aims to keep juveniles out of the criminal justice system. We looked to stop acts that many other countries consider torture, such as taking juveniles and routinely putting them into solitary confinement where they are traumatized and often come out of those circumstances more likely to do harm to themselves or others. We are going to reintroduce that bill this year.

Just last month I sat on a criminal justice reform panel right here in the Halls of the Senate, hosted by Van Jones on the left and Newt Gingrich on the right. In the last few months I have talked to Grover Norquist, I have

talked to the Koch brothers' representative, their chief counsel, and I have talked to conservative think tanks and Christian evangelicals. All of us agree on this issue. This chorus of voices, this coalition, this courageous commitment to our country's ideals lets us know that whether you consider yourself a liberal or a conservative, whether you consider yourself moderate leaning, left or right, this is an area we can agree on. It will save taxpayer money, uphold our ideals of liberty and freedom, create safer communities, and empower individuals to be successful.

Today I am excited to have joined with Senators Lee, Durbin, Leahy, and Cruz to support the Smarter Sentencing Act. We need to have this conversation about reducing Federal mandatory minimums. In fact, I love that the Urban Institute has stated that mandatory minimums for drug offenses is the single largest factor in the growth of the Federal prison population.

Let me repeat that. Mandatory minimums for drug offenses are the single largest factor in the growth of the Federal prison population. A key factor in that 800-percent growth in the last 30 years has been driven by nonviolent drug offenders and mandatory minimums.

This bill also would do other things. It would expand the Federal safety valve, giving judges greater discretion and allowing them to hand out their sentences. Those people who believe in separation of powers, let the judiciary have more space to hand down fairer sentences and not shackle them with laws made by legislators who don't know the particulars of a case. Many Federal judges have spoken out about mandatory minimums being unnecessarily restrictive for them in doing their job.

The bill would also make the Fair Sentencing Act retroactive, which would allow persons convicted under the old crack-powder cocaine disparity to now receive a fairer sentence. With the crack-cocaine law changed in 2010, an individual arrested today would receive a lesser sentence. So making this law retroactive to impact people sentenced for crack cocaine offenses prior to 2010 is only fair.

This bill could save a lot of money--hundreds of millions of dollars. It would give us some freedom not only to return some toward debt relief for this country--Lord knows we need to focus on that--but also to invest in other programs many people on both sides of the aisle support, such as reentry programs to help people stay out of prison and get back to a productive lifestyle. If enacted into law as the bill is currently scored, it would save $3 billion over the next decade alone. This is critically important.

So this is a call to the conscience of the Congress. Every single day we pledge allegiance to our flag. That is not something anybody in this Chamber does as sort of a routine, perfunctory salute. We say those words because they mean something, and we end with this ideal that is a light to all of humanity--this ideal of liberty and justice for all.

If we mean those words, then that, across the board, is what we should be pursuing in this body. We know in our country States are doing things to further uphold these ideals, that they are making commonsense reforms that are keeping people safe and lowering crime, commonsense reforms that are saving taxpayer dollars and relieving the burden on taxpayers and budgets, that they are passing reforms that liberate people from the shackles of an imprisonment that is unnecessary, that is directly addressing the painful disparities of race and poverty, and that it is empowering Americans, our brothers and sisters. In all of our holy texts it talks about the dignity of all people, whether they are behind bars or on our streets, the dignity of worth that empowers people to be successful, to have life and liberty and to pursue their happiness.

So I say I support reforming our criminal justice system. More importantly, I say let's support our ideals. Let's be a nation of liberty and justice for all. Let's follow the lead of courageous governors and legislatures and let's make this Nation even better than it is today. I urge all Senators to promptly pass the Smarter Sentencing Act through the Senate.

Mr. President, I rise today to speak about the Smarter Sentencing Act, which I believe is a very critical piece of legislation.

I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this legislation in this Congress, and I thank the bipartisan coalition of Senators who have come together, led by Senator Mike Lee from Utah and Senator Dick Durbin from Illinois. Their leadership on this issue has been absolutely critical.

The Smarter Sentencing Act has essential front-end reforms. These are reforms for when a person gets to the point of incarceration. What they actually do is combat injustices in the Federal sentencing program. They address a real plague in our country; that is, mass incarceration.

Think about this: We are the land of the free. We are a nation that believes in liberty and justice. But we are singular in humanity for an awful distinction: We have 5 percent of the globe's population but we incarcerate 25 percent of the globe's incarcerated people. That is unacceptable unless you believe for some reason that Americans have a higher proclivity for crime, unless you believe we have something in our water that makes us more likely to do wrong, and that is not the case.

The challenge is that we have seen in the past three decades a profound over-incarceration driven by a drug war that has created unfortunate negative consequences to our society. I thank Members of Congress for stepping up in this Congress to speak to this issue. It is un-American that we should hold the largest amount of incarcerated people per population than any other country. It goes against the very strains of our society dedicated to liberty, dedicated to keeping government focused on what it should be doing, not overreaching, not becoming overly aggressive, not surrendering or taking the liberty unnecessarily of other Americans.

I would like to talk for a few minutes about this broken system. What is broken in our criminal justice system? Well, when about three- quarters of our Federal prisoners are actually nonviolent offenders--I am actually one of those people who believe that if you do a violent crime, you should pay a very hefty price for that, that we as a society should have a place where we take stern action against people who promulgate violence, who undermine civil society. But as we look at this mass-incarceration problem where 25 percent of the globe's prison population is in our country, we realize that three-quarters of those people in the Federal prison system are nonviolent offenders.

This is not our history. This is not our tradition. Over the course of all of our Nation's history, we did not have this problem. It has really been the last 30 years where we have witnessed the explosion in the U.S. Federal prison population. In those 30 years alone--think about this--in the last 30 years alone, the prison population at the Federal level has expanded by nearly 800 percent. That is a massive and unacceptable increase, especially when you realize this was driven by the incarceration of nonviolent offenders.

This expansion of our prison population had a harmful effect when those people were released because once someone has a nonviolent felony offense, it is hard to get a job, it is hard to get business licenses, and they cannot get Pell grants. Often those people get caught up and go back to being involved in the drug war. So what happens is that two out of three of those people get rearrested within 3 years.

We are paying for this broken system, this revolving door of arresting nonviolent offenders, releasing them, and bringing them back into our system. It is plaguing the Federal budget and, frankly, State budgets all around our country. Each year more than one-quarter of a trillion dollars is being spent on this broken criminal justice system--money that could be used to empower people to succeed, to repair our infrastructure, or, how about this, it could stay in taxpayers' pockets.

What makes this system worse is that it undermines our American ideals. As I look across the way from the Capitol Building where I stand now and see the Supreme Court, written above the Supreme Court building, at the top, is this ideal of equal justice under law. The ideal that everyone will be treated equally under the law. But this broken criminal justice system has disproportionately impacted certain Americans and not others, which undermines America's core values of fairness and equal treatment for all.

More than 60 percent of our prison system is comprised of racial and ethnic minorities. The painful reality is that if somehow African Americans or Latinos used drugs at different levels than Whites, that might explain the disparate impact. If they dealt drugs at different levels, yes, that might explain it. But that is not the case. African Americans engage in drug offenses at a lower rate than Whites but are incarcerated at a rate 10 times that of Whites.

What is alarming about the mass incarceration is that people are actually not committing more and more crimes. The National Research Council recently released a report confirming what numerous other studies have actually shown: Incarceration rates are actually not tied to crime rates. We have seen incarceration rates going up and up, but now crime rates are coming down.

What is perpetuating this explosion of our prison population? It is the war on drugs that has created over the last 30 years alone an over- criminalization of nonviolent individuals, which stacked our prison population full of Americans, disproportionately minority and disproportionately poor.

Please understand that the people paying the highest price for this are the poor in our country. The New York Times yesterday published an article detailing how our jails have become warehouses made up primarily of people too poor to pay bail or to hire lawyers or too ill with mental health or drug problems to adequately care for themselves. If you look at our prison population, you will see that poverty, race, mental illness--those are the folks who are being disproportionately incarcerated.

If we follow our core ideals of fairness, democracy, and justice-- then we know that mass incarceration is not who we are. That is not right. That the times demand that we examine this broken system and do those commonsense things that are needed to make our justice system just, to work first and foremost for our safety, to not be a gross waste of taxpayer dollars, and to make sure basic ideas of fairness are fulfilled.

This is not just speculation. And what is so powerful about this moment in time, even though all I have said so far is compelling enough, is that we as Federal actors--the 100 Senators here, the 435 Congress men and women, the President and the Vice President--don't need to figure out a way forward, make it up, design legislation based on our own ideas. We actually only have to look at the pathway forward by looking at Governors and legislatures in the States. They are so burdened by the costs of this unruly system, a system that is now plaguing--the Federal Bureau of Prisons is plaguing our country with its cost. What the States are doing to bear that cost is they are finding pragmatic, commonsense, bipartisan ways to move forward.

In fact, what gets me excited as a Democrat is that we just have to look at the red States and what the red States are doing to reduce their prison populations. Let me give an example. States such as Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina are leading on this issue, and the Federal Government should follow.

Texas is a State known for law and order, and known for being tough on crime. Yet Texans realize that being smart on crime means saving taxpayer dollars, using that money efficiently and effectively, lowering crime, and guess what, hey, we can also lower our prison population and empower people to be successful in life and not slip down that slope back toward recidivism. They have made tremendous strides in Texas in adopting policies that are designed to reduce their prison population and lower recidivism.

In 2007, Texas boasted the fourth largest incarceration rate in the country. Faced with a budget projection that estimated by 2012 the State would need an additional 17,000 prison beds--think about that for a second. They saw that they were going to need to build more prisons, house 17,000 more prison beds, and it was going to cost them $2 billion in Texas. The State's legislature said: Enough of this madness. Enough of this craziness.

They enacted bold reforms that would act as a model for us in the Federal legislature. As a result, they passed this broad-based legislation. Texas was able to stabilize their prison population and avert that budgetary disaster.

Texas State Representative Jerry Madden, a Republican, noted in a recent hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations that the crime rate is now at 1968 levels. They were able to close three prisons and six juvenile facilities, and remarkably the Texas prison system is now operating at a 96-percent capacity. Commonsense reforms.

Georgia is another State. They have made remarkable progress. They are showing that reducing the prison population can lead to dividends for taxpayers, and can lower crime. In fact, over the past 5 years, in terms of the racial disparities in incarceration, Georgia has reduced the number of Black men incarcerated in the State by 20 percent. And they haven't seen crime go up--quite the contrary. They have seen it go down.

These States are proving that they don't have to lock up more people to create that safety we desire. States such as New Jersey, Texas, California, Virginia, Hawaii, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Colorado, New York, South Carolina, Alaska, and Georgia have all seen drops in crime rates as they have been implementing commonsense criminal justice reform.

So let's be clear. I am advocating for the Smarter Sentencing Act, but we should also be moving for bold, broad-based criminal justice reforms, copying the successes of red States with Republican Governors. We should be looking at their innovations and following their commonsense solutions and mirroring their success at the Federal level.

I am speaking of reforms at the front end when people get arrested; reforms behind the wall--inside the prison system to address what goes on in prison and helping these people, and reforms on the back end when they come out of prison, to ensure they stay out of prison.

Front-end reforms going on around our country are exciting, such as sentencing reform. What about radical ideas such as letting judges make decisions about sentencing and stop trying to legislate it? Judges are the experts. They know of the brutality of a person's circumstances. They can design sentences.

These policy initiatives should address the entire system. Behind- the-wall efforts should focus on initiatives to change the way prisoners experience life behind bars. To get treatment and job training so they don't commit future crimes. This is commonsense stuff. We shouldn't send people to prison and have them become criminalized or undermine their ability to be successful adults when they come out.

We should also focus on that back end, this idea that we need reentry policies to help people get jobs, reconnect with their families, and become strong, full-fledged American citizens. I am speaking of things such as parole reform.

To move forward we need to think big. This is what I will be advocating for. We can tackle this by taking a systemic approach. We must look at a broad-based reform agenda.

I love the fact that we have conservatives and liberals united on this issue--Republicans and Democrats, red Staters and blue Staters. Criminal justice reform is not a partisan issue, it is an American issue.

In 2010, Senators on both sides of the aisle came together to improve our justice system by passing the Fair Sentencing Act, which the President signed into law. This was a bipartisan piece of legislation that reduced the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine--drugs that are pharmacologically indistinguishable. They changed it from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1, and I thank Senators Durbin, Grassley, Leahy, and Graham for their leadership on this issue.

Last year I joined with Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky. I don't know how many sentences are used by people that contain the names Cory Booker and Rand Paul in them, but we agree on this issue. We have common ground, and we introduced the REDEEM Act. This legislation aims to keep juveniles out of the criminal justice system. We looked to stop acts that many other countries consider torture, such as taking juveniles and routinely putting them into solitary confinement where they are traumatized and often come out of those circumstances more likely to do harm to themselves or others. We are going to reintroduce that bill this year.

Just last month I sat on a criminal justice reform panel right here in the Halls of the Senate, hosted by Van Jones on the left and Newt Gingrich on the right. In the last few months I have talked to Grover Norquist, I have

talked to the Koch brothers' representative, their chief counsel, and I have talked to conservative think tanks and Christian evangelicals. All of us agree on this issue. This chorus of voices, this coalition, this courageous commitment to our country's ideals lets us know that whether you consider yourself a liberal or a conservative, whether you consider yourself moderate leaning, left or right, this is an area we can agree on. It will save taxpayer money, uphold our ideals of liberty and freedom, create safer communities, and empower individuals to be successful.

Today I am excited to have joined with Senators Lee, Durbin, Leahy, and Cruz to support the Smarter Sentencing Act. We need to have this conversation about reducing Federal mandatory minimums. In fact, I love that the Urban Institute has stated that mandatory minimums for drug offenses is the single largest factor in the growth of the Federal prison population.

Let me repeat that. Mandatory minimums for drug offenses are the single largest factor in the growth of the Federal prison population. A key factor in that 800-percent growth in the last 30 years has been driven by nonviolent drug offenders and mandatory minimums.

This bill also would do other things. It would expand the Federal safety valve, giving judges greater discretion and allowing them to hand out their sentences. Those people who believe in separation of powers, let the judiciary have more space to hand down fairer sentences and not shackle them with laws made by legislators who don't know the particulars of a case. Many Federal judges have spoken out about mandatory minimums being unnecessarily restrictive for them in doing their job.

The bill would also make the Fair Sentencing Act retroactive, which would allow persons convicted under the old crack-powder cocaine disparity to now receive a fairer sentence. With the crack-cocaine law changed in 2010, an individual arrested today would receive a lesser sentence. So making this law retroactive to impact people sentenced for crack cocaine offenses prior to 2010 is only fair.

This bill could save a lot of money--hundreds of millions of dollars. It would give us some freedom not only to return some toward debt relief for this country--Lord knows we need to focus on that--but also to invest in other programs many people on both sides of the aisle support, such as reentry programs to help people stay out of prison and get back to a productive lifestyle. If enacted into law as the bill is currently scored, it would save $3 billion over the next decade alone. This is critically important.

So this is a call to the conscience of the Congress. Every single day we pledge allegiance to our flag. That is not something anybody in this Chamber does as sort of a routine, perfunctory salute. We say those words because they mean something, and we end with this ideal that is a light to all of humanity--this ideal of liberty and justice for all.

If we mean those words, then that, across the board, is what we should be pursuing in this body. We know in our country States are doing things to further uphold these ideals, that they are making commonsense reforms that are keeping people safe and lowering crime, commonsense reforms that are saving taxpayer dollars and relieving the burden on taxpayers and budgets, that they are passing reforms that liberate people from the shackles of an imprisonment that is unnecessary, that is directly addressing the painful disparities of race and poverty, and that it is empowering Americans, our brothers and sisters. In all of our holy texts it talks about the dignity of all people, whether they are behind bars or on our streets, the dignity of worth that empowers people to be successful, to have life and liberty and to pursue their happiness.

So I say I support reforming our criminal justice system. More importantly, I say let's support our ideals. Let's be a nation of liberty and justice for all. Let's follow the lead of courageous governors and legislatures and let's make this Nation even better than it is today. I urge all Senators to promptly pass the Smarter Sentencing Act through the Senate.

Mr. President, I stand to discuss what has been discussed by the previous two Senators, the urgent need for a clean bill to fund our Department of Homeland Security.

I wasn't part of this body during the 9/11 attacks. I was living in Newark, NJ, and watched, as many in my city did, with a view clearly to the World Trade Center and saw that attack. What moved me afterward was the incredible unity of our country. There was no partisan politics. People pulled together. First responders from New Jersey, all over New York, and all over the country came together.

What we did after that as a nation was we began to prepare to ensure we could prevent those attacks and have better systems in place should emergencies, crises, disasters or attacks happen again. What happened from that unity is evidenced by this body joining together not just to sing patriotic songs on the Capitol steps but to work in unison to create the Department of Homeland Security.

That agency is tasked with the urgent need to prepare our country to meet crises if they come. This is not a partisan issue and should not fall prey to political fights between congressional Republicans and the President of the United States over immigration. There is way too much at stake.

Let me cite a few examples. Something we have learned from past attacks is the urgency of coordinating between different layers of law enforcement and first responders. If we do not pass a clean DHS bill, resources for that coordination, getting everyone working together, will be put at risk.

Let me cite another example. It is critical in this day and age that we stay on the cutting edge of technology, one step ahead of those people who seek to do us harm. We see clearly if we do not get a clean bill passed, we will not be able to stay on that technological edge. We see that in many areas. One great example is at our ports. New Jersey has one of the third busiest ports in America, and we need that critical technological equipment for upgrades that can help us to detect nuclear devices or harmful materials coming into our country. Without a clean bill, we will not have those resources.

We also see the headlines from just the past few months about cyber attack after cyber attack. A critical agency that must be funded appropriately to protect our businesses and our infrastructure and our first-responding capabilities against cyber attack is coordinated and led from the DHS. Not to fund this agency adequately so they can prepare for those attacks is unacceptable.

We are Americans and this idea of unifying together is our strength. We stand united against attacks. If we do it right, as we have learned not just throughout our country's history but in every aspect of our society--my college--high school coach used to talk about the five Ps: Proper preparation prevents poor performance. This, unfortunately, will so undermine our ability to secure ourselves, it is almost an insult that it will not even give proper funding to meet the weaknesses to the Secret Service, as we have seen their weaknesses exposed. As we go into a Presidential election, we must provide adequate security and protection for the next potential President.

This also harms our businesses as well. Take for example the E-Verify

system. This makes sure people who are hired by our companies do not have things in their background that would undermine our security. Those systems are harmed as well.

This is an example where petty politics and recklessness is being placed above people, policy, and reason. We as a nation have stood in unity after the most horrifying of attacks. We live in a world where we have seen diseases such as Ebola, where we have experienced cyber attacks, and where we have had to recover from vicious weather events such as Sandy. We live in a world where people seek to do us harm, and we should do nothing to weaken our ability to respond, to prepare, to make ourselves more resilient for any such occurrences. The urgency is upon us. We cannot be a reactive nation unified after the fact. We must be a proactive nation, working together, above politics, to do what is right for the strength and the security of our country.

I call for a clean bill in the critical, most important part, of our government to provide for the common defense. This is a time that should bring us together, not have us fall prey to every bit of Washington that people have grown tired and sick of. Let us pass a clean bill, as a bipartisan group of former Secretaries of Homeland Security has called for. This is not a time for recklessness; it is a time for reason. It is not a time for petty politics; it is time to put people first.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, my amendment No. 155 ensures that Federal agencies disclose to the public, landowners, and communities any significant new circumstances learned about the impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

The National Environmental Policy Act--NEPA--is one of the most emulated statutes in the world. It is used as a model around the world. NEPA in fact is often referred to as the modern-day ``environmental Magna Carta.''

These are very commonsense ideas. NEPA regulations really do require agencies to actually supplement already issued environmental impact statements when significant new circumstances or information is found to exist relating to the environmental impacts of a project.

The pending Keystone bill, however, would deem the final environmental impact statement issued last January to fully satisfy NEPA. In other words, if new circumstances come up that are germane and important, they do not get a chance to alter that statement. My amendment would change that.

I respectfully request 25 more seconds to conclude my comments.

My amendment would change that and would preserve the applications of agencies to supplement the EIS. For example, if the proposed route of the pipeline was to change, it could mean drinking water supplies and other critical resources would have a higher risk of contamination from a spill. People should know that.

When American companies are building projects, they comply with this important NEPA safeguard. Foreign companies should not be given a shortcut. If American companies do it, foreign companies should do the same.

This amendment is supported by the Natural Resources Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, and a number of other organizations. I ask my colleagues to support this amendment.

I yield the floor.

First of all, I want to say how good it is to see the Presiding Officer, and also recognize that he is a member of the nascent Cory caucus, and I respect that quite a bit.

Amendment No. 155 to Amendment No. 2

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment in order to call up amendment No. 155.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I want to say that amendment No. 155 is a very important amendment. It is common sense. It is practical. The National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA as it is known, is one of the most emulated statutes in the world. It is something that many people see as valuable in other countries because NEPA, in fact, by many is referred to as the modern-day environmental Magna Carta.

NEPA regulations require agencies to supplement already-issued environmental impact statements when significant new circumstances or information is found to exist relating to the environmental impact of a project. The pending Keystone bill, however--and quite surprisingly-- would deem the final environmental impact statement issued last January to fully satisfy this NEPA requirement going ahead. This would remove the obligation from permitting agencies to supplement any environmental impact statements if significant new circumstances or information is discovered.

This amendment I am putting forward, No. 155, would change that and would preserve a commonsense obligation of agencies to supplement the environmental impact statement for significant new circumstances or information. In other words, if very pertinent information comes forward, it would require there be a need to supplement the environmental impact statement.

For example, if the proposed route of the pipeline were changed, it could mean that drinking water supplies or critical resources would have a higher risk of contamination from a spill. This amendment would simply require consideration of significant changes so we don't go blindly and put natural resources at greater risk without understanding the impact.

This bill is for me common sense. It says, basically, if circumstances change, we should make sure a new environmental impact study is considered.

I would ask my colleagues to support this amendment and not provide special treatment to a foreign company that American companies don't get that could result in harm to fellow Americans.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I am grateful that Senator Boxer will yield for a question.

This is a question I have of Senator Boxer, and I wish to get her feedback because of her years of experience, her wisdom, and her depth of understanding on this issue. I think there needs to be an amendment for critical protection.

The need for regulation requires agencies to supplement already issued environmental impact statements when significant new circumstances come about. When there is information about these new challenges to the environmental impact of a project, something really has to happen.

So this pending bill deems that the final environmental impact statement issued last January would fully satisfy the NEPA, that this would remove the obligation of permitting agencies to supplement that EIS if any new circumstance or information is discovered.

The amendment would change that and would preserve the obligation of agencies to supplement--if we had such an amendment, it could really protect that.

I was told by a lot of people that NEPA is sort of referred to as the environmental modern day Magna Carta. In other words, it is such a critical set of protections. If we have a circumstance in which there is a significant change in the pipeline--say they just decide to change the direction or move it a little bit and it goes through an entirely new area--not to be able to take into consideration new information, new circumstances where an environmental impact statement abated, seems to be wrong. It actually seems to be giving this company, this foreign company, more information, more opportunity than our current American companies.

I would love for the Senator to comment.

I wish to thank Senators Bennet and Alexander for their work on this legislation. It is going to help our Nation's students make better, smarter, and more-informed decisions about higher education.

Historically, the United States has been the leader globally in expanding college opportunity. We understand that an educated workforce is essential to our Nation's economic competitiveness. Without highly skilled workers, America will not be able to compete in the global economy.

The average price of a college degree in the United States is climbing--about $13,856. Please put that in perspective with our competitor nations, nations that are keeping the cost of college low, knowing that their long-term competitiveness as a country depends on the education of their children, nations such as the United Kingdom, where a college education costs less than half of ours, and Germany, where kids pay a mere $933.

The average American student now is graduating from college with around $29,000 in loans. In New Jersey, that is up from an average of $27,000 in 2011 and $23,000 and change in 2010. This is unacceptable. Mounting debt is undermining not only the success of our individual young people in our country, but it is undermining the long-term competitiveness our Nation has in a global knowledge-based economy. That is one reason why it is important that we work to make the process of obtaining financial aid simpler and more straightforward.

We saw the ridiculousness which Senator Bennet held up in the length of the form and the explanation document. Well, this has to change. This is something I recognized when I was mayor of the city of Newark. We had classes. Literally we called it, I think, Financial Aid University, where we brought experts in just to try to help students navigate all of that. We spent so many resources knowing that for our kids from Newark to be competitive, we had to help them navigate this labyrinth of challenging questions and documents that it takes perhaps a college degree or even more to figure out.

When I first came to the Senate about 13 months ago, one of the first pieces of legislation I offered, having had that experience, was a way of simplifying these forms. There is an urgency here because the College Board estimates that 2.3 million students do not fill out the FAFSA form, the free application for financial aid. Because the form is a gateway to financial aid, having 2.3 million being deterred from actually filling it out is a harm to our Nation, not just to those individual students. Many students who qualify for Federal aid skip the form because they find it--as we obviously saw--too complex.

Because eligibility is currently based on income information for the year immediately preceding enrollment, financial aid deadlines mean that tax data is not yet available. As a result, students must determine how to fill out financial aid questions on the FAFSA form and take additional steps then to submit later the tax documents.

We know more can be done to make this process simpler and accessible, which is why I am pleased. I was really rejoicing when Senator Alexander and Senator Bennet showed me there was a way we could work-- even further than the legislation I introduced in the last Congress--to reduce it to two questions--saving time, saving energy, saving stress but even more importantly empowering students to get their education and contribute to our economy so that we can compete with those other countries that seem to be doing a much better job than we are in keeping the cost of college low.

This bill streamlines the financial aid system, simplifies the FAFSA form, discourages overborrowing--which is a problem--and, most importantly, gives students and families better information earlier in the process to enable them to make better decisions for them. This bill is a good step.

This bill is a great step. I am looking forward to working with the higher education community as well as students and families in New Jersey on how we can be successful in simplifying this process, increasing access to college and boosting not only enrollment but the economic output of our citizenry.

Again, I thank Senator Alexander and Senator Bennet for their work and leadership. I am pleased to be with them in this effort, and I look forward to continuing the conversation this year.

I wish to thank Senators Bennet and Alexander for their work on this legislation. It is going to help our Nation's students make better, smarter, and more-informed decisions about higher education.

Historically, the United States has been the leader globally in expanding college opportunity. We understand that an educated workforce is essential to our Nation's economic competitiveness. Without highly skilled workers, America will not be able to compete in the global economy.

The average price of a college degree in the United States is climbing--about $13,856. Please put that in perspective with our competitor nations, nations that are keeping the cost of college low, knowing that their long-term competitiveness as a country depends on the education of their children, nations such as the United Kingdom, where a college education costs less than half of ours, and Germany, where kids pay a mere $933.

The average American student now is graduating from college with around $29,000 in loans. In New Jersey, that is up from an average of $27,000 in 2011 and $23,000 and change in 2010. This is unacceptable. Mounting debt is undermining not only the success of our individual young people in our country, but it is undermining the long-term competitiveness our Nation has in a global knowledge-based economy. That is one reason why it is important that we work to make the process of obtaining financial aid simpler and more straightforward.

We saw the ridiculousness which Senator Bennet held up in the length of the form and the explanation document. Well, this has to change. This is something I recognized when I was mayor of the city of Newark. We had classes. Literally we called it, I think, Financial Aid University, where we brought experts in just to try to help students navigate all of that. We spent so many resources knowing that for our kids from Newark to be competitive, we had to help them navigate this labyrinth of challenging questions and documents that it takes perhaps a college degree or even more to figure out.

When I first came to the Senate about 13 months ago, one of the first pieces of legislation I offered, having had that experience, was a way of simplifying these forms. There is an urgency here because the College Board estimates that 2.3 million students do not fill out the FAFSA form, the free application for financial aid. Because the form is a gateway to financial aid, having 2.3 million being deterred from actually filling it out is a harm to our Nation, not just to those individual students. Many students who qualify for Federal aid skip the form because they find it--as we obviously saw--too complex.

Because eligibility is currently based on income information for the year immediately preceding enrollment, financial aid deadlines mean that tax data is not yet available. As a result, students must determine how to fill out financial aid questions on the FAFSA form and take additional steps then to submit later the tax documents.

We know more can be done to make this process simpler and accessible, which is why I am pleased. I was really rejoicing when Senator Alexander and Senator Bennet showed me there was a way we could work-- even further than the legislation I introduced in the last Congress--to reduce it to two questions--saving time, saving energy, saving stress but even more importantly empowering students to get their education and contribute to our economy so that we can compete with those other countries that seem to be doing a much better job than we are in keeping the cost of college low.

This bill streamlines the financial aid system, simplifies the FAFSA form, discourages overborrowing--which is a problem--and, most importantly, gives students and families better information earlier in the process to enable them to make better decisions for them. This bill is a good step.

This bill is a great step. I am looking forward to working with the higher education community as well as students and families in New Jersey on how we can be successful in simplifying this process, increasing access to college and boosting not only enrollment but the economic output of our citizenry.

Again, I thank Senator Alexander and Senator Bennet for their work and leadership. I am pleased to be with them in this effort, and I look forward to continuing the conversation this year.

Mr. President, I rise to add my sense of gratitude and appreciation to someone who has become a dear friend. I am his newest colleague and have had the privilege of working with him for these past 13 months. I just want him to know and state very publicly that he was one of the anchors to me as I was getting to know a very different place from being a mayor of a big city.

Your sense of fierce pragmatism was a light to me, coming down into a place known for partisanship and gridlock, and demonstrated to me your ability to bring people together and get things done, but even more than that, being a model for me, a role model for me in the early stage of my career in the Senate.

I have to confess, and do it with pride, that I love this country with the depth and the core of my being. My parents taught me that sense of pride. But you expanded that, incredibly, by bringing me out to Alaska. Of all my experiences in these 13 months, that was one of the highlights. It taught me a lot when I saw that a Senator still had such a powerful touch and connection and knowledge and love of the people of that State. You have made me love Alaska even more and know Alaska in my heart.

What was extraordinary to me, in knowing you in your short career, was how much you got accomplished, how steadfast you were in pursuing the interests of your State and this Nation. One thing I have to say, I felt uncomfortable as I saw you--I will never forget being at Bartlett High School, with the Bears, and seeing your love and connection to those kids. It made me feel very uncomfortable, the negativity that was being hoisted upon you during a campaign.

It made me think of something as I was out there, and I thought about it again as you talked of history. There is a very famous poet named Maya Angelou, who said these words:

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I rise.

The truth is, you are one of those people who are at your ascendency. You have risen above it all. You have risen above the things in Washington that try the spirits, not just of those of us here but of the Nation. You have risen to a level of accomplishment in your life that is extraordinary and as awesome as some of the vistas I saw in the State of Alaska.

The beauty I have right now, the confidence and the joy I have right now, is the simple fact that I know that God ain't finished with you yet.

Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I can't leave the floor without speaking to Mary. Mary has been such an incredible inspiration to me. I have been in the Senate now for 13 months, and I have had a number of conversations with her, but the best way to teach somebody is to show somebody.

Senator Landrieu is prodigiously persuasive, tirelessly tenacious, doggedly determined. Just to watch Senator Landrieu is to watch what every American should hope for in a Senator--someone who is unyielding in their work and service to them.

If you look at the myriad of interests in the State of Louisiana, I was amazed by what I saw firsthand. Mary stood up and fought for the people who were loud and ornery but still had a good cause as well as the people who were voiceless and humble. Mary stood up for them. Mary stood up for people in her community who were from every different background and from every different race. Mary stood up to them in a way that is a model to my State.

I heard my senior Senator mention you by name about how essential you were when my State had its back against the wall and crushed by a superstorm. When there were battles to get my State's funding, and Mary had no skin in that game, my senior Senator mentioned you as a champion for New Jersey and that is what blows me away about you.

I yearn for a government that has moral courage, more than we have now, people who will risk popularity for purpose and will risk substance for some kind of celebrity. Senator Landrieu has done things against her political interests, but that were for the people. That is why I have a great deal of reverence for you and why I travel down to your State.

Now the Senator knows this because I must have said it hundreds of times when I was down in Louisiana, that that is my ancestral State. I will end by saying this: My grandaddy was born in Monroe. He was born poor. As my family likes to say, he was so poor he couldn't afford to be poor, he was po, P-O. He was born to a single mama. He was born Black at a time of immense segregation, when people who walked the hallways of power couldn't give a damn about him. He taught me love for your State, and more importantly, the urgency to stand up and fight for those people that most folks won't fight for.

I am telling you right now, my grandaddy died during my first big election, but if he knew you, he would be so proud of your service.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I yield the floor.