Floor Statements

Mr. President, as with many of my colleagues here today, I stand before you to voice my deep concern over the nomination of Mike Pompeo to be our next Secretary of State.

President Trump has tweeted about Senate Democrats that it is ``hard to believe obstructionists may vote against Mike Pompeo for Secretary of State.'' Others have accused Democrats of playing politics, pointing to past Secretary of State confirmation votes that have faced less opposition in the Foreign Relations Committee and on the Senate floor, but this inference that we simply should rubberstamp Secretary of State nominees is misplaced.

Like all of my colleagues, I take my article II advice and consent responsibility very seriously, so I would like to state why I oppose Mr. Pompeo's nomination to be Secretary of State.

My opposition is not about politics. It really isn't about policy either. While I disagree vehemently with many of Mr. Pompeo's positions on issues such as human rights, climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal, these differences alone are not enough to disqualify him or any nominee, for that matter. Fundamentally, my opposition to Mr. Pompeo's nomination is about whether he can credibly fulfill his duties as our Nation's chief diplomat. Can he effectively and faithfully advocate for American diplomacy at home and abroad?

In this regard, as one of my esteemed colleagues said while introducing Mr. Pompeo before the Foreign Relations Committee, ``Your background does matter.''

So this is what concerns me about Mr. Pompeo's past. Mr. Pompeo was OK characterizing an Indian-American political opponent as ``just another `turban topper' we don't need in Congress or any political office that deals with the U.S. Constitution, Christianity and the United States of America.'' With a viewpoint like that, how can he credibly represent the millions of Indian Americans in the United States? Equally important, how can the United States be viewed credibly by India's 1.3 billion people, the world's largest democracy and a critical American partner in promoting American values and ideals in Asia in the face of a rising and ever more aggressive China? Sadly, that display of intolerance wasn't Mr. Pompeo's only past offense.

Mr. Pompeo has suggested homosexuality is ``perversion,'' an insinuation Mr. Pompeo ever so cleverly did not address when questioned by my colleague Senator Booker. At the CIA, he also canceled a Pride Month event which featured a discussion on the importance of diversity and an appearance by the parents of Matthew Shepard, a young man beaten, tortured, and left to die in Wyoming on account of his sexual orientation. How can the United States stand with the LGBTQ people of Chechnya who have been the victims of violence simply because of whom they love if our Nation's top diplomat has disparaged who they are?

The offenses continue. Following the horrific Patriots Day marathon in Boston, Mr. Pompeo falsely alleged that American Muslim leaders were ``potentially complicit'' in violent acts for failing to speak out. Under my questioning at the confirmation hearings, he refused to apologize for these comments. Why was I concerned? It happened in Boston. Why was I concerned? Because the Muslim leaders in Boston had spoken out against that attack on our Nation on Patriots Day, on marathon day in Boston.

Mr. Pompeo has said he disagrees with the characterization of his comment, but there is nothing to characterize on the floor of the House of Representatives. His comments disparaging Muslim leaders are part of the public record.

How can Mr. Pompeo effectively represent America to Muslim leaders around the world who are just as interested as we are in preventing religiously motivated violence?

Mr. Pompeo now claims these statements were meant to demonstrate that tackling extremism requires those who are the most credible voices to take an unambiguous stand against violence. Well, as the Secretary of State, Mr. Pompeo would be considered our most credible diplomatic voice around the world. How could Muslim nations ever feel respected when our top diplomat has voiced such unambiguous hate?

Mr. Pompeo cowrote an article on migrants that blamed Sweden's ``radical'' immigration policy on ``political correctness.'' America must be a leader in finding pathways to protect Syrians, Afghanis, and Iraqis fleeing the death and destruction of war, in sheltering the Rohingya seeking shelter from oppression in Burma, and in addressing the countless other refugee crises roiling the globe and threatening our collective security. That is not political correctness; that is our moral responsibility.

America is a nation built by immigrants and refugees. Some 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. Google, Tesla, Yahoo, Intel, and eBay are all companies that were founded by immigrants. Given these past statements, could Mr. Pompeo truly represent the interests of a nation made up of and built by immigrants? I do not believe that he can.

In the fight against violent extremism, there is no more divisive issue that erodes our ability to effectively cooperate with other governments than the use of torture. Mr. Pompeo has said that he won't rule out bringing back the abhorrent practice of waterboarding. A man who has said that those who carried out such actions were ``not torturers, they are patriots'' will not be able to credibly convey to governments with histories of human rights abuses that these actions are reprehensible with any semblance of moral authority.

Today, French President Emmanuel Macron addressed Congress and urged us to rejoin the international community in the commitment to combating climate change. He rightfully said that there is no planet B. But Mr. Pompeo characterized the Paris negotiations as an ``elitist effort to reduce the power of the United States economy,'' when, in fact, it was a historic effort by almost every country in the world to tackle a global challenge that will be an existential threat to every single person on the planet.

I believe in American ingenuity, American enterprise, and American leadership. I believe America must lead the world in solutions to this generational challenge. But how can we expect Mr. Pompeo to lead the Department of State in bringing greater peace, security, and prosperity to the American people through international engagement if he does not believe in U.S. leadership, if he does not believe that the United States is necessary for solving global problems, especially global warming?

Mr. Pompeo has too much to apologize for, too many statements to retract or explain, and too many controversial positions to defend.

Of most concern are Mr. Pompeo's past statements suggesting that he values military force over diplomacy even when diplomacy is a real option.

While negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program were underway, he argued that military strikes on Iran were preferable to diplomacy and that ``it is under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity. This is not an insurmountable task for the coalition forces.''

Just a few weeks ago, under my questioning during his confirmation hearing, he did not rule out a military solution in North Korea, which would be disastrous for the 230,000 Americans who live on the Korean Peninsula. There is no military solution to the North Korean nuclear threat. Only through sustained diplomacy and economic pressure, in close coordination with our allies, will we be able to negotiate peaceful denuclearization of North Korea.

America's top diplomat should embody the best of America's values and diplomatic traditions, not attack people's race, defend torture, promote division, ignore human rights, propose military force as the primary solution to our problems around the world, or reject solutions to the climate change that is threatening our planet.

The President can choose his own Cabinet, yes, but the Senate must advise and consent. No one wants to see the United States without a top diplomat, especially at such an important time in world affairs, but having a Secretary of State who has so thoroughly disqualified himself from credibly doing the job is no better.

Yes, I see and respect the former soldier and Member of Congress, the strong intellect who graduated first in his West Point class and edited the Harvard Law Review, but I also see and hear Mr. Pompeo's past comments and his more recent comments and positions that many who support him are conveniently choosing to disregard. But we cannot do that.

So I advise President Trump to choose a Secretary of State who embodies the best of America's values and diplomatic traditions and communicates them to the rest of the world, and I do not consent to the nomination of Mr. Pompeo, who is not the person for this important task.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Mr. President, borrowing from a phrase from Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, ``It is time to wake up to the threat of climate change.'' We must open our eyes to the insidious web of deceit that the Koch brothers, in alliance with the Trump Administration, are weaving to promote an anti-science, anti-consumer, and anti-renewable energy agenda. This web of deceit is something that the Koch brothers are proud of.

Just last week, they bragged to donors in a report that they were responsible for President Trump's policies: repealing the Clean Power Plan, check; attacking public lands, check; attempting to gut bedrock environmental laws for infrastructure projects, check; leaving the Paris climate accord, check; tax giveaways to Big Oil and other fossil fuel corporations, check-plus.

The first year of the Trump Administration has been a Koch brothers wish list, and they are popping their champagne bottles all the way to the bank. In fact, the various front groups and trade organizations that pushed President Trump to exit the Paris climate accord accepted almost $7 million from the Koch brothers directly. Those groups took millions more from other anti-climate groups, which were also funded by the Koch brothers. It is a tangled web they weave with their money. That is what the Koch brothers have bought--a network of individuals, shady front groups, and partisan organizations whose sole purpose is to undermine the policies that protect Americans and the planet from climate change.

Like a real spider web, it is hard to see this web of deceit unless the light catches it in just the right way. I am going to shine a light on a few threads of this web tonight, the threads that make up the effort to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change: the Koch brothers and their CO2 Coalition. One of these threads is the CO2 Coalition. This group, founded in 2015 with the remains of the defunct George C. Marshall Institute, pushed a single mantra: ``Carbon dioxide, a nutrient vital for life.''

The CO2 Coalition started where the George C. Marshall Institute, another Koch-backed front group, left off--disseminating disinformation, particularly around global warming.

Total funding from the Koch-related foundations for the CO2 Coalition is more than $650,000 since 2004. In addition to the Kochs, the billionaire conservative Mercer family also gave the CO2 Coalition $150,000 in 2016. And that is just what we know of.

For those not familiar, the board of the CO2 Coalition includes the controversial physicist William Happer, who has testified in front of Congress multiple times to push climate denialism and the self-serving interest of the fossil fuel industry and the Koch brothers.

When I was chairman of the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, Dr. Happer advocated in testimony for the government to support an ``alternative hypothesis,'' which amounted to denial of climate change. This ``alternative hypothesis'' was the grandfather of another familiar term, the Trump Administration's so- called alternative facts--``alternative hypothesis.''

During those years that I was the chairman of the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming and the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I conducted nearly 100 hearings. They went on for hours and hours. We are talking of 200, 300 hours of hearings where we were able to hear these crackpot theories that were enunciated and debunked at that time. Despite his views on climate science being routinely debunked, including what happened in my hearing back then, Dr. Happer continues to be called as an ``expert witness'' by Republicans in Congress. From this platform, he spreads doubt and misinformation about climate change. He has called carbon dioxide ``a benefit to the Earth,'' an absurd assertion that is in complete contrast to the findings of the EPA and the vast majority of climate scientists. That is because in its materials, the CO2 Coalition states that it has the express purpose of ``educating thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.''

In reality, the CO2 Coalition writes articles, produces videos, and uses this content to spread lies about climate change through social media. They seek not to inform but to deform consensus scientific views at the bidding of their fossil fuel funders, the Koch brothers.

Here is some information about carbon dioxide that the CO2 Coalition fails to mention in its love letter to fossil fuels. Every ton of carbon we emit costs us $36--that is the social cost of carbon-- the cost to all of us of emitting an extra ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

That carbon pollution is endangering human health, and it costs us money as a society to treat the damage it does to the health of our planet and the people who live on the planet. Carbon pollution is not a vital nutrient for life, as the CO2 Coalition asserts. It is a dangerous pollutant for our society when it is inside of our atmosphere at dangerous levels--at dangerous levels. The CO2 Coalition is certainly not the only fossil fuel supported group that is weaving this web of deceit. Especially when it comes to talking about the importance of the ``free market,'' fossil fuel-funded climate deniers often have selective memory loss.

The Lexington Institute, which has received funding from fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, insists that renewables can't compete in the free market with fossil fuels without Federal subsidies. That assumes that the fossil fuel industry has succeeded in the free market all on its own. It has not. Adam Smith is spinning in his grave, wondering how the fossil fuel industry gets such subsidies. As a matter of fact, he is spinning so fast that he would qualify for a subsidy under the tax policies, which Republicans put in place.

Federal subsidies for the fossil fuel industry are more than 100 years old and account for nearly $15 billion each year. Subsidizing an oil company to drill oil or a coal company to mine is like paying a fish to swim or a bird to fly. You don't have to do it. The tax breaks for the oil and gas industries are permanent pieces of the Tax Code. These payouts automatically continue year after year--forever, into infinity. They never decrease. They never go away. That is certainly not the case for renewable energy industries, like solar and wind. These industries have had to endure the uncertainty of not knowing if their tax breaks will expire. Now tax breaks for wind are scheduled to end completely next year. That will never happen to a fossil fuel break. The tax breaks for solar will end in 2021, but for the fossil fuel industry, those tax breaks will never come off the books because they fight against special tax breaks for wind and solar. Oh, my goodness. Who would want to help them? In fact, in its taking $15 billion a year every year for 100 years and 100 more years into infinity--completely distorting the free market with the support of fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil--the Lexington Institute is spinning its strand of the web of deceit by trying to stop a renewables revolution.

The Koch brothers and their fossil fuel allies aren't doing this alone. They have found their most ardent ally in their campaign to attack climate science in President Donald Trump. Throughout the Trump administration, there has been a concerted effort to deny, to delay, and to defund the science of climate change in an unprecedented way. Just look at the President's Big Oil all-star Cabinet. At one point, we had former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. We still have former Governor of oil-rich Texas Rick Perry at the Department of Energy. Oklahoma's oil oligarch Scott Pruitt is heading the Environmental Protection Agency. All of these oil allies have voiced doubts about the existence of climate change and the role of humans in causing it, but no one is doing more to help anchor the various strands of the web of deceit on climate science in the Trump administration than the EPA's Scott Pruitt.

Mr. Pruitt announced today a new proposed rule purporting to ``strengthen transparency and validity in regulatory science.'' What exactly does this new secret science rule really mean? The proposal would actually do the opposite of what its name suggests. This proposal would actually restrict the use of scientific research that EPA officials can use in crafting new regulations under the guise of so- called transparency. The Trump administration would allow the EPA to consider research studies for which the underlying data are publicly available. What this proposed change would really do is effectively block the Agency from relying on longstanding, important studies like those that link lead exposure to devastating neurological damage.

Scott Pruitt, at the behest of Big Oil and interests like the Koch brothers, wants to deny EPA scientists access to critical information in order to shield polluters, such as coal and chemical companies. Today, as Pruitt ceremoniously announced his new rule, he was accompanied by--wait for it--William Happer of the CO2 Coalition. The web of deceit is very real. No matter what Scott Pruitt tries to undo at the EPA, no matter what science President Trump tries to deny through the Federal Government, no matter what groups the Koch brothers try to fund, the truth is all too clear. Climate change is happening now.

Last year, we experienced a record $16 billion in storms--extreme weather events--and climate-related disasters. It was more than in any year in recorded history. Hurricanes ravaged Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico. The recovery from Hurricane Harvey alone is projected to cost $180 billion. That is the damage even as the Republicans fight to take the wind and solar tax breaks off the books. This year, in Massachusetts, we already experienced four Northeasters before the end of March. Three of those storms cost more than $1 billion. That is the earliest in any year ever recorded that we have experienced three storms with this magnitude of devastation. The cost of these storms speaks for itself. We simply can't afford to deny the impacts and reality of climate change anymore.

Our greatest weapon in fighting deceit and tearing down this web is sunlight--the sunlight of truth and the sunlight that is fueling the solar revolution. It is a clean energy revolution that is fueling blue- collar job creation and our economy, and it is happening all across this country and around the globe. Renewable energy is the greatest force for blue-collar job creation in the history of the United States.

Right now, wind and solar are generating 7 to 8 percent of the electricity we consume every day in the United States. Right now, we have more than 90,000 megawatts of wind. We have more than 50,000 megawatts of solar installed in the United States. By 2020, we are projected to have 120,000 megawatts of wind. We will have more than 90,000 megawatts of solar. Solar is projected to add an additional 35,000 combined megawatts in 2021 and 2022. That means, by the end of 2022, we could have over 250,000 megawatts of wind and solar installed in the United States.

You can see what is happening now with wind and solar after it had been, essentially, stopped by the fossil fuel industry for 100 years. This could have happened 50 years ago. This could have happened 100 years ago. Yet now, finally, because of Democratic policies, we have been able to finally unleash this revolution.

What is accompanying that wind and solar revolution? It is jobs, blue-collar jobs. We now have 350,000 Americans who are working in wind and solar. By 2020, we are going to have 500,000 workers in wind and solar. The majority of our solar jobs--137,000--is of electricians. There are roofers doing the installation. There are 38,000 jobs in manufacturing. These are good blue-collar jobs. There are 25,000 of our wind jobs in manufacturing while 35,000 are in construction, development, and transportation. These are good-paying, blue-collar jobs.

Why is this renewable revolution unstoppable? Why is this job creation that is good for all of creation 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. The cost of wind has fallen 66 percent since 2009. In fact, wind and solar are generally cheaper than coal and nuclear energy are right now. Coal is losing the war against wind and solar in the free market. It is not a conspiracy against coal. It is competition for coal that has finally emerged. That is what is happening. Coal is losing in the marketplace.

This is not just happening in the United States. It is happening around the entire world. Mexico had a power auction at the end of November at which the average price for solar was 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour. In 2017, solar in Saudi Arabia came in at 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. In Dubai, it was 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour. Half of all electricity installed around the world last year was renewable. Renewable energy deployment around the world has increased by 8 percent a year for 7 years in a row.

This is a global clean energy race, and it is a global job creation race. The Koch brothers and their fossil fuel allies want to take the United States of

America out of this revolution. Global temperatures are rising, but the cost of renewables is plummeting. There is no denying the science of climate change or the mathematics behind the renewable revolution.

For decades, the Koch brothers have perpetrated a fraud on the American people about climate change. They have worked to discredit science in order to sow doubt. They are funding a web of deceit that spreads misinformation and undermines the urgency needed to address the generational challenge of climate change. We must fight back with education, with urgency, with facts, and, ultimately, with action.

That is why, this week, I am introducing, with my colleagues here in the Senate and in the House, the Climate Change Education Act. This legislation would promote climate literacy by broadening students' understanding of climate change, the consequences of climate change, and the potential solutions. This bill would give students, teachers, and families the tools they need to protect our planet for future generations. We must take the climate deniers and their fossil fuel funders to task for their opposition to the clean energy opportunities that could win the battle against climate change.

We have a chance to unleash a clean energy revolution that creates jobs as it cuts dangerous carbon pollution. We are on the floor today to cut down this tangled web of deceit--to shine a light on the lies that emanate from this Koch brothers-funded web of deceit that has tried its best to stop this clean energy revolution.

As you can see, this revolution has taken off in the United States as it has taken off around the rest of the planet, and it will not be denied. The green generation, the young generation in our country, will not be denied. They want to see a wind and solar and all-electric vehicle revolution take place that will change the course of history. That is why we are out here today--to let the rest of the world know we are in this fight, and we are going to win it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am here to join Ranking Member Nelson and my colleagues to voice my opposition to James Bridenstine, who has been nominated to be the next Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

NASA is an agency that has been at the center of our Nation's modern history and impacts the daily lives of millions of Americans. The world watched in awe as Neil Armstrong took that first step onto the surface of the Moon in July of 1969, wearing a NASA patch on his spacesuit. Today, we marvel at photos of Pluto's surface, captured by NASA's New Horizons mission in July of 2015. From the closest to the farthest reaches of our own solar system, NASA is always there.

NASA is at a critical point in its history, and that is because the United States is poised to unleash the next great feat of human innovation as we look to unlock the true possibilities of space. To accomplish these goals, we need a solid foundation, and that starts and ends with the science conducted at NASA every single day. NASA's mission involves not just revealing faraway worlds but investigating the realities of our own. In order to truly do that, we need continued scientific research of the highest caliber.

The scientists working at NASA today are among the very best in the world. NASA, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, produces and analyzes the most robust data we have on our planet's changing climate. The OCO-3 program monitors Earth's atmospheric carbon levels. The CLARREO Pathfinder mission measures Earth's atmospheric heat. The Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite provides our scientists comprehensive data sets that are crucial to understanding the vast changes that are underway on our own planet this very second.

On NASA's website right now, there is a web page entitled ``Scientific Consensus: Earth's Climate is Warming.'' On this web page, based on NASA's vast collection of data, it continues, ``The impacts of climate change are already occurring. Sea levels are rising, and snow and ice cover is decreasing. . . . The warming climate likely will cause more floods, droughts and heat waves. The heat waves may get hotter, and hurricanes may get stronger.'' Those are NASA's words, and we know them to be true because science has proved it.

NASA's science is the gold standard. Its scientific work is crucial to our understanding the threat that climate change poses to our Nation, our economy, and the health of all Americans and people around the world. But Houston, we have a problem. NASA's science, NASA's missions, and American leadership will all be in serious jeopardy if James Bridenstine is confirmed to be the next Administrator of NASA. Under his leadership, NASA would come to stand for ``not accepting scientific advice.''

Congressman Bridenstine's record is one of questioning climate change and undermining science. He has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus and the threats of climate change. Before changing his website, it stated: ``Global warming theories should not drive national energy policy without clearer evidence.'' Global warming isn't theory; it is based on science. Unfortunately, Mr. Bridenstine's words do not reflect the accepted science behind climate change, including the very

science that NASA has been collecting and needs to continue to collect.

Under President Trump, we know that fear is rampant across the Federal Government among scientists. It is no surprise that the environmental and scientific communities across the country are asking that we vote down Congressman Bridenstine's nomination based on his voting record and his clear denial of accepted science. If Mr. Bridenstine is confirmed as the Administrator of NASA, he will bring that fear to its scientists at a time when we need them more than ever.

It is not only his views on science that make him unsuitable to lead NASA. NASA's workforce is comprised of more than 18,000 workers who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer. NASA has officially stated that ``diversity and inclusion are integral to mission success.'' In a 2013 speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Bridenstine declared: ``Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife, to be a father and mother to children.'' He has stated repeatedly that he would support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Congressman Bridenstine's personal views and voting record against people who identify as LGBTQ should immediately disqualify him from consideration for leading this diverse agency. NASA is an agency of inspiration, an agency that showcases the very best of American ideals: scientific integrity, innovation, diversity, fearlessness, resolve, and hope. Mr. Bridenstine puts these ideals at risk and is not qualified to lead this agency.

I urge my colleagues to oppose his nomination. I urge a ``no'' vote.

I yield back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted to Mary Schultz and William Goldsmith, both fellows in my staff, for the remainder of this session.

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

Mr. President, Scott Pruitt is the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He is charged with running the Agency and ensuring its mission. There are serious questions about Mr. Pruitt's leadership, but we will get to that later.

Today, the Senate is preparing to vote on the nominee to be the second highest ranking official at the Environmental Protection Agency--Andrew Wheeler. As the No. 2 at the Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler deserves the kind of scrutiny that reflects a position one step away from Administrator.

Andrew Wheeler has spent years protecting the coal industry--first from here in the Senate, where he worked to prevent passage of climate legislation, and then as a lobbyist for Murray Energy, one of the largest coal companies in America, which has led the fight by the coal industry to undo the progress we have made on climate policy.

Andrew Wheeler's coal credentials are without equal. He is without question a member of the coal industry's hall of fame. He was even present in March of last year at the meeting where Murray Energy CEO Bob Murray presented Energy Secretary Rick Perry with the now-infamous secret plan to save the coal industry.

Sadly, I am concerned that Andrew Wheeler's background means that he will never understand that saving coal is not the Environmental Protection Agency's job. It is the EPA's job to regulate coal, to protect public health and the environment, to keep particulate matter from filling the lungs of children in our most vulnerable communities-- more than 7,500 people die every year from the pollution from fossil fuel powerplants--to reduce the harmful carbon pollution that is causing climate change, and to end the toxic coal-mining practices that are poisoning our waters and our communities.

The corporate special interests, who have worked hand-in-hand with the Trump administration to block clean energy deployment and force Americans to breathe dirty air from fossil fuel combustion, are exactly the opposite of what we need to be at the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. They are, at the same time, the companies that Andrew Wheeler has represented. Andrew Wheeler has made a career of promoting the policies that make our air and our water dirty and that endanger the public's health.

Now, with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt under siege as a result of Agency mismanagement and scandal, we must have real concern about who will be No. 2 at the EPA. Who is on deck to take over if Scott Pruitt has to leave? Who is going to be sitting there in the chair as the Administrator to make these decisions about clean air, clean water, about the role which coal plays in polluting our environment? Who will that be if Scott Pruitt were to be removed from his position or resign from his position? And, by the way, that is a position from which I strongly support that he be removed--that he resign--but that would then lead to the consequence that Andrew Wheeler would most likely be the new Administrator of the EPA. This individual would then be in charge of the environment of our country. He would be in charge of it. The coal industry would have their person running the Environmental Protection Agency. That is unbelievable. That is the dream of the coal industry--that, finally, after all these years, they get the guy to be in charge of the environment, as the country and the world are moving in just the opposite direction.

Now, would he have been vetted for that role as the head of the EPA? Absolutely not. He is out here on a snoozy Thursday afternoon with his name out here to be considered with the Galleries empty of either publicity, citizens, or the press paying attention to the debate when the consequences of this decision that the Senate is about

to make is of historic magnitude. This man is the coal industry. If you Google the word ``coal,'' his picture comes up. Coal, ladies and gentlemen, has declined from 50 percent of all electrical generation down to 30 percent just over the last 10 years. Why? Well, because utilities in America are moving toward wind. They are moving toward solar. They are moving toward energy conservation. They are moving toward natural gas, which has half of the pollutants of coal. The coal industry has met its maker in the marketplace. The utilities themselves have moved toward cleaner sources of electrical generation in our country, and the only way that they can stave off this revolution, in their minds, is to have a coal industry representative be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Talk about the fox guarding the chicken coop. Talk about some kind of upside-down, bizarro world, where, all of a sudden, at the Environmental Protection Agency, the one industry that has most contributed to the greenhouse gases up in our atmosphere over the last 100 years, now has someone who is next in line to take over the entire Environmental Protection Agency.

So Scott Pruitt is under siege, and we have not asked Mr. Wheeler about his readiness to lead the EPA or how his policies would be different from those of Mr. Pruitt. We don't have any reason to believe his views are any different than Mr. Pruitt's. Does he agree with the policy direction Mr. Pruitt has taken at the Agency? Does he agree with the exorbitant costs associated with the questionable activities Administrator Pruitt has engaged in as head of this Agency?

There is a lot that Andrew Wheeler has yet to answer to if he were to take over as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, which brings us to the embattled EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt himself.

Mr. Pruitt's leadership at the EPA has made that Agency as toxic as a superfund site. Administrator Pruitt has consistently undermined the core mission of the EPA--to protect the environment and to protect the health and the safety of all Americans. He has put the interests of the fossil fuel, chemical, and auto industries above the needs of the public's health.

Perhaps the best example of Scott Pruitt's war on good, bipartisan policy is his full frontal attack on fuel economy emissions standards. Last week, Administrator Pruitt and the Trump administration began the process of rolling back these historic standards. In 2007, I worked on a bipartisan basis to enact a provision in the energy law that increased our Nation's fuel economy standards for the first time in 32 years. It is one of the laws that I am most proud of. I was then serving in the House of Representatives and I was able to work with Nancy Pelosi and able to work with John Dingell to push through that measure. Over here in the Senate, Dianne Feinstein, working with Senator Stevens and others, were able to bring together a consensus that changed the direction of fuel economy standards in our country. They had not been increased in 32 years because of the viselike grip that the auto industry and the oil industry had on public policymaking with regard to pollution over the preceding 32 years. It was a tragedy. It was a disgrace. It was harmful to the health of Americans, to the national security of Americans, and to the economy of Americans. Yet they had the power to do it.

But this world changed for the first time in 2007. Then building on that law, in 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation began negotiating a historic agreement with State regulators, automakers, labor unions, and the environmental community. In 2012, the landmark fuel economy emissions of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 got placed on the books. Consulting with States, auto manufacturers, environmental groups, and other experts, the EPA and the National Academies of Sciences have proved beyond a doubt that the existing standards are appropriate. Automakers are meeting these standards more quickly and at a lower cost than predicted. These fuel economy standards are technically feasible. They are economically achievable. They have revived the competitiveness of our domestic auto industry, which has added 700,000 new jobs since 2010 and sold a record number of vehicles in 2015 and again in 2016.

But Scott Pruitt is threatening American consumers, our national security, and our climate by trying to slam the brakes and make a U- turn on this critical policy. We cannot allow Scott Pruitt to put us in reverse on these strong standards. But it doesn't stop there.

Time after time, Scott Pruitt has undermined the core mission of the EPA to protect the environment, to protect the health and the safety of all Americans. The litany of Scott Pruitt's sins is a Big Oil wish list: repealing the Clean Power Plan; supporting withdrawal from the Paris climate accord; weakening the Clean Water Act; allowing more toxic pollution in our streams and our wetlands; loosening standards for hazardous pollutants like mercury, arsenic, and lead that corporations can spew into our air. With Scott Pruitt's actions at the EPA, more Americans would get sick, more children could get asthma, and more people could die. He has shut out the public from the EPA's rulemakings and decisions. During his tenure, the EPA has hidden countless thousands of pages of publicly funded reports on climate science and other topics from the EPA's main web page.

Now it is emerging that he has betrayed the trust of the American people by pursuing ethically questionable behavior while heading this Agency. His mismanagement of the EPA, his intimidation of scientists, among whom fear is rampant, and his insistence on undermining key environmental policies is unacceptable. It is impossible to have any confidence in him to lead this Agency. It is time that we issue an eviction notice, change the locks, and kick Scott Pruitt out of the EPA. It is time for him to go.

Amid this dark cloud, it is up to the Senate to ensure that anyone who is going to be responsible for overseeing our Nation's environmental policy is properly vetted for that position. Without more questioning and more examination, we do not know if Andrew Wheeler is that individual. Ultimately, I cannot vote for a lobbyist for the coal industry to lead the Agency that is tasked with making sure that carbon pollution is regulated. So that is the decision that we are being called upon to make here. It is like a shadow confirmation vote for the next Administrator of the EPA. It is an attempt to slip by at the end of the week, with Members of the Senate wanting to get home, the nomination and confirmation of a man who stands for just the opposite of what the credentials of a candidate to run the EPA should be.

We have a massive wind revolution in our country. We have 260,000 people now working in the solar industry in America. There are 50,000 coal miners, 260,000 people in solar, and 100,000 people in wind. Most of the wind and solar jobs were created over the last 10 years. Which direction does President Trump go? Which direction does Scott Pruitt go? Which direction will Andrew Wheeler, the heir apparent to Scott Pruitt, go? It goes toward coal and not wind, not solar, not renewable energy, not this greatest creation of blue-collar jobs in two generations in a single job sector.

Two percent of all new workers in America last year were solar workers who got hired, and they are good jobs. Who are they? They are electricians up on the roof. They are people who are carpenters. They are putting together the equipment. They are blue-collar workers. They are high-paying, secure, long-term jobs.

The President, however, looks to the coal industry with 50,000 coal miners and says: I am going to put in place a man who is committed to protecting that industry while destroying the wind, the solar, and the renewable industry in general and by saying to the automotive industry that you do not have to any longer increase dramatically the fuel economy standards of the vehicles which we drive in our country.

Elon Musk and all these smart, technologically savvy people in our country who are reinventing the way in which we drive are being told: No, the standard is too high. Your goal cannot be achieved. We are going to roll back those goals. That is Scott Pruitt. That is Andrew Wheeler. That is Donald Trump. That is what this debate is about here on the floor. It is a debate about the future of our country. It is a debate about the future of our planet.

It is about the future, about the direction in which we are going to be heading. Are we going to be looking at the world through a rearview mirror, back toward a technology of the 19th century, coal, or are we going to be looking toward the future? That future is one of solar and wind, renewable energy, and all-electric vehicles. It is a revolution that saves the planet, creates jobs, protects our security by backing out of importing oil from other countries.

The fuel economy standards in our country that are on the books right now that Scott Pruitt and Donald Trump want to roll back, back out 3\1/ 2\ million barrels of oil a day that we never have to import from OPEC and the Middle East. Do you know how many barrels of oil we import each day from the Middle East? Three and one-half million barrels of oil. That should be our goal.

Right now, the President is debating whether he should have more missile strikes in Syria in the Middle East and what the impact would be in Iran and Saudi Arabia, but, meanwhile, simultaneously, out here on the floor, we are debating a nominee who is going to be the hand- picked successor to Scott Pruitt to water down those fuel economy standards, water down that protection, which were given to young men and women so they will not have to go over to the Middle East in order to protect those ships of oil which come into our country. That is just morally indefensible when we know these revolutions are moving, they are creating jobs, and they are working.

That is why this nomination today goes right to the heart of the future of our country and the future of our planet. That is who Andrew Wheeler is. He represents the worst of what this Trump administration is trying to do to our country.

We should be the leader, not the lagger. We should be the point of light for the planet, going to a goal that we know can then be exploited around the rest of the world. That is what the 21st century should be all about, where children have to look back in the history books to find that there ever was a time when we were burning coal that was polluting the lungs of children and the planet, when we had a chance to move toward wind, solar, renewable energy, and all-electric vehicles. That should be our goal today. That is why I urge, in the strongest possible terms, a rejection of his nomination.

We should be having a full-blown debate, not this truncated process that is being imposed upon us here today. This is just plain wrong. This nomination is too important. This is the heart of what the green generation in America wants us to debate. Which way are we going, backward or forward? Which way are we going, toward a clean planet or a further polluting of the planet?

In his encyclical, Pope Francis made it very clear, No. 1, that the world is dangerously wanting; No. 2, that it is being caused largely by human activity; and, No. 3, that we have a moral responsibility to do something about it as the principal polluter over the last 100 years; because, No. 4, those who are going to be most adversely affected are the poorest and most vulnerable on the planet, and we have to do something about it.

That is why a ``no'' vote today is correct, because Andrew Wheeler is going to take us in the wrong direction, just the opposite of where Pope Francis urges us to go.

I yield the rest of my time to Senator Carper.

Mr. President, today, I wish to recognize Mary Anne Sciuto for more than 38 years of service to the Federal Government. As Boston's first full-time congressional liaison, Mary Anne will retire at the end of March from her post as district congressional lead at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' Boston district office.

Mary Anne's expertise, combined with her eagerness to assist the people of Massachusetts, has been an invaluable resource to me and my staff. Throughout her venerated career, she has assisted countless immigrants and refugees and has made the difference for individuals and families who dream of making the United States their home. Though navigating our Nation's immigration system can be a long and complicated process, Mary Anne is widely known for her patience and compassion. She has continually provided my office with important advice and training to ensure that we best meet the needs of our constituents. While she will be sorely missed, her legacy of helping and mentoring so many during her long career will live on.

My staff and I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Mary Anne for her years of dedicated service and wish her well as she embarks on this next chapter in her life.

Congratulations, Mary Anne, and thank you for the enormous contributions you have made to the community, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the United States of America.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to share my deep concern over the Trump administration's approach to North Korea.

I thank the Senator from New Jersey, the leader of the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, for asking the Members to come out here to speak to the Trump administration's foreign policy.

North Korea is a serious and ever-worsening threat to its people, to our allies and partners in the region, and to the United States. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has mismanaged our North Korea policy, and the potential consequences of failure are too great to ignore. North Korea may have bent over backward to appear conciliatory during the Winter Olympics and through its offers of talks with South Korea and the United States, but Kim Jong Un has not stopped his dangerous activities--far from it. While the North Korean regime is all smiles and open arms, its malign behavior continues.

Its engineers race to perfect a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile. North Korean laborers around the world--modern-day indentured servants--send paychecks home to the regime to help fund its illicit military programs. Illegal ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products continue. North Korea's army of cyber warriors grows more capable, and the Kim regime's thugs make no efforts to scale back rampant human rights abuses.

However, President Trump's approach to date threatens to make an already bad situation even worse. Despite his recent announcement that he would accept a meeting with Kim Jong Un, President Trump has systematically undermined the effectiveness of the very agency--the U.S. Department of State--he will need to make talks successful. By so doing, he has harmed U.S. foreign policy right as the United States is poised to embark on a crucial diplomatic effort with North Korea.

By firing Rex Tillerson, President Trump threw the State Department further into chaos when what we need right now is more consistency. This is indicative of a President who considers himself to be his own diplomat, negotiator, and strategist. Yet the gutting of the State Department goes much deeper. It has been badly depleted of both staff and resources by the Trump administration and is consistently ignored in the opaque process the White House is using to try to conduct American foreign policy.

President Trump has stifled dissent, ignored experience, politicized key diplomatic and national security agencies. The Special Representative for North Korea Policy, Ambassador Joseph Yun--the lead American negotiator with North Korea--has stepped down. One wonders whether he felt his advice was being heeded. We still don't have a U.S. Ambassador to South Korea more than a year into the Trump administration. We still don't have a confirmed Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. We still don't have a special envoy for North Korean human rights issues. We no longer have a sanctions coordinator.

Going into talks at the senior-most level with a hollowed-out State Department is no way to peacefully resolve a crisis. To the contrary, it exposes us to greater risk, and as if these vacancies were not enough, it gets worse.

The Trump administration's recently released budget request for fiscal year 2019 would drastically cut State Department funding. The State Department is already alarmingly underresourced and understaffed to handle the significant and increasing threats from North Korea. Yet there is no explanation as to why the President believes it is prudent to cut diplomatic resources, especially in the middle of a crisis.

We deserve an answer as to why the administration believes the State Department deserves fewer resources while trying to execute a wide- ranging strategy of diplomatic engagement and pressure. All the while, the White House is subjecting our allies and partners to contradictory statements that cause confusion and dampen the prospects of a peaceful solution.

We hear different thoughts on different days. Before firing him, President Trump routinely undercut Secretary Tillerson and, with it, our diplomatic high ground. Confusing our allies in South Korea and Japan, whose assistance in helping resolve the North Korean crisis is indispensable, only serves to embolden Kim Jong Un, who seeks to drive a wedge between the United States and our allies.

We cannot afford to fail. I am concerned that if these talks do not go well, President Trump will be able to claim he tried both economic pressure and diplomacy, with neither path having solved the problem. He will be left with the conclusion that the only approach remaining will be military force. We must be clear. There is no military solution to the North Korea crisis.

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Although the current situation we face with North Korea is not identical to the one we faced in the runup to the Iraq war in 2003, the North Korea situation is, in fact, worse, and the consequences are even more severe. Unlike Iraq, North Korea has nearly completed the development of long-range nuclear-armed missiles that will be capable of creating nuclear mushroom clouds in our cities.

We all agree we need to act to ensure that this never happens. The only responsible course of action is for the administration to use all tools of American statecraft to reduce the threats from North Korea. We have an obligation to American families, servicemembers, and our allies to say, unequivocally, that we did everything in our power without resorting to armed conflict.

Let's return the United States of America to the forefront of statecraft and allow for our diplomats to advance our interests without having to risk a frivolous loss of life. That is what is at stake as the President moves further away from using the kinds of tools which are available that can try to peacefully resolve this conflict with North Korea.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my friend Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and congratulations on his long history of action on climate change.

Six years ago, Senator Whitehouse began a campaign to speak every week about climate change. One need only look at the past 6 years of climate impacts to understand just how important the Senator's pledge is.

The planet has been warming for years, but in the last few years, the disturbing trends have accelerated. The last 4 years have been the hottest on record.

The effects of climate change are already obvious, from the eroding coasts

off Cape Cod to storm surge in Boston Harbor. January's bomb cyclone in Massachusetts broke the flood record in Boston set by the Blizzard of 1978.

Sadly, this is our new normal. Thirteen of the top 20 biggest flood events in Boston have occurred since 2000. While Massachusetts gets overrun by the impacts of climate change, President Trump has plans to expand offshore drilling off the New England coast. This is the very definition of insanity.

Our communities and our oceans are feeling the pressure of the changing climate. But what has the Trump administration decided to do about it? Worse than nothing. It has started to withdraw us from the Paris Climate Accord. It has repealed the Clean Power Plan. It has rolled back historic fuel economy standards, loosened standards for hazardous pollutants, and declared all-out war on climate science.

Throughout the administration, there has been an alarming attack on public information about climate change. On the Environmental Protection Agency's website, more than 5,000 pages of information on climate change have disappeared, either relegated to an unsearchable maze far from public view or simply deleted. Fact sheets on public health and climate change are gone. Resources for States and cities have disappeared. Guides for students and teachers are no more. This isn't transparency; it is a transparent attack on climate science.

It is also an attack on our scientists. More than 200 scientists have left the EPA under the Trump administration. Those 200 scientists have been replaced with only seven new hires. Our top climate scientists are telling us that fear is rampant at EPA and across Federal agencies. The EPA's job is to instill fear into the hearts of corporate polluters, not its own scientists.

We need to encourage more science, not less. We need science to inform the policies we need to provide the solutions that could save our planet. That is what Senator Whitehouse has championed for these past 6 years on the floor and throughout his career in public service.

I thank Senator Whitehouse for asking me to stand with him today and for being an environmental Paul Revere, sounding the alarm on climate change. We cannot be silenced, and we will continue to work together to sound that alarm--because that is what is happening, the Earth's alarm clock has gone off and it is telling us all to wake up. There is no one who is more woke to what is happening to our planet's climate than he.

Thank you.

Mr. President, anyone tuning into the Senate floor this week is probably very confused right now, and that is because we are not debating how to address the scourge of gun violence plaguing this country, just 22 days after the horrific Parkland mass shooting and following a near-universal call from the American people for Congress to get serious about guns. They are debating it in the State legislature in Florida, but we just don't have time in the U.S. Senate to debate this overarching issue of gun safety in our country.

The American people may be confused because we are not debating the fate of the 800,000 Dreamers and the uncertainty they still face; confused because we are not debating our crumbling infrastructure which, despite repeated calls from this President, we have seen nothing resembling a credible plan from him to fix our Nation's bridges, roads, and water systems and provide broadband for rural Americans.

Democrats do have a real plan, and we should be debating that. But no. Instead, just 3 months after the passage of massive tax giveaways that handed over more than $1 trillion to the wealthiest Americans and megacorporations, we are here debating a giveaway to the world's biggest banks.

We have moved on from tax handouts to the wealthy, to taxpayer-funded bailouts for Wall Street megabanks. That is not my opinion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released their analysis of this bailout bill and noted that the risk of a financial crisis would go up under this legislation.

Why in the world is Congress doing anything that increases the risk of a financial crisis? It has only been 10 years since the great recession, but Republicans seem to have forgotten about that. Maybe that is why this week is so confusing--because the backers of this bill are not talking about the risk to the entire financial system they are enabling. They have forgotten that and are only talking about the benefits to community banks.

Yes, there are some benefits. Those of us on the other side of this legislation are not arguing about that point. You could probably find consensus among all 100 Senators in this body that there is a legitimate, targeted relief we can and should provide for those community banks, but that is far from all this bill does. This community bank relief is being used to protect the giveaways for some of the biggest banks in this country.

Anyone listening to the supporters of this legislation would have no idea that 25 of the 38 largest banks in the United States will have critical Dodd-Frank rules rolled back for them. Anyone listening would have no idea that banks with up to $250 billion in assets are being told the current rules are too tough for them. These banks received $48 billion in taxpayer-funded bailout money. Those banks are not community banks.

Now, a decade after the financial collapse of 2008, we are saying it is probably OK. We are pretty sure they have learned their lessons. We are pretty sure that now the big banks will put the economic security of the country ahead of their own profits.

So the bottom line: This bill, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, will increase risks to our entire economy, and the fact that the words ``consumer protection'' are mentioned last should make clear they are simply an afterthought.

When large institutions fail--whether it is Lehman Brothers, Enron, AIG--it is everyday working consumers who get hit the hardest and pay the highest price.

There is the rule on Wall Street: On the way up, the big guys clean up; on the way down, the little guys get cleaned out. We saw that during the last financial crisis, when millions of Americans lost their jobs or their homes, and we are seeing it today, with increasingly common data breaches that compromise Americans' financial and personal information.

In recent years, devastating data breaches have become the new normal. The likes of Target, JPMorgan Chase, Yahoo, eBay, T.J.Maxx, Home Depot, and Sony are among so many who have become synonymous with massive data breaches.

Of course, there is Equifax, which is both a credit reporting agency and a data broker. Equifax's sole mission is using and profiting from consumers' most personal information, and they failed to protect that information. More than 145 million Americans' Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and, in some instances, even driver's license numbers and credit card numbers were compromised because Equifax failed to institute even the most basic security protocols. It seems that, for the American consumer, every year is the year of the data breach, and they are sick and tired of their information falling into the wrong hands.

So as the Senate debates how to ensure financial institutions do not endanger the American economy the way they did during the financial crisis, we cannot forget our constituents' calls for new data protection rules. That is why I have filed my Data Broker Accountability and Transparency Act as an amendment to this legislation. I thank Senators Blumenthal, Sanders, and Whitehouse for joining me.

My colleagues and I--Republican and Democratic alike--were outraged when we learned about the Equifax hack and how it hurts our constituents across the country, but what have we accomplished in the U.S. Senate since then? Nothing, and the threat is only growing.

We have an entire industry whose whole business model is predicated on profiting on Americans' most sensitive information. They are collecting it, storing it, selling it, and, in many instances, losing it in data hacks and breaches. Consumers don't even know who these companies are. They live in the shadows of our economy. Consumers rarely have any direct contact or business relationship with a data broker. Yet they know nearly everything about you. That is not just Social Security numbers, detailed credit histories, addresses, driver's license numbers. That is information on what you read, what music you listen to, your children, and your medical history.

In today's economy, you--the American consumer--are the commodity that is bought and sold in the open market. Right now, you have no rights. Data brokers are collecting, using, sharing Americans' personal information without your knowledge, without your consent.

Right now, American consumers are completely powerless. You can't say: Stop selling my information to any of these companies. That is unacceptable.

We need transparency; we need accountability. That is why I urge my colleagues to support my Data Broker Accountability and Transparency Act. My amendment would hold data brokers accountable.

First, my amendment allows consumers to access and correct the information that data brokers hold about them. Americans should be able to stop the spread of inaccurate information that could damage them personally and financially.

Second, my amendment provides consumers with the right to stop data brokers from using, sharing, or selling their personal information for marketing purposes.

Third, my amendment requires data brokers to implement comprehensive privacy and data security programs and to provide reasonable notice in the case of breaches. Equifax should have been required to have robust security to protect Americans' information. We must stop the next Equifax.

It has now been 6 months since the public became aware of that breach, and Congress has yet to enact any major legislation in response. We are still in the data broker Wild West. American consumers are still powerless, and the next breach could be around the corner.

Here is the financial services bill that we are taking up. Here is a bill that is directly related to these banks that we are talking about. Here is an opportunity for us to begin to figure out a way of protecting consumers in this data breach area where their financial records, where their health records, where their families' records could be compromised.

What is the solution? We are moving through legislation that deals with the problems the bankers say they have, but we are not dealing with problems consumers say they have with these financial institutions. When do we take up that bill? When do we finally say to the largest companies: What are the protections? What are the safeguards that are going to be constructed so that people's personal information is not compromised, so the data brokers aren't able to create a world in which everyone's information is just part of their profit-making opportunity?

That is what we should be talking about. Let's have a big debate here. Let's ensure that each and every one of these issues is dealt with.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment because we have to get to the heart of this Equifax issue. We have to actually deal with the world as it has changed. If the proponents of this bill say that the world has changed since the crash in 2008 and 2009, then the world has also changed with regard to the potential for the compromise of the information of every American. Let's have that debate, as well, in the same bill.

I urge that my amendment be put in order, and I urge that the Members of the Senate support it. It is time for us to give those protections to consumers, which they are crying out for. No individual consumer is crying out for this change in the banking bill, but they are crying out for protections in a system where they have no voice, no way to ensure that their own family's personal data is not compromised.

I yield back to the Chair.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to share my deep concern over what appears to be the Trump administration's intention to go to war with North Korea.

North Korea may have bent over backward to appear conciliatory during the recently concluded Winter Olympics in South Korea, but the Kim Jong Un regime has not stopped its dangerous activities--far from it. North Korea is a serious and ever-worsening threat to its people, to our allies and partners in the region, and to the United States, but the responsible course of action is to use all tools of American statecraft to reduce those threats.

We have an obligation to American families, servicemembers, and our allies to say, unequivocally, that we did everything in our power to curb North Korea's dangerous behavior without resorting to armed conflict. Instead, I fear that the Trump administration is beating the drums of war.

While the North Korean regime was all smiles during the Olympics, its malign behavior continued. Engineers race to perfect a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile. North Korean laborers around the world--modern-day indentured servants--sent paychecks home to the regime, helping fund its illicit military programs. Illegal ship-to- ship transfers of refined petroleum products continued. North Korea's army of cyber warriors grew ever more capable. North Korean military officers reportedly continued to assist and empower Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons program in Syria, and the Kim regime's thugs made no efforts to scale back rampant human rights abuses.

Many smiled as the North Korean regime won a gold medal in propaganda at the Olympics. All the while, it got ever closer to its ultimate goal of perfecting a nuclear weapon that could reach the United States of America. We missed an opportunity to engage in talks with North Korea, and we did that at our own peril.

While we must continue to ratchet up pressure on North Korea, other elements of President Trump's approach threaten to make an already bad situation even worse.

First, we are all too familiar with the President's reckless rhetoric. Promising ``fire and fury'' does not minimize tensions. Threatening to ``totally destroy'' North Korea only increases the

chance of deadly miscalculation. Boasting about the size of a nuclear button only makes the United States less safe. How does Donald Trump think Kim Jong Un would react if he believed his rule were under immediate threat? Would Kim restrain himself?

Second, contradictory statements from the Trump administration cause confusion that dampens the prospect of a peaceful solution. Is the Trump administration open to talks with North Korea? We certainly should be. If we are, what are the preconditions, and should we even have any? We hear different thoughts on different days. President Trump routinely undercuts his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and with it, our diplomatic high ground. Confusing our allies in South Korea and Japan, whose assistance in helping resolve the North Korean crisis is indispensable, only serves to embolden Kim Jong Un, who seeks to drive a wedge between the United States and our allies. We saw this during the Olympics, and we cannot allow that effort to ever take hold.

Third, the Trump administration's recently released budget request for fiscal year 2019 would drastically cut State Department funding. Yet there is no explanation as to why the President believes that it is prudent to cut diplomatic resources, especially in the middle of a crisis. The State Department is already alarmingly understaffed to handle the significant and increasingly more potent threats from North Korea.

Just this week, we found out that the Special Representative for North Korea Policy, Ambassador Joseph Yun--the lead American negotiator with North Korea--is stepping down tomorrow. He is one of the key players in any strategy with Pyongyang. But wait--there is more. We still don't have a U.S. Ambassador to South Korea more than a year into the Trump administration. We still don't have a confirmed Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. We still don't have a special envoy for North Korean human rights issues. We still don't have a sanctions coordinator. It seems the only thing this administration has to show for its concern about North Korea is Donald Trump's Twitter account.

I sent a letter to Secretary Tillerson asking him to explain how the State Department is sufficiently staffed to execute a wide-ranging strategy of diplomatic engagement and pressure, but as I wait for his response, the talk of conflict persists and the drum beat of war grows louder.

Sadly, we have heard this before. In less than 3 weeks, we will mark the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. To be clear, the current situation we face with North Korea is not the same as the one we faced in the runup to the Iraq war in 2003, but, as Mark Twain once said, while history does not repeat itself, it does tend to rhyme. We should recognize the similarities and learn the appropriate lessons regarding the use of military force.

Unlike Iraq, North Korea has nearly completed development of long- range missiles, which will be capable of creating nuclear mushroom clouds in our cities. We all agree that we need to act to ensure that this never happens, but nowhere is there a convincing argument for military strikes. There might be a military option for the North Korean nuclear threat, but there is no military solution.

According to July 2017 polls, 76 percent of Americans are worried that the United States will become engaged in a major war in the next 4 years, and 86 percent of Americans believe the military should only be used as a last resort. We should listen to the American people.

Congress must demand that the Trump administration exhaust all diplomatic and economic options in North Korea short of war. I am not the only one who thinks another Korean war would be horrific. Warnings about the consequences of conflict are coming from all corners, including from the senior-most national security and defense officials.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said that conflict on the North Korean Peninsula would be ``catastrophic.''

Former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry said that a U.S. strike ``could turn into a disastrous military operation'' and that ``a war in the Korean Peninsula that extends to Japan and that goes nuclear would be 10 times worse than the first Korean War.''

Victor Cha, who was to be nominated as U.S. Ambassador to South Korea before being removed from contention, stated that ``the answer is not, as some Trump administration officials have suggested, a preventive military strike.''

Reports suggest that John Bolton, whom President Trump may be considering to replace H.R. McMaster as National Security Advisor, apparently ``supports preventive war through a massive strike, if sanctions fail.'' He said that the United States would have to ``simultaneously destroy all known North Korean ballistic missile sites, submarine bases, and artillery, mortar, and missile installments along the North's border with South Korea.''

That doesn't include the sites we don't know about. In October, the Department of Defense stated that the ``only way to locate and destroy with complete certainty all components of North Korea's nuclear weapons program is through a ground invasion.''

Reports from a war game last week indicated that approximately 10,000 Americans could be wounded in combat in just the first few days of a new Korean war. Apparently GEN Mark Milley, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, stated that the ``brutality'' of conflict on the Korean Peninsula would ``be beyond the experience of any living soldier.''

Even before these comments, 74 percent of Americans were concerned about a ``full-scale war with North Korea.''

So we must ask some fundamental questions. On what criteria will the administration judge that all nonmilitary options have been exhausted? Who will be the arbiter of that decision? Will the administration fulfill its constitutional obligation and come to Congress to ask for support? How will the Members of Congress respond to such a request?

It is because of these questions that I am here today. It is why I introduced the No Unconstitutional Strike Against North Korea Act. This bill would prevent the Department of Defense and other Federal agencies from spending any money to carry out an attack, conventional or nuclear, on North Korea without congressional approval, because we must only use the U.S. military--the most powerful fighting force in the world--if it is absolutely necessary.

At the same time, I recognize that we must do more to stem the North Korea threat. That includes addressing actions by China, the primary enabler of three successful generations of North Korean dictators. We should seek China's partnership in this process, but we must not fear offending the Chinese Communist Party, nor fear China's reaction.

In the interest of our security and the interests of a peaceful resolution, we must, No. 1, cut off the flow of crude oil from China to North Korea--if we do not do this, then we are not going as far as we need to on a package of sanctions; No. 2, give the Kim regime a warning that we expect them to stop selling the slave labor of its people and, in fact, receiving the revenues from that slave labor in order to prop up their regime and to fund a ballistic missile and nuclear program; No. 3, eliminate North Korea's illicit drug trade; No. 4, halt the procurement of key rocket fuel chemicals; and No. 5, restrict its use of the internet to evade sanctions through theft of cryptocurrencies and the committing of other cyber crimes.

We must continue the pressure on North Korea, but it must be combined with simultaneous and direct engagement with North Korea. We have yet to use all of the sanctions that should be imposed upon the North Korean regime. We have a responsibility to ensure that we exhaust all sanctions, and that includes doing everything we can to shut down the flow of crude oil into North Korea, which props up the regime, props up the ballistic missile program, and props up their nuclear weapons program.

Talks with North Korea about these issues are not synonymous with concessions. Talks backed by targeted pressure and stronger alliances are the path pursued by countries that are strong, confident, and wise, while the drumbeat of war, on the other hand, is the sound of fear and insecurity.

We are talking today about sanctions on imported steel and aluminum that come into the United States of America, but we are looking at that as a

trade issue. If we want to do something about trade that truly endangers our country, we should be looking at the trade between North Korea and China. We should be looking at the crude oil that continues to flow into North Korea. We should not be talking about a military option until we have exhausted our diplomatic and our economic opportunities to bring North Korea to the table.

Without China's agreement on this, we will reach a debate on this floor talking about war with North Korea, but it will not be a debate that took place with the United States--the Trump administration-- having exhausted all of the opportunities that a cutoff of crude oil would have and could have presented to bring North Korea to the table. It worked in 2006, it worked in 1994, and I expect, for the sake of the American people, that the President will try to make that work right now. He has not done that yet. This administration has not done that yet.

It is wrong to be hearing this talk about military possibilities and military options before we have exhausted the cutoff of oil, of slave labor, of drugs, of cryptocurrency. We have to do that first. We owe that to history so we are not judged to have rushed irrationally into a war with North Korea that could quickly spiral out of control.

Let's return to a United States of statecraft, allowing our diplomats to advance our interests using our economic tools, our economic strength, as a way of ensuring that we avoid a frivolous loss of life in our country and other countries because we did not pursue a course that would work.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I would like to speak on behalf of my constituents and the tens of millions of Americans who rely on a free and open internet.

Make no mistake, we are locked in a historic battle to preserve the core principles of competition, innovation, and consumer choice that have made the internet the world's greatest platform for commerce and communications; a historic battle to restore the hallmark of American innovation and democratization; a historic battle to protect America's innovation incubator and job generator--a battle for net neutrality.

In December, the Trump FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, eliminated net neutrality. These rules prevented your internet service provider--Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Charter--from indiscriminately charging more for internet fast lanes or slowing down or even blocking certain websites entirely, the very rules that allow inventors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses, the lifeblood of the American economy, to connect to the internet.

The reason why is simple. The Trump administration sides with the rich and the powerful first and consistently puts everyday American lives last. We have seen them wage an all-out assault on healthcare, on climate change, and now on net neutrality, but today the internet is fighting back, and we have a powerful tool at our disposal that will allow the average consumer to have their voices heard right here on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Today I am officially introducing a CRA--Congressional Review Act-- resolution that will fully restore net neutrality. The entire Senate Democratic caucus is now standing with the millions of Americans who want to reverse the FCC's partisan actions and restore net neutrality.

Net neutrality is not and should not be a partisan issue. I thank Senator Susan Collins for supporting my CRA, and I encourage other Republican colleagues to stand with all of us who support net neutrality. We are just one vote away in the Senate from restoring net neutrality. There will be a vote right here on the floor of the Senate sometime this spring. The clock is ticking. We just need a simple majority for passage, and that is just one more vote.

When we take that vote, every one of my colleagues will have to answer the simple question: Whose side are you on? Do you stand with hard-working American families for whom the internet is essential or do you stand with the Big Money corporate interests and their army of lobbyists? We should all be on the right side of history.

Millennials are motivated. Momentum is building. Citizens are joining together demonstrating, writing letters, calling their Members of Congress, and taking this message to social media. They are joined by groups that include Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Free Press, the Center for Digital Technology, the Center for Media Justice, Color of Change, Common Cause, Consumers Union, Engine, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, and many others out across the country that are organizing right now as part of an effort that is going to bring millions of voices into the offices of every Senator and every House Member in our country.

This fight is not limited to the Halls of Congress. We are seeing a historic groundswell of activity at the State and local level. The Governors in Hawaii, New Jersey, Vermont, Montana, and New York have issued executive orders promoting net neutrality.

State legislatures in more than half of the United States are currently considering net neutrality legislation. Just today, 76 mayors across the Nation signed a letter opposing net neutrality repeal, and 23 State attorneys general have filed suit to reinstate the rule, and we plan to stand by them throughout this entire battle, in the court and out here on the floor of Congress.

We cannot let net neutrality be another example of Congress disregarding public opinion and putting donor interests first. Net neutrality is our 21st century right, and we will fight to protect it. In fact, 83 percent of all Americans in polling say they want to protect net neutrality. By the way, that is pretty much every millennial, because for millennials, the internet is like oxygen. I will say that if you are 35 years old or younger, the poll is at pretty close to 100 percent.

I can see all the pages nodding their heads as I am speaking. They know no life without a device that they are carrying around. This is the world in which we are living, and they do not want to have any discrimination introduce itself into the relationship they

have between the internet and their ability to control their own lives. That is what the battle is all about, those nodding heads of the pages in the well of the Senate. Those are the people who are going to be making a difference, the millennials, the generation Z young people who want this to be open for entrepreneurial activity and for democracy.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to speak for up to 10 minutes followed by Senator Cardin for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the need to protect our Dreamers from deportation. When we talk about Dreamers, we are talking about immigrants who came to this country as children. We are talking about immigrants whose parents brought them here when they were young to give them a better chance than they had in their own countries. We are talking about young immigrants who, when they were children, had no choice in the decision to come to the United States.

These Dreamers know no other home than these United States. Many of them have spent their lives in limbo, identifying as Americans but lacking legal status and under the constant threat of being sent back to countries that are completely foreign to them.

In 2012, President Obama took steps to protect some of these Dreamers from deportation. Through an Executive order, he established the program known as DACA or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program. DACA created security and opportunity for hundreds of thousands of young Dreamers, allowing them to live and work in our great Nation without the threat of deportation. So what DACA really stands for is ``Deserving a Chance in America,'' DACA, and a protection for these innocent young people who deserve a shot at the American dream.

I would like to take a moment to speak about one of these Massachusetts Dreamers who benefited from DACA. Her name is Estefany. She came to the United States at 9 years of age to escape violence in El Salvador. She was brought here by her grandmother, along with her two sisters and a baby cousin. The journey took 22 days. It was arduous. Estefany was so scared at one point she asked to be left behind. When she finally got to the United States, she found it difficult to adjust to this whole new world, but Estefany was overjoyed to be reunited with her mother, who had come to the United States a few years before the rest of the family was able to come.

Estefany was grateful for the opportunity she was given and did not want to squander it. She wanted to succeed in school and live up to her mother's sacrifice. Estefany, who only spoke Spanish when she arrived, struggled with elementary school and tried to do her homework every night. Working as hard as she could, in 2 years she was moved on from her English as a Second Language class. Her hard work paid off in even greater dividends when she was accepted into the prestigious Boston Latin Academy for high school.

Her work ethic and desire to deserve her family's sacrifices were what motivated Estefany and got her through the many hardships that come with being undocumented--fear, uncertainty, anxiety. When Estefany began her college application process, she fully understood, for the first time, what it meant to be undocumented.

Although she wanted to go to college and have a career, she was afraid to tell her guidance counselor and her teachers of her fears about her legal status. Once Estefany opened up to them, she confronted applying and attending college the same way she had always faced up to the other struggles in her life--with strength, courage, and perseverance. She fought the battle that many aspiring college students wage--figuring out how to pay for it. It wasn't easy. As she researched and applied for scholarships, she found out that most were for citizens only. Because of scholarships provided by immigrant support organizations like the wonderful Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, MIRA, Estefany is now attending the University of Massachusetts in Boston, where she is pursuing a degree in international relations and a minor in public policy.

So it sounds like a happy ending, but, sadly, it is not. On Estefany's first day as a freshman at UMass Boston, President Trump repealed DACA. He callously terminated the program, with no guidance on what should be done next for these young Dreamers. That heartless action by the President left Estefany unable to focus on school. She no longer had any certainty about her future here in the United States and at UMass Boston. As Estefany put it, ``After so many tears and sleepless nights, it felt like all my hard work was being thrown away.''

Estefany is a fighter, and she is not giving up on her college education or career. I know she will succeed if she is just given the chance because she, like so many other Dreamers, deserves that chance.

Over the 5 years that DACA was in effect, the program protected some 800,000 Dreamers, nearly 8,000 in Massachusetts. These are young people like Estefany who study, who serve, who work, and who live next door to us every single day. They are our friends, our neighbors, and our loved ones. They are not ``too lazy.'' They are not ``bad hombres.'' They are some of the best and brightest in our country.

Now, because of President Trump's unconscionable decision to end DACA, Estefany and so many young people like her are living in darkness again. It is heartbreaking to watch this administration strip protections away from people who are Americans in every way that should matter. Leaving them to live under a threat of deportation is unconscionable.

We should not abandon these young people whom we urged to come out of the shadows. We should not abandon the larger community of Dreamers who have no other home than the United States. The American people understand this. In January, a poll found that 87 percent of Americans favor allowing immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children to stay here--87 percent; nearly all Americans are with our Dreamers.

You would think that extending these protections would be a no- brainer for the Republicans. Right here, right now, we could pass a bill to protect these young immigrants, but, instead, the Republicans have decided to use the Dreamers as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations. They hope that by leveraging the lives and futures of Dreamers, they will get their laundry list of hard-liner immigration demands.

I am so glad that Senator McConnell has agreed with Senator Schumer that we are going to open up a debate here on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We are going to try to find a way to resolve this issue, although there is no guarantee that President Trump will, in fact, agree with any resolution here. There is no guarantee that the tea party Freedom Caucus Republicans in the House of Representatives will agree with any understanding that is reached here on a bipartisan basis, if we can reach one on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

I just think, for better or worse, the Dreamers should know that we are going to continue to fight for them and that we are going to continue to work toward creating a pathway for them to be able to live in our country without fear. I think that is going to be the signature moment we can create for our country this year. Yes, we have a budget agreement, but we have so much more work to do to help these young people who will be great Americans once we create a path to citizenship for them.

At this point, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Cantwell for organizing the opportunity this afternoon to speak about this egregious decision that was made by the Trump administration that will allow for drilling for

oil off of the beaches of the United States of America. It is an absolute disgrace that this administration is doing something like this. What we have on our hands is a President who has a hard time listening to his own message.

Last week, he was bragging about how much new oil we are discovering in America. He is so proud of this. In fact, we export a million and a half barrels of oil a day. Listen to that again: We export a million and a half barrels of oil a day. Where do we send this oil? We send it to China. We send it to other countries.

Is the President happy with that? No, he says we need more oil; we need to drill off of our beaches--notwithstanding what that will do to our tourism industry, to our fishing industry, or to any industry that does business along the coastlines of our country. Ultimately, what would be the purpose to which this oil would be put? Export the oil.

So how does that formula really work? The oil companies come to the beaches of Massachusetts or any other State. They set up rigs and start to drill for oil. They find the oil. Then, they sell that oil somewhere else around the world. Meanwhile, people who live off of those beaches in Massachusetts or any other State run all the risk if there is an accident, as there was in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 in the BP oilspill.

So the risks are run by the States that don't want the drilling, and the benefits all run to the oil companies that get to sell this oil around the world. It makes perfect sense because ``GOP'' really stands for ``gas and oil party.'' That is what they have turned themselves into. It is whatever Big Oil wants, even if State after State after State says it does not want this to happen.

Every single State, from Maine down to Florida, was going to be giving permission to the oil companies to commence drilling, but the Governor of Florida--a Republican Governor--protested. He said he didn't want there to be drilling off the coast of Florida, after Florida had already been included in the plan.

So what happens? All of a sudden, the Trump administration decides that they are going to have a gator giveaway. All of a sudden, Florida gets to be exempt. Why would Florida be exempt? Maybe because it has a Republican Governor. Maybe because that Republican Governor is thinking about running for the U.S. Senate. So maybe, just maybe, this Governor, who once supported drilling off of the coast of Florida, all of a sudden says: The people don't want it. They don't want the beaches of Florida to be endangered.

So what happens? Governor Scott from Florida all of a sudden starts shedding crocodile tears about how much he cares about the beaches, even though he had always been supportive of offshore drilling. That leads to the gator giveaway where, all of a sudden, Florida is not in.

I don't think it is incidental that Mar-a-Lago is actually in Florida, as well, and maybe Donald Trump hadn't been fully consulted by Secretary Zinke and the Department of the Interior on this inclusion of Florida. But before you knew it, all of a sudden, Florida was no longer on the map, but every other State that doesn't have a Republican Governor running for the Senate, that doesn't have a President of the United States with a summer resort, a winter resort, a spring and summer resort--Mar-a-Lago--is stuck with this decision.

The problem with what they did is this: It is obviously arbitrary and capricious. It is obviously a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. It is obviously something that will never stand up in court--that after a decision is made to include every State, all of a sudden Florida comes up. It will never hold up. That will be the basis of the case made by the attorneys general and all of the business and environmental interests that will be suing on this issue.

So what part of this really works? It is oil that will be drilled for at the risk of despoiling the beaches and the fishing industry--the tens of billions of dollars in the fishing and tourism industry--with the benefits running to one single industry.

The American Petroleum Institute is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they are saying: We are at the boom time of all times in oil drilling in the United States. We are energy independent. This is the boom time.

Donald Trump is sounding the same exact way, boasting across the country about his energy policies, his fossil-fuel-first policies. He keeps saying that he has ended the war on energy. It is not true because just last week he imposed a 30-percent tariff on importation of solar panels. So he is talking about no war on his favorite energy technology. But if he doesn't like them, they get a 30-percent increase in tariffs on the very technologies that, in polling, 80 percent of all Americans want to see increased inside of our country.

We are going to be fighting this every single step of the way. It is immoral, it is unnecessary, and it violates the goals that individual States have in order to advance their own economies. I, personally, am going to exhaust all available legislative tools to fight this attempt by President Trump to allow drilling off of the coast of Massachusetts, the east coast, and nearly every other single mile of coastline in the United States, with the exception of Florida.

That includes using the Congressional Review Act, which allows for agency action to be undone by a simple majority in both Chambers. I plan to pursue such a Congressional Review Act resolution if the Trump administration moves forward with this reckless plan. We will not stop until this plan is blocked and dead and our coastlines are protected once and for all.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, we are here today because Republicans and President Trump have failed in their most basic responsibility as the governing party, bringing us mere hours away from an unnecessary and consequential government shutdown.

Let's be clear. With Republicans in control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, the only person to blame if the government shuts down will be President Donald Trump.

Later today, I plan to vote no on the government funding bill that the House of Representatives has sent over to the Senate because it provides no certainty or resolution for Dreamers, pensioners, veterans, the people of Puerto Rico, or vulnerable children and patients across the country. I cannot support legislation that fails to ensure that we are fulfilling our moral and constitutional obligation to the American people.

Sadly, this budget process is just a continuation of a pattern from Republicans in Congress: Draft major policy in secret, with no debate, no Democrats, no real opportunity to negotiate. First, they did it on healthcare. Then, they did it on tax reform. Now, they are doing it again on the continuing budget resolution.

There is a great song in the musical ``Hamilton'' titled ``The Room Where It Happens.'' Well, the Democrats aren't even told where the room is. Republicans aren't negotiating deals. They are delivering fiats, not just to the Democrats but to the American people, and the American people are the ones paying the price.

We cannot let this craven, half-measure of a bill fool us. Yes, this legislation does finally reauthorize and fund a program that provides healthcare for 9 million children across this country, known as the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. But remember, just like they are abdicating their role in governing today and have been throughout the budget negotiations, Republicans in Congress allowed CHIP to expire at the end of September--more than 100 days ago.

Why would Republicans do such a thing for a program they now say is so vital and bipartisan? Because 100 days ago the Republican caucus was preoccupied with their unsuccessful attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. For weeks on end, they held America in suspension as they secretly wrote and rewrote a bill that would rip healthcare coverage away from tens of millions of Americans while taking a machete to Medicaid.

Thankfully, this dangerous bill failed to gain support from enough Senate

Republicans to pass. But when that irresponsible bill failed, instead of immediately returning to the important business of providing low- and middle-income children healthcare, the Republicans decided to use their energy to jam through a massive tax scam with giveaways for millionaires and billionaires, once again leaving children's health and working families in limbo. Republicans were more interested in a tax bill of corporate welfare than in children's healthcare.

Congress provided a Band-Aid for CHIP at the end of last year, enough funding to support some States through today. Yet the absence of a real solution has consequences. CHIP families remain worried about paying for their children's medications, getting them a checkup, or receiving that unexpected, devastating, and expensive diagnosis for their young child. Healthcare providers remain terrified that they will have to cut services to medically complex children and other pediatric patients they serve. States still lack the certainty and assurances needed to fully operate CHIP for their residents. Many are still contemplating contingency plans should the Federal Government not meet their end of the bargain and provide funds needed for CHIP to succeed.

These last 100 days of anxiety and uncertainty represent uncharted territory for this popular program. For two decades, CHIP has provided affordable, comprehensive health insurance to children of working families and pregnant women. In 2016, CHIP covered nearly 9 million children throughout the United States. Some 2 million of them are chronically ill, with asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, or developmental disorders. In Massachusetts, CHIP has been instrumental in getting nearly all of our children covered.

Without continued Federal funding, Massachusetts alone could lose approximately $295 million annually in Federal CHIP dollars. That would be devastating for the 172,000 Bay State children who rely on CHIP for their health coverage.

Ironically, over 3 months ago, Senate leaders in both parties came up with a bipartisan agreement on what the next 5 years of CHIP would look like. But Republicans insisted we had to pay for CHIP by raiding other important programs, like the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which is used to help prevent child illness by providing vaccines, among things. The stopgap funding measure passed in December cut $750 million from the Prevention and Public Health Fund for a short-term spending patch. It was robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So we are hours away from shutting down the government, with the superrich still celebrating their $1 trillion tax break and congressional Republicans still scheming at ways to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and still punting a solution for Dreamers, veterans, pensioners, and for the people of Puerto Rico. While I remain supportive of the CHIP program, I do not support the legislative malpractice Republicans performed on the continuing resolution.

But that wasn't the first time Republicans tried to pay for one healthcare need with another, and CHIP is not the only victim of Republican political games. I cannot support the House legislation because it provides no funding to address the greatest public health crisis facing our Nation today--the opioid crisis.

When President Trump declared the opioid crisis a national public health emergency in October, he laid out his vision that ``we can be the generation that ends the opioid epidemic.'' On that, he is right. But we know that a vision without funding is a hallucination. We need real funding to implement real solutions.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the opioid epidemic cost the country $500 billion in 2015. How much has the Trump administration devoted to this crisis? Zero dollars, not a nickel, since Donald Trump was sworn in as President. Now there is news that the Trump administration might slash the budget of the Office of National Drug Control Policy by 95 percent. That isn't a commitment to the crisis. That is an abdication.

Asking our States, our cities, and towns to continue fighting this scourge of opioid overdoses without additional Federal funding is irresponsible, it is cruel, and it will come back to haunt us as a Nation. These budget negotiations were an ideal opportunity to fund what my colleagues in both parties have said publicly is important-- combating the opioid crisis. Instead, we are leaving families without hope or help. We owe it to them and the millions like them across the country to fight as hard as possible for the funding they need.

We should also remember as we look at this House legislation that so many of the patients seeking treatment and recovery services for opioid addiction rely on their community health centers. But if this funding measure passes, Republicans will have irresponsibly and unfairly left funding for community health centers in limbo. That funding also expired more than 100 days ago.

For more than 50 years, community health centers have been an integral component of our social safety net. This movement, which started in Massachusetts, has transformed how we treat some of our most medically vulnerable citizens, while also improving the health and wellness of our communities. In fact, for many Americans, community health centers are the only access point for affordable healthcare. In Massachusetts, it treats more than 750,000 patients, and 16 percent of these patients are uninsured and nearly half are on Medicaid. In addition to the quality, comprehensive care they provide, community health centers play a key economic role in many regions across the country. Community health centers in Massachusetts have created more than 12,000 jobs, including more than 8,500 direct full-time employees. Much like CHIP, unfortunately, Republicans have denied community health centers the certainty of funding they need, forcing them to make tough decisions that ultimately impact their ability to fulfill their mission and care for the people of their communities.

I have heard from community health centers across the Commonwealth that Congress's inability to reauthorize funding has made new physicians reluctant to practice at their facilities, further straining an already depleting workforce. New staff to address burgeoning infectious health outbreaks, like the flu, cannot be hired, hampering the health center's ability to respond to the needs of the community.

These facilities are often the backbones of their communities, and for more than 100 days, we have been hamstringing their ability to do their jobs. It is shameful, and it is unacceptable.

Throughout the 100-day war on some of our most important healthcare programs, Democrats have been calling on Republicans to invite us into the room, to sit down on a bipartisan basis and work through our differences to come to a solution on CHIP, on community health centers, on opioid funding, and, of course, on our Dreamers. Instead, we are in a governmental paralysis, fixing only a fraction of the problems Republicans created while the President continues to focus on the campaign trail and fails in finding a solution for our country. For Republicans, this newest CR, yet again, means nothing more than ``Can't Resolve.'' The American people deserve so much more than that. The American people are tired of waiting on their government to do the right thing. Lives are depending on it. It has been 5 months since the fiscal year started, and we still don't have a budget. That is unacceptable.

Republicans are shedding crocodile tears about our military and national security being at risk during a government shutdown. Do you know what is harmful to our national defense--month-to-month budgets and operating by way of continuing resolutions. That is no way to run the Defense Department, but that is exactly what the Republicans have done with these short-term budget fixes. Spare me, spare America your crocodile tears because it is time to sit down, on a bipartisan basis, and get a budget done--a budget that would take care of the Defense Department, the opioid crisis, pensions, veterans, CHIP, community health centers, and it would give some certitude to the American people that this body knows how to govern. Instead of engaging in budget brinksmanship, we need Republicans and President Trump to engage in bipartisanship. It is time we end this waiting game now and provide

the certainty and funding necessary so all of these critical priorities are addressed, not just the ones Republicans care about.

The Republican paradox is that they don't believe in government, but they have to run for office in order to make sure the government doesn't work, and now that they control the House, the Senate, and Presidency, we have reached their perfect state where the government cannot work because it is being paralyzed by the party that controls all of these branches. They refuse to talk to Democrats. They refuse to ensure that the Constitution is implemented, where Democrats and Republicans, working together on both sides of this building, plus the President, sit down in the room in order to cut the deals. Until President Trump is willing to sit down with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan in the room, we will not get a resolution on these issues.

Mr. President, come to the Hill. Mr. President, sit down with all of the people who want to resolve these issues for the American people. Mr. President, do your job.

Bill Belichick says to the New England Patriots: If you want to win, do your job.

The same thing is true for you, Mr. President. Do your job. Come together with Democrats and Republicans. Stop carping critically from the outside at any move Democrats or Republicans make. Instead, get in the room. We can resolve these issues for the American people. The time is now, Mr. President. Do your job.

I yield back the remainder of my time.