Floor Statements

Mr. President, a few moments from now, we are going to come to this Chamber to vote on the nomination of Peter Robb to serve as general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board.

Quite frankly, if we allow this individual to be confirmed, it will be a severe slap in the face to American workers. This is an individual who has made a career out of attacking the ability of American workers to get a fair share of the wealth they create. Yet here is a proposal to put him in a leadership position at an agency whose purpose is to fight to make sure workers get fair treatment. How does it make sense to take someone who has fought to undermine the ability of workers his entire life and put that person in charge of making sure American workers are treated fairly? Certainly, it is exactly the opposite of the argument Candidate Trump made when he said he was going to stand up for American workers. When push comes to shove, the President wants to shove workers down into the ditch.

It boils down to this: The National Labor Relations Board was established 82 years ago in the middle of the Great Depression to protect workers by encouraging and promoting their right to collective bargaining. Think of the power of association so that workers can have the opportunity to have a fair share, to have a basic foundation for their families to thrive. That ability of workers to organize has been behind every advancement we have made as a middle class in America. Be it the 40-hour workweek, safe working conditions, standard benefits, each and every advance was led by workers' ability to organize. Yet here the President wants to put in place an individual who has done everything possible to take away that right, that ability to weigh in for basic fundamental fairness for workers.

The responsibility of the National Labor Relations Board is more important today than ever. We have seen the impact of policies on behalf of the privileged and the powerful--incomes stagnating while the wealthiest Americans see their riches grow right up to the skyline. We have seen that anti-worker forces throughout our country have led an assault in State after State after State against the right of workers to organize and to secure safe working conditions and fair wages.

Here we are at a time when America's workers have seen four decades in which their wages have been flat or declining while the rich and powerful have stripped off the growing wealth of this Nation for themselves. Income inequality has soared, wealth inequality is massive, and here is one more person being nominated to accentuate that inequality in wealth and in income.

Back in 1981, Mr. Robb was lead attorney on the case to decertify the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. The union was striking, and Mr. Robb helped President Reagan break that strike, which resulted in the firing of 11,000 striking workers and, as a commentator at the time said, forever ``undermined the bargaining of American workers and their labor unions.''

When he last worked on the team at NLRB, this nominee was present for decisions that--and this is recounted in a book called ``Right Turn''-- ``[a]ltered long-standing policy . . . narrowing the scope of activities subject to traditional National Labor Relations Board protections; broadening the permissible range of employer conduct in union representation campaigns; lowering the costs to employers of unlawful activity; and otherwise narrowing or excusing the employer to make changes subject to bargaining without informing unions before the change was made, or by permitting employers wider latitude to end the bargaining process by declaring impasse.''

More recently, Mr. Robb represented Dominion Energy and successfully defeated a union organizing drive at the Millstone Power Station, bragging on his firm's website that he was able to delay the election for ``more than two years after the day the petition was filed.''

As many of you know, he does not want workers to have a fair chance to vote on organizing a union or to work to press for a first contract or to seek fair wages. He has spent his career fighting against workers having that fair shot and defending companies against allegations from union members regarding unfair labor practices--all kinds of unfair labor practices, including age and sex discrimination. Never once in this long career has he been on the side of the American worker--not once; therefore, he has no place

at the head of an organization intended to support the ability of workers to organize and to press for a fair share.

It is unthinkable that this nominee would ever even come to this Chamber. It is certainly part of an endless stream of attacks by the rich and powerful on working Americans that have kept their wages flat and declining for four decades. When are we going to see an end to this sort of oppression by the powerful class against the workers of the United States of America?

There is one act after another by this administration--President Trump and his team--undermining fair wages for workers in this Nation. It is outrageous. This nomination is outrageous, and I encourage my colleagues to vote no.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern Zach Foote be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. President, we have a very important role in this Senate--to provide advice and consent on nominees. Our forefathers, who wrote the Constitution, envisioned that this power would be used rarely because a President, knowing this power existed, would nominate highly suitable people for the post that they were intended to occupy. But we haven't seen highly suitable people coming through this Chamber this year. In fact, we have seen one person after another fabulously unsuited for the office or position to which they were nominated.

We saw Scott Pruitt, who took on and attacked regulations designed to create clean air across this country time after time, in a very close association with the fossil fuel industry that wanted to allow more particulates, more particulates that cause a tremendous amount of health damage in this country.

We saw Betsy DeVos come through this Chamber, an individual who was nominated to be Secretary of Public Education but had never stepped inside a public school, didn't respect public schools, hadn't had children in public schools, hadn't volunteered in public schools, and wanted to decimate public schools. The best thing we could have done for public schools would have been to turn down that nomination, but this Chamber said: Boy, you know, we are going to do everything we can to damage public education.

Many of us stood up against that and said: No, let's fight for someone who can make public education better, not tear it down. But that is not what we got.

Now we have another individual to be considered on the floor of the Senate, Bill Wehrum. Bill Wehrum was nominated to head EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. Bill Wehrum has made a career out of working for powerful special interests and attacking any effort to make the air cleaner. Is that a person suitable for this role of protecting the air we breathe and making it better, someone who has sought to make it worse?

During the nomination hearing, I put up a very simple chart. I wanted to understand his thoughts about what was driving climate disruption. I put up a chart showing what NASA data showed for the solar impact, solar flares, and so forth, about which sometimes people say: Well, maybe it is solar flares that are causing the warming of the planet. NASA had data that showed a flat line on that and then a rising temperature.

I said: Is there any sign of correlation between these two lines?

His response was: Well, what do you mean? It is correlation.

He didn't have any understanding of the basics of how to compare one thing to another.

I put up another chart. The other chart showed all of the activities that are considered to be ones that might contribute to global warming, that are not manmade activities, things like the solar flares and volcanic activity. Again, the NASA data showed a flat line and the rising temperature.

I said: Does there appear to be any correlation between this flat line and this rise in temperature?

He again said: I just don't understand the data. I can't really comment on that.

Yet anyone with any basic ability to digest information would recognize that there was no correlation. You didn't have two things moving in the same direction.

Then I put up this chart right here. This chart shows that same temperature, observe the black line, and then it shows the line for rising carbon dioxide. I said: Well, are these things correlated?

Do you see any relationship between one line rising and the other line rising?

Again, he refused to answer.

How is it that we can put someone into a position who cannot even look at and comment on basic data, who has been a hired hand for the fossil fuel industry, who has fought to make our air filthier and more damaging to our health?

That is the nominee we have, a nominee who has sued on behalf of very powerful interests--the EPA, 31 times--to try to degrade the controls for things like mercury, which is a potent neurotoxin that damages the brains of, particularly, our children. Why should we have somebody who wants more mercury in our air in this position to consider air quality? It, certainly, does not make any sense to me.

He did have a chance to serve in this position, in an acting capacity, back in 2006. So he has been there before. He adopted guidelines on mercury emissions that had entire passages lifted word for word from information that had been provided by the industry. The industry did not want to regulate the mercury, and he just took its language and said that that is what we will do, that we will do what industry says. He was not working for the American people. He was working for the powerful and the privileged.

Then he told an EPA staffer ``not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies'' when crafting important rules. He instructed his staff not to look at the scientific information when constructing rules. What did he want them to look at? He wanted them to just take the language from industry. That is certainly not protecting the public interest. As the New York Times wrote, he has sought to ``elevate corporate interests above those of the public.''

This is not a position in a company. This is not a position in a corporation. This is a position of public trust. He has failed that test. In fact, he has failed it so badly that, although he was nominated in 2006 when there was a Republican majority in this Chamber, his nomination was subsequently rejected by the Senate. Back then, we had folks who really, actually cared on both sides of the aisle far more about air quality. Now it seems like the enormous amount of funding from the Koch brothers for campaigns across the country has squelched any consideration from my colleagues about the quality of the air or the quality of our water. This nomination is, certainly, a test of that.

If my colleagues do care about the quality of our air, they will act like their predecessors did back in 2006, and they will reject this nomination. An individual who has betrayed the public trust should not be confirmed to a position of public trust.

Thank you.

Mr. President, climate disruption is the seminal challenge of our generation. We have seen the impacts occurring all around the world. We see it in the disappearing Arctic ice. We see it in the melting permafrost. We see it in the change of carbon dioxide and methane being emitted from peat bogs, disappearing glaciers, dying coral reefs, and certainly more powerful storms and raging fires.

It is the responsibility of those of us in this generation, in this time, to take action. Indeed, communities across the globe are taking action. They are increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, vehicles, and appliances, and they are replacing carbon-polluting fossil fuel energy with renewable energy. This is such an important issue.

How much do you know about the changes underway? Well, let's find out. Welcome to episode 7 of the Senate Climate Disruption Quiz.

Our first question is, Since the year 2000, the rate of global carbon dioxide pollution has decreased dramatically, decreased slightly, stayed the same, or increased substantially? Lock in your answers.

The answer is D, increased substantially. Many folks think that because of the actions being taken at the local level and by the community of nations and the Paris Agreement, that, in fact, global CO2 pollution has decreased dramatically, but it has not. The rate at which the pollution is occurring is increasing. So it isn't just the total level. For example, in 1990, we had 354 parts per million; 10 years later, in 2000, we were up to 369.64 parts per million; and in 2017, we were up to 408.8 parts per million. The levels are climbing, but the speed is increasing as well. In that period around 1990, we were increasing about 1\1/2\ parts per million per year; by 2000, it was about 2 parts per million per year; and now we are at 2\1/2\ parts per million per year. So this increase is substantial.

As a community of nations, we have to not only proceed to decrease total carbon pollution, but first we have to get the rate of increase under control.

This brings us to the second question: In September of this year, how many miles did a Proterra bus drive on a single charge? Did this bus set a record by going 270 miles, the distance between L.A. and Las Vegas, or did it set a record by going 600 miles, equivalent from New York City to Columbia, SC? Did it travel over 1,100 miles, the equivalent distance from Arizona to Arkansas? Did it manage to go 2,092 miles, the shortest distance from the east coast to the west coast in America? Lock in your answers.

The correct answer is C. It went 1,100 miles. The electric bus traveled 1,100 miles. This bus was a new version of the Catalyst E2. It is called the Catalyst E2 Max. It is produced by Proterra. It has a battery that is 50 percent larger than the previous version that is being sold commercially--that is the Catalyst E2. That Proterra that is currently being sold has a functional range for the transit agencies that are buying it of over 350 miles, about 350 miles. That is pretty impressive. But by having a battery that is 50 percent lighter and moving quite slowly, driving it slowly, they managed to go 1,100 miles. It is really an indication of the rapid transformation of this particular type of electric vehicle.

Question No. 3: Warmer weather is contributing to what problem in major American cities? Is the problem caused by warmer weather transit delays? Is it exploding rat populations? Is warmer weather contributing to larger potholes or to longer tourist seasons?

Well, the dramatic answer here is that the warmer weather is contributing to exploding rat populations. Rat breeding usually slows in winter, but if you have a mild winter, that doesn't happen.

Since 2013, the pest control company Orkin has reported significant growth in its services--61 percent growth in Chicago, 67 percent in Boston, 174 percent in San Francisco, 129 percent in New York City, and 57 percent in Washington, DC, right here where the Capitol is located. This is a major economic and health problem. Rats caused $19 billion in economic damage in 2000 from, among other things, eating away at buildings and infrastructure, and, of course, they are carriers of rodent-borne diseases like E. coli and salmonella. Plus, we just simply don't like having them in our cities.

Let's turn to the next question, question No. 4. As of today, how many nations in the world are rejecting the Paris Agreement that addresses climate disruption? Is the answer 25 out of the roughly 200 nations in the world or 12 or 3 nations or 1 nation? Lock in your answers.

The answer is not 25 nor 12, and it is not 3. It is now just one nation that is rejecting the Paris Agreement. Now, until recently there were three nations. You had two nations that had not signed up and one nation that had said it was going to withdraw. The two that had not signed up were Nicaragua and Syria, and the one that said it was going to withdraw was the United States of America. President Trump made that announcement. But a short time ago, Nicaragua announced it was going to ratify the treaty, and today Syria announced it was going to ratify the treaty. That leaves the United States standing alone as the only Nation that is saying it is going to reject the Paris Agreement.

Of course, this has a big impact on American leadership in the world, since we worked very hard to bring nations together to craft this agreement. The nations were so impressed that all of them in the world are now participating except us--except the United States.

Let's go to question No. 5. Better management of our lands and forests could help reach what percent of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement? Could better management of lands and forests contribute to reaching 5 percent, or one-twentieth of the goal; or 12 percent, roughly one-eighth; or 25 percent, roughly one-quarter of the goal; or 37 percent, more than one-third of the goal laid out in Paris? Lock in your answers.

The correct answer to this is D, 37 percent, or more than one-third, a surprisingly high number. An international study released last month said the natural climate solutions in guarding the management of our lands and our forests could help us reach more than a third of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement. The paper looked at 20 conservation and improved land management actions that help increase carbon storage or avoid greenhouse gas emissions in a cost-effective manner. The single most important factor among them is reforestation.

Years ago I heard an individual say: Wouldn't it be great if we could just invent something that could pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Well, we actually have that already. It is called a tree. Growing trees is a very effective strategy in addressing carbon pollution.

Of course, there are issues related to how we manage our forests and making them more resilient to forest fires, where they are less likely to burn and emit carbon. Certainly, there is how we farm and how we take care of other types of lands, including peat restoration and coastal restoration.

Those are our five questions for this edition, episode 7, of the Senate Climate Disruption Quiz. These questions were ripped from the headlines in regard to the biggest test facing human kind on this planet. It is up to us in this generation to act.

We are the first generation to experience this enormous range of impacts from carbon pollution and a warming planet, and we are the only generation that is able to head off disaster ahead by acting quickly now. We are racing the clock. There is no time to spare. So stay engaged and do all you can to help take this on.

Meanwhile, as we learn more about technology and about the planet, all in the near future, I will bring you Climate Disruption Quiz Episode 8.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Kaila Davis, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. President, our Nation was founded on a powerful principle encapsulated by the first three words of our Constitution: ``We the People.'' We are meant to be a nation, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, ``of the people, by the people, and for the people,'' not a nation by and for the most powerful, not a nation by and for the most privileged. Yet time and time again, we are seeing a complete and total corruption of the vision of our Constitution.

We saw this earlier this year with one TrumpCare bill after another designed to rip healthcare away from 20 to 30 million Americans to deliver tax giveaways to the richest in America. We have seen it just recently in the consideration of a budget that reversed that and said that in order to give $4.5 trillion of tax giveaways almost entirely to the richest Americans, we will take $1 trillion out of Medicaid and half a trillion out of Medicare. We have seen this powerful conversion of standing our Constitution on its head, and now we have the Supreme Court fully participating in this effort in a case called Janus v. AFSCME. It is the very epitome of the principle of a nation so corrupted that it honors the opposite of what our Constitution stands for.

The sole purpose of this case, Janus v. AFSCME, is to undercut the ability of workers to organize. This is an assault on the freedom of working Americans to associate with their coworkers. It is an assault on the freedom of working Americans to negotiate a fair wage. It is an assault on the freedom of Americans to fight for fairer benefits and a safe workplace. Bottom line: It is an assault on the freedom of workers to participate in the wealth they work so hard to create.

In short, this is the right to exploit that our Supreme Court-- majority of five--is so determined to elevate. I have read the Constitution, and I have never seen embedded in it a right to exploit, a right to cheat, a right to take advantage of. Yet here is the majority of the Court prepared to fight for exploitation on behalf of the 1 percent of Americans at the very top.

The key strategy in this case is to attack the finances of workers when they organize. Former President Jimmy Carter once said: ``Every advance in this half-century--Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another--came with the support and leadership of American labor.'' It has been workers banding together to say: We can create a better foundation for families to thrive. And that hasn't just created a better foundation for those who belong to unions; it has created a better foundation for all workers. We saw them successfully band together and fight for a 40-hour workweek, fight for minimum wage, fight for sick leave, and fight for healthy and safe working conditions--again, benefits that every worker enjoys because workers were able to organize and fight to receive and win these provisions.

What is really going in the Janus case? Any organization, in order to function, has rights and responsibilities. Rights are the rewards you get for participating, and responsibilities are the requirement that you be part of the team and you contribute to the effort.

When I was small, probably just 2 or 3 years old, my mother had a book she would read to me that involved the animals in the barnyard. Animal after animal was asked to participate in making the bread, and animal after animal turned it down, but when the bread was baked, they wanted a full share even though they had refused to participate in the effort to create it. This is what Janus is all about. It is about the right to the rewards, divided from any responsibility to get the work done.

When workers organize, they say: We are going to have to be able to have the finances to drive this organization, and to do that, we need to have every worker contribute a fair share. Those fair share fees mean that all the workers

are in it together, they are all contributing, and they all benefit from the rewards.

Forever, the courts have said: Yes, with the reward goes the responsibility. That is true of any organization. It is fundamental in how organizations work. If you don't show up here on the floor, you don't get to vote. Every organization has its responsibilities that go with its rewards. But the 1 percent have chosen a strategy that says: We will take one organization in America--and that is workers organizations--and we will drive an absolute wedge between the responsibility and the reward.

These fees that we are talking about, these fair share fees, are not fees that go to political purposes. They don't go to donations to candidates. They don't go to organizing campaigns walking door-to-door for candidates. They don't go to advertising on the television or the web. They are simply the cost of having a team that works to negotiate an agreement with a company.

I find it absolutely evil that a majority of the Supreme Court is excited about embracing this right to exploit other workers by saying in this one case in America, you get the rewards without the responsibilities. If the Court was applying that to a stockholder in a company, the equivalent would be to say that the stockholder doesn't have to contribute to the costs of the management of the corporation, so they can demand back their share of what the management spends on their salaries, on their office spaces, on their private jets, and on their trips to do whatever they do, of the time they spend negotiating acquisitions to build the size of the company or striking deals to sell their products. That would be the equivalent, that a stockholder gets the rewards of all of that negotiation without having to participate in the cost. But this is not a situation in which five Justices want to apply consistent principle because their goal isn't to honor the Constitution, and their goal is not fairness; their single goal is to demolish the ability of workers to organize, to get a fair share of the wealth they work to create.

We can see that already our Nation is in trouble on this principle. For the three decades after World War II, we had workers who had the strong ability to organize and demand a fair share, and we saw a revolution in the prosperity of workers in those three decades from 1945 through 1975. Individuals who had lived in shacks, individuals who had been wiped out by the Great Depression suddenly were able to buy, on a single worker's income--it didn't even take two incomes--a three- bedroom ranch house with a basement and a single-car garage and were still able to save money for an annual camping trip and perhaps to save some to help their children launch themselves into life. That is what we had when workers got a fair share.

Yet, in the midseventies, the multinational companies said: Do you know what? Let's undercut the American worker by making our goods overseas in China and importing them. That way, we will demolish the jobs here in America, and we, the company, will have made things at the lowest price in the world, have sold them at the world market price, and have made a lot more money. This strategy worked for the multinational companies. They made vast sums of money for their stockholders and for their executives.

This application of different rules for foreign workers and domestic workers really gave a huge advantage to our competitor overseas and to a company that spanned both shores and could move its production overseas. So we saw the loss of 50,000 factories; we saw the loss of 5 million factory jobs; we saw the loss of an enormous number of supply chain jobs; and we saw, without those payrolls being spent in the community, an enormous loss of retail jobs in the community, but it made the wealthy wealthier, and that was the goal of the strategy.

So here we are, facing this case that will come before the Court later this year, but the members of the Court have, essentially, already declared their positions. Four members of the Court were on the previous version of this when the Court tied 4 to 4, and Neil Gorsuch, who was added to the Court, has been very clear on which side of this he stands.

Should we put an asterisk by Neil Gorsuch's name? Should a 5-to-4 decision, with Gorsuch being in the majority, even carry weight here in our society? This is the seat that for the first time in U.S. history was stolen from one President and delivered to another. The majority of this body right here stole the seat, undermining the integrity, dishonoring the oath, the responsibility for advice and consent, and damaging the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. It was done because it was a strategy to enable the 1 percent to rip off ordinary working Americans. The prize for that was a position on Citizens United that now allows the wealthiest Americans to continue to fund campaigns across this country to drown out the voices of ordinary people and a position on this case, the Janus case, that says that we will take one organization in America, that of the workers, and divide the rewards from the rights.

We know who is behind this strategy. It is the Koch brothers through their organizations, the National Right to Work Foundation and the Liberty Justice Center. They were behind the strategy for the theft of the Supreme Court seat. They were behind the massive increase in third- party spending that polluted the campaigns across this country. They are behind this strategy to destroy the vision that is embedded in our Constitution.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: I am opposed to this legislation because it gives employers the right to exploit. Eleanor Roosevelt was a real champion for workers, and she called a spade a spade. The right to exploit is not a right that any Member of this body should pursue, and it certainly should not be pursued by the Supreme Court.

We know that there is a chapter 2 to this strategy. The first is to get the Supreme Court so that you can divide the rights from the responsibilities; therefore, you as a worker do not have to contribute to the cost, but you will benefit from the rewards. Pretty soon, very few people will be contributing; therefore, it will undermine the financial ability of the union to negotiate.

Then they have a second strategy. This fundraising letter was sent out last year by the State Policy Network. By the way, the State Policy Network is an alliance of 66 State-based think tanks that are designed and funded by the Koch brothers and their friends to undercut the ability of workers to get a fair share of the wealth that they create. They said: Here is our plan to defund and defang our opponent, the unions--to deal a blow to the left's ability to control government.

Ah, they are fancy words, but what they really meant was our goal is to take and undo the ability of workers to organize so as to get a fair share of the wealth they create. It is one evil act after another that is funded by the Koch cartel.

In our Nation, we have stood up to this type of abuse time and again. The American historian who created the phrase the ``American dream'' said, in each generation, there is a group of Americans who rises up to take on the forces that appear to be overwhelming us. We need to call on the people of the United States who believe in the vision of our Constitution, to be that group to rise up and take on this effort to turn our Constitution on its head--to strip ``we the people'' out of our Constitution and replace it with ``we the powerful''--and to stand up against this type of right to exploit, whether it is a bill here on the floor of the U.S. Senate or it is a begotten majority of the Supreme Court.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Isamar Chavez, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.

Mr. President, there are few things we do here in the Senate that matter more or have longer lasting impacts on our Nation than confirming individuals to lifetime appointments in district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court.

It is the Senate's duty, as Alexander Hamilton laid out in the Federalist Papers, to ``prevent the appointment of unfit characters.'' Hamilton thought that this power would be used rarely because a President would seek to make sure that he or she sent qualified individuals to the Senate for confirmation, but we are seeing something quite different today. We are seeing the President engaged in a zeal to pack the court with extreme rightwing ideologues and to ram them through this confirmation process without due review.

Just yesterday, the American Bar Association sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee saying that Leonard Grasz, President Trump's nominee to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, is not qualified to serve as a Federal judge. Yet his confirmation hearing is scheduled for this week.

Putting extreme and unqualified people on the court is a disservice to America's judiciary. It will impact the protection of fundamental American rights for generations to come. It is critical for us, therefore, to have a conversation about what is going on at this moment.

Just this week, we have four nominees for the court of appeals coming to the floor. Amy Barrett was confirmed just hours ago. There is another vote scheduled for tomorrow. These individuals, as I will go through in a moment, don't come here with the types of qualifications that really should allow them to be considered for lifetime appointments.

Time and time again, we have heard from our Republican leadership that Democrats are engaged in a massive, ``often-mindless partisan obstruction,'' in the words of the majority leader. From where comes this evaluation? Well, he wants to move judiciary nominees faster, without due consideration. And certainly he does know something about obstructing judicial nominations since he spent the entire 8 years of the Obama administration leading the effort to obstruct consideration of nominees here in this Chamber.

Eighty percent of President Obama's nominees waited 181 days or longer. That is certainly far more than under President George Bush, President Clinton, the first President Bush, or President Reagan-- obstruction taken to the maximum, 6 months or longer to work their way through the confirmation process.

Throughout President Obama's entire 8 years in office, just 55 circuit court judges were confirmed. That is the lowest number for any President. And by this point in the previous administration--in the Obama administration--just one nominee had been confirmed for a spot on the circuit court. But here we are taking a look at how in this time period just one had been confirmed for Obama, but we will have, at the end of this week--assuming each individual gets the full majority-- eight circuit court nominees confirmed. That is one for Obama and eight for President Trump. That number wasn't reached substantially into President Obama's second year in office.

We can look at the average number of days that it has taken from committee report to confirmation for the first seven nominees. President Trump's first seven circuit and district court nominees waited 37 days for confirmation once they were reported out of the Judiciary Committee. Let's compare that to President Obama, where the Judiciary Committee held them up for 75 days. So once again Democrats in the minority are moving far, far faster to date than did our colleagues when President Obama was in office. Certainly by comparison, President Trump's nominees are sailing through at a rapid pace.

So let's not hear any more about the preposterous false news coming from the majority side about things being slowed down when the facts are quite the opposite. But why this emphasis on

creating this false narrative? Perhaps it is because right now there is a lot of pressure on the majority to show that they are getting something done, and not much is happening that will help anyone in this country. They tried to get something done by trying to strip healthcare from 20 to 30 million Americans in 5 different versions of the TrumpCare monster. They didn't quite get it done, thankfully. And I doubt that the American people--in fact, I know that they certainly would not have been appreciative of the bill in which my Republican colleagues said: Let's strip all this healthcare away from 20 to 30 million people so we can give massive, multitrillion-dollar tax benefits, tax giveaways to the very richest Americans.

Wow. That is certainly not a way to win the hearts and minds of Americans--attack working Americans time after time in order to deliver the National Treasury to the very richest Americans. Perhaps my colleagues will be glad they didn't succeed in that effort.

Now there is a tax plan on the floor--a tax plan being considered that will once again take $1.5 trillion out of healthcare to deliver several trillion dollars to the richest 1 percent of Americans. We see it time and time again--attack working Americans to deliver incredible gifts from the National Treasury--really a raid on Fort Knox. Has ever such an audacious theft been considered previously in U.S. history than the theft that my colleagues are trying to perpetuate both through the healthcare strategy and now through this tax strategy?

But there is a bigger purpose at work here, and that is a goal to rewrite the vision of our Constitution. Our Constitution has this incredibly powerful, meaningful vision of government of, by, and for the people, but my colleagues don't like that vision, and they decided that the best way to change it is to put people onto the court who like a different vision--government of, by, and for the privileged and the powerful. We saw it in their healthcare bill, we see it in their tax bill, and now we are seeing it in their nomination strategy to the court--a GOP agenda that will tip the scales of justice to favor the powerful and privileged over working Americans; judges who want to legislate from the bench on behalf of the powerful; judges who want to legislate from the bench on behalf of the privileged, who want to support predatory consumer practices, who want to strip away individual rights of women to determine their own healthcare, who want to deny a fair day in court by allowing binding arbitration where the seller of the services gets to pick and pay for the judge. Judges, rather than pursuing neutrality, are pursuing government for the powerful--that is the radical rightwing agenda attack on working America.

We should do all that we can to stop it, including having opposition in this Chamber.

This week, we will have Stephanos Bibas, President Trump's nominee to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, who believes that overincarceration in our jails has nothing to do with race or with mandatory minimums despite all of the research and data that show otherwise.

He takes on and disagrees with the experts on medical care, who understand the fundamentals of addiction. He says, simply, though drug addiction is painted as a disease that requires medical intervention, all of that is unnecessary. Drug addicts can just stop using drugs. If only it were that easy. He has such a profound misunderstanding of the basic healthcare issue. Person after person after person on both sides of this aisle has come to say that opioid addiction is an addiction that needs medical treatment; yet he is a nominee who does not understand any of that.

He also believes that when it comes to legal sentences, corporal punishment should be applied that is ``public, shameful, and painful.'' Perhaps the understanding of rare and unusual punishment was something missing in his legal education.

Let's look at his 2 years as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York--the notable case of United States v. Williams, which the New York Times described at the time as a ``legal legend in the making.'' They did not say that because of its being a wise or insightful decision. He was working as a prosecutor, and he wanted to really go after the little guy.

He used his position to marshal prosecutorial, law enforcement, and court resources to bring charges against a cashier at a veterans hospital who had been accused of stealing $7--not $7,000, not $700,000, and not the $700 million or $1 billion being laundered by a big bank but the accusation of a cashier who had stolen $7. Stealing is never acceptable and never appropriate, but it did not matter that the cashier maintained that she had given the seven crinkled $1 bills that she had straightened out or that the security cameras did not show her pocketing them or that the customer who was right there saw it and stated that she was innocent. It did not matter. None of those facts mattered. He wanted to go after the little guy rather than go after the big folks who steal us blind.

The morning of the trial comes around, and a detective testifies that he found those seven $1 bills in the cash register, just as the customer had stated. Meanwhile, this nominee saw fit to spend huge amounts of Federal resources in going after an individual who, by every form of testimony, had not committed a crime in the first place. It is easy to go after the little people, and if you believe in government by and for the powerful and the privileged, as these nominees do, then that is your mission in life--to go after the little people. Yet she lost out because, even though she was innocent, she lost her job due to her prosecution.

Then there is Joan Larsen, who is the President's nominee for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, a nominee who was added at the last moment to another circuit court nominee's confirmation hearing, which was against the Senate's practices and against minority opposition. Why do you add someone at the last moment? It is to ensure that the committee does not have enough time to adequately review her record. That is always a cause for suspicion--someone is changing the procedure so that a person's record cannot be reviewed before the committee sits down to the hearing.

This is probably fitting with Ms. Larsen's long-held disdain for the legislative branch. She coauthored a law review article that stressed the importance of protecting the President from Congress, she said, ``the most dangerous branch of government.''

She goes on to denigrate the use of committees in Congress. She says that Congress has maintained an extensive, costly, extra-constitutional network of committees that watch over the work of Cabinet departments because ``the ambition and love of power of our Senators and Representatives caused them to lust after the patronage and media glory that a committee post could bring.''

Is there any deeper or more profound misunderstanding of the committee process here in Congress? Does she have any idea that the reason we have committees is that there are complex topics? As President Trump said: Who knew healthcare could be so complicated? So you have a committee of members that specializes in that effort, that learns the details so that it can fairly consider the ideas for legislation. It has very little to do with ambition and a love of power and a lusting after patronage. There really is not patronage on a committee. We, the members, do not hire the staff.

With her being someone with such a profound misunderstanding of the branches of government, why do my colleagues say that they want her in there? Is it because of this vision of a government that is by and for the powerful that takes on the little people, beats them up, squeezes them dry, and delivers the benefits to the richest in our society on every single issue--on healthcare, on taxes, on judicial appointments?

Mr. President, I think it is going to be a very robust conversation about taxes. When we look into the eyes of working Americans, I hope my Republican colleagues are ready to answer this question, and that is, Why do they, the Republican Party, want to send $3.5 trillion of tax benefits to the top 1 percent? Why not spend the tax benefits on the middle class?

Well, my colleagues keep coming to the floor and saying this is all about the middle class, but they don't mention that, in fact, every single major change is all about benefits for the richest 1 percent.

Changing the dynasty tax to create a dynasty loophole, wow, that really doesn't benefit anybody in the working class. Lowering the top bracket while raising the bottom bracket, well, that doesn't help anybody in the working class. Providing a special passthrough for those who can put their business activities into limited liability corporations and have a special low rate, well, that certainly doesn't help anybody in the middle class.

One provision after another, after another is targeted at the richest Americans, while coming and preaching help for the middle class. Oh, the American people will see right through this scheme. They are going to ask: Why is it you do so little for those at the bottom? In fact, you do nothing for those in the bottom third. Why is it you do so little for those in the middle class? In fact, many of them will see a tax increase. Why do you send the vast bulk of the benefits to the richest Americans when the richest Americans are already so much richer than anyone else?

The debate we are going to have is important. For my colleagues who think they can fool the American people by talking about the middle class and instead are targeting the richest to be richer, I have news: It is not going to work.

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

Mr. President, I am coming to the floor to talk about the challenge we have with forest fires that have been raging in the West, in Montana and Idaho and Washington and Oregon and California, and periodically we have devastating fires in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.

We have to figure out how we do a better job in a multitude of ways. First, it is very important that we quit treating terrible fire years, enormous fires, as if they are some ordinary event because there is currently no FEMA-style reaction to terrible forest fires.

We respond with FEMA for tornadoes and for floods and for tidal waves and for hurricanes and for earthquakes but not forest fires. Well, the result is, the Forest Service runs out of funds to fight the fires in a bad year, and then they have to drain all the other programs they are working on, including the programs to prepare for future timber cuts, the programs to thin the forests, the programs to repair the infrastructure in the Federal forests, all these other efforts, and then they can't resume those efforts until we have restored their funding, which can come often far later.

This fire borrowing has to end. That is why we absolutely need to support the bill Senator Wyden, Senator Crapo, and others have been working on to say: Let's create a FEMA-like structure for these worst fires so we end this fire-borrowing devastation of the fire accounts. That absolutely needs to happen.

Right now, there are three funding issues we need to address. First, we need to help out the communities that have been impacted economically by these devastating fires. Some have been scorched directly, others have been profoundly affected by the smoke in the community, others have been affected by highways being shut down, and others have been impacted by tourism dropping dramatically. So it is very important that we send a message to the Department of Agriculture, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to say: Use your emergency programs to assist these communities. We really should make sure they are at the front of the line, along with those who have suffered the disasters in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, for emergency loans and assistance from the Small Business Administration and for an augmented share of community development block grants to assist them in a very flexible fashion.

I had the chance to meet this weekend with leaders in the Rogue Valley to talk about how smoke had affected them, and company after company after company had been dramatically impacted. Some you would say was obvious. If you have a zip line company and tourists aren't coming because the smoke is very thick, you are going to be impacted, but others are a little less obvious; for example, the production of wine and the potential impact of the smoke and the fires directly on the harvest but then also on perhaps tainting the flavor of the wine, which will have an impact down the road.

So we need to make sure we do all we can to assist these communities just as we are assisting the communities that have been devastated by Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma.

The second thing we need to do is, we need to include $200 million in the next package, the third tranche of assistance for the disasters this year. We need $200 million to fund the repair and replacement of infrastructure and trail infrastructure damaged--the buildings and the trails that were damaged by these forest fires. Now, that $200 million, that goes half to trails and infrastructure that were damaged by the hurricanes and half to those impacted by the fires. Essentially, the damage was roughly equally split. Without this type of funding, the Forest Service will be forced to postpone or cancel projects in fiscal year 2018 to accommodate the recovery. It will compromise the work to remove hazardous trees for public safety, road and trail maintenance, restoring vegetation in watersheds, and rehabilitating wildlife and fish habitat.

The third thing we have to do is seize the moment and invest in fire resilience. Every single time we have a fire season like this--and this season we spent almost twice as much, on average, to fight the fires-- people ask: Why don't we do more on the front end to reduce the risk of these fires?

Well, that is such logical thinking to do more on the front end. What do they mean by that? We have millions of acres of second-growth forests. We clearcut them. Some of them regrew naturally. Others were replanted. We replant virtually everything now. After 10 or 20 years, the trees are very close together. The branches are very close to the ground. This is prime territory for fires. Fires love this. Disease loves this. So it becomes a real problem unless you go in and thin the trees enormously--take out a lot of those trees--and proceed to get rid of the hazardous fuels of branches that accumulate on the ground and so forth. But if you do those two things, those forests become much more resistant to fire.

When you are doing this on a stand that is a bit older--20 or 30 years older--you also get a significant supply of sawlogs for the mills. So this is a real win-win situation. You get a forest that is better in resisting fire, you get a forest that is better in resisting disease, you get a forest that is better for timber stands, and you get a forest that is better in terms of being an ecosystem. With all that winning, we need to do more to make it actually happen.

In my State of Oregon, there are 1.6 million acres that have already gone through the environmental process. They are ready to be thinned and have the hazardous fuels removed. In Washington State, it is at least 400,000 acres. There are probably hundreds of thousands of acres in every State from Montana and Idaho to California, Nevada, and New Mexico.

This picture shows the difference. This road right here had a stand on the left that had not been thinned. If you can make out the colors, these trees are dead. They are all brown--dead trees because of the heat of the fire when it swept through. This side of the road had been treated. The trees had been thinned. The brush had been

taken out from below. They often call that mowing. It has had prescriptive fire in it, which means after you have thinned it, you may go 10 or 15 years, and then let fire burn up the shrubs at the base. Therefore, on this side of the road, the forest is undamaged.

In fact, I went out to this area outside of Sisters, OR, this last weekend. It is just remarkable how the area that had been thinned and treated with mowing and prescription fire became very resistant to the fire that was sweeping toward Sisters. It really helped the Forest Service fight the fire because they could easily maneuver through the area that had been thinned, much more than the area that hadn't been thinned. So that Milli fire was stopped before it got to Sisters, thankfully. In other places where the forest hadn't been thinned, the outcome might have been very different.

Let's invest now in this win-win. Let's not succumb to the traditional timber wars of the past. After fires like this, there are those folks who come along and say: We just need to clearcut everything. Let's do a 10,000-square-foot timber sale with no environmental review and allow everything to be cut. That was the 1950s. In fact, we have a bill in this Chamber that says: Do exactly that, and you can take out the old growth and the big trees. The irony of that is those are the trees that are actually fire resistant. Those are the trees you want to leave.

This is a solution that brings the environmental world and the timber world together and provides a supply of sawlogs for our mills. Let's make that type of vision happen. But to do that, we have to fund the effort. We have to have the funds to be able to go in and do that thinning and mowing and fire prescription. That is why we are asking for about $600 million to help thin the forests of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and wherever else there is a forest that has gone through that environmental review. It is ready for action. Let's put Americans to work in those forests in this win-win strategy.

Three things we need to do: Help our communities that are scorched, proceed to invest in emergency repair of the damaged infrastructure on our forest lands, and invest a significant $500 to $600 million in thinning the forests that have already gone through environmental review.

Thank you.

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

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Indiana for joining me on the floor today to raise awareness of the ethnic cleansing that has been occurring on the other side of our planet, ethnic cleansing by the Burmese military against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Just last week, together we sent a letter to U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. It was signed by 21 of our colleagues. It called for ``tangible actions against the Burmese government to end the violence, to help the Burmese people and make clear that there will be consequences for those who commit such atrocities against civilians.''

I am pleased to partner with my colleague on this. I think he will share some remarks, and then I will follow up with some remarks of my own.

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my colleague and the opportunity for us to work together to help shine a light on this moment of great atrocities in the world. A great deal of what we are calling for is for America to do more to shine a light on it and for the world to work together, not just to shine a light on it but to end it and to proceed to have as much healing as can possibly take place.

I thank my colleague from Indiana for being deeply in this conversation. It is a real pleasure to work on the Foreign Relations Committee together.

We must address this situation. According to a report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, ``government forces and Buddhist extremists in Burma have carried out `a well-organized, coordinated and systematic' campaign of human rights violations against the Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar's Rakhine State,'' with a strategy to ``instill deep and widespread fear and trauma--physical, emotional and psychological--among the Rohingya population.'' This comes after the commissioner's statement that this ``security operation,'' as they refer to it, in Burma was ``a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.''

As we ponder international relations, we see from time to time that one group, somewhere in the world, will respond to deep tribal impulses and prejudices and seek to wipe out another group. These are horrific moments in history, and we have seen this movie--this situation--occur time and again. After such atrocities, the world has said ``never again''--``never again,'' meaning that we will respond when we see this happening. We will apply great pressure. We will coordinate with the world to make sure it stops, because such effort to wipe out another ethnic group is so unacceptable and it is such a crime against humanity.

But here we are, and it is happening right now in Burma. It is happening with a Buddhist nation.

We normally associate the Buddhist religion with a main emphasis on peaceful conduct. Yet this tribal impulse--these deep prejudices are so powerful that they overcome whatever peaceful impulse there is, and they have resulted in a massive effort to wipe out the Rohingya people. In the course, there have been a massive number of rapes. There have been children killed right in front of their mothers. There have been villages surrounded by soldiers and then the village huts set on fire, and then they have been shot as they flee. This is about as inhumane as it can get.

Something close to 300 villages have burned to the ground. By some estimates, 3,000 civilians have been killed. A few weeks ago, we were talking about 400,000 refugees pouring into Bangladesh. Now, the number is 600,000 Rohingya refugees.

Roughly half the Rohingyas live in Burma, and those refugees include 300,000 children. Think about the type of trauma those children have just experienced and the challenges they will have regaining a foundation to thrive. Then there are those who are internally displaced inside of Burma, who have been driven out of their villages but haven't been able to make their way to Bangladesh. This is the challenge we face.

There is an area of Bangladesh called Cox's Bazar. That is where these two main refugee camps are. International aid groups are working to quickly get as many resources as they can into this area so that people do not starve and so that medical wounds can be addressed. But there is still a significant lack of food, a lack of clean water, and a lack of sanitary bath and toilet facilities. That condition is ripe for spreading disease--diseases like cholera.

When I was home in Oregon, I met with a group of Rohingya refugees who came and settled in Oregon. As we can imagine, they have a very personal connection to what is happening. Some of them have distant relatives still there. Some have immediate family members. They don't know exactly what has happened to everyone in the middle of this chaos.

We also heard about villages that didn't get burned down but where the military was blockading people from leaving the village to go to the fields to secure food and blocking them from leaving the fields and going back into the village, probably responding to international outrage over villages being burned and essentially resorting to a strategy of starving out the villages to drive people away. Imagine being trapped in one of those villages, knowing what is happening to village after village after village, knowing children have been slaughtered, women have been raped and often killed, and men have been shot. The desperation is enormous.

I heard firsthand accounts of conditions of refugees from Reza Uddin, who had just returned from a 2-week trip to visit them. He told powerful and moving stories about children who had been brutalized, children who had been separated from their parents, children who might possibly now be orphans because it is not clear if their parents are still alive or, if alive, where they are.

The world collectively has not done enough. The community of nations has not done enough to address this unspeakable brutality. Bangladesh should be complimented for accepting these refugees fleeing for their lives. They have been cooperative. It is a challenge for them, and we should acknowledge that. We should continue to ask them to do everything possible and to give the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and various aid organizations full opportunity, full access, and full authority to be in and assist those in these refugee camps.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations have condemned the actions of the Burmese, and that is certainly appropriate, but we haven't done enough. We have not taken the steps to which my colleague referred to strengthen sanctions or coordinate international countries to all weigh in. The only thing that will make a real difference here is pressure on the Burmese military. They are in charge. We can criticize the civilian government in Burma, and many have, and they have been unable to stop what

is going on and sometimes often reflect the prejudices that contributed to this, but it is the military that makes the decisions.

We had testimony from the State Department yesterday, and one of the officials used the term ``vigilantes'' for what the vigilantes are doing in this oppression. That is not the right term to use. This is not uncoordinated action. This is action coordinated through the military decision-making process. You don't surround camps, you don't have significant planning that goes into it, and have it just be vigilantes. Vigilantes may be involved, but they are not the driving force. They might be assisting the soldiers in some cases, but this is a coordinated act of the military of Burma, and it is important that the community of nations convey to the military how unacceptable this is and that there will be significant consequences.

My colleague has referred to the fact that in this situation no military sales should be made to such a military. That is important, but that takes a conversation among nations, and the United States needs to be deeply engaged in this.

There is a lot of international fundraising going on. There was a donors conference held on Monday to assist the refugees. It raised about $200 million or a little more in new funds. That is about $400 per refugee. That is not nearly enough to provide for shelter or care in a situation with complete lack of access to fields or farming or support. It is going to take more than that. We should be involved in working with the United Nations, UNICEF, World Health, UNHCR, or the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and the World Food Program to step up and assist. I certainly believe it would be very helpful to have President Trump take this issue on and speak from the heart of our Nation to this dark and evil deed that is happening--that we reject it and we will partner with the rest of the world to end it.

I do feel that there is a history in which we have helped lead nations in these situations. We haven't always been there. I know that President Clinton said that the biggest regret of his administration is that he didn't respond quickly in Central Africa when the Tutsis and Hutus went to battle against each other, slaughtering each other with machetes. This is a chance for us to really respond--to respond aggressively, to have that moral clarity, and to exercise that leadership in the world. I join my colleague in calling for such action for more assistance, with the aid to both Burma and Bangladesh, for the moral clarity to take action that pressures the Burmese military in a significant and compelling way and to provide assistance in the right of return--the ability of these individuals to be able to return to their villages.

Traditionally, this group has been denied citizenship. Early on, we heard from the civilian government in Burma: We will let them come back if they show they are citizens. No. 1, they have never been granted citizenship. No. 2, after a horrific situation like this, if they did have papers, they wouldn't have papers now. They would have been burned along with the villages. There needs to be a change in attitude, a change of heart among the Burmese civilian leadership, and certainly among the military, to lead an effort in the peaceful tradition, the Buddhist tradition, of embracing this diversity and returning these people to their land.

Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan now serves as chairman of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State. He and his team have laid out a report with very specific actions--actions that will help end the cycle of radicalization and the cycle of violence. We need to work to try to make sure those things are implemented, to show oppressive governments and the rest of the world that the world will not stand-- that the world will respond, and respond aggressively, in a coordinated, forceful way when ethnic cleansing occurs. That is the best deterrent we could have for future atrocities.

Again, I thank my colleague for being in this dialogue and for his support to shine this light and to take a compelling more forceful action. Like him, I look forward to meeting with the Ambassador from Burma later today.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my intern, Sarah Finley, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day.