Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Virginia and I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for their great leadership on this issue.

Just talking about SNAP very briefly, 50 percent of all children in the United States, at some point in their lives, are going to be on SNAP, are going to need some help to eat so they can avoid hunger--50 percent of all children. So we are playing games with the program that is central to the lives of millions of families across this country, and we are playing out this entire drama in an all-too-familiar scene.

For the third time in just 2 years of the Trump Presidency, we are once more in the midst of a government shutdown. It is important to remember how we got here.

In December, the Senate majority leader brought to the floor a temporary funding bill to keep the Federal Government open. It passed this Chamber unanimously. Everyone--all 100 Senators at the time-- agreed that, at the very least, it was important to keep the government open while we debate the issue of border security and immigration reform.

So why on Earth is the government shut down? Well, simply because President Trump has decided to hold the government hostage because he didn't get funding for a costly, ineffective wall. Shutting down the government over billions of dollars for a wall is like canceling the World Series because your team didn't make it.

At nearly 3 weeks into the Trump shutdown, we can track and see the devastating effects of the President's hostage-taking. Some 800,000 Federal employees are going without pay, and the longer this goes on, the more their worries mount. Mortgages, student loan payments, car payments, heating bills, food on the table--President Trump may operate from crisis to crisis, but countless American families are living paycheck to paycheck.

I have heard from many of the individuals and families who are part of the approximately 7,800 Federal workers across Massachusetts, and they are rightfully anxious about how they will make ends meet. Twenty- two percent of Federal employees in Massachusetts are veterans--22 percent. So how does Donald Trump repay thousands of individuals who have served and sacrificed for their country? By not paying them.

Let's be clear about who these workers are. They are janitors, cafeteria workers, secretaries, security guards. WORK, Incorporated, is the largest employer of individuals with disabilities in New England under the Federal AbilityOne Program. It employs hundreds of individuals with significant disabilities who work across Federal facilities in the region, but because of the Trump shutdown, they aren't going to work. If they are not working, they are not being paid, and they are not

providing the critical services which are needed for families in New England and across the whole country.

We have gone from Mexico paying for the border wall to Americans going without pay. That is how absurd the President is being in terms of who ultimately winds up paying the price for his campaign promises.

What is more, the Trump shutdown reaches beyond workers and empty paychecks.

The shutdown of the Environmental Protection Agency means almost all of the 516 employees in EPA region 1, which includes New England, have been furloughed. That has halted cleanup of rivers and other brownfields all across our region. It endangers the water, the air, all of the work that is done to protect the 13 million people who live in New England.

It means the Federal investigation into the deadly September 13 natural gas explosions and fires in Merrimack Valley is suspended and residents are left waiting for answers. The Trump shutdown is shutting down justice for the residents of Lawrence and Andover and North Andover because that investigation is now suspended.

We are heading for absolute catastrophe if the shutdown stretches on much longer as millions of vulnerable, low-income Americans relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program--or SNAP--may have had their benefits cut severely. That is going to put 764,000 of the poorest Massachusetts residents at risk of hunger.

President Trump may think it is OK to furlough workers, but he can't furlough hunger, he can't furlough dirty drinking water, he can't furlough pipeline accidents. We need an open government to prevent these things from happening.

In just a few hours, we will hear from the President. He will go on TV tonight and present a fear and hate-ridden case about a manufactured national security emergency at our border.

The irony is, the longer President Trump extends this government shutdown, the more insecure and unsafe American families become because Federal workers aren't there to protect them against the things that they work every day to ensure that each and every family in our country are spared from--the pain that otherwise would be inflicted.

So the Department of Homeland Security is one of the agencies the President has shut down. An outsized number of Transportation Security Agency screeners and agents who screen and apprehend dangerous suspects at airports are calling in sick rather than work without pay. Some have even quit.

Sadly, our own American President is the architect of this crisis. The truth is, there are more Americans today going without their paycheck than immigrants who illegally crossed the southern border in the past 2 years.

Trump has completely manufactured this emergency, but there is an impending one if this Trump shutdown continues and Americans are left without government services. So let's end this.

To my Republican colleagues, let's pass the bipartisan legislation to reopen the government. You supported it before; support it again. Raise your voices. Let's put people back to work, and let's provide certainty for the American public.

Once again, I thank Senator Kaine and Senator Shaheen for their leadership in organizing this very important colloquy.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado, and I rise to echo the sentiments of the Senator from Colorado.

I first want to thank the Senator for all of his great work on this bill, for all of the hearings that took place in the subcommittee, all of the various interest groups who had to be worked with in order to make sure that this bill came to pass.

So I just want to thank the Senator from Colorado and thank his staff for the great work.

This bill is a historic bill. It is a very important bill. It could not have happened without the Senator, and I thank him for all of his incredible leadership on this issue.

I want to thank my own staff for all of their great work on this issue as well.

We had an incredible bipartisan partnership that was created between the Senator from Colorado and the Senator from Massachusetts, but our staffs worked very closely together.

This bill, the Gardner-Markey Asia Reassurance Initiative Act, is a very important bill, and I want to speak about this bill, but in doing so, I am actually speaking about something that is broader, something more important, something of more lasting consequence to international peace and stability, and something more critical to the economic well- being, security, and fundamental rights of Americans and millions of others around the globe.

America has always had an important relationship with the Indo- Pacific region, but the global landscape is changing, and today, more than ever, the Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region, not only for the United States but also for the rest of the world, and that is what this bill is all about. It is how we in the U.S. Congress can reaffirm that we, No. 1, are and will remain committed to the Indo- Pacific; No. 2, recognize its shifting dynamics and the significance these changes represent; and No. 3, stand ready to marshal the leadership and resources necessary to address the challenges we face and capitalize on the opportunities before us.

With that in mind, I again want to extend my gratitude to my partner in this endeavor, Senator Gardner. He has been the best possible partner in this effort, and I want to thank him for everything he has done.

I also want to thank Senators Corker and Menendez for their assistance in advancing this bill through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a litany of saints who I think should all be mentioned: Senator Rubio, Senator Cardin, Senator Young, Senator Sullivan, Senator Perdue, Senator Graham, Senator Coons, Senator Kaine, Senator Peters, Senator Wicker--all cosponsors of this bill, perfectly bipartisan.

I also want to thank Representatives McCarthy and Hoyer and Neal and Royce and Castro and Yoho for their work as well. That list of Members is not only indicative of the level of bipartisanship there is in Congress but also on U.S.-Asia policy. This bill would not have been possible without them, and it would not have been possible without, again, the wonderful staffs we are blessed to have working on these issues, who spent many long hours advocating for key American interests and values in this legislation.

This bill represents a generational policy framework to enhance U.S. leadership in the Indo-Pacific and is a demonstration of American commitment to a free and open region, as well as the rules-based international order.

Zach Hosford and Mark Appleton on my staff dedicated the last year to working and partnering with the Senator. So I am pleased that the Gardner-Markey Asia Reassurance Initiative will pass the Senate today, and I look forward to its being sent on to the President's desk.

I again thank Senator Gardner for all of his incredible work.

I yield the floor.

I thank Bishop Carper--I mean Senator Carper as I continue preaching to the choir. There is no one who does it better than you do, and we have to continue to do this insistently, persistently, and constantly to make sure this message is heard. We thank you for all of your great leadership, Senator Carper.

Senator Merkley will be joining us out here on the floor. We have so many other Members who are completely committed to this issue. It is absolutely essential that we make progress in 2019 and 2020 on this issue.

We are speaking on the floor today about the just-concluded international climate negotiations in Poland--also called COP24. That means conference of parties. That means every nation on Earth. Twenty- four. The 24 times that every nation on Earth met to preserve the Earth, to make sure that this great gift God gave us is, in fact, passed on better than we found it and not potentially at great risk because we did not act.

Unfortunately, given the focus of the Trump administration at the climate conference, you could say that we are here on the Senate floor not for a colloquy but for ``coal-oquy''--a discussion about the role of coal in our society.

In a shameful moment for our country in the history of international climate negotiations, the United States formed a gaslighting group with Kuwait, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to downplay the findings on climate change while at the talks in Poland.

Despite the fact that in the IPCC's special report--the U.N.'s special report--on 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world's scientists tell us that coal without carbon capture must be completely eliminated as a source of power by the year 2050, the United States, unfortunately, held an official event celebrating dirty fossil fuels, with no solution to the problem.

That is the Trump administration. President Trump, I think, got his degree in climate science from Trump University, and the diplomas were handed out by the Koch brothers. This is the problem. It is not the coal miners. We have to make sure that we take care of the coal miners. We have to make sure that they get the healthcare they need, the pensions they need.

There is a revolution going on. It is a renewables revolution, and it is an all-electric vehicle revolution. This administration has been trying as hard as it can to stop it, to slow it down, even as the planet gets dangerously warm.

Fortunately, for the planet, the international community set the rules of the road for implementing the Paris climate agreement despite the misinformation being peddled by the Trump administration. The global community was in agreement in its belief in the science of climate. Now we have a new rule book based on the international consensus for making progress toward the goals outlined in the Paris climate agreement.

What happened in Poland was an important milestone for the planet. When Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, he defied the wishes of the majority of Americans and of many of our biggest business leaders because they know that being a part of the Paris Agreement makes America more competitive. It will create new jobs, open up new markets, catalyze economic growth, and reduce business risks. The Trump administration's decision to pull the United States from the Paris accord continues to be a grave, unforced error that will have massive implications for our economy, for our security, for our public health, and for our future.

The new Conference of the Parties' rule book--the new meeting of every country in the world--makes the Paris Agreement stronger than ever, but the United States wants the rules to simply allow us to sit out the game. By the ``United States,'' I mean the Trump administration, representing the Federal Government. Yet it doesn't represent the people. It doesn't represent the States. It doesn't represent the cities. It doesn't represent all of the businesses in our country that are moving on renewables, that are moving on this dramatic change.

Recently released scientific studies make clear that as one of the world's greatest polluters, the United States cannot sit on the sidelines. You cannot preach temperance from a bar stool. You cannot tell the rest of the world to do something while you yourself are allowing all of these emissions to go up into the atmosphere. Of the 17 hottest years on record, 16 have occurred since the year 2000. At the rate we are warming, the world is on course to breach 1.5-degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the year 2030.

The National Climate Assessment warns that the Northeast will warm faster than any other region in the United States, breaching 2-degrees of warming above preindustrial levels of 2035. In other words, the Gulf of Maine--Massachusetts Bay--is the second fastest warming body of water on the planet after the Arctic. That is dangerous. What it means is that we could have a total loss of coral reefs, the doubling in loss of plant and animal species, a loss of up to one-tenth of U.S. GDP-- more than double the losses of the great recession by 2100.

Senator Carper already laid all of this out in graphic detail for the Members to see and for the American people to see. When asked about the conclusions from his own administration's scientists on climate change, President Trump said: I don't believe my own scientists on climate action.

The world no longer sees the American President as Commander in Chief; it sees a climate denier in chief sitting in the Oval Office.

Thankfully, America's climate scientists are fighting for us. The world's scientists are fighting for us, and we

must fight for them. We must fight efforts to censor their research. We must fight the efforts to ax their budgets. We must fight for them because the work they do is essential to our planet's future.

One only has to look at the litany of sins perpetrated by the Trump administration on climate science and climate action to see how big of a fight we have. The list of this administration's efforts to weaken climate action, public health, and environmental rules is so long that Senator Whitehouse and I had to publish a report to capture all of the ways Donald Trump has already come to lead ``The Most Anti-Climate Administration in History.''

This is the report. It just goes on. It is page after page of actions that the administration has taken to undermine the progress we should be making on climate. We just issued this report this week. There are more than 114 climate actions that President Trump and his Big Oil all- star team, at the Cabinet level in this administration, have put in place. That has been, literally, one attack per week over the past 2 years.

During his tenure, President Trump nominated Andrew Wheeler, a member of the coal industry's hall of fame, to run the Agency that is tasked with protecting our environment. He has moved to freeze fuel economy standards at 2020 levels rather than pushing for the economically and technologically achievable goal of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. While in the White House, the President, day by day, tries his best to make sure that no progress is made.

Here is what I know. We went all the way from 1975 until 2007 with no new law being passed on fuel economy standards. In the House and in partnering with Members over here in the Senate, I was able to pass the increase in 2007 for fuel economy standards. That was the first increase in 32 years. President Trump has proposed a clean powerplant replacement that would kill 1,400 more Americans every year and emit 12 times more carbon dioxide. This list goes on and on. The only thing longer than the list of anti-climate and environmental actions taken by the Trump administration might be the number of investigations of the Trump administration.

Unfortunately, in the absence of leadership from Trump's Federal agencies, people wonder what is happening. Is there a reason for hope? The answer is yes. Our towns, our cities, our States haven't missed a step. There are 22 States, 550 cities, and 900 companies with operations in the United States that have climate commitments in place. These pledgers could get us within striking distance of our original commitment in the Paris climate agreement.

After the Waxman-Markey bill passed on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and when President Obama went to Copenhagen, the promise he made was the 17-percent reduction by 2020, which was in the Waxman-Markey bill. That is the pledge, that 17 percent in the Waxman- Markey bill. We are still capable of coming very close to that, but we know that even the U.S. commitment in Paris of up to 28 percent in the years after that would be insufficient to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees by midcentury, so we need to be thinking beyond that.

We need to get to net zero emissions by 2050. To get there, we will need to take unprecedented action. We need to supercharge our investments in a clean energy economy, and we need to do that at the Federal level. Globally, we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. We need to invest in energy efficiency solutions to reduce the total energy demand by one-third. We need to transform our transportation system because as much as 65 percent of energy used in transportation will need to come from low-emission sources. At the same time, in the power sector, we need at least 75 percent of our electricity to come from clean sources by 2050.

Getting there will not be easy, but we have the technologies that are necessary for this to be possible. We have the momentum in the markets to get renewable energy to every corner of this country. We are ushering our power sector into a clean energy future that is good for our environment and good for our economy, as Senator Carper said. In the early 2020s, it could be cheaper to build new renewables from scratch than to continue operating old, dirty, coal-fired power plants. That is not a conspiracy; that is called competition.

Adam Smith is smiling in his grave, looking at this competition unfold. The cost of solar has fallen 50 to 60 percent over the last 5 to 6 years. In fact, wind and solar are generally cheaper than coal and nuclear energy right now. That is not just happening here. Half of all electricity installed around the world last year was renewable. Let me say it again. Last year, half of all new electricity on the planet was renewable. Renewable energy deployment around the world has increased by 8 percent a year for 7 years in a row, and there is no likelihood that it is going to change.

Globally, more than 330 billion dollars was invested in clean energy just last year. This is a global clean energy race. It is a global job creation race, and we cannot let nations like China and India and others win that race. We have to push ourselves harder. Right now, we have more than 50,000 megawatts installed in the United States. By the end of 2022, we could have over 250,000 megawatts of wind and solar installed if we would just continue at the pace on which we are right now and don't allow Donald Trump and his cronies to roll back those advances.

We now have five times as many workers in the solar industry as we do in coal mining in the United States. In 2016, we added as many jobs in the solar industry as exist in the coal mining industry. By 2020, we will have 500,000 Americans working in wind and solar. Who are these workers? They are electricians. They are roofers. They are carpenters. They are blue-collar workers all across this country. We have unleashed a blue-collar job revolution in this country. There are hundreds of thousands of people working in it with there being a direct assault from the White House going against those workers every single day. Blue-collar workers are workers who, right now, are five times larger in number than are the coal miners in our country. It will be machinists to build advanced fuel-efficient vehicles. It will be American electricians retrofitting energy-efficient buildings. It will be American roofers installing solar panels. Clean energy is the greatest force for blue-collar, high-wage job creation in a generation.

While we have a responsibility to protect the livelihoods of the millions of Americans who work in energy efficiency, clean energy, clean vehicles, and clean fuels, we need to make sure that those working in fossil fuel industries are supported throughout this clean energy transition.

I thank Senator Merkley. I thank Senator Carper. I thank all of the Members who have worked on these issues that move us toward a 100- percent renewable future. We need a green new deal for our country. Now we just have to exert the political will to make it a reality.

I thank everyone for all of their work on this issue. In 2019, we are going to raise every one of these climate issues in the context of a massive job creation effort. We are going to save all of creation by engaging in massive blue-collar job creation in our country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Whitehouse, who has been out here on the floor, week after week after week, sounding the warning, like Churchill, that there is danger ahead, that there is a gathering storm. Yet it is not metaphorical as it was for Churchill. It is real. There is a gathering storm. What Senator Whitehouse has been doing, year after year after year, is coming out on the floor to document this gathering storm and to warn that we have to take action.

I thank Senator Whitehouse for his incredible, historic leadership because, between the U.N. and the U.S. scientists, all of the evidence is now there. My belief is, the failure that he talked about to heed the dire warnings on climate change is much more now than that figurative gathering storm; it is literally gathering much fiercer energy in super-charged storms that will bear down on our shores as a result of our warming crisis.

Scientists have shot off the warning flare. In the last 2 months, we have received two of the most alarming reports to date on the threat that climate change poses to our country, our economy, our security, and to our planet. It questions the morality of our country because ultimately that is what it is. It is a moral issue of whether we are going to leave this planet better than we found it.

Are we going to be the stewards of this planet and pass it on to future generations better than we found it? Right now, the gathering evidence from the United Nations and from our own U.S. Government's scientists is that we are not.

The Federal Government's National Climate Assessment that was released last week as well as the recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report are clarion calls. The science in these reports is clear. If we fail to act now, storms will grow more frequent and more powerful. Extreme weather events, like Hurricane Michael, which grew more quickly this October than any storm we have seen, will continue to cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The National Climate Assessment--the congressionally mandated report issued by 13 Federal agencies-- underscores the specific impacts we are facing now and will continue to face in the future.

In our home region of the Northeast, which Senator Shaheen and Senator Whitehouse and I have the privilege to represent, the impacts are going to be truly devastating. The Northeast region will surpass 2 degrees centigrade of warming beyond preindustrial levels by as soon as 2035--not 2050, not 2100 but by the year 2035--if emissions continue at their current pace. That would be the quickest warming in the contiguous United States and would occur as much as two decades before global average temperatures reach a similar point.

The real-world effects of this warming trajectory are shocking. Sea levels

in the Northeast could rise upward of 11 feet by the end of the century. Almost one-third of the sandy shorelines along the Atlantic coast could erode inland at rates of at least 3.3 feet per year. We will feel the impact on our economy, which is so strongly tied to fishing, to our beaches and tourism, and to our natural environmental resources.

In 2012, a 2-degree centigrade water temperature increase boosted lobster landings to high summer levels a month earlier than usual. The result was an early supply glut and a collapse in prices to the lowest level in almost two decades. This type of negative impact on our fishing industries will become more commonplace as the climate continues to warm and our marine life is forced to move to new areas.

Outdoor recreation in the Northeast, which will suffer the consequences of climate change, contributes nearly $150 billion in consumer spending and supports more than 1 million jobs across our region. Climate impacts, like beach erosion, are an imminent threat to this economic powerhouse. Yet perhaps most devastating will be the impacts on the public's health. According to estimates, up to 10,000 people in Massachusetts could, by the end of the century, visit the emergency room annually due to the rising heat.

Despite these generational warnings from both the United Nations and the scientists in our own country, President Trump has continued to dismiss the impending disaster from our dangerously warming planet.

How did President Trump respond when asked about the conclusion that climate change could devastate the American economy?

His answer: ``I don't believe it.''

Well, it doesn't matter, Mr. President, if you don't believe it because the world's leading scientists have shown it to be true, and 70 percent of Americans believe it. They believe global warming is happening.

President Trump may deny climate science, but there is no denying the consequences of climate change. Yet the Trump administration will not stop at climate denial. It has a much more insidious scheme to block action on climate--deny, delay, and defund. The list of its climate sins is long, with each action more egregious than the last one.

First came the appointment of an all-star Big Oil Cabinet--Scott Pruitt at the EPA, former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson at the State Department, and former Texas Governor Rick Perry at the Department of Energy.

Since Mr. Pruitt's ouster after numerous ethics violations, the Trump administration has nominated king coal's favorite son, Andrew Wheeler, to head the EPA. Mr. Wheeler is a former coal industry lobbyist and has downplayed the recent science on the devastating impacts to come from climate change. After these reports came out, he said: ``I have some questions about the assumptions.'' These are assumptions that have been vetted by 300 leading scientists in the United States and across the planet.

The only question, I believe, is why someone like Andrew Wheeler was put in charge at the EPA. A coal lobbyist is now the head of the EPA. The EPA just turned into every polluter's ally. That is the net result of what Donald Trump has done at the Agency.

The Trump administration is also moving to freeze fuel economy standards rather than pushing for the historic and technically achievable goal of 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025. I am the author of the 2007 law that required the first fuel economy increase in 32 years. Increasing our fuel economy standard to 54.5 miles per gallon is the single largest action that any nation has ever taken on climate--that one law. Yet the Trump administration is trying to make a U-turn on those standards that are saving customers money at the pump and reducing the emissions we pump into the air.

The Trump administration is also trying to repeal President Obama's Clean Power Plan. Turning our back on this roadmap for reducing pollution in the electricity sector will result in at least 12 times more carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade.

Why is the Trump administration taking us backward on climate in the face of these dire warnings? Just follow the money.

Yesterday, during the weekly Senate Climate Change Task Force meeting, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Cardin, other colleagues, and I heard about the complex funding behind the climate countermovement, which the fossil fuel industry has funded and used to mislead the American people and to hold this administration hostage.

The ``web of climate denial'' is nothing more than dirty energy corporations and their shady front groups spending over a quarter of a billion dollars each year to deceive Americans about climate change. These corporations distort scientific consensus and turn it into an artificial political debate. They produce sham scientific documents, such as ``Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warning,'' a report published by the Heartland Institute and sent to over 300,000 science teachers across the country. Funding 300,000 documents to be sent to every science teacher in America over science that is patently untrue-- that is how much money the fossil fuel industry has. That is how high they try to send up a smoke screen around this issue to terrify teachers that they might be getting in trouble if they actually teach accurate science rather than the bogus documents that are sent to them by the fossil fuel industry, by their handmaidens, the Heartland Institute.

These fossil fuel phonies are on a mission to sow doubt, and their efforts seem to be bearing fruit in this administration. The web of denial messaging strategy is highly sophisticated, disciplined, and politically controlled. Conferences, advertisements, websites, talking heads--this fossil fuel-funded farce may be a well-oiled machine and well funded, but they are wrong.

What do we do in the face of this web of denial? We need to look at the dollars and cents of it all--not the Big Oil and King Coal greenbacks but the success of green energy.

We are ushering our power sector into a clean energy future that is good for our environment and good for our economy. Coal cannot compete against wind, solar, and other renewables and natural gas in the free market. By the early 2020s, it could be cheaper to build new renewables from scratch than to continue operating old, dirty, coal-fired powerplants. That is not a conspiracy; that is called competition. Adam Smith is smiling in his grave, watching this market force begin to take over. And that is why this renewable revolution has become unstoppable. It is because the cost of renewables is plummeting. The cost of solar has fallen 50 to 60 percent over the last 5 to 6 years. In fact, wind and solar are generally cheaper than coal and nuclear energy right now. Coal is losing the war against wind and solar in the free market. That is what we call it--the free market. The War on Coal is a war that has been declared by the free market on coal, and it lost that war.

It is not just happening here in the United States; it is happening all around the globe. Mexico had a power auction at the end of November 2017 where the average price for solar was 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour. In 2017, solar in Saudi Arabia came in at 1.8 cents a kilowatt hour. In Dubai, it is 2.4 cents a kilowatt hour.

Half of all electricity installed around the world last year was renewable. Let me say that again. Half of all new electrical generation capacity in the world that was installed last year was renewable. So it is not just the United States; this is happening globally. The revolution is on.

Renewable energy deployment around the world has increased by 8 percent a year for 7 years in a row. Globally, more than $330 billion was invested in clean energy last year. This is a global clean energy race. It is a global job-creation race. It is a global clean energy investment race. We are going to save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation, as we have all of these people who are hired in order to install these new technologies.

Right now, we have more than 50,000 megawatts of solar installed here in the United States. By 2020, we are projected to have more than 90,000 megawatts of solar. Solar is projected to add another 35,000 megawatts combined in 2021 and 2022. That means that by the end of 2022--4 years from now--we are going to have 250,000 megawatts of wind and solar in the United States.

If you think of a nuclear powerplant having 1,000 megawatts--the Seabrook

nuclear powerplant, the Diablo Canyon nuclear powerplant--think of 250 solar and wind facilities. That would be the equivalent of each one of those nuclear powerplants. That is what we are talking about.

By the year 2020, we will have 500,000 people employed in the wind and solar industry. Contrast that with the 50,000 people in the coal industry. By 2020, there will be 500,000 in wind and solar. Who are they? They are roofers. They are electricians. They are engineers. They are people who are working with their hands to install all of this equipment.

The President doesn't seem to really care about those blue-collar workers--upwards of 500,000 by the year 2020--but they are working hard, they are working for good wages, and they are also not running the risk of inhaling dangerous air that can be dangerous to their health. That is where we are. We have this incredible opportunity that is before us. It is already happening. The President is in denial.

The climate change fight is not just a question of job creation or economic imperative; it is about the moral imperative we have to act. We know climate change will get worse. We know lives will be lost. We cannot sit back and do nothing.

In 2015, Pope Francis came to Capitol Hill, and he delivered his environmental ``Sermon on the Mount.'' He told us that mankind created this problem of climate change and now mankind must fix it. With the world's poorest and most vulnerable suffering the worst consequences of climate change--extreme poverty, famine, disease, and displacement--we have a moral obligation to act.

I agree with Pope Francis that the United States and the Congress have an important role to play. We have a responsibility to help those less fortunate amongst us who will be harmed the most by rising seas, a warming planet, and more pollutions spewing into our air and water. That is why, right now and in the next Congress, I am standing here with my colleagues in this fight to ensure that we take climate action, for a price on carbon, for investment in clean energy, for resilient infrastructure, for 100 percent renewable energy in our country.

If there is a tax extenders bill, we will be fighting for clean energy tax credits and for extenders to help reduce our carbon emissions, including for offshore wind, for storage of electricity, and for clean vehicles. We will be standing side by side in that fight in 2019 on the Senate floor so that we continue this revolution.

If there is an infrastructure package, we will be fighting for aggressive renewable energy standards for utilities and the Federal Government and for coastal infrastructure needs.

As we work on appropriations, we will fight for more funding for energy efficiency and programs that protect the health of children and families from climate change.

The climate challenges facing our Nation and the entire world are indeed great, but the United States has the technological imperative to lead on solutions. We have the economic imperative to create opportunities and jobs for all people, and we have the moral imperative to protect our planet for future generations.

The rest the world will not listen to us and follow us if we do not, in fact, take these actions. You cannot preach temperance from a barstool. You cannot ask other countries to act when we ourselves are walking away from the responsibility. That is the moment we are in.

By January 1, 2019, this battle is going to be on. We have been given the warning, and we are heeding it. We are going to have mighty battles up here on the floor to make sure that future generations do not look back at us and wonder why we didn't heed all of those warnings that were given to us by the smartest scientists on the planet.

Now I would like to yield to my great colleague from the State of New Hampshire, a woman who has dedicated her career to the issues of clean energy up in her home State. I give you the great Senator from New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen.

Mr. President, I seek recognition to speak at this time.

Mr. President, I rise to convey my strong support for the America's Water Infrastructure Act, which passed Congress earlier today.

With communities throughout Massachusetts and the country working to improve the quality of their drinking water, bracing for rising seas and more intense storms, and seeking to be more competitive in the global economy, this legislative package will provide welcome relief and support for critical infrastructure.

I have long focused on providing resources needed to improve the maritime linchpin of my State's economy: Boston Harbor. But this economic engine needs direct Federal funding to fire on all cylinders, especially as we transition to a new, supersized shipping era.

Two years ago, the Panama Canal completed an expansion project that allows bigger vessels, called post-Panamax ships, to pass through the canal. These ships, which are the length of aircraft carriers and can carry more than three times as much cargo as their competitors, are too large to dock at Boston Harbor today. That is why, in the 2014 Federal water resources bill, I fought to authorize $216 million in Federal funding for the Boston Harbor improvement project, which will deepen the harbor to accommodate those post-Panamax ships. I am pleased that my provision dedicating an additional $16 million to this crucial project was included in the 2016 water resources bill.

The Boston Harbor improvement project is projected to double the harbor's container volume, protect and grow 7,000 jobs, and generate $4.6 billion in economic activity throughout the New England region. It is a simple formula: Larger ships mean more cargo, more cargo means more commerce, and more commerce means more jobs for Boston and the State of Massachusetts.

I am pleased that the Corps has to date allocated $91 million of funding to this critical project thus far, but deepening the harbor alone does not ensure that the Port of Boston can accommodate these new, gargantuan giants of the seas. We must also deepen the berths, the area where the ships dock. That is why I am proud to secure a provision in this bill that will allow the port to construct more expansive berths, and I am pleased to help secure

a $42 million Federal grant to expand these berths.

By no means is Boston Harbor the only coastal gem in Massachusetts. In 2020, we will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement at Plymouth, but the celebration won't be complete if the ships can't get into and out of Plymouth Harbor. Regrettably, Plymouth Harbor has filled up with so much sand that ships are having trouble navigating--including the centerpiece of the celebration, the newly restored Mayflower II. That is why I secured a provision in this bill requiring the Corps to dredge this important landmark for the 400th anniversary. Just a few months ago, I helped secure $14.5 million needed to ensure that this hallmark of American history is swiftly deepened.

With this statutory requirement and funding, Plymouth Harbor will be able to host a great birthday party in 2020--one that Americans from all corners of the country and people from around the world are going to attend. But those Bay Staters living on Cape Cod will most likely experience a little traffic on the way to the event because Cape Cod is only accessible by two bridges, which span the Cape Cod Canal. If Cape Cod is the arm of Massachusetts, then these two bridges are the vital arteries delivering the island's lifeblood. The strength of those two bridges will determine the strength of the island's economy and health and well-being.

Regrettably, these two 80-year-old bridges, which are owned by the Army Corps, are structurally deficient. That is a problem for businesses that need an uninterrupted flow of commerce and residents who must have a safe means of evacuation in the event of an emergency. Imagine if there were an accident at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station or the equivalent of a Hurricane Maria. These two bridges are the only way for many Cape Cod residents to escape to safety.

I am proud that this bill includes my provision directing the Corps to replace these critical evacuation routes, helping preserve the very safety of island residents. In a time of emergency, Massachusetts residents shouldn't have to think twice about the best way to get their families to safety.

The bill also includes legislation that I have authored to help protect consumers from unjust and unreasonable increases in their electricity rates. Right now, if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has a vacancy--as is currently the case--and deadlocks 2 to 2 on whether to improve a rate increase, the increase goes forward. To make matters worse, the public can't even challenge a decision in this circumstance. That is exactly what happened in New England in 2014, leading to a $2 billion increase for our region's consumers.

My legislation would fix that by allowing the public to bring a challenge when FERC deadlocks, as they can for every other FERC decision. In sports, a tie isn't a loss, and the Fair RATES Act will ensure that a tie at FERC won't mean consumers lose with higher electricity rates. We must ensure that ratepayers are protected from unjust and unreasonable increases in energy prices. The legislation will help return the power to the people when it comes to energy prices by providing an outlet for consumers to challenge rate increases.

I thank Senators Murkowski and Cantwell for working with me to move this legislation forward, and I thank my great partner in the House of Representatives, Congressman Kennedy, for his tireless work to address this issue and to protect consumers.

I am pleased that this legislation contains several other key provisions that increase the funding caps for three coastal protection programs, allowing the towns of Salisbury, Newbury, and Sandwich to implement larger beach-nourishment projects--pumping sand onto the beach--to protect their communities; reevaluate the Muddy River environmental restoration project to pave the way for reauthorizing this crucial project; permit the town of Sandwich to use sand pumped from the Federal Cape Cod Canal that otherwise would be dumped in the ocean to fortify their town from rising seas; ensure that the Corps takes on all the costs to repair the town of Sandwich's beaches, which experience severe erosion due to the jetties at the mouth of Cape Cod Canal; and require the EPA to appoint liaisons to minority, Tribal, and low-income communities so these disenfranchised groups can have better access to the resources and tools provided by the Federal Government to improve the quality of our Nation's drinking water.

From fortifying our communities, to dealing with the present-day impacts of climate change, to eradicating the environmental contaminants of the 20th century from our water infrastructure, this legislation package will provide the funding and direction needed to help modernize the Commonwealth's water infrastructure.

I thank Chairman Barrasso and Ranking Member Carper for working with me on this important legislation. I was proud to vote in favor of America's Water Infrastructure Act today. It is something that I think is going to work very successfully for the State of Massachusetts. It is something that, in my opinion, is the quintessential example of how bipartisanship should, in fact, animate the legislative process in this body.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that three letters and a news article related to allegations against Judge Kavanaugh be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I rise to speak in opposition to the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The vacancy that Judge Kavanaugh seeks to fill is not an ordinary one. The retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy created one of the most consequential vacancies on the High Court that this country has ever seen. There is a reason why scholars and pundits refer to the Supreme Court of the last 30 years as the ``Kennedy Court.'' His influence on so many important cases cannot be overstated.

Throughout his three decades on the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy was often the swing vote in decisions decided 5 to 4 on a divided Bench. After John Roberts became Chief Justice in 2005, Justice Kennedy was the deciding vote in 92 percent of all cases decided by one vote. Let me repeat that. Of the 203 cases decided by a 5-to-4 vote in the John Roberts era, Justice Kennedy was the deciding vote in 186 of them--92 percent.

The Justice who succeeds Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to leave a deep and lasting mark on issues of the highest magnitude. Any nominee to the Supreme Court carries significance, but a nominee at this moment, for this seat, will play a defining role in our Nation's history.

The constitutional obligation conferred on Senators to provide their advice and consent on a Supreme Court nomination is a powerful, a serious, and a sacred responsibility. As Senators, we are duty-bound to determine whether Brett Kavanaugh is worthy of our trust. Even before President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, there were serious concerns that his views were too extreme, that he lacked the independence we seek in our judges, and that he had a difficult relationship with the truth.

During the confirmation process for his current position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, Brett Kavanaugh made misleading statements under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee on issues such as the Bush administration's policies on torture, his involvement in the nominations of controversial judges, and his knowledge about the theft of emails from the Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Then, when it came time to fill Justice Kennedy's seat on the Supreme Court, Judge Kavanaugh was hand-picked by the Federalist Society--an ultraconservative group that is dedicated to installing far-right judges on our Federal bench. The Federalist Society promised Donald Trump that the judges on that list would support his partisan agenda if they were elevated to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump repeatedly assured his supporters about that agenda and promised them that he would only appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act. Let me restate that. Donald Trump promised that he would only appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act.

As to Brett Kavanaugh, the promises that Donald Trump and the Federalist Society made were backed up by Kavanaugh's judicial record on the DC Circuit.

As a Federal appeals court judge, Brett Kavanaugh wrote a dissenting opinion that questioned Congress's authority to enact the Affordable Care Act and suggested that the President could choose not to enforce it.

Judge Kavanaugh would have blocked a lower court's order allowing an undocumented minor to safely and legally terminate her pregnancy.

Judge Kavanaugh supported employers who sought to deny their employees access to contraception.

Judge Kavanaugh wrote an opinion that unless guns were regulated either at the time the Constitution was written or traditionally throughout history, they could not be regulated now. He would have struck down the District of Columbia's assault weapons ban because assault weapons have not historically been banned.

How about 3D-downloaded guns? That was not in the original Constitution. There was no 3D gun. Are we bound by what the Founding Fathers thought about weapons or can we ourselves make a determination here? He says no. It goes back to the time when the Constitution was drafted or throughout history but not today. That is just wrong.

Judge Kavanaugh has consistently opposed strong environmental protections and sought to restrict the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency. He also authored a dissenting opinion that argued that net neutrality rules were unconstitutional.

Time and again, on all of these issues--access to healthcare, gun control, consumer and environmental protections, and a free and open internet--Judge Kavanaugh has been a rubberstamp for a far-rightwing agenda. Yet that is not the only reason President Trump chose Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.

Judge Kavanaugh, who once served as Ken Starr's top deputy in the investigation of President Clinton, has since written that a sitting President should not be investigated for allegations of wrongdoing, should not be indicted or tried while in office, and should not even have to participate in civil legal proceedings until he leaves office. This is a convenient reversal of a pro-investigation and pro-litigation position that Kavanaugh held when a Democrat was in the White House. It is a reversal that synchronizes very well with Donald Trump's interests.

With Donald Trump under criminal investigation and with legal issues arising from that investigation potentially headed to the Supreme Court and with Brett Kavanaugh's having articulated strong views about shielding a sitting President from criminal proceedings, his confirmation is a constitutional crisis in the making. It is no coincidence that a President who fears the long arm of the law would nominate to the Supreme Court a jurist who would keep him from its reach.

Brett Kavanaugh has left a lengthy paper trail on all of these hot- button issues. That is why President Trump and his allies closed ranks and fought to keep so much of his record hidden from the American public. Despite repeated requests from Senate Democrats for documents relating to Brett Kavanaugh's service in the Bush White House, we--the Members of the Senate--have only seen 7 percent of those records that were, in fact, part of Kavanaugh's record inside the Bush White House, and only about half of

that 7 percent are available to the public.

To put it another way, no Senator has seen 93 percent of all of Brett Kavanaugh's work in the White House. That work includes reflections on his views on the detention of enemy combatants, interrogation techniques and the use of torture, warrantless wiretapping, and the banning of same-sex marriage.

We on the Senate floor--and as we cast a vote today--do not have access to any of those documents that he worked on while he served in the Bush White House. How can we give advice before we vote on consent if we can't even gain access to the documents which he himself handled in the Bush White House and which he himself may have commented upon during the time they were being considered? We have no access to it. Ninety-three percent of all of the documents are not available to the Members of the Senate. Even though there are reams of paper detailing Brett Kavanaugh's involvement in these issues, his record on them remains a blank slate for Senators.

To summarize, even before the events of the last 3 weeks, we knew a lot of things about Brett Kavanaugh and yet, at the same time, shockingly little about Brett Kavanaugh. We knew we had a blatantly partisan person, but as you are trying to be nominated for the Supreme Court, we--the Senators and the American public--have a right to know what you think about issues. That is why every preceding nominee had to provide all of the documentation, with the notable exception of Brett Kavanaugh, who is denying us 93 percent.

This is happening with the acquiescence of the Trump White House and the Republican leadership here in the Senate. No Member of the Senate, Democrat or Republican, knows what is in the 93 percent of all of the papers. No one knows. It is a deliberate coverup of all of those documents so that we cannot know, so that the public cannot know. So we begin with that--the 93 percent of all of his records in the White House that are not accessible to us even though this nominee is given to us from this White House. We know a lot, but there is much, much more that we do not know.

We knew that we had a Federalist Society-approved nominee who would overturn Roe and the Affordable Care Act. We knew we had a President with a vested interest in finding a future Justice who could shield him from legal jeopardy, and we knew that there was much else we didn't know because that 93 percent was being hidden from public scrutiny. All of these reasons alone were enough to warrant a ``no'' vote on Judge Kavanaugh's lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Then we learned of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Dr. Blasey Ford bravely came forward to tell us about the Brett Kavanaugh she knew. She came forward to share a deeply personal and traumatic experience of sexual assault. Dr. Blasey Ford did not want to share this painful story with the American public. She did not want to have her life upturned and picked apart. She did not want to subject her family to harassment and death threats. She did not want the President of the United States to shamefully and appallingly mock her at a political rally, but she came forward anyway. She came forward because she believed it was her civic duty to do so.

From the beginning, it was clear that her allegations were credible. She had recounted the painful experiences to her husband, in couples' counseling, years before Brett Kavanaugh was ever considered for the Supreme Court--something her therapist's contemporaneous notes corroborate. Three days before Brett Kavanaugh was nominated, while his name was publicly in play for the Supreme Court, Dr. Blasey Ford reached out to her Congresswoman in the hope that she could help inform President Trump as he decided on a nominee to fill Justice Kennedy's seat.

Dr. Blasey Ford took a polygraph test to prove that she was truthful, and she only shared her story publicly when reporters made it untenable to remain silent. Every detail shows Dr. Blasey Ford to be consistent, honest, and trustworthy. As hard as it was for her, Dr. Ford did our country an invaluable service by coming forward, testifying before the Senate, and telling the entire country her story.

Her testimony was powerful. It was heart-wrenching. When she spoke of her strongest memory of the assault--the laughter of the two boys as Brett Kavanaugh pinned her down--we felt her profound pain. When she spoke of Brett Kavanaugh's covering her mouth as she tried to scream, we felt her visceral fear. For countless women and men across the country whose experiences mirror that of Dr. Blasey Ford's, this testimony was their voice. For many of them, Dr. Blasey Ford's bravery gave them the courage to come forward with their own stories of sexual assault.

On the day of her testimony, my office received over 100 calls from survivors who courageously shared with my staff the painful details of their own assaults. Many of these men and women were telling their stories for the first time. Women have stopped me at the airport and on the street to tell me their stories.

Dr. Ford has given them the counsel to come forward so they can share their own experiences. Dr. Ford's courage opened a wellspring of emotion. I applaud her. We owe her a deep debt of gratitude. She was a role model for all of us, for the children of the country, and for future generations. She has given new meaning to what it means to be a good citizen.

Dr. Ford was compelling. She was convincing. She was courageous. She had nothing to gain and everything to lose. No reasonable, open-minded person could have listened to Dr. Blasey Ford and concluded anything other than that she is telling the truth about what happened between her and Brett Kavanaugh.

Yet there are two sides to every story. What about the other side of the story? What did Judge Brett Kavanaugh have to say about it after we heard Dr. Ford testify before the Judiciary Committee? It was Judge Kavanaugh's turn. What did we hear from Judge Kavanaugh? We heard anger. We heard belligerence. We heard evasiveness. We heard disrespect. Judge Kavanaugh's testimony before the Judiciary Committee reinforced the old concerns about his credibility. He gave answers about his behavior in high school, about supposed drinking games, and about his yearbook page that simply defy credulity. Recent reports from those who knew him in high school and college contradict his assertions that he was never aggressive or belligerent after drinking or that the terms he used in his yearbook had the meanings as ascribed to them before the Judiciary Committee.

In fact, in a letter Judge Kavanaugh himself wrote in 1983 that surfaced after his testimony, he described himself and his friends as ``loud, obnoxious drunks.''

The point is not that Brett Kavanaugh engaged in questionable behavior in high school. The point is he was not honest about it with the Judiciary Committee under oath at his confirmation hearing. The point is he was not credible. The point is he misled the Judiciary Committee. As my colleagues framed the issue yesterday, the point is that if we are assessing whether Dr. Ford's allegations satisfy a more- likely-than-not standard, they do and do so easily. The point is that Judge Kavanaugh showed an alarming lack of judicial temperament in addressing those issues.

Don't take my word for it. Consider what Judge Brett Kavanaugh has to say. What would Judge Brett Kavanaugh say about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's appearance before the Judiciary Committee?

Well, in 2015, Judge Brett Kavanaugh gave a speech at the Catholic University on what makes a good judge. He set forth litmus tests for a good judge--the characteristics and qualities he or she must have. Here is what he said then. Brett Kavanaugh said: ``First and obviously, a good judge, like a good umpire, cannot act as a partisan.'' He went on to say that it is very important for a judge ``to avoid any semblance of that partisanship, that political background.'' Yet in his opening statement to the Judiciary Committee--his opening statement--Judge Kavanaugh launched into a nakedly partisan screed. He blamed Democratic Senators for a conspiracy to destroy his nomination. He called the recent allegations against him a part of some ``revenge of the Clintons.''

He told the Democratic Senators on the dais that ``what goes around comes around,'' making an unvarnished political threat. That was in his opening statement to the Judiciary Committee. Judge Kavanaugh failed his own test of partisanship.

Next, in his 2015 Catholic University speech, Judge Kavanaugh said: ``[I]t is critical to have the proper demeanor.'' Judge Kavanaugh added that it is important for judges ``to keep our emotions in check, and be calm against the storm.''

Anyone watching Judge Kavanaugh's testimony before the Judiciary Committee saw just the opposite. Judge Kavanaugh was angry, emotional, and belligerent. What we saw was a performance we would expect from a judge on the ``People's Court,'' not on the Supreme Court of the United States. Judge Kavanaugh failed his own test for judicial temperament.

Finally, in his 2015 Catholic University speech, Judge Kavanaugh counseled that a good judge ``must demonstrate civility.'' Yet in his appearance before the Judiciary Committee, Judge Kavanaugh impugned the motives of Democratic Senators. He was rude. He interrupted questions. He went so far as to ask my colleague Senator Klobuchar whether she ever blacked out from drinking--an affront by a nominee who was there to provide answers, not to ask questions. Brett Kavanaugh failed his own test of civility.

That is why more than 2,400 law professors have written to the Senate and told us ``Judge Brett Kavanaugh displayed a lack of judicial temperament that would be disqualifying for any court, and certainly for elevation to the highest Court of this land.''

That is why former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens took the extraordinary step of stating publicly that Judge Kavanaugh's performance at his qualification hearing disqualified him from serving on the Supreme Court.

Let me say this: Brett Kavanaugh is not entitled to a job on the Supreme Court--no one is--but the American people are entitled to the truth. President Trump and the Senate Republicans have kept it from them.

The FBI background investigation that was reopened after Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony was not a real investigation. It was a figleaf to cover for Republicans with concerns about Judge Kavanaugh.

The FBI interviewed only nine witnesses. Unbelievably, Dr. Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh were not among the people interviewed by the FBI. The FBI was forced to ignore countless leaks or not to follow up on them. Then Senators were given 1 hour to review the results of the so-called investigation.

I was locked in a secure room with 17 Senators, and there was one copy of the FBI report for all of us. It was like a bad game show, where Senators had to compete with each other to get pages of the report from the hands of their colleagues, read them, and digest them before the clock ran out on the 1 hour we were given to read the report. It was the single most absurd thing I have experienced in my time in Congress.

Sadly, it was entirely consistent with the manner in which the Senate Republicans have handled this nomination throughout the confirmation process. That is because the White House and the Senate Republicans weren't interested in getting to the truth. They were interested in covering it up and ramming through Judge Kavanaugh's nomination.

They have gone so far as to stoke claims that Dr. Ford's supporters have an ulterior motive and that Dr. Ford is being used for political reasons. It seems that many of my Republican colleagues just cannot bring themselves to believe a woman's account of a sexual assault and that other women and men would rise up in support of her. It is shameful that people think this is what has occurred. It is just shameful.

Article III of the Constitution says that a Supreme Court Justice ``shall hold their Office during good behavior.'' That is the standard after someone serves on the Supreme Court. What this body has been unwilling to do is to actually determine whether Judge Kavanaugh has engaged in good behavior before he is put on the Court. They have truncated that process. They have made it impossible for us to get to the bottom of that truth.

The Republicans control this Chamber. They control the schedule. They have rushed to judgment on Brett Kavanaugh in order to confirm him before the midterm elections.

They have 51 votes to confirm anyone they want. The Democrats do not control this Chamber. The Republicans have 51 votes. If they wanted to bring in someone else who did not have these problems, they could have done it anytime. They could do it today.

Some say we have no power to stop the Republicans from confirming a Justice this year--no power. That is absolutely untrue. What the Republicans have in their power, however, is to nominate someone--even today--who is worthy of serving on the Supreme Court.

We know they want a Supreme Court Justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade. We know they want a Supreme Court Justice who will take away health insurance coverage for preexisting conditions. We know they want a Justice who will oppose any gun control, and we know they want a Supreme Court Justice who will not question Donald Trump or let him be investigated.

If Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, it will further harm a Supreme Court that has never fully recovered from Bush v. Gore--the partisan decision that threw the 2000 Presidential election to George W. Bush. It will further harm a Supreme Court that has not recovered from Judge Neil Gorsuch joining the Court after Senate Republicans stole that seat from Judge Merrick Garland. Confirming Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will further erode and undermine the Court's legitimacy and continue to diminish the American people's trust in it.

The Supreme Court of the United States deserves better than Brett Kavanaugh. The American people deserve better. Our democracy deserves better.

I will therefore vote no on the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, and I urge my colleagues to vote no as well.

Thank you.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, I stood here to commend this body for developing and passing much needed legislation to help families and communities respond to the opioid overdose crisis. This crisis is a tragedy, a scourge, an epidemic that claimed an estimated 49,000 lives just last year. It is one that knows no political, territorial or demographical boundaries.

Soon, the Senate will consider a bipartisan, bicameral, consensus opioid package, which overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last week.

Contained within the conference bill are several of my provisions from the Senate-passed legislation, including Opioid Milestones, a bipartisan bill I introduced with Senators Murkowski and Hassan to create a scorecard to measure our Nation's response to the opioid crisis. In other words, as we spend more money, how do we now give a grade to each one of the programs that we are funding so that in 2, 3, 4 years, it is best practices across the whole country, so that we are ensuring that we learn the lessons of what is, in fact, occurring? So that is a milestone, a scorecard so that we know what is happening with the money, with the programs we are funding.

The final package also retains important legislation I introduced with Senators Young and Baldwin to help address increasing rates of infectious diseases associated with injection drug use, such as HIV and viral hepatitis.

Two weeks ago, while highlighting these provisions, I also called on my House and Senate colleagues to include in the conference legislation a critical policy that was noticeably absent from the Senate-passed bill: expansion of medication-assisted treatment, or MAT, for opioid use disorders.

In 2016, I worked with Senator Rand Paul to expand access to MAT by enabling nurse practitioners and physician assistants to temporarily prescribe SUBOXONE. This year, I introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Paul, Senator Collins, and Senator Hassan to provide permanent MAT prescriber authority for nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Our legislation would also extend this authority to other nursing professions already stepping up to address the opioid crisis-- certified nurses, midwives, clinical nurse specialists, and certified registered nurse anesthetists.

As this consensus legislation was being negotiated, Senator Paul and I led a bipartisan, bicameral letter urging leadership to include the House-passed version of our legislation in the final bill.

Today, I am pleased to report that we succeeded in this endeavor. Section 3201 of the conference legislation would permanently allow nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe MAT. It would also provide that authority to the other nursing professions for 5 years. This policy will immediately save lives and improve our overall response to the opioid overdose crisis.

I thank my partners in both the House and Senate for fighting to ensure that we reduce the demand side of this epidemic by enhancing access to treatment.

In addition to expanding MAT, the conference package takes important steps to help connect vulnerable populations to healthcare, particularly substance use treatment.

As we work to address our Nation's opioid crisis and right the wrongs of the failed War on Drugs, we must do all we can to remove barriers to care, including for those who have been incarcerated.

Last month, I reintroduced my legislation, the Supporting Positive Outcomes after Release Act, which prohibits States from terminating an inmate's Medicaid coverage during incarceration. My legislation would instead require States to temporarily suspend Medicaid coverage, ensuring immediate access to healthcare services upon reentry into the community. In other words, when the prisoner is let out of incarceration and they go back into the community, they will have access to healthcare services. Otherwise, the likelihood of relapse is very high.

I am pleased that the conference opioid package includes a version of my legislation requiring States to suspend rather than terminate Medicaid coverage for young people under 21 years of age during incarceration. This provision will help bridge the precarious time after release by ensuring that these individuals can access their benefits as soon as possible.

I applaud the work of Senators Hatch and Wyden to include this important provision in the conference package, and I hope that this is a step forward in expanding this suspension policy to other Medicaid populations. I don't think it should be just 21 and under; I think it should be anyone who is leaving prison. A high percentage of people who are in prison have some drug-related problem, and if we don't provide them with the treatment they need as they are leaving, then it is almost--not a guarantee but a high probability that they will take a U- turn and come right back with the same problem again.

This final opioid package represents a critical component of our response to the Nation's opioid overdose crisis. I commend Senators Murray and Alexander on their incredible and tireless work to put this legislation together, and I thank them for working with me throughout the process on all of those provisions. However, this should not and will not be the end of Congress's efforts to tackle the opioid epidemic. There remain a number of other outstanding proposals, like mandating prescriber education and clearly labeling the risk of opioids on prescription bottles. That could pay big dividends in addressing this crisis.

I would say in conclusion that it is a missed opportunity when we don't mandate physician education across the whole country on the prescribing of opioids. We should do it. There are a lot of physicians out there who are prescribing bottles of opioids who have never had the correct training in order to ensure that they understand what the consequences are.

Simultaneously, Senator Hatch and I have introduced legislation that says, in the absence of mandatory physician education, the bottle cap of every opioid have a warning, as they are taking the bottle from the pharmacy, so that the mother, the wife, the father, the responsible party in the family can actually see that this is dangerous and that it is addictive. The warning is right on the bottle cap in a color--red, orange, green--that says ``this medicine is different from anything else you have in your cabinet.'' At least give the mothers and fathers and family members the tools they need or the information they need to say: The physician didn't tell us this because they weren't mandated to have the education, but at least I can read it and say to myself that this is something I should be very careful with in allowing my family member to take these pills.

That is for another day, but I think it is important, and I think it is something that we are going to have to include, ultimately, down the line just to give families the information they need.

Again, I thank everyone, Democrat and Republican. This is a perfect example of how bipartisanship prevails over paralysis. And there can't be a more important issue that would prove that this institution can work. I thank everyone involved.

I yield back.

Thank you, Mr. President.

It is Congress's obligation to protect the public from abusive practices that harm consumers and dull the competitive process. Regrettably, Congress has failed to fulfill that obligation with the FAA reauthorization bill.

With this bill, Congress has missed a historic, once-in-a-generation opportunity to stop gargantuan airlines from gouging Americans with exorbitant fees. Last year, Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, and I secured a provision in the Senate FAA reauthorization bill that would protect passengers from ridiculous, sky-high airline fees. Our FAIR Fees--Forbidding Airlines from Imposing Ridiculous Fees--provision directed the Department of Transportation to, No. 1, assess whether change and cancellation, baggage, and other fees are reasonable and proportional to the costs of the services which are being provided, and secondly, to ensure that change and cancellation fees are reasonable.

Airline fees would be fair and reasonable--that is all the provision did. The reason we need that is simple. In a truly competitive industry, an airline would be unable to charge unreasonable fees because their competitors would undercut their prices. Darwinian, paranoia-inducing competition would drive down fees to reflect the actual costs of the services provided--the cost to check a bag, the cost to change a flight reservation, the cost of booking a passenger on standby for an earlier flight. Fair and reasonable. But the airline industry is far from competitive. In the past 10 years, we have gone from 10 major airlines down to 4. Four airlines now control 85 percent of traffic in the skies. An analysis from the U.S. Travel Association found that 74 airports are served by only 1 airline, while 155 airports are dominated by 1 carrier controlling over 50 percent of seat capacity. Here is the result: sky-high airline fees and a growing frustration with the modern flying experience.

To the surprise of no one, the airline industry launched a ferocious lobbying blitz against our bipartisan FAIR Fees provision, making its elimination from the bill their top priority. The airline industry lobbed all sorts of false accusations against these commonsense protections--profitability of the airlines would go down, passengers would no longer be able to change or cancel their flights--but not once did the industry actually defend the price of all of these fees to cancel or to change a flight. Not once did the industry actually demonstrate that their fees are reasonable and proportional to the cost of the services provided. That is because those costs are not proportional to the services being provided to the customer by the airlines.

The independent Government Accountability Office, GAO, recently released a report confirming what countless passengers across the country already know to be true: Airlines are gouging captive passengers to line their pockets, not to cover the actual costs of the services being provided. During a hearing last year, representatives from United Airlines and American Airlines testified that their change and cancellation fees bear no resemblance to the costs borne by the airline for actually canceling a ticket or changing a flight reservation.

Even in the past few weeks, as we worked in Congress to include important consumer protection measures in this final FAA legislation, the airlines continued to raise fees. That is how confident the airlines were that their powerful industry lobbyists would remove my provision and Senator Wicker's provision from the bill. Despite bipartisan support, despite the provisions included in the Senate bill, and despite the public outcry, the airline lobby knew that they could count on Congress to do their bidding, so they raised their fees anyway.

Last month, JetBlue Airways changed its cancellation fees from $150 to $200 for certain flights. JetBlue also raised fees for a passenger's first checked bag from $25 to $30 and increased the fees for a second checked bag from $35 to $40. That is $140 to check two bags roundtrip. Not surprisingly, almost immediately after, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, and American Airlines followed suit, raising their bag fees to match JetBlue's.

When I sent letters to the 11 major airlines inquiring as to why airline fees are on the rise even though there appears to be no appreciable increase in the cost of services provided, the airlines' response was predictable.

Eight airlines had refused to respond to my inquiry by last Thursday's deadline--a deadline I set to ensure that this body would have this critical information in hand when considering the FAA bill. There has been no response from United, American, and Delta. That is unacceptable. Of the three airlines that did respond, two could not explain whether their fees were reasonable to the costs of the services provided. The other refused to address the matter altogether, claiming that this information is ``proprietary,'' claiming that the flying public does not have the right to know if they are being gouged. That is the airline industry's position.

If it is not to cover the cost of the services provided--checking a bag, changing a flight reservation, canceling a ticket--why are the airlines charging these fees? The answer is, because they can. Last year, the airlines raked in $2.9 billion in change and cancellation fees. That is equivalent to the cost of 11 million flights from Washington to Boston. The airlines collected over $4.5 billion in checked bag fees, which is enough to buy 55 jumbo jets. The airlines have turned this nickel-and-diming into a multibillion-dollar industry--a $7.4 billion industry last year. Passengers think they are buying low-cost airfare, only to be gouged by proliferating airline fees.

The American public wants Congress to stop these abusive practices, and here in the Senate, we answered their call. We secured a bipartisan provision in the Senate FAA bill that would have stopped this fee epidemic once and for all. But through an opaque process and after months of lobbying against my bipartisan FAIR Fees provision, the airlines won and airline passengers lost.

What exactly are the airlines so afraid of? Why won't they even respond to my letters? The FAIR Fees provision doesn't set fees; it only directs the Department of Transportation to set up a public process to assess those fees. But that is exactly what the airlines oppose. They don't want to have to explain this, to be transparent about what they are doing, because if they did, the American people would know the truth--this is price-gouging in its purest form.

On behalf of the American flying public, the millions of Americans who are subjected to ridiculous airline fees, I will vote no on the FAA bill. And I vow to the public that this fight will not die with this bill. As the fees rise, pressure will mount on Congress to address this consumer protection, competition issue. We know the problem. FAIR Fees would have been the solution, but this bill does not include that solution, and this fight must go on.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I would like to honor the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts--the oldest chartered military organization in the Western Hemisphere--on its 381st Fall Field Day Tour of Duty. Its charter was signed in 1638 by John Winthrop, then-Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Ancient and Honorables continue to serve the Commonwealth as a vital part of its militia, subject to the direction of the adjutant general of the Massachusetts National Guard.

Although the Ancient and Honorables have long served as the honor guard for the Governor of the Commonwealth, they continue to play an integral role in the State's civic rituals. Among their responsibilities, they participate in the inaugurals of State constitutional officers, the annual State of the Commonwealth address, and the yearly celebration of the Constitution of the United States from the historic State house in the heart of old Boston, but most importantly, they stand ready to assist in times of peril or emergency.

May the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts long continue its role in fostering, supporting, and preserving the civic life of the city of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the United States of America. The Ancients serve as world ambassadors of the United States, where, on their Fall Field Day Tour of Duty, they pay their respects to fallen soldiers of all nations who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in defense of freedom.

Today I would like to recognize the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts for their civic responsibilities, patriotic duties, and community service. May they continue their proud traditions for many years to come.

Mr. President, I rise today to express my frustration--my outrage--that this body is poised to miss a historic, once-in-a- generation opportunity to stop the major airlines from gouging Americans with exorbitant fees every time they fly.

In the dark of night early Saturday morning, House and Senate committee leadership released a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill that does not include a commonsense, bipartisan provision to protect passengers from having to pay $200 to change a ticket that costs $250--a provision that would have protected a family from paying $200 to cancel a flight because another family member had fallen seriously ill and a vacation had to be canceled.

Instead, after months of lobbying against my bipartisan FAIR Fees provision, the airlines won and airline passengers lost. I would compare it to the Christians and the lions, but in this story, the Christians even had to pay extra to enter the amphitheater.

What once were considered the basic services of flying have now become optional and with a massive price tag--checking a bag, carrying on a bag, flying standby for an earlier flight, printing a boarding pass, early boarding, seat selection, changing or canceling your flight, even a blanket and pillow.

Air travelers are being nickeled-and-dimed, but the real cost is in the billions of dollars. That is because the major airlines have turned fees into a multibillion-dollar industry. Last year, the airlines raked in $7.4 billion in fees. More than $4.5 billion came from now having to pay to check your bag, and $2.9 billion was extra fees if you wanted to change your ticket or if you wanted to cancel your ticket. That is billions of dollars. That is actually the equivalent of 11 million flights from Washington, DC, to Boston. That is the cost that is now imposed upon consumers. Passengers think they are buying low-cost fares, but they are really just victims of airline greed in support of a new multibillion-dollar profit center.

Even in the past few weeks, as we worked in Congress to include important consumer protection measures in this final FAA legislation, the airlines continued to raise their fees.

Last month, JetBlue Airways raised its change and cancellation fees from $150 to $200 for certain flights. They also raised fees for a passenger's first checked bag from $25 to $30 and increased the fees for a second checked bag from $35 to $40. That is $140 to check two bags for a round trip. Shortly after, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, and American Airlines followed suit, raising their bag fees to match JetBlue's.

In college, I might have spent more time being interested in politics than economics, but I thought competition was supposed to drive prices down and not up. So why are the airlines charging these fees? Well, the first answer is, because they can, but the real answer is, because there is no competition among domestic airlines.

In the past 10 years, we have gone from 10 major airlines down to just 4. Only four airlines control 85 percent of traffic in the skies. The only thing competitive about the current airline industry is the fight for overhead compartment space. Americans have more choice in where to eat at the airport than which airline they can take.

We know that when choice goes down, fees go up. And these sky-high fees bear almost no resemblance to the cost of the services being provided. The Government Accountability Office, GAO, recently released a report confirming what countless passengers across the country already know to be true: Airlines are gouging captive passengers to line their pockets, not to cover the actual cost of the services provided.

Does it really cost $200 for American Airlines to change a ticket? Does it really cost Delta Air Lines $40 to load that second bag--$10 more than processing the first bag? Airlines are increasing their fees in order to match their competitors. They are actively seeking to deceive passengers by offering artificially low fares and then charging exorbitant fees on the back end.

Enough is enough. It is time we put a stop to these abusive practices. That is why Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and I joined together to get our provision ensuring change and cancellation fees are reasonable into the Senate FAA reauthorization bill.

When a liberal from New England and a Republican from the Deep South can agree on policy, we are on the right side of history. Yet the airline industry had other plans. They stated their No. 1 priority in the FAA reauthorization was defeating our FAIR Fees provision.

What is it about this provision that they would stop at nothing to block it from becoming law? Why would the airline industries band together on this one issue? They don't compete truly against each other in the marketplace. Here, they could all come together on one policy. It is because they don't want the Department of Transportation to assess whether change and cancellation, baggage, and other fees are reasonable and proportional to the costs of the services provided. They don't want to ensure change and cancellation fees are reasonable. That is all that our provision does--ensure that these fees are reasonable and proportional to the cost of the services being provided by the airlines to the customer. That is it. It is as commonsense and as straightforward as you would want an airline passenger to receive from their airline--fair and reasonable.

No price is determined by this amendment--only that it has to be fair and reasonable and related to the cost that is, in fact, borne by the airlines in order to provide that service. How onerous could that be on an airline? Why can't we get that passed through this body so that consumers don't get tipped upside down at the counter as they try to change a ticket or to cancel a ticket? Why can't we get that passed?

If a child gets sick and a passenger has to change or cancel a flight weeks in advance, does it really cost Delta Air Lines $200 to cancel that ticket? If a meeting gets postponed so a ticket has to be canceled 2 weeks before departure, is it fair for United Airlines to charge $200 for a ticket that costs about that same amount? Are those fees proportional when the airlines can still resell the vacated seat, even if the passenger cancels weeks ahead of time?

Think about that. The passenger gives the airline 2 weeks' notice. Then, they have to pay a fine, $200. Then, the airline resells the ticket to another passenger. What is the cost to the airline in that kind of situation? Or are they just exploiting the vulnerability of the passenger who has to change it? They have resold the ticket for the same price or higher to another passenger.

The answer is no. Passengers have no choice. They have no alternative.

The market has failed, leaving these flyers vulnerable to fee gouging and corporate greed from the airlines. You are at the counter, and they can say: Go to another airline.

And you say: Well, there are no other airlines at this airport that fly to my destination. It is the only airline I can rely upon.

Well, then, pay the cancellation fee, pay the change fee because you are not at a marketplace where you can then say: There is another airline I can go to right here at this airport that will take me to that destination nonstop.

In fact, the only thing the airline industry was more committed to doing than raising airline fees was defeating the consumer protection provision in the FAA bill. We still have an opportunity to right this wrong. Tomorrow the House of Representatives will consider the FAA reauthorization bill. On behalf of the flying public--the millions of Americans who are subjected to ridiculous airline fees--I call on the House to add the FAIR Fees provision to the FAA reauthorization bill, and I call on my Senate colleagues to support it. It is time to stop nickel-and-diming American families and ensure

that they are flying the fair and friendly skies. Otherwise, these billions of dollars, year after year, will come out of the pockets of consumers who have no choice.

Senator Wicker and I worked together to build it into the Senate bill. We should not have receded to the position of the House. That was a mistake. This history is going to continue because the anger of the flying public is only going to build as each and every month and year goes by. The day is going to come, I vow to you, where we are going to have this in a bill that passes this Chamber and the House of Representatives.

This is an issue whose time has come. If it has been blocked, it is only temporarily. We are going to return to this issue. Everyone in the Congress will be made accountable to the flying public so that they are not given this offer they can't refuse every time they are at the counter: Pay or don't fly. It is absolutely wrong.

At this point, I yield back.

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 rise today to speak about the pending legislation to address the opioid epidemic--a crisis the likes of which we have never seen in America. All of us know that this crisis is a nightmare. It is a scourge. The prescription drug, heroin, and fentanyl epidemic is a human tragedy unfolding every day in homes, in alleyways, in bathrooms, the back seats of cars, in nearly every city and town of our country.

Preliminary estimates indicate that opioid overdoses claimed an estimated

49,000 lives just last year, including nearly 2,000 people in Massachusetts. That is more than gun violence. That is more than car accidents. The opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug overdose crisis in American history. A crisis of this proportion demands action at all levels, and I am pleased that the Senate is taking a step in that direction today.

I would like to thank Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Patty Murray and their staffs, as well as the leadership and staffs of the other committees, who worked to create and refine the legislative package we will be voting on later this evening.

This bill contains a number of proposals that will help families and communities struggling day in and day out to respond to the opioid overdose crisis. One of those proposals is my bipartisan Opioids Milestones Act, a bill I authored with Senator Lisa Murkowski and Senator Maggie Hassan to create a scorecard for our Nation's response to the opioid crisis.

The Milestones Act will require the Federal Government to both set tangible benchmarks for how we are addressing the opioid crisis in our country and measure progress on key objectives every single year. When people are sick, they get a treatment plan. The United States of America needs a nationwide treatment plan for fighting the opioid crisis, and that is what this provision will create for our country. Those objectives include reducing overdose deaths, expanding treatment availability, increasing the number of individuals in sustained recovery, and decreasing emergency room visits for overdoses.

If we don't have a dashboard--a scorecard--to clearly and quantifiably show our progress on this epidemic, we will continue to fight the same battle over and over again. We urgently need to know whether our policies and resources are being used in ways that have a measurable impact on the public's health. The Milestones Act provision in this bill will provide a national roadmap for ensuring that our Federal and State resources pay lifesaving dividends. That is my goal, that is Senator Murkowski's goal, and that is Senator Hassan's goal, and it is in the bill.

This type of strategy was put in place to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America--another disease that was surrounded by stigma, inaction, and the lack of research until advocates, scientists, healthcare providers, and policymakers joined forces to chart a path forward and to make measurable progress. While that war is not yet won, new HIV diagnoses and deaths have declined dramatically over the past two decades in the United States.

When America has a plan, America wins. That is why I am pleased that this legislative package includes important bipartisan legislation that I introduced with Senator Todd Young and Senator Tammy Baldwin to help address increasing rates of infectious diseases like HIV caused by injection drug use.

With more than 220 counties across the United States at risk of a hepatitis C or HIV outbreak related to the opioid crisis, we cannot afford to wait any longer to arm our States with the tools needed to tackle the public health consequences of this epidemic. Massachusetts had more reported cases of hepatitis C than any other State in 2015-- the same year we peaked in overdose deaths caused by illicit opioids.

The public health consequences of the epidemic are life-and-death. One recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health roughly estimates that 510,000 people could die over the next decade due to opioid-related causes, which include overdoses as well as other causes of death tied to opioids, such as HIV infections from sharing syringes. That is what Senator Young and I are trying to deal with. We are trying to deal with this issue so that we can create the tools that help us to deal with this growing medical problem in our country.

This provision will help ensure that the Federal Government works with States to improve education, surveillance, and treatment of opioid use-related infectious diseases like HIV and viral hepatitis, but we have more work to do to combat this crisis. If we are going to reduce the supply of heroin, fentanyl, and illicit prescription opioids, then we have to reduce the demand through treatment. That must include increasing access to effective medication-assisted treatment, or MAT.

Only about 1 in 10 individuals with a substance use disorder will be able to access treatment. That is unconscionable and demands immediate action. That is why as part of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act--or the CARA bill of 2016--Senator Rand Paul and I worked together to include provisions that would, for the first time, allow physician assistants and nurse practitioners to prescribe lifesaving medication- assisted treatment, like SUBOXONE, for individuals with substance use disorders.

Since these provisions went into effect, more than 8,000 physician assistants and nurse practitioners have registered to provide medication-assisted treatment. That has resulted in more Americans accessing this lifesaving care, especially in community health centers and rural communities across this country. For doctors and medical professionals, MAT stands for medication-assisted therapies, but for those with an opioid use disorder, expanding MAT means more access to treatment.

Nurse practitioners and physician assistants want to respond to the demand side of the opioid crisis, and they are stepping up in a major way to connect individuals to the treatment they need. Unfortunately, the authority nurse practitioners and physician assistants have to prescribe this lifesaving treatment expires in a few short years. If we don't intervene now, a substantial amount of our current prescriber population will no longer be able to treat individuals with substance use disorder using this effective treatment. That will further strain our already woefully inadequate treatment workforce.

That is why Senator Paul, Senator Hassan, Senator Collins, and I introduced new, bipartisan legislation to provide permanent MAT prescriber authority for nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Our bill also extends this authority to other nursing professionals already playing an important role in our fight against the opioid crisis--certified nurse midwives, clinical nurse specialists, and certified registered nurse anesthetists. These dedicated nursing professionals are irreplaceable members of our healthcare community, and we need to make sure they can provide treatment that saves families from the suffering of addiction.

The legislative package we are voting on today in the Senate unfortunately does not contain this bipartisan legislation on medication-assisted treatment. This is a missed opportunity to build upon our commitment to treatment. But the House-passed opioid legislation does contain a version of our provision to make the prescriber authority for nurse practitioners and physician assistants permanent and to expand that authority to the other nursing professionals. I will continue working with my colleagues to ensure that this lifesaving provision makes it into the final opioid package negotiated between the House and the Senate leaders.

The bill we vote on today cannot be the end of our efforts to help solve the opioid overdose crisis. The opioid crisis knows no boundaries, and neither should our efforts to combat it. Not only must we expand access to treatment, we must also think about how we can help to prevent addiction from taking hold in the first place.

Last week, I introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Orrin Hatch to help ensure that patients and their loved ones understand the risks of prescription opioids. I have heard too many stories about substance use disorders that began from an opioid prescribed to an individual injured on the job who needed to feel well enough to return to work the next day, or to help heal a sports injury. That is the story of Cory Palazzi from Taunton, MA.

In high school, Cory was a varsity baseball and football athlete and a member of the National Honor Society. He had a love for the game of baseball. For him, the baseball diamond was the happiest place on Earth.

In his junior year, Cory suffered a shoulder injury that required surgery. After surgery, Cory was prescribed opioid painkillers and became addicted to his medication. His painkiller addiction eventually became a heroin addiction, and in 2013, Cory suffered a heroin

overdose, which has left him permanently disabled.

Cory and his family, Lori and Dave, have turned this tragedy into triumph. Today, they share their story in schools and other organizations to warn the public about the dangers of drugs and offer a message of hope for those who are faced with addiction. We thank them for their courage, for their strength, and for their commitment to ending this crisis.

The Palazzi family know firsthand that prescription opioids are dangerous, but because of the confusing names and ingredients, many families may not know that they have just left the pharmacy with a bottle full of danger. The path from one bottle of pills--for patients who have had their wisdom teeth removed or suffered a sports injury--to addiction needs as many roadblocks put in place as humanly possible.

The legislation Senator Hatch and I have introduced--the Lessening Addiction By Enhancing Labeling Act, or the LABEL Opioids Act--would require that all prescription opioid bottles dispensed to a patient contain a clear, concise warning that opioids may cause dependence, addiction, or overdose.

In the absence of legislation to ensure that providers across the country receive uniform, mandatory education on safe opioid prescribing, we need to give patients information on how to safely use, store, and dispose of these dangerous medications. In the same way we put warning labels directly on cigarettes for being addictive and causing potential death, we need labels to caution patients about the dangers of prescription opioids. It is important that everyone who receives an opioid prescription understand the potential risks, and a sticker on an opioid pill bottle is a powerful, consistent reminder of that danger.

We must do all we can to put a stop to this dangerous opioid crisis that has ravaged families and communities across the country for too long. We are moving in the right direction, but today's vote should not be the end of our work on this issue.

I thank my colleagues in this Chamber for their commitment, and I look forward to working with them in the conference and beyond to make sure we put everything in law nationally that helps to ensure that children will have to look to the history books to find that there ever was such an epidemic as this opioid crisis.

Once again, I thank Senator Alexander and Senator Murray for their great work on this issue.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for 4 minutes.

Thank you, Madam President.

I thank the Senator from Missouri for his great leadership on this issue. As he was pointing out, this issue of whether we make a continued increase in the funding for research at NIH goes right to the long-term budgetary objectives of our country.

If we do not find the cure for Alzheimer's by the time we reach the year 2050, the budget at Medicare and Medicaid for taking care of Alzheimer's patients will be equal to the defense budget of our country. Obviously, that is not sustainable. So the only way we are going to be able to deal with this issue is to find a cure.

Research is medicine's field of dreams, from which we harvest findings that give hope to families that there could be a cure for the disease that runs through their family's history. It could be Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, cancer. Whatever the disease, it is going to take funding from the NIH to match the magnitude of the challenge. That is what this bill is going to do.

Working with Chairman Shelby and Senator Leahy, along with Mr. Blunt, what we are seeing is another dramatic increase. He and Senator Murray have worked with the chairs in order to accomplish this goal.

Ultimately, I know how important this issue is because my mother died from Alzheimer's. The funding level for Alzheimer's research has been woefully inadequate matched against the magnitude of the problem, so there has had to be a dramatic increase.

Unfortunately, from 2002 until 2007, we have just level funding at the National Institutes of Health, and that meant a cut by ultimately 20 percent in the spending capacity of NIH. So now we are making up for lost ground. The key is, it draws the most talented young people in America toward the goal of finding the cures and the breakthroughs that can ultimately give hope to families because NIH isn't just the National Institutes of Health, it is the ``National Institutes of Hope''--the hope people have that the disease that runs through their family will, in fact, be cured.

That is why this budget is so important because it is going to increase the hope families have. It is going to draw more scientists toward these issues. It is going to lead to more breakthroughs because whether it be Alzheimer's or cancer or diabetes or ALS or whatever the disease is, failure is not an option. We must find the breakthroughs that are going to make a difference.

When it comes to Alzheimer's itself, when I was a boy, President Kennedy said the mission to the Moon was what we should all be focusing on. Well, in the 21st century, it is the mission to the mind. It is to try to find ways in these labyrinthian passageways of the human brain that we can find the clues that make it possible for us to find the cure.

I thank the Senator from Missouri. I thank you, Madam President, for giving me an opportunity to extend. There is no more important issue than what we are going to be dealing with.

With that, I yield back.

Mr. President, I wish to discuss H.R. 6147, which includes the Fiscal Year 2019 Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations bill. This bill provides critical funding for the U.S. Geological Survey, USGS, and the Advanced National Seismic System,

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