Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Commerce Committee be discharged from further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 132.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 145, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 146, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I, too, wish to spend some time talking about the confirmation and upcoming vote on Judge Neil Gorsuch. As many of my colleagues have noted, this is certainly one of the most important responsibilities we have in this body--to confirm the next Supreme Court Justice.

As the Presiding Officer noted in remarks made a few days ago about Judge Gorsuch, he is an exceptionally well-qualified candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. I will go briefly into his bio.

First of all, he has a sterling academic reputation and credentials. He graduated from Columbia, Harvard, and Oxford. He clerked for two Supreme Court Justices. He worked at the Justice Department. Very importantly--and we are not hearing a lot about it from our colleagues on the other side--he was unanimously confirmed for a U.S. court of appeals job for the Tenth Circuit in 2006. Senators such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden all voted for him, as well as many of my colleagues in this body on the other side of the aisle who are still serving.

He is a westerner. We know that right now the U.S. Supreme Court, with the possible exception of Justice Kennedy, has no westerners. Geographical diversity on the Court is very important. This morning, my colleague Senator Murkowski talked about how the current Supreme Court is occupied by Justices who have spent almost their entire lives in the Boston, New York, DC corridor. That is not America. That doesn't represent the whole country. Judges in Western States focus on issues like Native-American law, lands issues, oil and gas issues. It is very important, certainly for my State of Alaska, to have a judge with that kind of background.

But it is more than facts on a page that make Judge Gorsuch such a strong candidate for the High Court. During Senate Judiciary Committee hearings last week, his temperament was also tested and his judicial philosophy was articulated. It was clear during those hearings that Judge Gorsuch will bring a commitment to following the rule of law and that he believes no one, including the President of the United States, should be above the law. He reveres the separation of powers and the fundamental principle that it is the Congress of the United States, not the judiciary, that makes our laws.

He performed exceptionally well. He answered question after question with consistency and displayed a legal philosophy well within the mainstream of judicial thought within the United States.

As the Presiding Officer knows, it is not just Members of this body who are talking about Judge Gorsuch and how well qualified he is; commentators across the country have focused on how qualified Judge Gorsuch is to be our next Supreme Court Justice. Let me highlight just a few of their quotes.

This is from an editorial from the Chicago Tribune:

Here is a judge who knows the law and knows the role of the

judiciary: He isn't on the bench to make law, he's there to

interpret it faithfully.

Neil Gorsuch should be confirmed.

The Detroit News:

After two days of often hostile hearings, Supreme Court

nominee Neil Gorsuch is proving himself an even-tempered,

deeply knowledgeable nominee who should be confirmed by the

United States Senate.

The Denver Post said:

[Judge Gorsuch] possesses the fairness, independence and

open-mindedness necessary to make him a marvelous addition to

the Supreme Court.

USA TODAY's editorial board declared: Gorsuch merits confirmation. This Supreme Court nominee is qualified within the broad judicial mainstream of America.

In fact, we looked to see if there was any major paper across the country or commentator who is opposed to Judge Gorsuch's nomination. It was hard to find any. It was hard to find any in any part of the country. Two former chief justices of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals--both appointed by different Presidents of different parties-- stated that Judge Gorsuch ``represents the best of the judicial tradition in our country.''

Even one board member of the liberal American Constitutional Society who said he supports Democratic candidates and progressive causes declared: ``There is no principled reason to vote no on Judge Gorsuch's confirmation.''

He received the highest rating from the American Bar Association. And it is not just the ABA, there is a long list of different groups across the country, many representing minority groups in America, who have supported Judge Gorsuch--the National Congress of American Indians, the Native American Rights Fund, the Hispanic Leadership Fund, the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Tribes in Alaska. The list goes on and on and on.

Given the broad-based support--from the left, from the right, from the center--why would my colleagues on the other side of the aisle threaten the traditions of this institution and not even allow an up- or-down vote on Judge Gorsuch? Well, I have been listening. I have been listening to the speeches to see what they are saying. It seems that some of my colleagues are focused on this vague notion of vagueness-- literally, vagueness. If we listen to their comments, they talk about Judge Gorsuch's supposed ambiguity, his vagueness, his evasiveness, that he won't answer questions on how he would rule on specific cases, so they are going to oppose him because of this. Well, these are curious and, to be frank, unconvincing reasons to oppose Judge Gorsuch.

First, as we know, a nominee is typically not expected to say how he or she would rule on future cases. Judicial nominees, whether appointed by Democratic or Republican Presidents, have said this repeatedly. I will provide a quote from a prior nomination hearing by one of our current Supreme Court Justices. She stated:

Because I am and hope to continue to be a judge, it would

be wrong for me to say or to preview in this legislative

chamber how I would cast my vote on questions the Supreme

Court may be called upon to decide. Were I to rehearse here

what I would say and how I would reason on such questions, I

would be acting injudiciously.

That was what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1993. She continued during her confirmation hearing:

A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts,

no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the

specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain

for the entire judicial process.

Many have called this the Ginsberg standard, one that Justices have followed in front of the Judiciary Committee during their confirmation hearings and one that Judge Gorsuch also followed. Indeed, during his hearing, Judge Gorsuch stated that if the President or others had asked such a specific question on how he would rule on a particular case, ``I would have walked out'' of the room.

So my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can't have it both ways. They say they want an independent voice on the Court, but they are also opposing Judge Gorsuch because he won't tell them how he would rule on certain cases. This is a new standard and an impossible standard to meet.

The second reason the vagueness standard of many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in their opposition to Judge Gorsuch is unconvincing is that it ignores the fact that this is a judge with a record. They say: He is vague. We are not sure what his views are.

Judge Gorsuch has decided roughly 2,700 cases, over 800 of which he authored. There is nothing vague about that. In 97 percent of the time in those cases, he reached a unanimous decision with the other panelists on the Tenth Circuit. These are not vague decisions. His judicial philosophy and temperament are on full display in literally

tens of thousands of pages of decisions in his own words. There is nothing vague about them.

My colleagues can challenge him on his mountain of legal opinions, but please, with all due respect, let's drop the facade of opposing him because of vagueness, and that they don't know what the issues are is not an argument that has much merit.

So despite widespread acclaim from groups across the country, representing a broad spectrum of liberals and conservatives, and despite a tenured, concrete record as a judge on the U.S. court of appeals, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle appear to want to engage in a partisan filibuster of Judge Gorsuch's nomination.

What exactly does this mean? The language, I admit, can be confusing--cloture, filibuster, 60-vote threshold. In plain English, what is really going on? It means that the minority leader right now wants to prevent the Senate from having an up-or-down vote on the merits of this Supreme Court nominee. In other words, no vote ever on the qualifications of Judge Gorsuch. We will just filibuster.

I have been watching a number of my colleagues come to the floor and talk about what they are planning on doing. The minority leader has essentially been saying: We all do this. We are all guilty. Nothing new here. This is just a little bit of payback. This is how this place operates.

In many ways, these arguments are almost cavalier in what they are about to do. But we shouldn't buy that. I have been in the Senate only 2 years--a mere blink of an eye compared to others--and I missed a lot of the other nominations and debates in 2013, the Gang of 14 many years ago. But I like to read a lot of history, and here are some facts that are important to understand as we debate the Gorsuch confirmation:

First, there has never been a partisan filibuster of a new President's nominee for the Supreme Court--never.

Second, it has been the custom, always, of the U.S. Senate to give a new President's nominee an up-or-down vote. For example, Republicans gave this courtesy to President Clinton when he nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993 and Stephen Breyer in 1994 and President Obama with his first-term nominees, Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and Elana Kagan in 2010. They all got up-or-down votes.

Third, there has never been a 60-vote requirement for any Justice on the Supreme Court during the confirmation process in the U.S. Senate-- never.

Let me go through the votes of the current Supreme Court Justices: Justice Kennedy, 97 to 0; Justice Thomas, 52 to 48; Justice Ginsburg, 96 to 3; Justice Breyer, 87 to 9; Chief Justice Roberts, 78 to 22; Justice Alito, 58 to 42; Justice Sotomayor, 68 to 31; Justice Kagan, 63 to 37.

Incidentally, Justice Scalia, whom Judge Gorsuch would be replacing, passed the vote in the U.S. Senate 98 to 0. Note that two of the current members of the Supreme Court were confirmed by fewer than 60 votes.

Bottom line: There has never been a 60-vote requirement in the U.S. Senate or a partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee during a President's first term--never.

Here is another fact equally as relevant to Judge Gorsuch's confirmation: More than any other President, more than any other Presidential election in recent memory, the one last year was clearly about the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans in the Senate and Candidate and now President Trump told the American people: There is an open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. This is an important issue. Let the people decide.

And they did. Polls show that millions of Americans ended up voting for President Trump and against Hillary Clinton based, at least in part, on which candidate they believed should nominate our next Supreme Court Justice and whether they wanted the Court to act as a superlegislature, interpreting a living Constitution, or whether they wanted a Justice in the mold of Justice Scalia, with a more modest view of how the Court should view its station in our constitutional order.

The American people, including my constituents, spoke loudly in November on this issue of the U.S. Supreme Court by voting against Hillary Clinton and for Donald Trump. And to his credit, President Trump kept his word on this important issue by putting forward an extremely well-qualified candidate who will be a worthy successor to Justice Scalia.

Despite all this--an extremely well-qualified nominee and a national election that focused on who should fill the vacancy of the Supreme Court--it appears that the minority leader of the Senate is going to ignore the will of the American people and set a precedent dating back to our Nation's founding by leading a filibuster against Judge Neil Gorsuch. We shouldn't allow this to happen, and we won't.

I hope my colleagues who are contemplating this will change their minds because in going forward with this filibuster, who are they really punishing? They are punishing the American people, as well as undermining the traditions of this body--a body with rules crafted carefully over the last two centuries.

As I mentioned, we need to work together in this body. In my 2 years in the Senate, I have tried hard to work with my colleagues on bipartisan issues. I have also tried hard to show all my colleagues the respect they deserve as duly elected Senators of this important body. Whatever the outcome of this vote on Judge Gorsuch, I certainly want to make clear that we need to continue respectfully working across the aisle for the sake of our Nation, and we need to rebuild trust in the Senate. But at the same time, I believe strongly that Judge Gorsuch deserves to get an up-or-down vote. I certainly encourage my colleagues to bring that vote forward and to confirm this exceptionally well- qualified candidate to be our next Supreme Court Justice. And the American people deserve as much, as well.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, for months, I have been coming down to the floor every week to recognize someone in my State who has made a difference to our communities in Alaska, someone who has devoted time and energy to making my State a better place to live. I call these individuals our Alaskan of the Week.

As I have said repeatedly to all of my colleagues and to those watching on TV, I am a little biased here, but I believe my State is the most beautiful in the country and, I would argue, in the world. I urge everybody in this room, everybody watching on TV, to come to see for yourself. Take a trip to Alaska. It will be the trip of a lifetime. I guarantee you.

It is the people who truly make my State unique, people who are helping each other, strong-willed, warmhearted, tenacious people who have worked tirelessly for years for all of those who live in Alaska.

This week I would like to honor Dan Fauske, one of the strongest willed, warmest hearted people I have ever known. All he has done for us has made Alaska a better place for literally thousands of people throughout our State.

Dan came to Alaska in 1974 after serving in the Army, as so many Alaskans do. Like so many Alaskans, he arrived with a glint of steel in his eye and a mission to help build our State. Alaska is full of natural wonders, but our manmade wonders are also marvels, and Dan wanted to be part of building more of those marvels for our State and for our country.

He first arrived in the North Slope Borough--the top of the world--to help the community build up their infrastructure and strengthen the Alaskan Native villages in the area. It was a time of enormous change for all of Alaska, particularly the North Slope. Oil from the North Slope Prudhoe Bay, the largest oilfield in North America, had recently begun to flow down the Trans-Alaska System for 800 miles. The largest land claims act in U.S. history, the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act, had recently passed, and the governments in rural Alaska were being formed and reformed to take advantage of these opportunities.

After Dan went back to school to receive a master's degree in business administration from Gonzaga, he made his way back to Alaska again to serve as chief financial officer and chief administrative officer for Alaska's North Slope Borough, where he launched an ambitious and ultimately successful capital plan to provide basic necessities that so many Americans take for granted, like running water and sewer,

those kinds of services, to the villages throughout the North Slope Borough, again, on the top of the world.

According to Bill Tracey, Sr., from Point Lay, which is one of the villages there, who was a coworker at the time, ``Dan's excellent work ethic and skills earned him the respect of the North Slope leaders. . . . His accomplishments were remarkable.''

With his beautiful and spirited wife Elaine always by his side, Dan then moved his family to Anchorage to head up the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation. For 18 years, he managed HFC's nearly $5 billion in assets. It is not an overstatement to say that he revolutionized that agency, doing remarkable things, including and most importantly helping thousands of Alaskans--thousands of our constituents, our fellow Alaskans--pursue their dream of buying an affordable home. There is nothing more important than that.

The Alaska Legislature just passed a bill to name the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation the Daniel R. Fauske Building, and the dedication ceremony will take place in Anchorage on Saturday.

As his bio indicates, there is no doubt that for decades Dan Fauske served Alaska with his hands, his heart, and with his head. But a bio on paper can only tell you so much about a person; to really appreciate him, you would have to have been with him and watched the energy and can-do spirit radiate from Dan Fauske. You had to watch him talk to people with respect and humor and understanding and a very keen intelligence. He had a big laugh--a very big laugh--and he told great stories. He also had that rare ability to genuinely connect with everybody he met, it didn't matter who. He was able to speak the language of a businessman, a builder, a veteran, a public servant. He spoke the language of a father, a husband, a friend, and a true Alaskan. In doing so, he gained the respect of everybody, and I mean everybody, in my State--politicians, State workers, military members, people from all across Alaska, people from all across the political spectrum. If you wanted something done and if you wanted it done right in Alaska, you asked Dan Fauske to help you do it. People trusted him. I trusted him.

Most importantly, Dan was a great father to three great boys, D.J., Scott, and Brad, and two daughters, Marcy and Kathy, and he was a great husband to his incredible, vivacious, and very strong wife Elaine.

Mr. President, Dan Fauske passed away this afternoon with his family and friends by his side. Our prayers and the prayers of so many Alaskans go out to all of them during this very difficult time. For anyone watching, I humbly ask that you say a prayer too.

For all he has done for all of us, all his memory will continue to do for all of us, Dan Fauske is our Alaskan of the Week. He was also my very good friend. My wife Julie and I will miss him greatly.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I yield back all Republican time in relation to H.J. Res. 43.

Mr. President, today, March 30, marks that 150th anniversary of the date when President Andrew Johnson signed the treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska. It is a big day for my State, and for the past few months, I have been diving into the archives and doing some research about the treaty and about the first few years of challenges following the signing. As you can imagine, building a State out of a frontier, particularly one so far away from the rest of the country and in such an extreme climate, was challenging, to say the least. It demanded, and still does, a certain kind of person with a certain kind of toughness, vision, and a determination to work for the good of all. Let me give you an example of what it has required.

Some members of the first territorial legislature in 1913--46 years after the purchase--who lived in far flung places faced a challenge. Specifically how to get to Juneau to begin to hash out creating the rules of a new territory.

Of course, there were no commercial airlines in those days--no snow machines, so four members from Nome--lawyers, miners, and businessmen-- hitched up their dog teams, headed to Valdez, and took a steamship to Juneau. It took them nearly 2 months to get there. When they did arrive, the first order of business was this: granting women the right to vote, 7 years before Congress ratified the 19th Amendment.

That is the heritage of every one in Alaska, and that is the same spirit, of traveling far against the odds, to do what is right, that still animates my great State. It animates people who haven't even been to Alaska. My State is more than a place with set geographic boundaries. My State is also an idea, a dream; it goes beyond borders and represents so much about America that we hold dear: beauty, freedom, self-sufficiency. It has been this way even before Alaska became a territory--when a group of people, led by former Secretary of State William Seward, pushed the country to buy Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. As has been proven, that was a good deal.

Every week, I have been coming down to recognize an Alaskan of the Week, a special person who gives their time, energy, and talents to making our State the best in the country.

Today I want to speak about someone who I will call an honorary Alaskan. Today I would like to name Senator Charles Sumner our posthumous Alaskan of the Week. Senator Sumner

never set foot in my State, but he knew Alaska well. We are a State because of him, and others, including Secretary of State William Seward, who had vision and tenacity.

Senator Sumner was born on January 6, 1811, in Boston, MA. He was a lawyer, a professor, and then a politician. He was a man of purpose, principle, and many, many words and opinions. In fact, he was nearly caned to death while working in the Senate Chambers, by one of his colleagues--a congressman from the South--for expressing his opinions on the horrors of slavery. It was a deplorable act, and it cast a pall of shame over this body for years. Senator Sumner never really recovered, but after a long convalescence, he set his sights on the Alaska Purchase.

He was skeptical, at first, until Secretary of State Seward got his ear, and he immersed himself into the accounts of the promise of this new territory, which turned him into an ardent supporter. On April, 8, 1867, Senator Sumner, using only notecards, gave a 3-hour speech on the Senate floor about our State.

He spoke of Alaska's abundant resources. He saw the Pacific as the ocean of the future and argued that Alaska is the key to that future. He spoke of the treasures--the gold in our land, the veins of coal, our huge mineral deposits, and the treasures below the Arctic Ocean. He talked about the ``multitudes of fish,'' the thousands of acres of timber, and the opening of new trade routes.

He and others saw in Alaska the ``Eden of the North''--a future which would entail up to 1 million self-sufficient Americans supported by the resources of the land. Owning Alaska would give us greater control of the next ``great theater of action'' in the Arctic and Asia-Pacific, for both national security and economic reason.

In the new territory of Alaska, ``Commerce will find new arms; the country new defenders, the national flag new hands to bear it aloft,'' Senator Sumner argued. A ``boundless and glorious future,'' awaits, he and other supporters argued.

Senator Sumner ended his epic 1867 speech by arguing that the whole territory, not just the peninsula, should be given the name by the people who lived here. ``It should be indigenous, original, coming from the soil,'' he said. ``Alaska,'' he concluded, ``the great land.''

The day after Sumner's Senate speech, the once-skeptical U.S. Senate approved the purchase by a vote of 37 to 2. One hundred and fifty years later, Alaska has made good on that early promise. We have contributed enormous resources to our country. We are vital to our country's national defense, our national pride, and our economic growth. We still have the vision of Secretary of State Seward and Senator Sumner driving us toward a brighter future. Thanks to Senator Sumner and to the people of Massachusetts who gave us such a brave leader--our honorary Alaskan of the Week.

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

Mr. President, as my colleagues know, I have been coming to the floor week after week to recognize an Alaskan who has made a difference in his or her community. As I have said repeatedly--I am a little biased, of course--I have the honor of living in the most beautiful State in the country, but it is our people who truly make it special. They are resilient, kind, and giving. And it is the next generation that is going to continue to make my State the best place in the world to live.

This week I would like to introduce my colleagues to 18-year-old Ivory Gerhardt Cyrus, this week's Alaskan of the Week. Ivory lives in Kiana, a beautiful, close-knit Inupiat village of less than 400 people on the banks of the Kobuk River in Northwest Alaska. Like many villages in Alaska, there are no roads in and out. People travel to Kotzebue, which is the closest hub city--it is not very much of a city but a big village--about 40 miles away by plane or snow machine, boat, or sometimes dog team. That is where Ivory was raised--in Kiana--and where, against many odds, she has strived.

Ivory was born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which made getting through school a challenge. She was at times misunderstood, at times bullied, and many didn't know how to deal with her properly.

About 120 kids each year are diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in Alaska. When she was in middle school, Ivory began committing herself to helping them by speaking out about her own experiences and by advocating the way students with behavioral issues are treated in school. She was an advocate for them.

Now she is an honor roll high school senior, graduating this spring, and along the way, she has become a State of Alaska trainer for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She gave a presentation at an international conference recently on disability and diversity, and she was named one of five recipients of the 27th annual Women of Achievement and Youth Awards in Alaska.

This is what I find most impressive about Ivory: She is passing a message of hope and service on to her peers. She started a group, encouraging the members of the group to do one positive thing each day. The name of the group is appropriately entitled ``One Positive Thing,'' or ``OPT.'' That message has spread throughout her community, and now villages in Kiana are remembering to do one positive thing each day for themselves, their families, and their community. Last year, she held her first OPT conference in Kiana for youth all across the region. This year, that conference--the next OPT conference, One Positive Thing-- will be held on April 7 and 8.

Ivory is an exceptional young woman. She is going to go on to do exceptional things. Next fall, she plans on attending the University of Alaska Anchorage where she plans to continue to do one positive thing each day and will bring that positive attitude to the students at UAA. She is going to continue to encourage others to do that as well.

I congratulate her for all of her accomplishments, for being our Alaskan of the Week, and congratulations to her parents, Jean and Tom, for the wonderful job they have done in raising this exceptional young lady.

Ivory gives us all hope for the future.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 96, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 97, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 3 p.m., Monday, March 27; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed; further, that following leader remarks, the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of Executive Calendar No. 1, the Montenegro treaty; further, that the filing deadline for first-degree amendments under rule XXII for the cloture motion filed during today's session of the Senate be at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, March 27; and finally, that notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, the cloture vote occur at 5:30 p.m.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.