Floor Statements

Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Bailey Bowen for her hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC, office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming.

Bailey is a native of Kemmerer, WY. She currently attends Utah Valley University, where she is studying behavioral science. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months.

I want to thank Bailey for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her next journey.

Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Timothy Corley for his hard work as an intern at the Republican Policy Committee. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming.

Timothy is a native of Maryland and a graduate of American University, School of International Service. He studied U.S. foreign policy. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months.

I want to thank Timothy for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Jacob Henry for his hard work as an intern in my Casper office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming.

Jacob is a native of Casper, WY, and is a second-year student at Casper College. He served in the Marine Corps and has received two Purple Hearts. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months.

I want to thank Jacob for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Sarah Miller for her hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC, office. I recognize her efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming.

Sarah is a native of Pennsylvania. She recently graduated from American University, where she received a degree in international studies. She has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made her an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of her work is reflected in her great efforts over the last several months.

I want to thank Sarah for the dedication she has shown while working for me and my staff. It was a pleasure to have her as part of our team. I know she will have continued success with all of her future endeavors. I wish her all my best on her next journey.

Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Sean O'Brien for his hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC, office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming.

Sean is a native of Illinois and a graduate of American University, School of International Service. He received a degree in international studies. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months.

I want to thank Sean for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Samuel Owen for his hard work as an intern in my Cheyenne office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming.

Samuel is a native of Columbus, OH, and is a junior at the University of Wyoming. He is studying finance and energy development and management. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months.

I want to thank Samuel for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Jackson Ventrella for his hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC, office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming.

Jackson is a native of Mesa, AZ, and is a junior at Hillsdale College. He is studying politics. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months.

I want to thank Jackson for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Madam President, I would like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation to Colyer Woolston for his hard work as an intern in my Washington, DC, office. I recognize his efforts and contributions to my office as well as to the State of Wyoming.

Colyer is a native of Sheridan, WY, and a graduate of Hamilton College. He studied environmental studies and geosciences, as well as comparative literature. He has demonstrated a strong work ethic, which has made him an invaluable asset to our office. The quality of his work is reflected in his great efforts over the last several months.

I want to thank Colyer for the dedication he has shown while working for me and my staff. It is a pleasure to have him as part of our team. I know he will have continued success with all of his future endeavors. I wish him all my best on his journey.

Mr. President, over the past few months, Congress has passed 14 different resolutions that are going to save the American people money and are going to make it a lot easier for our economy to grow. There have been 14 times since February that we have struck down unnecessary, burdensome, and costly regulations.

These were called ``midnight regulations'' because they came at the end of the Obama administration. Some came out, actually, after the Presidential election had been completed. The outcome was known, and, still, the outgoing administration tried to continue with what President Obama's Chief of Staff at one time called ``audacious executive actions.'' Half of these 14 regulations--half of them--were actually put in place after the November Presidential election.

When one thinks about the election last year in November, President Obama said time and again during the campaign that his agenda was on the ballot. The American people rejected that agenda, and the President dumped these new rules on the American people as a parting shot. We wiped out 14 of these regulations--wiped them off the books.

In one resolution, we rolled back an important part of President Obama's war on coal. That was the so-called stream buffer rule. It was designed to shut down a lot of the surface coal mining in this country. It would have destroyed up to one-third of coal mining jobs in America. So we passed a resolution that will protect coal mining jobs and protect American energy independence.

There was another resolution we passed that restores the role of local land managers in deciding how best to use Federal land. Before the Obama administration, the local experts were the ones who would help decide how Federal land could be used in so many areas around the country. These are the people on the ground. They are the ones who know best what works there. They are the ones with the best sense of how to balance all of the different ways that land can be used. That could be things like recreation, energy production, and grazing.

Well, the Obama administration said it wasn't interested in hearing from the local experts anymore. It decided to put the decisions--all of those decisions--in the hands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington, DC. So Congress passed a resolution that says these are decisions that affect local communities and those communities should have the say--and a significant amount of say--in how decisions get made.

When we look at these 14 resolutions all together, they will save Americans over $4 billion and more than 4 million hours of paperwork because not only are the regulations expensive, they are burdensome and time-consuming.

I can tell my colleagues this is just the beginning. These resolutions are just one tool that we have to strike down bad regulations. There is much more that Congress can do and will do, and there is much more that the Trump administration can do.

The administration has already made it clear that the bureaucrats in Washington are not in charge anymore. I plan to make sure the Trump administration keeps up the pace and tosses some of the worst regulations and rules into the garbage where they belong.

A good place to start would be for Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Interior, to throw out another rule that makes it more difficult to produce American energy. This regulation supposedly tries to reduce how much methane gets lost in oil and gas production. There is always some unprocessed natural gas that gets released at gas and oil wells. Energy producers try to gather up this gas and then ship it to a processing plant where, of course, it can be sold. It can be used by customers, and taxes are paid on it that go to State and local governments, as well as money that is raised by the sales for the companies themselves.

To do that, the producers need small pipelines. They need these small pipelines to collect the unprocessed gas from the wells and to get it to the processing plant. Here is the problem: We don't have enough of these gathering lines. Without the gathering lines, the only option is for that gas to get burned, and that extra natural gas will escape into the air.

So what do the bureaucrats in Washington say? They could have addressed the real reason this gas is being lost; that is, the fact that they haven't allowed enough of these gathering lines on Federal land. Instead, they decided to write a regulation that makes it tougher for us to produce American energy here in America. The Obama administration blocked the permits to build the gathering lines.

So this methane rule is a terrible regulation. It is redundant. It is unnecessary. I believe it is illegal, and it needs to go. Secretary Zinke should wipe the slate clean and get rid of this outrageous rule immediately. He should also order the bureaucrats who work for him to start approving more of these gas-gathering lines. That is what we really need. We need to make energy as clean as we can, as fast as we can, and do it in ways that do not raise costs for American families. We need to balance thoughtful regulation with a growing economy. We can have both.

The Obama administration absolutely failed to strike the right balance. The Trump administration and Congress have a lot more we can do to make sure we get the balance right.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, over the weekend, President Trump celebrated 100 days that he has been in office as President of the United States. Newspapers and magazines and pundits on television were all talking about

what the President has accomplished in those first 100 days.

From what I heard talking to people at home in Wyoming this past weekend, his first 100 days has been a huge success. People tell me that they think America is finally headed in the right direction again. I had a lot of people tell me they feel as if they have actually gotten a new spring in their step as a result of the Presidential election last year and President Trump taking office.

The other day when I was home, I was in line at the gas station behind a guy. A friend of his came and said: Hey, how are you doing? The guy said: Great. We are hiring again.

That is the kind of confidence that is happening all around Wyoming. The polling company Gallup says that it is happening not just in Wyoming but all across the country. For 24 straight weeks, more Americans have been more optimistic than pessimistic about the economy. As soon as Donald Trump was elected President, economic confidence soared, and it has stayed positive ever since. Gallup said that this is the exact opposite of what they had seen in the previous 8 years; that is, during the whole Obama administration, during the entire so-called economic recovery.

In another poll released last week, Gallup said that people are also less worried that they will lose the job they have. They found that American workers are less concerned about being laid off from their job than at any time since Gallup started asking questions way back in 1975. That is more than 40 years ago.

Why are people optimistic now? I think it is because they see that President Trump and the Republicans in Congress are serious about improving the economy. They see that we are serious about giving relief to Americans who have been getting buried under an avalanche of redtape. They see that the President is off to a very fast start in the White House.

Just look at what we have already done to help relieve the burdens on Americans. Congress has rolled back 13 different midnight regulations that President Obama tried to sneak through at the last minute. We struck down a stream buffer rule that was meant to block coal mining. We got rid of a rule that puts Americans at a competitive disadvantage when they are trying to develop energy resources overseas. We got rid of a regulation that took the control of local energy issues away from the State officials; we got rid of that regulation. And we got rid of one of the regulations that gave more control to Washington and less to States. These were regulations that harmed Americans and wiped out American jobs. Now those regulations are gone.

We have more that we can do to roll back terrible regulations like these. I have introduced a resolution to block another damaging rule that has come out by the Bureau of Land Management, which has to do with the Obama administration rules on methane that is produced at oil and gas wells. The new regulations created confusion by duplicating other rules that were already on the books.

That was the problem with so many of these regulations coming out by the Obama administration as they left office: regulation on top of regulation causing costs and confusion. They added costs that discourage energy production and kill energy jobs.

I hope that we can have a vote on this resolution very soon and get rid of this unnecessary red tape.

As active as Congress has been getting rid of these unfair, last- minute rules, President Trump has been even more active. He has already signed at least 30 Executive orders to help clear a path for the American economy to take off again. He signed a major Executive order promoting American energy independence. This has been an enormous shift away from the Obama-era approach of disruptive regulations, restrictions, and Washington overreach. All of these regulations did more to harm hard-working Americans than they did to actually help the environment. From now on, Washington will be looking for ways to protect our environment while helping our economy to grow.

Just last week, President Trump took another important step to keep his promises. He eased restrictions on drilling for oil and gas in offshore areas, like the Arctic and the Atlantic Oceans. These places have great potential for producing the energy America needs. President Trump is helping to create certainty that those resources will be available if we need them.

President Obama couldn't imagine that it was possible to have responsible energy development in America. President Trump knows differently. He knows it is possible. He knows that American workers can do the job. He knows that America will be stronger because of it. I think that is the kind of thing the American people mean when they tell me that they feel they have a spring in their step.

I can also tell you that this is just the beginning. Remember when President Obama bragged that he had a pen and a phone? Well, President Trump has proved that he has a whole drawer full of pens, and he intends to keep using them to help get the American economy growing again. He wants to hear more people saying that things are great; we are hiring again. That is what the President has been doing, and it is what Congress is doing. These are the kinds of things that will get this country back on track when it comes to our energy policy.

In Wyoming and in much of the country, energy means jobs. Our goal should be to make American energy as clean as we can, as fast as we can without raising costs on American families. All of us should be able to agree on that. It is time to restore that balance to America's energy policy. President Trump is dedicated to getting that balance right.

Republicans in Congress are dedicated to getting the economy back in gear, and I hope that more Democrats will join us with their ideas and with their support. That is what the American people want, and it is what they voted for. It is why people are confident and why they see better days ahead for this great country.

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, people around the country know the world continues to be a very dangerous place. It became more dangerous over the past 8 years. I believe that is particularly related to what I saw as unwise and unsound policies by the Obama administration, certainly when it comes to foreign policy.

Every President's foreign policy should secure America's national interests and demonstrate America's leadership around the world. That was not the case under President Obama. The last President and his team followed a policy, what has been called strategic patience--strategic patience--when dealing with hostile countries all around the world: Iran, North Korea.

Any time there was a belligerent, aggressive, cunning dictator on the move, President Obama's position was strategic patience. It was a terrible approach--a terrible approach for us in dealing with reckless regimes.

I always thought President Obama was completely focused on signing a nuclear deal with Iran, not because it actually was a great deal but maybe because it might reflect well on his legacy. I thought he wanted a deal so badly that he ended up getting a deal that was a bad deal. Well, as part of the deal, the former President accepted Iranian demands--and he accepted all of them--to lift an arms embargo that the United Nations had put into place.

This was an embargo that said that Iran was not supposed to be selling weapons to other countries. The embargo was going to disappear in 5 years, whether Iran complied with it or not. We already know Iran has no intention of playing by the rules. They haven't played by the rules all the way through. Last week, the Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, said Iran has already been violating the embargo. That is why I believe they have no intention of playing by the rules.

The Secretary of Defense tells us they are not playing by the rules now. He said we have seen Iranian-supplied missiles--our Secretary of Defense said: We have seen Iranian-supplied missiles being fired into Saudi Arabia by the rebels in Yemen. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was even more clear. He said last week that Iran is ``the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.''

He said that Iran is ``responsible for intensifying multiple conflicts''--``intensifying the conflicts and undermining U.S. interests in countries such as Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon.'' Now, this is a direct result of President Obama spending 8 years being strategically patient. It is the result of sending the signal that Iran would be rewarded for its bad behavior.

So let's look at what happened last year when the Obama administration was bragging about the nuclear deal--and they were high- fiving, bragging about the deal.

Just when the deal went into effect, President Obama arranged to send to Iran $1.7 billion in cash--$1.7 billion is an astonishingly large amount of money. It is a million and a million and a million--it is 1,700 piles of $1 million. Remember--try to visualize this. You may remember the news reports about pallets of cash stacked up going to Iran. President Obama sent $400 million as a downpayment.

Within 24 hours, the Iranians agreed to release a group of Americans whom they had been holding hostage. The Obama White House said it was not a ransom payment to free the hostages. The Obama administration actually thought the American people were naive enough to believe it was just a coincidence in timing. Well, you can bet the Iranians did not believe it was a coincidence because they actually said it was not a coincidence.

The Iranians described the money as for the release of the hostages. We know from experience that the Iranians see hostage-taking as a valid way of conducting their own foreign policy. Right now, North Korea also has taken hostages--three American hostages written about today in the papers.

We know from experience the Iranians see hostage-taking as a valid way to conduct foreign policy, and they have also gotten the message, at least from the previous administration, that it can be a very profitable policy as well. President Obama played right into their hands. There is something else President Obama did that we just learned about, and that is why I wanted to speak about this today.

Politico had a major expose on Monday of this week. The headline was: ``Obama's hidden Iran deal giveaway''--

the ``hidden deal giveaway.'' Around the same time President Obama was sending cash to Iran, he also released seven Iranians who had been arrested by the United States. The President downplayed the crimes these individuals had committed. He said it was a ``one-time gesture'' to help grease the skids for his Iran deal.

Now, according to the documents obtained by Politico, the Obama administration also dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other individuals. Some of them were wanted for serious threats to our own American national security. One man was charged with trying to buy thousands of assault weapons--thousands of assault weapons--and send them to Iran.

Another was charged with conspiring to get from Iran thousands of pieces of equipment with nuclear applications. The scheme included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran. Centrifuges were a big reason we were concerned about Iran's nuclear program in the first place. Yet, according to President Obama, this doesn't seem to be a problem.

According to the article that came out Monday, ``As far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating right here within the United States.''

As one expert told Politico, ``This is a scandal.'' She said: ``It's stunning and hard to understand why we would do this.'' Republicans in Congress warned about this kind of thing from the very beginning. President Obama was so interested in getting a deal that he got one that in my opinion, has been very bad for the United States--not just for the United States, bad for the world because Iran with a nuclear weapon makes the world less safe, less secure, and less stable.

President Obama has this as part of his legacy, but I will tell you strategic patience has failed. Secretary of State Tillerson said so last week, and I agree with him completely. I am glad to hear our top diplomat recognized this, and I am glad to see the Trump administration doing a comprehensive review of the Iran nuclear agreement.

The last President put international opinion first when it came to foreign policy. We see this all around the world. This President, President Trump, is showing that we will put America's interests first. It is not just Iran where we have the problem. I was recently in Asia over the break, along with a group of Senators. We went to Tokyo, we went to Beijing to meet with the leaders in China. We went around that region. We met with the Premier of China, who is the No. 2 person in China, and we met with the No. 3 and the No. 4 to talk specifically about the problems of North Korea and the region.

For a long time, North Korea has been called the land of lousy options, but there is new urgency as we see the increasing capacity of North Korea now with their rockets not just propelled with liquid fuel but now with solid fuel that allows for quicker launches. The launch vehicles are no longer on wheels limited to the roads in North Korea, they are now on tracks and they can go anywhere.

North Korea has increased their nuclear capacity as well as their missile deliverability, and they are working on intercontinental ballistic missiles that can hit the United States. That is why we were at the White House yesterday for this secure briefing. That is why it is so critical that we focus on North Korea and we have a President who is focused on a peaceful resolution but is not afraid to use force, as we have seen in Syria and in Afghanistan, because if you want to use deterrence, you have to have a capacity--which we have had in the United States, which is incredible--through the Presidents over the years. You have to have a commitment to use that capacity, and we have seen from President Trump a commitment to use that capacity in Syria, in Afghanistan. You have to communicate a willingness to use that capacity, as President Trump is doing today.

Last week, Vice President Pence traveled to the demilitarized zone between South Korea and North Korea. He said very clearly that when it comes to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, ``the era of strategic patience is over.''

North Korea has been allowed to get away with too much for too long. It continues to test nuclear weapons. It continues to test missiles. It continues to use hostages as a way of getting what it wants from other countries.

Over the weekend, we learned that North Korea arrested an American professor who was in that country. North Korea, like Iran, has a history of taking hostages and using them as leverage to get what it wants. We now know three Americans are being held in North Korea.

The leadership of countries like Iran and North Korea need to understand that this kind of action will not succeed.

No one wants a fight with Iran. No one wants a fight with North Korea. The way to avoid the fight is to show that there is a limit to the patience of civilized countries of the world, which is why the age of strategic patience is now in the past.

There is new leadership with negotiation, deterrence, and, as a final option, the use of force, if necessary, which has not been the case in the last 8 years, where the use of force, the message sent by that administration was: We have no commitment to use the capacity which the United States has.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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