Floor Statements

Madam President, I appreciate the remarks of the majority leader. If he would wait 1 minute, I just want to make a little offer to him. I am not going to get into an argument with him, but he brought up more things than I like to bring up in one speech, anyway.

I did want to remind him that I was one of the six that voted in the shutdown, and a day later we solved the problem that you couldn't have done unless the six of us who did vote for it in the Republican Conference voted for it.

I just want everybody that listens to this and watches it on TV to know that everything he said is not always true. He did speak to us obliquely on recognizing the fact that we did that. I just want you to know I was one of them. I am only telling him that now because I want a chip tomorrow on his vote, and I am going to try to impress that on him.

Absolutely.

Thank you. I appreciate that, I think.

Madam President, I am not going to talk about judges and appointments and things of that nature. I could talk about them. That is a big issue for us coming up. I want to talk about people--American citizens, farmers, ranchers, people who make our food supply happen, people who make our country happen and our economy happen, et cetera.

Georgia is one of a number of States that supposedly had gotten some kind of disaster benefit some time back. We have had hurricanes, floods, and storms. California has had great fires. We had an earthquake in Alaska. We had volcanoes in Hawaii. This has been one of the most devastating years--and the past couple of years now--we have ever had, and, historically, we have always passed disaster bills to help our citizens who are put out of business, basically, by disaster to at least get their feet back under them.

We have helped people get healthcare. We have helped people get housing benefits. We have helped people do a lot of things just to get their families put back together--people like these folks right here.

I just want to remind myself from this picture here that we have the Moss family. We have others who are here who raise cotton, raise peanuts, and raise pecans. Georgia is now No. 1 in the U.S. of pecans. Pecans are a huge cash crop for us. Of course, Savannah, in my State, ships ton after ton all year long.

A pecan is an interesting nut, so to speak, because the tree has a lifecycle of about 12 years before it can make or produce pecans. When you invest in a pecan farmer, you are not investing like in a watermelon farmer. You get a watermelon the first year you plant them. You are investing in something that is going to take 12 years to mature and begin production. We had 50 percent of our pecan crop completely destroyed a few months ago now in southeast Georgia, and you can't reclaim it. It is difficult to finance.

It is an unusual tree, and it is unusual wood because it is not as strong as you would like to have it. Therefore, when it gets really mature and really produces, it produces so much weight on itself. Unless you are really doing a good job, you are going to lose some of them just because of the weight it produces on its own limbs.

Peanuts, everybody knows, because we serve those peanuts back in the cloakroom all the time to curb your appetite--Georgia peanuts. They are all laughing and looking at me. They know how good they are. That helps all of us make it for another day, until we get to another meal.

We do all kinds of things in here about this. Agriculture is 21 percent of my State's economy, but it is all of America's economy--a lot of it. Most importantly, it is what we all have to do--to eat three times a day. There is only 90 days' worth of food supply available at any one given point in time in the world. I mean, as food grows, you consume it, and you replant and you grow again.

We have a number of people from east coast to west and from north of the northern border and west of the west border who are in pineapples or

pecans or peanuts or whatever--cotton--and who need some relief that they have earned and need.

What is happening is that we have had multiple attempts in the last 5 months to pass a disaster relief package. It will be offered as an amendment that basically Senator Perdue and I have offered as well in the past. It just takes those people in our country who have been hurt, who are eligible for programs that exist in the law, and gets that money out the door. For some of us, if we don't get it done in the next 2 weeks, it is just not going to get done. We have farmers who will go out of business.

You know, everybody says all farmers are all rich. Well, they are dirt poor. That is what they are. I was a real estate guy. I know how you do that. You make a great balance sheet on the value of the real estate, but all of a sudden, if you lose the value of the real estate and you don't have anything to offset the liability that you created to buy the real estate, you get in trouble. We have a lot of that in Georgia, a lot of it in Alabama, a lot of it in California because of the fire, and a lot of other places.

We need to get it straight, and the best thing we can do is to get these farmers in a position where they know this year, if they get their money in time to plant, they can make the money they need to pay the bank back rather than tell the government to give them a check for a disaster.

So we are not only talking about helping the farmer. We are talking about helping us. Every time we get the farmer back on his or her feet in order to go back into production, planting, and doing their job, then, they will produce income for that, and they will pay these loans off. Yes, they are not going to be as rich as they were before, but they will not be out of business. Some of these farms are 200 years or more in the family--post-Civil War farms. There are lots of people in our State who are just dying because of what happened.

Our cotton crop was killed. It was probably the best. We think it was going to be the best crop we ever had because the week before the storm started hitting, we did some picking, but then the storms came through, and in 1 day, one hurricane wiped out the cotton in Georgia.

It took out about 70 percent of the pecan trees in Georgia. It took out our blueberries--yes, blueberries. Everybody says Michigan produces the most blueberries, or Maine does. No, they don't. Georgia does. Agriculture is an entrepreneurial business in our State, but it takes the ability to raise the money to plant it, produce it, sell it, take the crop to market, and reinvest it. We are not talking about people getting rich. We are talking about people taking the risk of doing business like you have always done business.

So I am going to talk about this amendment for just a second. It is so important. There is some misinformation out there. Leader Schumer obliquely referred to a whole lot of misinformation. I am going to correct one of them that he said in just a minute.

It is important to know what we are doing tomorrow. We are going to tell Renee Moss, Greg Mims, and Casey Cox--these families right here-- that help is on the way for their cotton, their pecans, their peanuts, and their farms. It is help not to give them a handout but to give them a hand up and tell their bankers that we are going to stick with them so they can work overtime to make the money back to pay the bank back and also pay us back. That is what we ought to do, and that is what we should do, but if we don't do it before the month is over, we are dead.

As many of you know in here, the SNAP money ends this month. The SNAP money fix is in this. You are not going to have student nutrition programs if you don't get it added into the legislation and get it passed. They run out, technically, on March 31, and we have 14 days until that is passed, which will be April 14, to finally restore it. We have to restore it as fast as we can. We have to get it done. This bill does that.

Let me tell you what the bill does. You heard about Puerto Rico. I love Puerto Rico. When I was in the Air Force, we did field trainings at Ramey Air Force Base. I was a load master. We did runs down there to the east coast all the time. I love the people down there. I love the food down there. I love the beaches down here and the great folks. They have already gotten a number of millions of dollars that they talked about in a speech today. They want $600 million that were now approved in this bill. Now, $600 million is a lot of money.

They already got $40 billion and haven't spent all of that. We need to make sure everybody gets their fair share for the disasters that took place and does not take the disaster money and use it as a payoff somewhere down the line.

Puerto Rico should be helped, but the rest of the country shouldn't be held hostage because of Puerto Rico. We have Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina with hurricane damage, California with the wildfires, Alaska with the earthquake, Hawaii with the volcanoes, and also include $600 million for Puerto Rico. There is no money for CDBG, like some of them wanted, but the rest of the money for the SNAP program. That is what their votes are going to be about.

The Democrats are going to say, just as Mr. Schumer did--he was for this a while back. I don't know what happened. I guess he got upset about something; I don't know what it is. This says we are going to take care of people who had disasters that they didn't want and lost lots of money they couldn't afford to lose. They are going to go out of business, which we don't want them to do. It is going to compound their problems in their States.

I know the Senator from Arkansas, the Presiding Officer, knows exactly what I am talking about. Rice is the main product in Arkansas, as well as other agricultural products. It is key to their economy. So we have to get them safe while we can.

It is about those crops. It is about their insurance. It is also about their economy. I wanted to bring this up. It is about global warming. It is about climate change. It is about a lot of things we don't ever brag about around this place. I am going to brag about it simply because people think these things are about one simple subject.

This is a report out of the Appropriations subcommittee that does a number of things to fix things that are broken, things that people around here talk a lot about wanting to do, things like $20 million for the CDC to continue its research on epidemics, which saved us with Ebola when it hit us a couple of years ago, and it will save us again with measles. We are on the cusp of an outbreak of measles--an outbreak like we have never seen before. It is not there yet, and I don't want somebody to run out and say: He said it is there. But it is coming if we don't react to it or respond to it. It is critical that we do and see to it that we do it as fast as possible.

It is about $600 million for Puerto Rico.

It is about emergency forest restoration programs where our forests have been destroyed by storms.

It is about nutrition assistance for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a province of the United States of America where people are starving right now and going into malnutrition.

It is about American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and market facilitation programs for AGI waivers.

It is about the economic development assistance programs that are not working right now because they are not funded, and if we don't get them funded, they are not going to work for the betterment of our economy.

It is about $200 million to repair the damage caused by Hurricane Florence to Marine Corps installations at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. I think you and I agree that the Marine Corps is very important. You might say, what emergency do they have? They were wiped out by the storm. If we don't rebuild these things as quickly as possible, we will have our marines without a place to bivouac, a place to sleep or a place to eat. We don't want that to happen.

That is what this is about. It is not about giving out perk money; it is about absolute essentials to the defense of our country, the food of our country, et cetera.

So I want to appeal to Senator Schumer. I listened to his remarks. Now, unfortunately, the Senator from Vermont has come. He didn't know I

was talking, I guess. I will talk about him a little bit too. Mr. Leahy is a fine gentleman and a great friend of mine, but he has kind of let me down on this one. I want to talk about that. I am hoping maybe I can change his mind and maybe yours as well, Mr. President. We don't have a second chance at this. We had two chances that didn't make it. We voluntarily got off the other bills because we didn't have enough money to get on them, so we had to get something else passed. One of them was restoring the cuts before the shutdown--which, by the way, we got off of the shutdown vote to allow this to pass so we could cut out one of the arguments. I wanted to throw that in as well.

I see he is leaving already. He didn't want to hear what I had to say. He told me--and I will try to phrase this correctly--he told me: I have always voted for emergency money.

I have always voted for emergency money, too, for Yankees, for southerners, westerners, and northerners, because when we have an emergency in this country, it is America's emergency; it is not just an emergency for one region.

We don't want to bleed ourselves to death or wastefully spend this money, but by golly, if we become a country where we cannot depend on ourselves to help ourselves when times are tough--I don't know.

Senator Romney and I talked before this a little bit ago about how we really ought to have a sinking fund and create a funding source that over time can accumulate money as a hedge against future disasters. We know we are going to have them; we always do. We know they are going to come; they always do. At least have more money in the bank to be prepared for them so we don't get into political battles like we are in now where we have tangential issues that we are debating all because of the amendment, et cetera.

So with the senior Senator from Vermont on the floor, I am going to cut some of my remarks short so he will have plenty of time to say whatever he has to say, but I want him to hear what I have to say.

This is about Puerto Rico. They are getting $600 million, and they have already gotten some money. They aren't going to get everything they want, but they are getting everything they should get out of this particular bill, including SNAP.

The farmers in the South are going to get a chance to replant, a chance to borrow, and a chance to make the money to pay back over time. Otherwise, it is going to be on our backs anyway, so if we don't help them, we are going to be stuck. It is about doing the right thing at the right time for the right people. The right thing is to restore the commonsense bills we have passed that will allow them to farm or whatever it is they do. That is No. 1.

No. 2, we need to do it without arguing about regions or people or what they do. We ought to do it as American citizens supporting other American citizens and what they do for their livelihood, and they pay their taxes because of that.

Lastly, there are times when we have great debates over things that are political in nature or funny in nature. I am serious as a heart attack about this. I told Mitch McConnell, who was mentioned by Senator Schumer a minute ago, I told Mitch--I said: I can't go home this weekend and tell them the same thing I told them the last four weekends. I have to tell them we got the job done for them, or we are going to fail them.

I don't want to fail them. I want to vote for the amendment tomorrow that Senator Shelby offered. If it loses, I am going to vote for the one the Democrats will offer, which will give us a chance to get something back in the conference committee. If both of those lose, we may as well go home. We will wake up one day in the next few months and say: What did we do? Why did we do that? We lost our perspective.

It is not just about Georgia; it is about America. It is not just about farming; it is about a lot of things. It is time for us to do what is right, what we should have done on the two bills before--that we approved. Let's make it happen the way we have always done, and let's do the right thing at the right time for the right people, for the citizens of the United States for America.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object and I will yield to the Senator from Alabama.

I want everybody to listen closely. Senator, please listen to me closely. You are a great friend. I love you to death. But do you know what you just did? When you read off the States that deserved money and ought to get it, and you read them one by one, you left out one-- Georgia. That is why I am down here.

I am not saying it to be ugly. Facts are facts, and I am scared that a Freudian slip--which I am sure that probably was or something like that--might be something that causes us to get lost again. No. 1, I want to point out that in your own remarks, from your own memory or from your own notes, that is exactly what was said.

Absolutely.

I don't want to cut anybody out, but I want to make that point.

I yield to Senator Shelby.

Mr. President, 4 years ago, about this time of the night on a Monday, I made a speech about Woody Woodside. Four years later, I make another speech about Woody Woodside.

Four years ago, I acknowledged his 30 years of service to the people of Brunswick, GA, Glynn County, the Chamber of Commerce, and two Members of Congress for whom he worked over the years. Tonight, I praise him for 34 years of service and for the fact that he is going to retire later this year.

It is time for me to say that Woody Woodside is one of the most unique individuals who all of us know in our State. He is someone who is always there when there is a problem to be worked on. He is always there with a positive attitude. He is somebody who always thinks of a way to fix a problem. He is somebody who doesn't call to complain but calls to be a help.

Woody is a great man. He is a great friend. I have known him and his beautiful wife, Ellen, for a long time. They have a beautiful family. Their daughter, Mary Gould, is a wonderful lady. They lost their young son, Jay, a few years ago when he passed away. He was one of the finest kids I ever met. He worked here in Washington a couple of times. Once, he worked a short time for me. He had the spirit that his father has and his mother has--the spirit of can-do, the spirit of loving his community, the spirit of being a good human being.

Woody is interesting, and he is unique. He went to the Citadel and served in the U.S. Army and Georgia Army National Guard. Woody did a lot of work in Congress. He worked for 11 years for ``Bo'' Ginn, a Congressman from Georgia, who later ran for the Governor of Georgia. For 3 years, he also worked for Lindsay Thomas, another former Congressman. So he had 14 years of work in the Congress of the United States before he went home to Brunswick and Golden Isles.

The Brunswick Golden Isles is a very unique place. You have the Sea Island Company that developed Sea Island, which is one of the finest four-star resorts anywhere. You have fishing, which is an industry that serves our State so well. We only have 123 miles of shoreline, but we have lots of fish, we have lots of crabs, and we have lots of shrimp. It is a great industry for our State and a great, prosperous industry for that part of our State. The Golden Isles is a very unique place, for it is the estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. It is where the food chain starts. If there were no Brunswick and if there were no marshes or glens, there would be no food chain; there would be no fish or wildlife.

This is a pristine area that we have worked for years to preserve and maintain by passing wetlands bills, by passing clean water bills, by doing all of the things you need to do to make sure you are doing everything you can to keep the water clean and to keep that industry viable. Woody was not just a chamber leader because he had to do it, but as a citizen, he wanted to do it. Woody is a leader and has been a leader for clean water and for the coastline to be clean and for the industries that depend on the ocean and the sea and for that part of our State.

We have a lot of chamber presidents in our State. We have 159 counties, so I imagine we have 159 chamber presidents. That is a lot. We have no one who is more active or more involved in his State activities or his local activities than Woody Woodside. Of our State chamber of commerce, he has been an officer and adviser for years. He has been on more economic development councils than have most Governors. He is outspoken, not to a fault but to a critical need when we need him to say what he needs to say for all of the right reasons. For years, he has been selected as one of the most outstanding Georgians by Georgia Trend magazine.

All in all, he is the whole package. He is outstanding; he is smart; he is likable; he loves government and what government can do as a partner with the private sector. I love him as a friend. So, in knowing that Woody is going to retire this year, I take this time to say: Woody, you have been special for lots of reasons.

I do lots of these at the requests of chambers of commerce for people I know, in some cases, but for whom, most of the time, I don't know. They are hard to do. It is hard to find something that is the right thing to say about somebody you don't know. I know Woody Woodside. I know his heart and I know his record and I know what he has done.

Woody, you have been everything a person could ask for. You and your wife are everything we could ask for as leaders. You are a wonderful human being, a great American, and a great Georgian.

May God bless you and your family in your retirement. Thank you for your service to our State for many, many years.

I yield the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. I rise for a moment to talk about a vote we will have tomorrow in this Chamber on a motion to adopt an amendment to the supplemental appropriations passed by the House, and it is a disaster amendment dealing with the States that have been afflicted by disasters over the last 2 years--most of them southern States, but not all. Some include the Territory of Puerto Rico.

I am going to go over the details in a second, but first of all, some of you may see floating around this memorandum from the chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the House and the vice chairman in the Senate. It talks about an agreement that was on the disaster money and refers to Puerto Rico being shortchanged and the fact that we need to make sure that that doesn't happen. I want to give you the facts.

Georgia, which I represent, is one of a number of States that includes Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alaska, California, and Hawaii, which have experienced significant disasters in the past 2 years. We saw the fires in California on our TVs. We saw the volcanos in Hawaii. We saw the blueberries in Georgia fall off the vines and be destroyed. We saw what happened to these crops and Alaska's earthquake. All of these States have received nothing yet.

Puerto Rico has received $40 billion--$40 billion for what happened in Maria, and $21 billion has not been spent. They have gotten a lot of money, $40 billion, and the amendment I want to talk about in a second gives them $600 million more.

There are a lot of places in this country that are States that we represent that have gotten nothing and have had big disasters in the last 2 years. These disasters are hurting our economy, our people, and our States.

So I want to--any of you to see this email or this flyer tomorrow or hear the debate tomorrow. What it says, the flyer says that the vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Leahy, is going to object to the substitute that will be offered by Senator Perdue and myself tomorrow to the bill that will be debated unless Puerto Rico gets a better shake. The point, Puerto Rico has gotten 40, only spent 19, they have got $21 billion left to spend. We have $600 million to see to it that they don't run out of SNAP money at the end of this month, which they will with everything that stands currently. Puerto Rico is being treated great. Is there CDBG money they want? No, it is not in there.

``Fair'' is an interesting word. Fair is when you and I are treated fairly. We both get equal proportions, for money and things of that nature. Unfair is when somebody weights the formula--or someone takes undue advantage of a special situation.

Well, this is a special situation. A lot of people are going to go without help by the end of next month. Farm bills are going to come due, and banks are going to foreclose on them. A lot of people in agriculture will be hurt badly. People who have been hurt by the fires in California will not be helped. Those who expressed help for earthquake damage in Alaska will not be helped. A lot of people will not be helped.

We need to put off this guise of fairness and be really fair. Let's see that we put in the $600 million, which the amendment does and see to it that people on SNAP in Puerto Rico get their money. Let's see to it that those people in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina and other States damaged by floods, hurricanes, or fires get their money.

There will be more emergencies, and we all know that. We all hate emergencies for a lot of reasons--appropriators, especially. Nobody wants to have to do that, but when our State, your State or mine, is injured dramatically in a disastrous hurricane or tornado or whatever, we as a country have always passionately dealt with the results of those storms, the losses those States have felt, and helped those States get back on their feet and those people be served.

We are not asking for a handout; we are asking for a hand up in each of those States, and they have been waiting for a long time. Those who know what I am talking about, who is from Georgia, we have farmers who have gone through a cycle and their farm financing was done through banks that, at the end of this month, will have to act on those loans and call them for payment or have a refinance schedule knowing that they got some money coming down the line. If this passes and is agreed to by the House and the banks get the message that we are trying to help them like we have always had in the past, they will have a chance to make the negotiations, pay the money back that they borrowed, and do it over time and give people jobs in the field rather than go back and tell them we can't give them money and help them and lose the farm and business and us lose a lot of jobs.

It is just not right, and it is not fair. I used the word ``fair'' just then because I think fair is the definition of

seeing to it that Puerto Rico, Georgia, and South Carolina get help.

If you get this argument, read it. It sounds like we agreed to something 3 weeks ago, and now, all of a sudden, we are not agreeing to the same thing. That is not true. We agreed last week when we left what this vote would be tomorrow, what the supplemental will look like, what would be included in it, and as I understood it and my sense of understanding, we agreed to all the things. Was there enough money for Puerto Rico for what they wanted? No, they wanted more. Would Florida like more? Would Georgia like more? North Carolina like more? Yes. But in fairness of equity, it is fair and equitable to those people.

I would urge you to listen to the debate and what everybody tells you what happened before you make a decision and everyone gets hurt. Instead what you are going to do, if you fall for this scenario, you are going to really hurt some people who will otherwise be helped through deliberations that have taken over the part of the last 2 or 3 months.

Mr. President, I appreciate the time and the time to come here. I wish I could talk about something other than disasters, but I can't. A lot of people lost their lives and farms and their future. I want to see that we help in an equitable fashion in those States and those Territories that we do so.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I will be very brief for the Senator from Delaware so I am not taking up too much time.

I am here to do something very special. One of the great things we get to do is to pay tribute to people who do great things in our State. We don't brag about journalists as much as we should. They think we are saying bad things about them, but they are great. They make the country better. The fact that we have an accountable media makes us all great. There are superstars within the media who deserve acknowledgment, particularly when they retire from the job. In Georgia, that has been the case.

Dick Williams, in Atlanta, GA, announced on Sunday that after 53 years in print, television, and radio journalism, he is going to retire. Dick has covered me over many years. He has been known as a conservative columnist, but he has gone after me as many times as he has been for me. He plays it straight down the middle unless it has to do with basketball--and he loves basketball. He has been chosen to referee in the conference championship for the State's high schools and has been a great sportsman for Georgetown University, for which he recruits athletes. He himself went to Georgetown.

Rebecca, his wife, was in the Georgia House as a reporter when I was in the Georgia House years ago. She is a talented house person who went on to ABC. She and Dick got married, and they have two children. They live in Brookhaven, GA, which is a new city that was created by the Georgia Legislature to allow independence for a lot of our cities that had been trapped inside the metro area.

His wife has been a reporter of journalism, and Dick has been a reporter of journalism. Then Dick bought the Dunwoody Crier. The Dunwoody Crier is one of those weekly publications--neighborhood newspapers--that everybody loves because it has their kids' pictures in it, because you can get a story about your wedding in there, and because Dick also writes in there some poignant columns that one would never read anywhere else.

When he wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he wrote for a newspaper that was owned by Eugene Patterson, by Ralph McGill, and by many talented writers. He was in the same category of spokesman and writer as those two gentlemen, who were giants, with McGill's having won a Pulitzer Prize.

Dick is one of the most favorite people I have ever known who reported on politics because he was always doing it for the right reasons. There are projects that have happened in our State today because Dick Williams took the power of the press not to trash something but to build up the facts that allowed it to pass. A lot of times, that doesn't happen, but when Dick saw a good deal, he would go for it, and when he saw a bad deal, he would go for it. Either way, you could take his word for it all the time because he was what is known in the profession as a straight shooter.

Dick Williams is a very special individual to me and my family. He did 1,700 shows called ``The Georgia Gang.'' Every Sunday, at 8:30 in the morning, for 30 minutes, every politician in Georgia watches channel 5 in Atlanta because that is ``The Georgia Gang.'' If you make it by that, your week is going to be pretty good because they haven't skewered you for something stupid that you did, but if you don't make it by that, you are going to have a tough week.

Dick Williams is the kind of journalist all of us love--accurate, articulate, smart, and caring about what he

does and the effect it may have. It is a real pleasure for me to stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate and say, Dick, thank you for the 1,700 great 30-minute shows you have done in your past. Thank you for all of the straight calls you made on the basketball court. Thank you for marrying Rebecca, who is a wonderful woman. Thank you for welcoming Lori Geary as your replacement every Sunday morning at 8:30. I now know, when I get up on Sundays, I will be going to church not with Dick Williams but with Lori Geary.

God bless you, Dick. Thanks for your contribution to Georgia.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 60 seconds.

Madam President, I just want to say to the gentleman from Ohio that I have been to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I went there with John Lewis. John Lewis is a great American. I supported title V and the Civil Rights Act. So I appreciate your remarks and your candidness, but all of us should not castigate all the rest of us and throw us in groups because all of us are free thinkers, independent thinkers, and are committed to the betterment of the United States of America and seeing to it that everybody has a vote who deserves a vote, and I will always fight for that.

I yield the floor.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. President, today I am proud to recognize in the Record the American Legion's director of the national legislative division, Matthew Shuman, who has a long record of service to our Nation's veterans.

Mr. Shuman has not only dedicated his career to serving veterans, he is a veteran himself. He served in the U.S. Army from 2008 to 2012, most notably as a military police officer. Mr. Shuman concluded his military career serving on the Arizona Army National Guard Honor Guard, providing military funeral honors for our Nation's fallen soldiers.

Mr. Shuman began serving veterans with the American Legion in 2015, starting as an assistant legislative director with the veterans employment and education portfolio in Washington, DC. In his current role as director of the national legislative division, Mr. Shuman is the chief advocate for the 2-million-member organization, working with Federal agencies, the White House, and the media to share what the American Legion is doing in Congress on behalf of the 20 million American veterans.

During his time with the American Legion, Mr. Shuman had a role in the creation and passage of significant legislation impacting America's veterans. These include the VA MISSION Act, the VA Appeals Modernization Act, the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, and The American Legion 100th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act. These efforts have contributed to improving the quality of life and strengthening healthcare and benefits for servicemembers, veterans, and their families.

Today I am honored to pay tribute to Mr. Shuman for his service to our country and his steadfast commitment to advocating on behalf of veterans throughout his career. Congratulations to Mr. Shuman on his lasting legacy of advocacy for veterans, and I wish him the best in his future endeavors.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for 2 minutes.

Mr. President, I am from Georgia. Last night in Georgia, Alabama, and throughout the Southeast, one of the worst tornadoes went through that has ever gone through in history.

Twenty-three Alabamians were killed last night; a number of homes in Georgia were wiped out and ruined. I don't think we had a death, but they had 23 in Alabama. The tragedies we are having in the Southeast continue to rise.

In a few weeks, we are going to ask the Senate to pass a disaster bill to reinstate some of the agricultural money for the last 2 years for our pecan crop, our blueberry crop, and others.

On behalf of the people of Georgia, I just want to say that we are having a tough time. Our agricultural community is in the most difficult time it could possibly be. We are going to ask the Senate to work with us to find appropriations that would make sense to bring back those pecan and blueberry farmers in Georgia, Alabama, and

South Carolina and to deal with the agricultural emergency we have had.

We also say a prayer of thanksgiving for the great opportunity we have to live in the Southeast but also recognize that we are now ground zero for tornadoes and those types of death-defying acts that are taking place. We want all of the people in Georgia and Alabama to know that our prayers go out to them. We will do everything we can to make them right.

Thank you.

I yield back my time.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of our time and call the previous question.

Mr. President, to the Democratic leader and Bruce, who is on the floor, congratulations on behalf of all the Republicans in the room.

Come down to Atlanta and watch the Braves play the Mets. We would be happy to have you anytime. Thank you for your time here.

Madam President, in accordance with rule XXVI, paragraph 2 of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent, for myself as chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics and for Senator Christopher A. Coons, vice chairman of the committee, that the rules of procedure of the Select Committee on Ethics, which were adopted February 23, 1978, and revised November 1999, be printed in the Record for the 116th Congress.

Mr. President, the Committee on Veterans' Affairs has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 116th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, on behalf of myself and Senator Tester, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the Committee rules be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent, for myself as chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics and for Senator Christopher A. Coons, vice chairman of the committee, that the annual report for the Select Committee on Ethics for calendar year 2018 be printed in the Record. The committee issues this report today, January 29, 2019, as required by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.

Mr. President, all Democrats and Republicans, pay close attention.

I have been here for 20 years, and I have seen a lot of shutdowns-- about five of them. I want to talk about what they have produced.

The first one with Bill Clinton produced Monica Lewinsky. That is how they got into all the trouble--because she was an intern at the White House. Idle hands are never good.

For us, Newt Gingrich lost his job in the same shutdown. He lost his job because he lost six votes in the House and couldn't get reelected as Speaker. I had to replace him. I am kind of glad that happened, but it is still not a good reason to have a shutdown.

A few years later, great Senators--John McCain being one of them and Ted Kennedy being another--worked their fingers to the bone and came up with a great immigration bill that I was a part of in my first term in the Senate. We got castigated and ruined because, all of a sudden, ``amnesty'' became a four-letter word, and political consultants found it to be kind of an easy way to run against people in the party.

For 15 years, we have been beating each other over something that ought to be easy to do, which is to change for the better. A lot of people think Congress's job is for us to come to Washington and change things for the better. When it comes to immigration, all we ever change is the subject. We never end the debate, and we never pass a result. Oftentimes, we call each other names for the wrong reason.

I am here for one reason--to thank my colleagues who are on the floor. To all of the others who are ready to do some business, I am ready to do some business. It is time we put the workers in our government back to work. It is time we did what we promised the people in the United States of America we would do. And it is time we went to work because when everybody is out of work, it is our fault. They are the people who carry the mail, who empty the garbage, who cook in the cafeteria, who clean up the parks, and they do everything without complaining whatsoever. They are out there--many of them--not even being paid right now while we are sitting here, debating a subject that we can't reach a solution on--period.

We need to take our armor off, leave our weapons at the door, walk in the room, and shake hands.

We need to grab Ben Cardin's hand and say: Ben, thank you for making an effort as a Democrat.

Lisa, thank you, as a Republican, for supporting it.

Let's sit down, and let's pass a bill we can all agree on that gets Americans back to work and restores the spirit of Ellis Island and the pride of the United States of America.

I yield back.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Washington very much for her courtesy. I will be brief, and I will be very succinct. In fact, I will be responding to some of the things that Senator Schatz from Hawaii and others have said on the floor.

I am going to respond to myself. I made a speech here only yesterday, about 2:30, in which I talked about the frustration that I have and that most Georgians have with the fact that the government is shut down, and I talked about who is losing.

We are losing. The government loses more money when it shuts down than it makes any other time. Shutting down is a losing proposition all the way around, and we are exemplifying the best way to lose because we are not doing anything to solve the problem.

I have a solution I am going to propose, specifically, right now. I am not going to put my name on it to be the lead name. I don't care who gets the credit. I am ready for some solutions. I am going to talk about some very serious things right now and some very difficult things, but we are in a serious, difficult problem. We have serious problems, and we need serious people to solve them.

In the United States today, at our ports, our airports, and our highways--every way you can cross the border to come into the United States of America--we charge fees for all kinds of things, and we have for years. We have trust funds, like Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund and things like that. People come across our borders all the time. In Smuggler's Gulch in San Diego, they come in on an eight-lane highway, flooding into America in the morning to go to work and flooding out of America in the afternoon to go home to bed, and we charge for that.

A constituent of mine called me last night, a gentleman I know very well, who is a very successful businessperson. He said: Johnny, you all are fighting over this border wall or how you fund it or who gets credit for it. I saw your speech. Have you ever thought of this?

I listened. I listened, I thought, and I said: You know, I haven't.

I got my staff to get me the information, and it all works. It makes sense, and I think it would make sense to the American people. I think it would make sense to the President of the United States, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party as well. If we all start tonight, even, and decide whether we want to sign it or not, we can do it together. Who gets the credit for it stops, and we fight over something that makes more sense fighting over than having a border that leaks and an immigration program that doesn't work.

Here is the idea. We establish a fee in the United States of America through our ports, through our airports, through all the different ways you come here. You create a trust fund for that money to go into, and it is designated for the security of our borders--our Canadian border and our Mexican border.

That is it. They charge. Someone entering the country pays. If it is a bus that comes in 10 times a day, you know they don't pay 10 times the amount that somebody comes in once a day. We will figure that out, but create a mechanism.

If you use the current mechanisms that are being used to collect moneys today in our Departments, we would raise $2.5 billion a year doing that. Did you hear me? $2.5 billion. If we had $2.5 billion, we wouldn't have a problem anymore.

You could argue over what you build. That doesn't matter when we have security. Security is what we want. This Senate and House can get together at the White House, we get in a room, and we say: What do we want to charge? To whom do we want to give the responsibility? What is the goal?

The goal is to secure the border--a mechanism to fund securing the border--and to get off this argument of who is right, whether it is Democrats or Republicans. We are just arguing about something that doesn't matter. What matters is the American people. What matters is how their Representatives are handling their problems. What matters is what you and I are doing to get this whole argument that is going on and put it aside.

I am here to tell you, I am throwing an idea out that I think is a good idea. A very smart man gave it to me. I didn't think of it. I thought about it all last night. I couldn't think of anything wrong with it. I am sure somebody will be able to come up with something that is wrong with it.

It pays for it. We decide where the money goes, and it goes for security. We don't argue over what type of security because that is not the issue. The issue is we want it secure.

What we have had is that we have had a couple of leaders who argued about how you secure it, not whether or not you can secure it. You can always argue about how. I like pink better than purple, but I don't let that stop me from buying a black shirt if it is the only shirt I can get.

It is time we decide what it is we want. We want security. We want to put the government back to work. We want the American people to get the benefits they deserve, and we want a mechanism to do it--that is, a simple mechanism to do it. We already do it everywhere. We do the passenger facility charge.

The distinguished speaker sitting in the Chair today knows that. He flies here every week and pays $7.50, I think, per ticket here and per ticket out. It pays for the security of airports. We do this all over the place. Let's do it here.

When you ask anybody what is probably the biggest problem in America, they say the biggest problem is that the American Senate and the American

House will not sit down and get the work done.

After that, we haven't even opened the door to see if we can find a solution. This opens the door to a solution. I am telling you, as a representative from the State of Georgia, representing 10.5 million people in this Senate, we can solve our problem today--not tomorrow, but today--with the action of our Finance Committee and our leadership and the President of the United States, by not deciding who gets credit or who gets blame but deciding it is time enough for funding games to be over with. It is time for us to get down to business.

We all took an oath a few months ago when we were sworn in, saying that is what we wanted to do, and now we are avoiding it every single day.

I will not take any more time. I know the Senator from Texas is here, and the lovely Senator from Minnesota is here, and they are two very good representatives in the Senate of the United States of America.

Don't forget about this idea. I am going to talk about it a lot. I don't want it to be the Isakson amendment or the Isakson idea. I want it to be our idea, America's idea. I want to fund it with Americans' money, to solve America's borders and get our immigration system solved and get us off of dead center and talking about nothing and mainly down center lane.

I want to end with what Zell Miller told me. Zell was a Senator at one time. He beat me for Governor of Georgia in 1990. In our last debate in that Senate race--it was a pretty good race. I had gotten pretty close. In fact, if my grandchildren had been old enough, it would have almost been won by me, if I could embellish the stories a little more.

At the end of the story, we had a minute each to close our speech. I closed my remarks with a 1-minute statement. I thought it was pretty good. Zell leaned back, with that twang of Zell's and said: You know, ladies and gentlemen, if you see a turtle sitting on a fence post on a country road, there is one thing you know for sure: He did not get there by himself.

I know for sure right now we are going nowhere because we are not talking about the problem. I know for sure that it is time for us to do the simple thing; that is, to solve it. It is not the hard thing, and that is to think of other reasons why we can't solve it. I, for one, will do everything I can do to let the people I am representing here know I am doing everything I can to get it open. I don't care what we have done. I am not going to call anybody a name. I am not going to do anything like that. I am not going to claim it for my idea. I hope nobody will steal it and claim it for theirs and cause us problems.

Let's just get to work. There is no problem we can't solve that we don't want to, and there is no problem we can solve if we don't want to solve it.

God bless you, Mr. President, for presiding today, and God bless the United States of America.

I yield back the balance of my time.