Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak on the floor for up to 5 minutes.

Mr. President, it has been interesting to hear the debate today about how heartless it would be to protect the life of a child. The debate from the other side has come out fast and furious, saying that S. 311 is about a child who is not viable and that somehow we are going to put a mom through more torment with a child that is not viable.

The plain text of this bill could not be clearer. This is not about abortion. This is about a child who has been born alive and who is a viable child.

Here is the interesting conversation. Many people in this country argue about abortion--rightfully so. We are talking about the life of a child. This, in particular, though, has a clear argument. What if an abortion is botched, and instead of the child being killed in the womb, they are actually delivered? Now a child is on the table who is crying, with pink skin, 10 fingers and toes wiggling, and is reaching out. What happens now? That is the question with this bill.

Interestingly enough, it is not the first time it has come before the Senate. In 2002, this same issue came before the Senate. The Senate, the House, and the President all agreed that if an abortion was botched and the child was delivered, that child is a child. By definition, that is a child. In 2002, what that bill did not do is define what happens next if the life of that child is then taken after they are born.

This wouldn't be an issue because it is clearly defined in law except for the fact that a few weeks ago, the Governor of Virginia made a public statement saying that we need to have a law to say that we could deliver a child, make it comfortable, and then decide what to do with that baby. Suddenly, this becomes a national conversation.

We thought this was a resolved issue in 2002, but it is not. There is still debate from the other side saying: Deliver the child and then decide what to do with the life of that child.

This is not just an issue that has no consequence as well. After that bill was passed in 2002, the CDC started analyzing birth certificates to determine if this happens and how often it happens.

It doesn't happen often, but in a few number of States where the CDC gathered information from, it determined there were 143 babies who were born alive after an attempted abortion and who then died with no record of how it happened.

Just in 5 months in 2017, the State of Arizona reported that 10 babies were born alive after an attempted abortion. This doesn't happen often, but it does happen, and the question is, Who are we as a nation and what are we going to do with a child who is in front of us who is alive?

Medical professionals are called to do no harm--the Hippocratic Oath. It is interesting to see medical professionals provide care to every person everywhere they go. If there is a car accident, it doesn't matter if it is their patient. They pull over and help. Interestingly enough, at the State of the Union Address, just a couple of weeks ago, we had a staff member in the back who passed out, and Members of Congress who are also physicians, who were in their seats, jumped out of their seats to go provide care because that is what physicians do. But in the case of a botched abortion, the child is delivered and then everyone who is a medical professional just steps back and watches the child die and doesn't provide care. It is the reverse of the Hippocratic Oath. We need to resolve this in our law.

If I can even make a comparison. We as people, and even soldiers in the field, honor life. Soldiers who were trained to take life still are also trained to honor life.

Article 12 of the Geneva Convention, which we support, says this: ``Members of the armed forces and other persons . . . who were wounded, sick . . . shall be respected and protected in all circumstances.'' Literally, if you are in the fight of your life on the field, as our Armed Forces are, and you run across a wounded individual in that fight from the other side, we give care to that person, even though they are our enemy on the battlefield. But in an abortion clinic, that child is not given the same care that we are demanded to give on the battlefield.

This is a fascinating dialogue that I have had with a lot of my colleagues. For a lot of my colleagues who are pro-abortion and who don't see that as a life, I will often ask this simple question: When is a life a life? What is your redline? I think that is a fair conversation.

For myself, it is conception. When that child is conceived and they are developing, they have unique DNA. That is a different person. For others, they will say it is when the child is viable. For others, they will say when the child is born.

I just ask a simple question. When the child is born, is that a child? Is your redline birth? This bill affirms that when a child is born, we should at least acknowledge that that is a person.

I am a dad who has cut the umbilical cord of my own daughter before. I would be terrified to say that the child was not a child until I, as the dad, cut the cord--that I could take that life at any moment before that. That is not who we are as Americans.

Let's pass this. Let's protect living children.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in the next 24 hours, the Senate will do what it should do, which is to actually go through the process of advice and consent with a nominee--this time, for an Attorney General-- William Barr.

William Barr is eminently qualified. It has been interesting to hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk all day long today about how qualified William Barr is but then always pause with a ``but'' and take off on the Mueller investigation.

Let me explain what this means by ``eminently qualified.'' He has had an exceptionally impressive legal career. He serves in one of the top U.S. firms. He began his legal career decades ago as, actually, an analyst and as legislative counsel for the CIA. He worked on domestic policy for Ronald Reagan. He served as the Deputy Attorney General from 1990 to 1991, and then he served as the Attorney General of the United States for George Herbert Walker Bush from 1991 to 1993.

When he was appointed as the Attorney General in 1991, his nomination passed out of the Judiciary Committee with a unanimous vote of 14 to 0. The Judiciary chairman at the time--a gentleman named Joe Biden--called him a fine Attorney General. He was overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate in

1991--a less partisan time. It was when Democrats and Republicans both looked at his qualifications, not at a political agenda.

We have a unique moment in which to look at someone who was a good Attorney General for the United States, one who served faithfully but then had a season away from that, only to turn around and do it again. How many of us wouldn't want to redo something we did years ago and say: I did it, and it went well, but if I were to have a little more time and could do it over again, I would do things better. We have that chance with William Barr. It is a unique moment for us as a nation to be able to bring somebody like that back again.

What happened under his watch?

During that time period, he believed and still believes that the personal security of the citizens of the United States is the primary, first duty of the government's and of the U.S. Attorney General's. Despite what is being smeared about him on this floor over and over again--with people saying he is being hired to be the President's personal attorney--for those who have actually met with him and talked with him, he speaks openly about law enforcement in the United States. He talks about working with local law enforcement and with U.S. attorneys to actually prosecute crime and go after the issues that distract from American values and that keep the American people from living the American dream.

During his tenure as Attorney General, he spearheaded the initiative called the Weed and Seed Program, which removed violent drug offenders from the streets. Under Attorney General Barr, in the 1990s, violent crime in the United States went down because they were aggressively prosecuting for crime.

He is also the Attorney General who supervised the enforcement and implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was an incredibly difficult legal process to have gone through and to have implemented nationwide in order to have protected the rights of individuals who had been overlooked in our country for two centuries-- those with disabilities. It was a major feature of what he did during that time period.

He brings this unique, important perspective from his dealings with law enforcement, his background, his experience. All of those things look like they would make a slam dunk with which to come to this floor and have wide, bipartisan support except for this--that he is being used as a message in the Mueller investigation. It is not that he said: I am going to stop the Mueller investigation. It is not that he said anything else about that. He did write a 19-page letter as an attorney in the law practice that is helping President Trump get through this process.

He wrote: Hey, as former Attorney General, here are all of the things of which you should be advised. When you are working with the President, here are the key features.

It seems like a kind thing to do for any President. He wrote the letter with all of that information in it, and he gave those details. Fine.

He has also said over and over again that he is not going to undercut the Mueller investigation. Yet some of my Democratic colleagues have said: No, it has to be more than that. He has to recuse himself like Jeff Sessions did. He has to recuse himself. If he doesn't recuse himself, he can't be there.

May I remind you that the reason Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself was that he was on the campaign team for the President, and when he got into the position of Attorney General, the ethics team from the Department of Justice advised him: Hey, since you were on the campaign team, you can't be the investigator for the campaign team. At that time, Attorney General Jeff Sessions agreed and said that it would violate ethics for a person on the team to help investigate the team, so he recused himself. That was not William Barr. There is all of this talk that he has to recuse himself like Jeff Sessions did, but it is a completely different situation. Why should he recuse himself?

Apparently, people don't want the Mueller investigation to have any supervision, which, again, I find fascinating politically because I distinctly remember, during the Clinton administration, that many of my Democratic colleagues who are still in this Chamber now were furious with Ken Starr. They can't believe Donald Trump would say he is frustrated with the Mueller team, but they had no problem with the Clinton White House's literally saying: We are going to go to war against Ken Starr. The term ``witch hunt'' is not new. The Clinton administration used that same term against Ken Starr. This is a fascinating side-by-side to me, to be able to look at this.

Here is what I would advise: Let the Mueller investigation finish its job. It has a job. Let it do its job. Quite frankly, the Attorney General shouldn't be in the day-to-day operations of the Mueller investigation. That is why we have a special counsel. Yet, at some point, the special counsel has to turn information over to someone. William Barr is not going to be the one writing all of the information from the special counsel. He should neither have this incredibly high standard nor be held to some standard of doing something that he is not going to do--try to interfere in this process. He has made that very clear.

He has also made it very clear verbally, in committee settings, and in written statements that he is going to release whatever comes out, as under the law, from the Mueller investigation. I think some people believe that the Mueller investigation is going to release a big, giant written report like the Senate Intel Committee will do. Yet the Mueller investigation's task is not to release some big, giant report; its task is for them, as prosecutors, to go through and recommend indictments. If they choose to write a report, that is up to them. Now, this Congress could try to mandate that, but that is not their requirement. They are a special counsel. This is a group of attorneys that is making recommendations. That is all it is.

Don't judge an Attorney General nominee based on some accusation from some thought of what might happen and what he might do. Judge him on what he actually says and what he has done. Hold him to that standard.

I have also had some folks back in my State say they have heard that William Barr supports the possibility of some States having red flag laws on the Second Amendment. Now, I spoke to William Barr. He came to my office. We spent about 45 minutes together. We went through a whole litany of questions and answers about his background and the issues he has dealt with, his passions, his dealings with local law enforcement, his cooperation with State prisons, consent decrees, religious liberty. We talked of drug trials and processing. We talked about the whole issue of gang violence--on and on and on--including the Second Amendment.

He again reiterated he is supportive of the Second Amendment in every area. If someone loses his Second Amendment rights, it will only be based on due process, which is with a court's being involved. That has always been the standard for us as a country.

I have seen some of the things that have been written about him, one being that he is not supportive of the Second Amendment. That is absolutely false, and I can say those things based on my personal conversation with him after having asked him those questions. See not the things that have been written about him but the things that he has actually written and said about the Second Amendment. He is a protector of our rights under the Constitution. It is one of the things to which he has sworn under oath to protect as the previous Attorney General and would have to swear to again under oath.

This is a simple thing for us. We are looking at a qualified nominee who has an excellent background, the experience, and a passion to protect our country; who has shown a passion for law enforcement, protecting our Nation, and reducing violent crime in our country. I look forward to his stepping in and taking the lead in the Department of Justice.

May I make a side note on this? Again, this nomination reminds me of why it is so important that this Senate fix its nomination process. We have a broken nomination process--period.

If you take the last six Presidents combined, when they were putting their staffs together in their first 2 years of office, it was 25 times that someone in the Senate asked for additional time to debate that person. It

could be any one of 100. For the last six Presidents, it was a total of 25 times that one person asked for additional time to debate. In this body, it was 25 times that somebody said for the last six Presidents combined that we need a little more time to debate this person. They asked for additional what is called postcloture debate time. That is a full intervening day--24 hours--plus an additional 30 hours after that just to debate. That is fine. For highly controversial nominees, it is entirely appropriate.

Yet, in the first 2 years of President Trump's Presidency, that request has been made 128 times--25 times for the last 6 Presidents combined versus 128 times for this President. It is not because they have been all that controversial as nominees, although I am fully aware that President Trump has nominated some folks who have created heated debate on this floor, but it was certainly not 128 times. In fact, many of the times after we had had that postcloture intervening day, plus another 30 hours, those people passed either unanimously or with 90- plus votes. They were not controversial. It was an attempt to shut down this Senate and shut down this President to keep him from hiring his staff. That has never happened before. There has never been a time that the Senate has tried to prevent an elected President from hiring his own team--until now.

In May of 2017, I made a proposal to fix our postcloture vote debate time, seeing what would happen. I continued that conversation over and over again with many of my Democratic colleagues.

The last session, we brought in front of the Rules Committee a proposal that was made by Harry Reid and then was passed under Harry Reid's time and his leadership in the Senate--that is, to limit postcloture debate time to streamline that process.

I brought that exact same proposal back out and said: Republicans voted with Democrats to make sure this process would work in 2013 and 2014. Now will Democrats vote with Republicans on the exact same language? And we will do this together to fix this process.

The Democrats gave me the Heisman at that point and said: No. It was good of you to vote with us, but we are not going to vote with you.

That was all last session.

I brought up another proposal that went through the Rules Committee today. It is a simple proposal. Historically in this body, there hasn't been a lot of postcloture debate time on nominees, especially not on nominees like district court judges or Deputy Assistant Secretaries of some entity.

I met today with the person who will be the IRS counsel, the counsel of the IRS, which I dare guess no one in this room could name right now, and certainly most people in America couldn't, but they have been blocked for a year, so the IRS does not have a Chief Counsel. Not a controversial nominee--will probably pass unanimously or near unanimously. Just to prevent the IRS from having a counsel, they have been slowed down.

My proposal is simple. We can still have postcloture debate. If anyone in this body wanted to slow down any nominee, they could still do that. They could request a full additional day, 24 hours, and then in the next day, instead of adding an additional 30 hours, it would be just an additional 2 hours. So instead of getting a full day plus 30 hours, they would get a full day plus 2 hours. That is still a lot of time.

Quite frankly, only 25 times in the last six Presidents have there been any requests for any additional time. So that would still allow a long period of time, but it would expedite the process so at least we could go through this.

If we don't fix this now, this will become the habit of the Senate from here on out. When the next Democratic President is elected, I can assure you that we will have the same issue with nominees that President Trump is having because it only takes one Senator to say: No. I want a whole intervening day plus 30 hours for every one of your nominees.

By the way, the President puts 1,200 people through the process of nomination--1,200. So count the times that will happen in the days ahead.

I know this is part of the ``resist Trump'' movement and to shut down the operation of his Presidency, but it actually is going to shut down the operation of every President from here on out if we don't fix this rule.

I am asking my Democratic colleagues to look long, to not look right in front of us, to look at the future of where this is really headed and what is really happening to this Senate. The precedent that is being set right now on debate will be the standard in the days ahead. Let's fix it now so we can get this resolved long term for the sake of our country and do this right.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, 2\1/2\ weeks ago, Democrats and Republicans--the House, the Senate, and the White House--agreed to reopen the government for 3 weeks to be able to continue negotiations on border security.

A very simple statement that was made by my Democratic colleagues was this: Reopen the government for 3 weeks. We will negotiate on border security and come to an agreement, but only if the government is open, and it would be limited to border security.

It was a pretty straightforward conversation.

President Trump said: We trust you on this.

We agreed to reopen the government for 3 weeks to focus on border security.

Now it appears that based on the negotiations that are happening right now in this building, this has become a Lucy-and-the-football- type negotiation because this doesn't seem to be about border security anymore.

My Democratic colleagues have said: Now we want to add one thing. We will vote for fencing at the border as long as you agree to defund a section of ICE.

The whole negotiation now is this: Yes, we will add border fencing, but you have to agree to defund ICE.

Here is the way that works. Their agreement is this: You will have to limit the number of people that ICE can detain.

Now, to our credit, this Congress has always allocated funding to say: Here is x amount of dollars for detention facilities and for bed space for ICE, knowing that if somebody is picked up at the border, when they are picked up at the border as they cross, the Border Patrol does not house them. They are not detained by Border Patrol. They are arrested by Border Patrol, and then they are turned over to ICE.

So the plan is not to allocate enough dollars for ICE detention but to create a new arbitrary cap for the number of people that ICE could actually detain, so that ICE could only hold x amount of people. That is what they want to get a negotiation--for the first time ever to have a maximum cap of the number of people that ICE could detain.

Why does that matter? One is to allow funding for it, and another one is to have a cap. A cap is very different, and my Democratic colleagues know it.

In real life, here is what it would look like. If ICE, at any point, already had the number they have in custody at that point and they arrest someone else, they would have to choose to release someone currently in detention before they could arrest someone and put them in detention.

Let me give an example.

Coyotes now try for any adult who is coming to try to have them bring a child with them because they know if a child travels with the adult, they are going to get a special lane into the country, as if they are coming as a family. They get their own fast lane into being released into the country.

If you have this ICE detainer cap, coyotes will know: Bring people in mass migration because ICE can't release enough people at once. So if you come as a thousand across the border or 500 across the border, they have to be released into the country because ICE can't quickly release 500 people from detention to add the new 500 people who are coming through.

My Democratic colleagues also know that it currently takes about 41 days for someone who is in detention to go through the whole process to get a hearing and get finished. This would accelerate the process of getting those people out and released into the country, rather than getting them through the actual hearing.

The better solution on this is to add judges and actually get people to go through the process and get due process faster, instead of releasing people into the country. Once someone crosses our border illegally and they are released into the country, the vast majority of those individuals never get deported because they either don't show up for the hearing at all or, when they do show up for the hearing and they are told, no, you can't legally stay, they disappear.

This cap negotiation that is going on right now is exactly the wrong direction to go. It is not about border security. It is about releasing people into the country.

Several years ago, there was a young lady named Sarah Root. She was in Iowa. It was graduation night from college, and she was hit by a drunk driver and killed. Sarah Root's loss drew the Nation's attention for a moment to the issue of not only drunk driving but illegal immigration, because the person that hit Sarah was illegally present in the country and had a blood alcohol level three times above the legal limit.

Local law enforcement, at that time under the Obama administration, asked ICE to detain them. ICE said they didn't meet the minimum qualification that had been set by the administration to detain them. So they released this person on bond. Sarah later died from her injuries, and they have never been able to find that guy again. He is gone. He is somewhere in the United States, or maybe he is running internationally. We don't know, but he is on our most wanted list instead of being held.

That was a decision made by a previous administration just on priorities. My Democratic colleagues are trying to force ICE to make those kinds of decisions every single day now--to determine who needs to be released and who needs to be kept based on an arbitrary cap that they want to put in on the maximum number of people that ICE can detain.

There is no State in the country that sets an arbitrary cap, other than the bed space that they have available. But this conversation is that we have enough bed space to hold someone, but you can't use that bed space because we want to limit the number of people that ICE can detain.

This is the current debate on border security. It is not about border security anymore. It is not about fencing anymore. It is now about giving ICE a maximum cap they can detain and, literally, forcing ICE to release people illegally present into the United States. That is not border security. That is the opposite of border security, and we should not go for a deal that puts a cap on ICE that is an arbitrary number.

I hope this administration rejects that. I hope we can finish negotiations. I hope the American people see this for what it is. This is no longer about border security. This is about trying to force this administration to release people into the country who are illegally present and prevent ICE from doing its job. Enough is enough on this. Let's allow the ICE folks to be able to do their job--they are Federal law enforcement--and not put a cap on them, saying: You can only enforce the law this far, and then after that, you cannot enforce the law anymore because we have an arbitrary cap. That needs to be rejected, and that is not a serious offer in negotiations.

The reason we don't already have a deal that is already done right now, with this body debating it, is that debate about capping ICE detentions got added into the conversation last weekend and blew up the whole negotiation.

This is not the White House blowing up negotiations. This is not Republicans blowing up negotiations. This is my Democratic colleagues saying they want a cap on ICE detentions and allowing coyotes to be able to rush large quantities at the border or forcing ICE to have to make difficult choices about which gang members they are going to release and which they are going to hold, literally getting a briefing every morning saying: We can't arrest anyone today because we don't have enough detention space, so today we have to look the other way.

That is an absurd proposal, and we should reject it.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, pending, we have an amendment of mine coming up. We have a large lands package with the Land and Water Conservation Fund, with a lot of lands, transitional properties. A lot of things are coming up in this.

There are multiple reforms that are built into it, but we missed one. I think it is important that we deal with this before we do a long- term, permanent reauthorization of this program because when this Congress does a permanent reauthorization, we seldom ever get back to it. We say: It is moving, and there are other things that need to be dealt with. It becomes less important.

My amendment has two basic parts. It addresses two critical issues of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. One of them is that the Land and Water Conservation Fund is set up to purchase new properties, but if there is a problem on that piece of property that we purchased, there is no requirement to fix it.

Here is how it works: The fund actually purchases the property, and then the hope is that Congress will then appropriate dollars separately to do the

repairs to open up the property. So it is announced to the community that this new area will be opened up as public lands, but when the purchase is actually done, there is a big sign on it saying ``closed for safety repairs.'' Those repairs may cost $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, and there is a wait of sometimes 10 years or more before the actual appropriation is done.

This is an easy fix. This fix should be noncontroversial. When we purchase property with the Land and Water Conservation Fund, if there is any maintenance needed on that property, then that needed maintenance is also taken care of by the Land and Water Conservation Fund at the same time. It has to be budgeted in. That way, we don't purchase property and then wait a decade to actually put it into public use. That doesn't make sense to anyone. Everyone walks by it and says: Here is inefficient government again. We bought this property, but there is a different pot of money to fix it up, and we have to wait a decade.

I hope that this is noncontroversial to all us and that we see the common sense in this.

In this package, there is some land that we will purchase and literally not be able to use for who knows how long. There is a hope for future appropriations at some point to deal with safety issues so that people will be able to actually use the land.

The second part of this deals with the past because this has been the process for a while. We purchase new properties and try to put them into use but can't because they came with maintenance issues. We have other public lands, such as our national parks, where there is $11 billion in backlogged deferred maintenance, with no plan to actually fix those. Let me give some examples. We have all heard of Yellowstone. There is $100 million of deferred maintenance at just that one park, with no plan to fix it.

The simple answer is that the Land and Water Conservation Fund is set up to purchase new properties when needed. Allocate just 5 percent of it to go to the deferred maintenance backlog. That still leaves 95 percent of it to purchase additional properties when we need to. But we need to seriously deal with the $16 billion total backlog, and $11 billion of that is deferred maintenance in our national parks.

This is not a poison pill. This shouldn't be a controversial amendment. This is an amendment to help fix an ongoing problem. If we don't fix it, 10 years from now, we will all regret that it was not done. What I suspect is, if we put this in place and actually set aside some dollars for deferred maintenance, by next year, every Member of this body will say: You know what, there is a national park in my State where there are some broken-down buildings that are boarded up that no one can use. Let's try to get access to those maintenance dollars to fix it.

Fine. We can pick whatever order we need to pick from to get to them. Let's start repairing. Let's not be a bad landowner who purchases and never repairs and has no plan to repair. This is simple, straightforward, and should be common sense. Let's not add properties that we can't pay for. Let's not add properties with a maintenance problem and no plan to actually fix it. That is what the amendment is all about that is coming up in the very next vote we take. I look forward to its passage so we can actually get some of these repairs done.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute.

Mr. President, only in Washington, DC, and the Federal Government would we say that we want to do something, but we can't do something. My hope is that we will do something.

Long-term, we all see it. I agree that it is the same thing that we always deal with. It is always down to the time and to the moment.

This is one of these dialogues we have had for a long time, asking how we can deal with deferred maintenance that is $16 billion and growing and with no plan to shrink it. In fact, we are adding lands in this bill that, when we pass the bill, will increase the amount immediately, and there is no plan to take care of that.

The simple request is that we should actually take care of deferred maintenance when we buy it so that we are not adding property with deferred maintenance on day one, and we should have a plan to deal with deferred maintenance that we have--the $16 billion. Without that plan to actually deal with it and without a plan to deal with it the first day with products that we buy, we are adding to the deficit immediately.

This is an issue we have to resolve long-term, and it will not get better. My concern, as I have expressed, is that this is a permanent reauthorization. We don't ever have to come back to it. I hope we do, but we don't ever have to come back to it, and this Congress is notorious for only doing things we have to do.

So we will see how things go in the future with this.

With that, I yield back.

Mr. President, the Senate often does things by unanimous consent in areas in which there is really no common disagreement. This body will do a unanimous consent to congratulate the New England Patriots for winning the Super Bowl, and, unanimously, all of us will agree to congratulate them. Yet, today, the Senator from Nebraska brought up a very straightforward, simple bill: Do we as a nation permit infanticide?

For some reason, the New England Patriots is noncontroversial, but the death of children at their deliveries is controversial enough that my Democratic colleagues are blocking it. It is not some fancy, formal bill with a trick piece in it; it is a very simple, straightforward bill. Occasionally, an abortion is botched, and while they are actually trying to take the life of a child, the child is actually delivered. At that moment, the child is delivered and is on the table, crying, and the question is, Now what do we do?

Current medical practice is to back away from the child and allow him to die slowly on the table because there was supposed to have been an abortion, although the child was fully delivered and was on the table, with the umbilical cord attached, crying. It doesn't seem like this should be controversial; it seems like this should be as straightforward as congratulating the Patriots for winning the Super Bowl. How can we as Americans say no to a fully delivered child's life?

The question about abortion has been historically a question about, when does life begin? I am one of those crazy radicals who actually believe in science. I think, when cell division is occurring and when DNA is there that is different from the mom's and different from the dad's, that it is actually a different human being--a smaller human being but a different human being. That is what everyone in science believes. That child who is developing is alive. The day of his birth is just another day. Now, it is a pretty traumatic day for him to transition from being inside the womb to the outside, but birth is just another day of life for that child because he is fully developed. He was developing in the womb, and he is developing outside the womb. Every single person who can hear this has had the exact same experience of developing in the womb.

This seemed like a commonsense issue until the legislators in the State of New York, a few weeks ago, stood and cheered and applauded when they passed a bill for third-trimester abortions. These are ultra- late-term abortions. This is a fully viable child abortion.

Let me review quickly what the State of New York did. There are only four countries in the world that allow late-term abortions. There are only four left--North Korea, China, Vietnam, and the United States. Those in the New York Legislature stood and cheered that they are in the middle of the human rights-depraved nations of China, North Korea, and Vietnam. That is at 24 weeks and on. At 20 weeks, there is still Canada and the Netherlands and Singapore that are left, but by 24 weeks, at that late-term, Canada, the Netherlands, and Singapore drop off. They say: No, we are out. That is a fully viable child. Yet those in the New York Legislature stood and applauded.

It got one-upped in Virginia last week as the Governor of Virginia explained Virginia's late-term abortion bill as one-upping New York's. He said, in Virginia's bill, in his words, this is how it would work. If children have deformities, however that is defined, or for the mental or physical health, however they want to define that because there was no definition, they would deliver the child, make him comfortable, resuscitate the child if the mother wants, and then would discuss what to do with the child.

It is not enough for the State of New York to applaud late-term abortions and join North Korea, China, and Vietnam as the only places on Earth to allow this. No. The Virginia Democrats had to go one more and say: Let's deliver the children and then discuss it based on their deformities.

Back to the Super Bowl conversation, one of the most popular commercials in the Super Bowl was for a gaming system that showed kids with disabilities who played a video game just like other kids, except now they want to decide at those children's births whether to just take their lives then. How in the world can we as a culture run a television commercial and say: That kid is just like that kid. Look, they play games just alike. But when they are little, let's deliver them and discuss it and figure out what we want to do.

This is infanticide. This is not about pro-life and pro-choice; this is pro-humanity. To get to the point at which we are discussing whether children live or die based on what they look like at birth and then, if they don't quite look right, we will take those lives is inhumane and is beneath us as a society. I cannot fathom the discussion that we are having on the floor of the U.S. Senate as to whether a fully delivered child lives or dies or discuss what happens during a botched abortion when a child is fully delivered. It used to be that my Democratic colleagues said life begins at birth. Now, apparently, it is not at birth anymore; it is unknown when life actually begins because it is a discussion we are going to have at their births now.

How can we block this bill? How can this, of all things, not bring unanimous consent? It is inhumane.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, there has been a lot of conversation about the damage to our economy and to the basic operations of government from the shutdown. Rightfully so, it is something we should talk about and spend some time trying to figure out how to manage this for the future, what shutdowns do to our future.

What has been interesting is how absent that same conversation has been over the last 2 years as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle actively worked to shut down the basic operations of government by not allowing nominations to proceed in the normal process.

In December, with little fanfare and into early January, 386 nominations from the Trump administration were returned back to the Trump administration with a ``no action''--386 people. Those were judges, those were potential board members, those were individuals, many of them Deputy Assistant Secretaries of different Agencies, individuals who keep the basic functioning of government open and working. Three hundred and eighty-six of those nominations had no action on this floor because something very different was happening during the last 2 years. It had not happened like this before in the beginning of any Presidency--in the first 2 years--that his nominations were blocked on the floor not with a vote, with time.

In the past, with nominations, a person would be nominated by the President. They would go to the committees. They would get a full background check investigation. There would be questions for the record. The committees would then have an open debate in the committee. They would vote as a committee. If they were voted out of committee, there would be additional questions for the record. Then, once those were done, they would get an up-or-down vote. Often those were voice votes, even here. It was something that was assumed because they had been approved by committees, and the background checks had been done.

In the last 2 years, 128 times, Members of the Senate required what is called a cloture vote--one more hurdle to go through--so that literally they would have to file cloture on those, allow for an intervening day for them to sit out there, and then 30 hours of debate on that person--30 hours of additional debate. That is after the intervening day. You have 24 hours, plus another 30 that is all set out there, to add a little additional time.

With over 1,000 nominees whom the executive branch would do, it is not possible to get through all of those if you continue to request an additional 2 days in the process to work on each of them.

For individuals to prevent these different Agencies from working and functioning, to prevent the activities of government, you can just request cloture votes over and over again--128 times to basically slow down the Senate so much and to slow down the workings of government all over DC so much that it can't operate at its capacity.

This has to be resolved.

Two years ago, I saw this trend that was moving in the Senate, and I said that long-term for the Senate, this will damage the functioning of government and of the Senate. We have to address it.

So 2 years ago I asked for a reach-out to say: How do we actually resolve this? We had some ongoing meetings. We had a full committee hearing dealing with the issue of the nominations process and how to resolve this in December of 2017. That was after months and months and months of meetings in preparation for that.

We had a markup in April of 2018 to talk about how we could resolve this and what proposals are out there.

I had numerous conversations with Republican and Democratic Members of the Senate to be able to resolve the issue in the Senate because, although in the past you could always request a cloture vote on someone if there was someone truly controversial, this was being used differently. This was not being used to address someone truly controversial; this was being used to shut down the functioning of government.

Many of those individuals--once they did get their cloture vote and that obligatory time--passed with 80 and 90 votes. They weren't people--I have heard people say that if Trump would put up better nominees, then this would be easier. It wasn't that. It was purely dilatory, to slow down or shut down Agencies' operations based on not allowing them to hire staff to actually do the job. That government shutdown, which has been ongoing for 2 years' time, will continue to go until this Senate resolves it.

So after 2 years of meetings, I am making a proposal to this body: We need to fix this. We need to fix the nomination process to have an orderly process so that when there is a controversial nominee, they can be addressed with additional time on the floor, even past the committee time, even past the background checks, even past the additional questions they are asked--to give additional time but in a reasonable way so we can continue to operate as the Senate.

My simple proposal is that we have 2 hours of additional debate, if additional time is allotted, and, quite frankly, that is after the intervening day, so there would be a full day of debate and then an additional 2 hours on the next day that would be allotted to give full time to anyone who may be a problem. That is 2 hours of additional blocked-off time in addition to the additional day that is put in place. I think that is plenty of time.

If it is a Supreme Court Justice we are talking about, if it is a Cabinet official, maybe 30 hours would be the best option for that, as well. So we would do 2 hours for most nominees, 30 hours for Cabinet level and for the Supreme Court or circuit courts. That

would give plenty of time to do additional debate, and it would simplify the process.

This proposal is not really all that controversial. I have talked to many of my Democratic colleagues, and they seem to nod their heads and say: Yes, this is a better way to resolve it. The answer I am getting back is: Let's vote for that now but let it not start until January of 2021.

Their assumption is that they are going to beat President Trump in an election, and they will take over, and they certainly don't want the Senate to function when there is a Democratic President the same way it is functioning when there is a Republican President.

My gentle nod back to them is that there is absolutely no way we should ever agree to that. Why would we ever do that? What is happening is, the last 2 years of this shutdown--the slowdown of all of these Agencies, which has happened by blocking all of these nominees--have created this muscle memory in the Senate, and if we don't fix it now, it is going to keep going.

My Democratic colleagues who say ``We are going to continue to block you for the next 2 years the same way to shut down the functioning of Agencies'' with some delusional belief that 2 years from now this will not happen to them if they happen to win the Presidency--that is false, and they know it. If we don't resolve this now and allow this President to be able to function with his nominees, as any President in the past has, then this is going to just keep going, and it will hurt the long- term functioning of our government. So it is an absurd thought to say: We will vote on it now, but it will not actually take effect until 2021. The reasonable thing is, let's resolve it now.

This simple proposal I am putting out in the next few days will make it public, and in February I hope there will be a meeting with the Rules Committee to allow open debate in the Rules Committee, for Republicans and Democrats alike to look at this issue and resolve it, to make any edits or changes. If there is a different way to resolve this, I am open to any other resolution. But for the long-term health of our government and of the Senate and how it operates, we have to resolve this because we can't have individuals hanging out there for over a year and expect that this is going to get better.

Let me give you some examples. For over a year, the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services sat out there and then was returned back to the President at the end of the session and will have to start all over again. It is the same with the Chief Counsel for Advocacy in the Small Business Administration, the inspector general in the Office of Personnel Management, Governors for the U.S. Postal Service, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce, the Ambassador to Colombia, the Ambassador to Morocco, and the General Counsel for the Department of Navy. These were all individuals who were out there for over a year with no action, waiting.

We will not get the best and brightest in our country to set aside their life for a nomination process that is over 1 year and then goes back to the White House, and then they have to start all over again the next year, and maybe it goes another year. Who in America can put their life on hold for all of that time? We want the best and brightest to be able to serve. Blocking them with slowdown tactics will prevent that from happening in the future.

I am trying to be fair in this process. Let's do this the right way, the way we all know it should be done. Let's take it to the Rules Committee. Let's put a proposal out there to fix the nomination process. Let's get the 60 votes that are required to resolve the nomination process through the Rules Committee to the floor of the Senate and actually fix that as a standing order. Let's resolve it now, lest this drags on for another 2 years and it never gets better.

This has been a 2-year process to get to this point, and in the days ahead, when we release this text, I hope my colleagues will engage in reasonable conversation to resolve that. I am open to that, but I want us to fix the problem and admit that a problem needs to be fixed and solved.

I yield the floor.

On behalf of the majority leader, I object.

Mr. President, it is amazing how much we talk about our kids. People talk about bipartisan things here all the time. There is a bipartisan conversation often about our families and about our kids and how proud of them we are and about sharing our lives with each other.

My two daughters are a remarkable part of my family, of who I am. I can't even process life without thinking about the two of them.

Our kids are some of the most valuable moments of our entire lives and our greatest memories. When they were little, we looked into their eyes and saw potential, and we dreamed for them. From our earliest days of pregnancy, Cindy and I talked about the future for our girls as we prayed for them, thought about them, prepared for them, and it had sunk in what an incredible responsibility they really were. Kids are that way. That is that earliest moment that we talk about all the time.

What is remarkable about this photo is thinking about just exactly what this moment could be like because, in this moment, there are really two directions that it could go in America. This little one was born several weeks early. For that little one, life could have gone in two different directions. This group of doctors is gathered around this little one, delivering this child, and watching him take his very first breath. Only seconds before that, that same little one we see there with this same group of doctors could have been destroyed--that life in the womb--and it would have been OK.

You see, in America, this moment could go two different directions at any time. This life could be there, and we could watch the decades ahead of him or, seconds before this picture was taken, when that child was still in the womb, that life could have been destroyed, and no one would have paid attention because the determination of whether this is a child or whether this is just a little lump of tissue is determined by a few seconds in a delivery room. If it is still inside the womb, it is not a child; it is just tissue. A few seconds later, when he is delivered, everyone smiles and looks at the face of this baby and says: What a beautiful child, and what a remarkable miracle that is.

How do we do that in America? How do we decide what is life and what is just tissue?

Some people would say it is only a child if we believe it is a child. If we don't believe it is a child, it is not a child; it is only tissue.

Some people say it has incredible value, and we should prepare for his or her college, and we should think and pray about his future and his spouse and what he is going to do. Some people would say it is meaningless--just flesh that can literally be put into a bag and taken to the curb. The determination is really by the mom and the dad there. They get to choose whether that is a child or whether that is tissue.

I honestly don't understand that conversation because when I look at this child with fingers and toes and hair and unique DNA, there is nothing different about that child right there than this child. You see, that child whom we saw in the picture before is the same age as this one, but, this time, this is a 3D ultrasound taken inside the womb, but there is no difference between the two. Both of them have faces and fingers and toes and nervous systems and functioning brains and lungs. They have DNA that is different from their moms and their dads--DNA that is unique to those people. Whether you can see him or not, that heartbeat and that DNA is a child.

In America, we still have this ongoing dialogue: When is ``life'' life?

I heard someone earlier jokingly say that if this life were discovered on Mars, we would say Mars had life on it, but we are still discussing whether this life is a life on Earth. What do we do with that?

Here is what we continue to debate and continue to have a conversation about. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court ruled on what is now the infamous Roe v. Wade decision. It was supposed to have settled the issue about life. It was supposed to have settled the issue that every single State has to allow abortion and that life, according to the Supreme Court in 1973, was about viability. When can this child live on his own outside the womb--viability?

Viability in 1973 was very different than viability now, thankfully. When we think about viability now, there are people born at 21 or 22 weeks--extremely early--who would have never survived in 1973 but who regularly survive now because of great medical care. Viability really doesn't determine life, though. Life is something that begins much earlier, and for some reason in our culture, we are still having a conversation about what to do with that tissue.

As Americans, we spend a lot of time trying to work on very difficult issues, but for some reason, this has become a partisan issue that is exceptionally divisive in this culture. This life and this child shouldn't be a partisan issue. This shouldn't be a Republican child or a Democratic child. This should just be a child, and we should be able to pause for a moment and determine what we are going to do about her and determine: Is she valuable?

As a culture, we spend billions of dollars caring for the homeless because we believe that every single life matters and that no life can just be thrown away just because one struggles with life. We spend billions of dollars caring for the oldest and the weakest in our society because they need 24-hour care and because we respect that life and the dignity that it carries. We demand equal protection for women and men of all races, all ages, all sexual orientations, all faiths. We demand that as a culture because we believe, as a culture, that every person should have respect and every person should have opportunity because of one's great potential.

We pat ourselves on the back when we adopt abused animals, when we stand up against human trafficking worldwide, when we help clean up ocean trash, or when we plant trees to beautify our communities. Yet we are having a tough time considering that child as a child.

We even require that cigarettes, alcohol, theme park rides, medicines, and many other products have warning labels on them to warn pregnant moms not to use the product because it could harm the child because, as a culture, we acknowledge that a mom's smoking hurts a child. Yet, for some reason, we can't seem to acknowledge that a child could be hurt by an abortion and that it really would end a life.

It is my guess that anyone who disagrees with this has already tuned me out because, as a culture, we don't want to think about this life because if, for a moment, we pause and consider that maybe she is really alive and has purpose and value, we would have to swallow hard and acknowledge the millions of little girls just like her who have died in abortions in America--millions. To fight against having to deal with that, we just don't want to think about it, and we just tune it out. Yet, if you are one of the folks who has actually stuck with me through the dialogue, let me walk through a couple of things just to think about.

Let's start with a few things--the science. This little girl has DNA that is different than her mom's and dad's. It has cell division. It has something that we would look at in normal embryonic development called the Carnegie stages of embryonic development.

For years and years, every medical school teaches the Carnegie stages of embryonic development. They look at cell division at the beginning point and acknowledge, as they go through the

process, that this is a child from the earliest moments and that it is a stage of life. Every single person who can hear me right now has gone through the Carnegie stages of embryonic development, just like this little one has. Every person has because we understand that it is a natural part of life, that it is a stage of life, that it is an acknowledgment of life.

It is something that we acknowledge in the animal world because this Congress has passed laws to deal with endangered species, including a $100,000 fine if you damage a golden eagle's egg, a bald eagle's egg, if you go to marine turtles' nesting spots to destroy or to even disturb the nests of marine turtles. In Oklahoma, we deal with barn swallows that will build their nests in the springtime in construction areas. All construction has to stop if a barn swallow builds a nest in a construction area, because those eggs are important, not so much because of the barn swallow but because there is a common understanding in this Congress that those eagle eggs, turtle eggs, and barn swallow eggs are future barn swallows, turtles, and eagles. We acknowledge that it is a life that is in process. So we protect it, but we can't seem to make the simple, logical step that that eagle egg becomes an eagle and she is a little girl.

The science screams at us in this area, but for many people, they just don't want to think about it because, at this stage, she is in the womb. She is invisible. She hasn't reached the stage at which you can see her. For many people, they say: She is only alive when I can see her. If I can't see her, she is not real.

The problem is that the science doesn't prove that out.

The second issue that we have to deal with is where we are as a culture and where we are as a country compared to other countries on this simple issue about looking at this little one and asking: Is that a child or is that just tissue? Where is the rest of the world on this?

It is interesting to note that the rest of the world is in a very different spot than is the United States on this. This is a simple map of the world. Most of the world--and you will see it in gray here--says that abortion should stop at 12 weeks. That is 3 months. After 3 months, you can't have an abortion anymore.

There are seven countries in the world that will allow abortion all the way up to 24 weeks. They are the countries that are here in black-- Canada, the United States, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and the Netherlands. They allow abortions up to 24 weeks.

At 24 weeks and on, in the third trimester, there are only four countries in the world that allow late-term abortions--only four-- China, North Korea, Vietnam, and the United States. Everywhere else in the world looks at that child and says that the child is a child--fully viable--except the United States, China, North Korea, and Vietnam. Now, that is not a club I really want us to be in.

All of Europe has banned late-term abortion--all of it. All of Africa, most of Asia, and all of Central and South America have looked at this, and as separate cultures, they have said no to a late-term abortion--that he is a fully viable child.

Interestingly enough, there was a survey that just came out today--a nationwide survey--that asked Americans' opinions on this issue about life. There were 75 percent of Americans who said there should not be abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy--that is 3 months--except to protect the life of the mom. This was 75 percent of Americans. They are with this part of the world. This part of the world all says that same thing. That is most of Europe, and most of that area says OK to 12 weeks, but that after 12 weeks, you have to stop because the child has a functioning nervous system and brain and is developing in all of those areas.

Even if you don't acknowledge where I am, where I believe that life begins--at conception--why can't you at least acknowledge that at 12 weeks, which is where most of the rest of the world is, he is a child that should be protected?

At what point do we, as Americans, slow down enough to look at what we don't want to look at and at what the rest of the world has done, except for Vietnam, North Korea, and China? Why do we want to be in that group when we deal with the issue of life? Those are some of the worst human rights violators in the world. Why are we in that club?

Folks have recently said to me: You know, I understand this is a legislative issue, but it is really a faith issue. This is really about your faith, and your faith should not legislate who I am.

I would only tell you that a culture makes decisions, including our culture, not just about its faith but about its values as a culture.

Stealing is also a religious issue. It is in the Ten Commandments. So maybe, as a culture, we shouldn't ban stealing because the Ten Commandments say you shouldn't steal. No one would really say that because, as a culture, we all look at it and say that theft is a problem, that you shouldn't be able to do that.

A culture makes its decisions based on its own personal values. So it is not just a religious issue, but our faith does impact our personal lives and decisions. It does affect who we are.

In China, where most faith is banned, they allow abortion at any stage. In fact, in China the state is the most important thing. Everything is about building up the state. The individual has no value. The state has the greatest value. China determines it has too many people. So it forces women to have abortions. It compels them. Some can only have one child, and some can have two children, but every child after that has to be aborted because the state chooses that. Its greatest value is the state.

Our greatest value is the individual. That is why our documents begin with things like ``we the people,'' because the individual has value. We look at the senior adults who are in the nursing homes and provide care for them. We look at the homeless person, the child who is in need of food, and that little girl who is still in the womb, and we say they all have value because the individual has importance.

I had someone who caught me and said: You know, your faith has this whole verse in the Bible that says: ``I was knit together in my mother's womb.'' So this is a religious issue. You have a belief that each child was knit together by God in their mother's womb.

Then they paused and said: That is fine for you to have that belief, but I have the belief that they were knit together, but it is when they are not done. They are not fully knit together. They are not really a shirt. They are only a sleeve, and if they are still in development, then, they are not fully developed. They are not really a child yet.

I smile at that and say: Actually, although this child was born premature, you are right. She is not fully developed. It is not just a sleeve. It is just a smaller shirt, but she will get there because everything about your life's development--your hair color, your height, your health--is all bound up in those first cells as they start dividing in your own unique DNA.

This is not about a religious conviction. This is about a child and who we are as a culture.

Let me say this: I understand there is a lot of conversation about this. As I mentioned before, this has become a partisan, divisive issue. This is not trying to be a Republican or Democrat. I have met Republicans and Democrats who both can look at this picture and say that is a child, not tissue.

This shouldn't be a divisive or political issue, neither should this be an attacking and condemning issue of the moms and dads who have walked through abortion. Quite frankly, I have great compassion for them. For those moms who have had an abortion, that memory never goes away for them. Years later, they sit in the food court at the mall and watch a small child playing nearby and think: That is how old my child would be right now if they were still alive. I have not met a mom, ever, who wasn't affected by abortion and the memories that come back to them on that.

This is not a flippant issue for any person who goes through an abortion. I grieve for those folks and the struggle they have, but I also grieve for us as a nation in the devaluing of something so obvious as a child. We can do better as a country, but the first thing we have to do is stop and look.

As a nation, we have been through some moments that we are not proud

of, but as a nation, we are proud of who we can become. As a nation, we are not proud that at one point, we declared African-American men and women as three-fifths of a man. As a nation, we are not proud of that. As a nation, we are not proud that we once told women they could not vote. As Americans, we are not proud that at one point, we took Japanese-Americans and interned them in camps because we were afraid of them. As Americans, we are not proud of those moments.

I pray there is a day that we are not proud that we looked away from little girls and little boys and said: You are not human enough yet. Your life can be ended because I don't want to look at you.

The beginning for us, really, is to stop and look at what is obvious. That is a child. What are you going to do about that child?

One of the great books of the 20th century was written by a man named Ralph Ellison, who, by the way, was an Oklahoman. Ralph Ellison was a tremendous African-American author. In the early 20th century, he wrote a book called ``Invisible Man.'' It is a remarkable journey to look into that time period. The author, who is really writing as the narrator of the book, is telling his story.

In the prologue of the book, there is a section I want to read to you because I think it is powerful, just thinking about the philosophy that Ralph Ellison put out. He said this:

I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and

liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am

invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see

me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus

sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors

of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they only

see my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their

imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me.

Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of biochemical

accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer

occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those

with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of

the inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their

physical eyes upon reality.

Ralph Ellison was saying in the early 20th century that White America, when they ran into Black America, refused to look and ignored them as if they were invisible and just walked on.

As a culture, I am grateful that Americans are opening their eyes to each other as friends and as neighbors and as Americans. I wonder, one day, when the peculiar eyes that choose to pretend that this child is invisible, simply because she looks like this, when our peculiar eyes choose to look at what we have chosen to say is invisible and to turn away and to say: Let's see what we do as a culture. Let's march for life. Let's speak out for what is obvious, and let's determine what to do in the next step.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, we are in day 20 of a government shutdown. It is exceptionally avoidable, but it is also exceptionally painful and distracting to the American people.

At the USDA, the Farm Service Agency loans have stopped.

TSA employees are working without pay. If we can't get this resolved by tomorrow, they will miss a paycheck, but they will still be at work.

Home lending programs have halted.

For the FAA, new air traffic controllers are not being trained. We still have air traffic controllers in the tower who are working now--by tomorrow, without pay coming in--but new training has stopped. That means a year from now, when we need to have those new air traffic controllers take their spot in that tower, there won't be someone in that tower because we have halted the training at this point.

IRS taxpayer advocate services are closed.

Indian Health Service is being stretched.

At the Bureau of Indian Affairs, most employees have been furloughed.

The Department of Commerce and many others have been affected.

While this doesn't affect most Agencies in the Federal Government, it affects a lot, and it affects real lives and real people. Let me give some examples from just my State of Oklahoma.

There is a technology company in Tulsa that will have to begin furloughing employees because it is a contractor for the Federal workforce.

Those folks who are selling their cattle right now and who have a relationship with Farm Service can't cash that check because they can't get a second cosigner for the check, and that definitely affects them.

A Federal worker contacted us and said that she is a contractor, and as of a couple days from now, she is not going to be able to pay her son's tuition so he can go back to college, because it will be too far a stretch.

The food banks in my State have already started stocking up and reaching out to Federal employees who may not get a check starting tomorrow and may be stretched and need some additional assistance, many of them for the first time ever.

We have a family in the Norman area, south of Oklahoma City, who typically handles the contract for housing for students who are coming to the FAA, to the academy. Well, obviously those academy students have all gone home, and they are losing $5,000 a week due to the shutdown and the lack of housing for those folks. And it is not just empty facilities; employees who are contractors there are now being furloughed.

See, this affects real lives and real people. This was an exceptionally avoidable shutdown. Months and months ago, the President of the United States announced publicly and repetitively that he was not going to sign a funding bill at the end of the year that does not add additional border security. Over and over again, in public speeches and in private conversations on this Hill, the President repeated over and over: I am not going to sign a funding bill unless it adds additional border security.

For some reason, half of this Hill ignored it and said: He is just kidding. He is not just kidding. He sees the issue of border security-- as I do, by the way, as well--as being a serious issue that has been talked about for decades but has not been addressed. Now all of these families are being impacted because half of this Hill said they thought the President was kidding.

We should be able to do basic border security. This used to not be a partisan issue. It was just a decade ago that this body voted to add 650 miles of additional fencing along the border between Mexico and the United States because at that time, a decade ago, this body said: There is a serious issue with border security. We should add fencing to the border.

Outspoken liberals like Senator Clinton and Senator Obama voted to add fencing to the border in 2006 and said that is the right thing to do. But suddenly now, a decade and a couple years later, it is a partisan issue and we can't allow President Trump to have additional fencing. It seems very odd to me. This seems like a personal attack on the President rather than a realization of where we have been as a country for a long time. We should have basic border security.

For the President to be actually very malleable on this--shockingly so, to some people--he stepped out and said: I want $5.7 billion for a wall or for fencing or for steel barriers or whatever you want to call it. We need some additional barriers on it.

To negotiate during the Christmas time period and to be stuck because the White House makes an offer to Senator Schumer, and Senator Schumer's response apparently was, we will wait to negotiate this after Nancy Pelosi becomes speaker--so for 10 days we sat with no negotiations going because we had to wait until there was a Speaker Pelosi.

Now Speaker Pelosi steps up and says: We are going to do nothing on this. And the President says: No, we need to do something. And suddenly something that the American people saw as obvious--why wouldn't we do basic things for border security--has suddenly become political and controversial.

The President, even in his speaking earlier this week from the Oval Office, started by saying we should do additional technology at the border. I fully agree. In fact, just in the last 2 years, the Department of Homeland Security has added 31 new fixed surveillance tower units to the southern border, has added 50 mobile surveillance systems to the southern border, and has added ground sensors and tunnel detection capabilities to the southern border. Those are all technology aspects of helping the southern border. The President stepped up and said we need to do more in that area.

He said we need to add additional agents, which, again, has not been a partisan issue in the past.

He said we need to add additional immigration judges, which, again, has not been controversial. We have 800,000 people waiting in immigration courts to get due process right now. Many of them will wait 3 years or more just to get to a court. That is because we have too few judges handling the many immigration cases that are out there. It should be common sense to say ``Let's add additional judges so people can get to due process faster,'' but suddenly that has become controversial.

The President said we need to add a steel barrier. Now, I am fully aware he has talked about a wall in the past, and he said wall, wall, wall over and over, and some people have this picture that it is going to be the Berlin Wall, complete with graffiti on the side of it. That is not what DHS is putting up, nor what they have put up. They put up these big steel slats because the Customs and Border Patrol folks don't want a solid wall. They need to be able to see through it to see whether there is a threat coming to them.

Has it made a difference? It has absolutely made a difference. Some of my team were down at the border in San Diego just a month ago. They visited with the Customs and Border Patrol folks there. They stated that the old fencing that is there--and there is some very old fencing in that area--that old fencing had more than a dozen penetrations through it a day--a day. It was meaningless. But the new fencing that they are putting up, these big steel slats, that steel barrier has one person a month. So it moved from 10 to 12 a day to 1 a month. That is a pretty big difference. That is helping manage our border. That is why fencing actually does work.

I am fully aware of folks saying, if you put up a 30-foot fence you get a 31-foot ladder, but what happens is, when you have to climb a 31- foot ladder, you have to slow down in the process, and it gives time for the Border Patrol to be able to interdict. That is what a fence is about, to say: You can't cross here easily. You have to slow down through the process--and we can interdict folks.

This is a completely avoidable and, quite frankly, very recognizable problem. We should not have a government shutdown happening right now. Interestingly enough, some of my Democratic colleagues I have spoken with over the last 2 days were quietly whispering in these hallways: I hope the President will just declare a national emergency so the fencing can get built, and we can say we fought it, rather than actually bringing a piece of legislation here to solve it.

There are real families and real lives getting affected by this. Let's resolve this. This is not a big number. This is not a complicated issue. We can come to common agreement on basic border security to protect our communities and our cities. We should have the ability for individuals to come into the United States to work. We have always been that way.

Interestingly enough, I remind people all the time that the 5,000 people coming from the migrant caravan from Honduras are camped out 250 yards from the largest legal border crossing in the world, the San Ysidro crossing. We have 5,000 people who are trying to illegally cross the border literally 250 yards from where 100,000 people a day cross legally every single day, but the cameras are all focused on the 5,000 people trying to cross illegally, not turning the camera 90 degrees to focus in on the 100,000 people a day who filled out the forms and did it right and are

coming into our country. We are still a country with open immigration, and we should be; we just ask people to do it the right way. I don't think it is that unreasonable.

So how do we get out of this? The most basic way to get out of this is just to do what we talked about for months--let's sit down and figure out how to do border security--just the simple process of that. Some of my colleagues have said the President needs to open the government, and then we will talk about border security. That will be the same argument we have had for a couple of years now, where they say: Some other time, some another time. The President said, after months and months, this is the time to talk about this. So let's resolve it as quickly as we possibly can.

Let's not complicate it. I have heard people say: Let's add all these additional things to the conversation and make the deal bigger. Making the deal bigger just slows down the process even more. Federal employees and all these families need answers right now. Let's not continue to try to make this a bigger and bigger argument that stretches out longer and longer in debate. Let's solve the issue we have in front of us right now and keep debating the other issues.

Finally, let's get a permanent resolution to this issue of government shutdowns. It has been interesting to me to see the media comparing this shutdown to the one that happened during the Jimmy Carter Presidency or the Clinton Presidency or the three that happened during the Reagan Presidency or those that happened in the Bush Presidency. This is a bad habit Congress is in. There were 16 of us who met this last year, from April all the way through December--eight Democrats and eight Republicans, half from the House and half from the Senate--to try to resolve the budget process. Many of us spoke up, myself included, over and over again, saying that this is a broken budgeting process, saying we have to end the government shutdowns. By the time we got to the middle of December, that group of 16 could not come to a resolution to address this problem. Well, how about now? Are we willing to admit now that there is a problem with budgeting?

Here was one of the solutions I brought to that committee. I think it is straightforward. The simple solution is, if you get to the end of the budget year and if we don't have things resolved at that point, go into a continuing resolution; that is, continue to fund the government, hold the Agencies and employees harmless, but Members of Congress have to stay in Washington, DC, and the Cabinet and the White House have to stay in Washington, DC--no travel for anyone. We have to be here.

If you want to hit Members of Congress where it hurts, don't let anyone go home for the weekend to see their families. We have families we want to see, too, but we shouldn't be able to walk away when there is still work to be done. The greatest pressure point we can have in this body is that we would have to stay in continuous session until the negotiations are finished. Make everyone stay here.

That may sound overly simplistic, but when I bring that up to other Members of Congress, they are like: Whoa. That is too much. Really? Everyone needs to stay here, keep the negotiations--from the House, the Senate, the Cabinet of the White House, and the White House staff itself.

The second measure we can take is, each week, through any kind of fight that goes on to get the budgeting done, cut everyone's budget in the House, Senate, and White House's operating budget 5 percent that week. Now, again, holding all the Agencies harmless, but for those who are doing the negotiations, they start feeling the pressure. Not only can you not travel, you can't see your families. You have to stay in continuous session, but your budget is getting cut every week by 5 percent, each week until it gets resolved. Again, the pressure is on the people it should be on, holding harmless the American people who aren't in the middle of this fight in the process. There are ways to solve this--simple, commonsense ways--and I will continue to bring those up again and again because when this shutdown is complete, there will be a fight over another one coming. In the meantime, we need to try to end this loop we are in that destabilizes our system.

Let's do border security. Let's not fight over, ``OK. Let's open up the government, and we will talk about it later.'' Everyone knows that really will not happen. Everyone knows that game. Let's resolve what all the American people know needs to be resolved--basic, functional, real commonsense security, not putting up a big wall across the whole border. No one wants to see a 2,000-mile-long wall. It is not even needed, but in areas where there is a city on both sides of the border, and you literally cross the border within seconds unless there is a barrier there, it makes sense to have a barrier in those locations. It makes sense to put technology in other areas to be able to monitor folks who are illegally crossing the border in other areas. We can do this in a commonsense way. We can do this quickly. Let's get it resolved.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I ask the Chair lay before the Senate the House message to accompany S. 943.

The Presiding Officer laid before the Senate the following message from the House of Representatives:

Resolved, That the bill from the Senate (S. 943) entitled

``An Act to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct

an accurate comprehensive student count for the purposes of

calculating formula allocations for programs under the

Johnson-O'Malley Act, and for other purposes.'', do pass with

an amendment.

Motion to Concur

I move to concur in the House amendment.

I know of no further debate.

I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, the Federal Government awards more than $600 billion in grant awards--$600 billion. We actually do more in grant awards than we do in contracting. Our current system is riddled with outdated reporting mechanisms that burden grant recipients and inhibit oversight from Agencies in Congress.

The bill, H.R. 4887, which is called the GREAT Act--Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency Act--tries to put some sense into this process. This is a process that has worked with all of the grant requesting Agencies. Whether they be universities, whether they be entities for research, they have all gone through this for the past couple of years, actually. They have given a tremendous amount of input because they struggle in actually requesting the grants and in getting through all of the chaos of those grants.

The OMB and other entities are not getting the data information to the American people, so there is no transparency in that process. For the past couple of years, we have worked very hard to establish a good process of getting transparency and also of helping the grant- requesting entities get a more efficient process.

The GREAT Act would require, within 1 year, OMB and the leading grant Agency to establish a governmentwide data standard for information related to Federal awards. Within 2 years, guidance must be issued for grant-making Agencies on how to apply those standards and implement them into the existing reporting practices. Within 3 years, Agencies must ensure that all grants and cooperative agreements use the new data standard for future information requests. This is exceptionally important to get through the process so that we are not squandering $600 billion in grants.

Let me tell you what this process has gone through.

In February, H.R. 4887 passed unanimously out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Then it went to the House Calendar, and it passed unanimously on September 26. Every Democrat and every Republican in the House voted for this. Subsequently, Senator Enzi and I passed our amended Senate companion to H.R. 4887. It passed unanimously out of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in September.

The bill being considered today is reflective of bipartisan support from both the House and the Senate. This bill, H.R. 4887, cleared the Republican hotline weeks ago. Every single Republican has already cleared this. They want the transparency in the grant process and want a better grant process for all of the grant requesters. It is not yet clear on the Democratic side.

My simple request doesn't just come from me. This request comes from the Grant Professionals Association, the National Grants Management Association, the Association of Government Accountants, the American Library Association, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. Leading universities around the country have just asked to improve this grant-making process. Every single Democrat in the House has affirmed this, and every Republican in the House and every Republican in the Senate has already cleared it. We are just asking for this bill to move forward and to be passed.

I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 4887 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I further ask that the Johnson substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I am a little confused when every grant- making and requesting organizations--all of the universities around the country--are requesting this. Every single Democrat in the House has already affirmed this. There does not seem to be a great fear of Mick Mulvaney at the OMB since, by the time this will be implemented, it will be 2022. So it is a little bit confusing to me why getting more transparency in grants and helping grant requesting organizations would be controversial.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, there is an error in the way this bill is drafted. There are a lot of entities that want to be able to engage in the process of working against recidivism and make sure we can actually help those individuals who are in our prisons go through the process. Some of those are faith-based groups. The definition that is in this bill would preclude a lot of faith-based groups from being engaged. We want to open this up to everyone.

The Trinity Lutheran case in the Supreme Court said that the government should be neutral to any entity, whether they are secular or sacred, that the government treats them all the same. This is not about proselytizing; this is about allowing groups that want to engage and serve those in the prison populations and work against recidivism in the future to do that. This technical correction allows that, and I think it is a wise thing to do.

I thank the sponsors for allowing this to go forward and for this correction to be made.

I am glad to yield back.

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

Mr. President, there has been a long conversation about Yemen. Yemen is in a civil war. It has been a brutal civil war. There have been a lot of civilians killed and a lot of damage done to the country's interior.

Of the 30 million people who are living in Yemen, 22 million, currently, need humanitarian assistance. We have over 8 million people who are what is called ``at risk'' of severe starvation. It has the largest cholera outbreak in the world right now, and its currency has plummeted in value. We have over 2 million people inside the country who have been internally displaced. They, literally, can't live in their homes because the war is around their homes,

and they have had to flee from those spots--2 million people. It is a terrible situation.

Yet, while this body is arguing about supporting or not supporting the Saudis--should we be around it or should we not be around it?--our Ambassador, the leadership of the U.N., and our U.S. military--which this body is arguing we shouldn't engage to help--are currently putting people at the negotiating table in Sweden. For the past week, our military, which this body is saying shouldn't be engaged, has actually been the prime mover in getting all of the same players to the table to negotiate.

In just the last few hours, the Secretary General of the U.N., along with the rebel leadership and the legitimate leadership of Yemen in the civil war, have stepped out to make major announcements. The first major announcement they just released within the last hour was that they have committed to halting fighting around the seaport so that humanitarian assistance can get in.

The Houthis have, actually, dominated the seaport and taken all of the income from the seaport to finance their fighters. Their weapons are coming from Iran, and their income is coming from the port because they have taken the port over. Now the U.N. is going to run the port. That is a dramatic shift. Revenues from the seaport will be deposited into a central bank so that the rightful government, when this is all resolved, will actually give the revenue back to the people of Yemen. There will be a release in fighting--a pull-out in the major city around the seaport there. They have agreed that they are going to have a secondary meeting next month in order to work out the final details to actually shut this down.

So while this body is arguing about whose side we should take--the Iranians' or the Saudis'--and that is really what the body is arguing about--we are, actually, actively pushing the players to the table to resolve this.

This is the worst possible moment for this body to start arguing about whose side we should be on. I am fully aware that the Saudis' humanitarian history is deplorable. The whole world praises them because they now allow women to drive. I mean, we are in that bad of a humanitarian situation and of a human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. I am fully aware of the murder of Khashoggi and am fully aware of what they have done in other areas, but the Saudis have also been the only entity to give humanitarian aid to Yemen in order to help assist this.

The United States, by far, is the largest donor to what is going on in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, but the civil war is not our problem. This is a proxy fight between Saudi Arabia and Iran that is being fought right on Saudi Arabia's southern border in Yemen. We shouldn't take sides in this other than to stand up against Iran's aggression as it has moved into Iraq, as Iran has moved into Syria, and as Iran has moved into Lebanon. We don't want to see Iran dominate the entire region and destabilize the region, but we do want to bring peace to this region.

So what should we do in this situation?

I think we should speak with a very clear voice about the human rights violations of Saudi Arabia and call Saudi Arabia out to be a part of the civilized world, but I think punishing the innocent civilian casualties in Yemen is the wrong way to do it.

We should speak out on the issue of Khashoggi, and we should speak out on human rights in the entire region. We should stand up and ask: What can we do to stop the fighting and protect the civilians there? The best thing we can do is to be engaged with the Saudis but not in selecting targets and not in refueling their jets--we have already stopped all of that--but in being a presence there.

As Americans, we forget that most of the world does not try to protect civilians in battles like we do. Most of the world just carpet bombs and destroys and burns down cities. Do you want a good example of where America is not present? Look at Syria right now and at the year after year of barrel bombs, of chemical weapons--Americans are out; we are not advising--and at the destruction that is happening to the civilians.

If we want to see even more of that in Yemen, then let's back this out entirely. If we want to give Iran the upper hand in the peace negotiations that are happening right now, then let's tell them through this body that we don't support the Saudis anymore but that we support the Iranians, who started this civil war in Yemen.

The best thing we can do is to give the peace negotiations the opportunity to finish and to go well; to support, in every way that we can, the protection of civilians in that region; and to make sure that we are assisting with our advice on how to protect them and how to move forward. That is the best thing we can do--not argue about whether we are going to pull out or not pull out or engage in Yemen or not engage.

Let me be clear. Yemen is not our fight. That civil war is not our fight. Yet, in the ungoverned spaces of Yemen, there is a group called al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. They use those ungoverned spaces and use the cover of the civil war to actively recruit worldwide. The most aggressive part of al-Qaida that is directly pointed at the United States in planning attacks, in orchestrating attacks, in putting out information for lone-wolf individuals all over the world on how to conduct attacks on airlines or in cities or in bus terminals originates from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen.

So while the civil war off to the west is not our fight, though we do want to protect civilians and get them humanitarian aid--and we are helping with that--it is absolutely our fight to take it to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Hadi, the rightful leader of Yemen, has given us the authority to take the fight to the terrorists there in his own country because he doesn't want al-Qaida in his country either.

As long as we are working with Hadi as the rightful leader--he is giving us the go-head to fight against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and we should for our own security.

So I understand the politics of this, and I understand the messaging saying that we shouldn't have all of these things and painting this picture of us pulling out of Yemen for humanitarian reasons. But the fact is, the humanitarian assistance is going in because we are there. The fact is, we are helping reduce civilian casualties in that area, not increasing them. The fact is, the terrorist group al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula--the most aggressive group against us from al-Qaida-- lives right there in Yemen, and we should be able to take the fight to them before they bring it to us again.

These are difficult issues. There is no simple solution to any of these, and I get that. It is a very messy civil war. But the last thing we should do is just pretend our disengagement protects civilians. It does not.

I have a unanimous consent request that is coming up that is currently in conversation to try to figure how out to bring it to the floor. I see there are some other speakers here on the floor who are ready to speak. I would like to yield the floor to others who want to speak and then speak again in a moment on a unanimous consent request.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 698, H.R. 2606.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Lankford amendment at the desk be agreed to, and the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.