Floor Statements

If the gentleman would like to finish his remarks, I would be glad to yield for a few minutes.

Madam President, I wasn't going to come over here today--I just got off an airplane a little while ago--but I am here because of what I have been hearing.

What I have been hearing is that we need to be talking about the shutdown and not other subjects. When I met with the TSA agents on my plane flying up here, they said: Why don't you get our work back for us?

We are not even talking about TSA. We are not even talking about the shutdown. We are talking about different opinions at different times and different things that don't really matter in the scheme of things.

I appreciate what the distinguished ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee just said, but quite frankly, last week he was talking about how important it was for us to stay on the shutdown and not do anything else. Now the leader on the minority side says it is important for us to get this Russian gentleman or oligarch--whatever that is--whom we are already punishing, and then we will go back to the shutdown.

My point is this: There is only one thing we need to be doing-- restoring the confidence of the American people in the Senate and the House. They don't have it right now. We haven't given them anything to hang their hat on--not a single thing.

We have been shut down for 23, 24 days. I am not a Johnny-come- lately--pardon the reference--to the issue of shutdowns. I have been in the Senate and House for 20 years. I voted against five shutdowns-- every one I had a chance to. Shutdowns cost the government more money; they don't save the government any money. They don't solve any single problem whatsoever, even when you mask them by only shutting down a little bit of the government, like we are right now. Not much of the government is really shut down--just the part that hurts the smallest income earners from our government. We are doing the wrong thing, punishing the wrong people, and that is just not right.

All the speeches you are going to hear today, including mine, don't matter at all unless we, first of all, get on the shutdown, correct the problem, and find a way to bridge the gap. The President is not moving. The Democrats aren't moving. The majority leader is not moving. We are not doing much. That doesn't solve anything. Somewhere along the line, we have to agree to find a way to do something different that may not be the end deal but the bridge to do an end deal, or else we are all going to look silly.

The truth is, everybody in this negotiation right now is sitting in their office or sitting and talking to some people, having a beer or doing whatever, and saying: How are we going to stick them--meaning the other party--and get this shutdown over before our people drive us crazy?

We are caught in our own trap. Things like what we are debating this afternoon just emanate that.

This oligarch, who has a huge investment in the largest aluminum company in Russia, is being divested of his interest down from 75 percent, I think, to 45 percent.

My home country of Sweden--one of the largest consumers of their product of aluminum and one of the biggest sellers of aluminum to the United States of America--has called me and said: You all are killing us.

We have driven him down from 75 to 45, and we have some more things to do. They are losing their vote. I think their vote is now down to about 25 percent of the board. They have restricted

him every way they can. I am a businessman; I know how you restrict people and tie them down. This deal does that. It doesn't give them anything they don't want--it gives them a lot of what they don't want to have.

So I just want to appeal to everybody listening to this, all of my colleagues--I love all of you. We all play political jokes. We can talk about how the Democrats did this and the Republicans did that. But the fact is, we are not doing a damn thing while the American people are suffering. The TSA agents I talked to in Atlanta today were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. A lot of the guys and ladies are not showing up for work, and there are going to be more of them.

We have the Superbowl coming to Atlanta, GA, in about 3 weeks--the biggest tourism event in the world this year. What if the largest airport in the world that is going to bring all the people to the largest football game in the world goes out of business because of the TSA strike? You will have just cost millions of dollars for the United States of America, for my home city--the city of Atlanta--and others. There are thousands of examples just like this.

I have had three people from my State call me. A convention is coming up in one of our cities, and this shutdown is going to hurt the ability to bring that here. We are going to lose the revenue we would normally get from that. So we need to think about what we are doing. We are not winning any points with anything.

A lady who was waiting with me to get on the plane just laughed when I gave my answer to the TSA agent. I turned to her and almost asked: Why are you laughing? I said: You know, I understand why you are laughing because I can't explain it either.

We need to understand what we are doing and why we are doing it. What we are doing doesn't make any sense. What does make sense is resolving to go out and solve the problem. Senator Schumer, Senator McConnell, Senator Crapo, and I--and all of us--should get together in a room and give the press something to really write about--of our having a meeting of 100 people who caused the problem and saying: Let's find a way to solve the problem or to at least agree to get us back to business, to at least agree to not affect the lowest income people on our payroll, because the higher income people aren't suffering. Let's get the work done. Let's get it worked out. Let's not call it a Republican shutdown or a Democratic shutdown. It is an American shutdown.

I see that Senator Schumer is coming. I don't usually get this riled up, Chuck. I apologize because I am riled up a little bit.

It is just silly. I used to be able to explain anything. I was a pretty good real estate salesman for a long time. I could close a deal. I can't close this one. I had to three or four times on that Delta plane today, as I came up here, and I couldn't do it. When I listened to the answers I was giving these people--good, old American citizens-- as to why we can't get the government open, I thought, if I were they, I would not vote for me either.

So let's get to work. Let's stop blaming everybody else. Let's put the blame where it belongs--on all of our shoulders collectively. Let's do what we elected officials were elected to do, and let's make a deal.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I will follow up on the Senator's points.

We need to do what we did last year when Republicans and Democrats stayed up here for 2 weeks while the government was shut down. We worked out an immigration agreement, and we got the DACA situation fixed. The President came out for a large number of DACA improvements. We almost got there. We fell short, I think, by six votes. The leader and I were on the same side, and a lot of us in here, from both parties, were on the same side. Those are the types of answers we need. We need to push to get that done.

Madam President, today I am honored to recognize in the Record Albert M. Hodge, Jr., of Rome, GA.

Al Hodge is an economic development leader whom I have known for more than three decades, dating back to his work as chief executive officer of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce in South Carolina in the 1980s. We have worked together in business, when I was in the State legislature and chairman of the State board of education, and still today in our current roles.

Al is a fellow University of Georgia bulldog, who led the Charleston chamber for 8 years, the Augusta chamber in Georgia for 8 years, and now the Rome Floyd Chamber of Commerce in northwest Georgia for what will be 21 years when he retires from the chamber business this April.

Al is not one to take credit, but his professional accomplishments tell a lot of his story not only in these communities, but also across multiple States and even internationally.

Al is the current vice chair of the Japan America Society of Georgia and, along with me, a member of the Society of International Business Fellows. He graduated from Leadership Georgia a few years after me, and he has always remained active with the organization. Al also served as a member and as vice chair of the Georgia Board of Education and multiple other education-focused boards. He is a past chairman and a current board member of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. Al has also served as chair of Georgia's economic development professional association, the State's chamber of commerce professional association, and he has taught economic development at the U.S. Army War College, internationally with our alma mater, and other organizations.

Al is an expert in his field. He understands the countless factors that play into successful economic development, he builds coalitions to mount successful campaigns, and his work has paid off time and again.

Rome is a great community, with many leaders and good friends of mine, but in large part thanks to Al's personal investment of time and energy into his role, the community has gained more than $1.2 billion in direct investments by primary employers and the creation and retention of over 7,000 new primary jobs, not counting commercial, service, and other jobs, during his time there.

Al was an instrumental member of the coalition that built State Mutual Stadium and brought the Braves organization's Class-A ball club to the community in 2003, the Rome Braves. Thanks to his leadership, the community passed not only the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax--SPLOST--but also more of these initiatives over the years to benefit the community's schools, roads, airport and countless other services. Most recently, he guided development of the Rome Tennis Center at Berry College, the Nation's largest single-surface facility, with 60 courts across 30 acres.

While Al has led the chamber, the community has seen the location of major headquarters and manufacturing investments, including Pirelli Tire North America, Suzuki Manufacturing of America, Neaton Auto Products Manufacturing, and a major Lowe's distribution center.

In addition to my visits to Rome and seeing him in the State, I have spent time with Al and the Rome chamber at least once a year in Washington, and I have spent the last 15 years working with his daughter as a member of my staff. Of all his professional accomplishments, it is Al's family, friends, and colleagues whom he truly cherishes and champions.

Al is a great guy, and I want to wish Al and his talented wife Cheryl Riner Hodge--who has been a true partner to Al, in addition to her own career as an artist--the very best as he retires from the chamber. I also look forward to the Hodges' continued success in economic development as they go on to launch the next phase of their lives and careers. Many more will benefit from their continued efforts in this field.

Mr. President, I rise for a couple of moments in morning business to pay tribute to the Senate and what we have done this past year. We think we are easing towards going home. We think we are easing towards finishing the year, and everybody is excited about that. We have talked about a lot of things we haven't done. Let's talk about what we have done, because I think this has been the most successful time I have had in Washington for 20 years.

As chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, we have had the best success we have ever had for the most important people in the country we love--our military in the United States of

America. I want everybody to remember four things to take home that you have done to see to it that our men and women who fight for us and keep us safe get treated the way they should every day.

No. 1 is the VA MISSION Act.

After a number of years, when we started moving towards a way to get better appointments, better timing, and better results for our veterans, we finally came together with the VA MISSION Act. We saw to it that if a veteran needed health needs met, he got them when he needed them, not when it was convenient for him to get them. If the VA couldn't provide them, the private sector could. He could go to the private sector. We have done everything we can to expand accessibility to quality healthcare. Our vets are the most important assets we have.

The second is the accountability bill. For a lot of years, we saw on the front pages of the newspapers that the VA had done stupid things and that a lot of VA employees had done stupid things. The way they got corrected--the way they got punished--was to be transferred to another VA office. We finally passed a bill whereby if you don't do your job, if you hurt the people you are there to protect--meaning our vets--then you get fired. You have a 10-day appeal, and then you are through. You don't get paid forever. You don't get moved. You don't get switched around. We make sure you have pure accountability. Because of that, the VA is more responsive today than it has ever been.

With that, we had to put in whistleblower protection to allow our vets who find out something is going wrong but who are afraid to say something to have the protection that everybody has with whistleblower laws we have passed.

The third biggest problem we had and the No. 1 headache we have is seeing to it that veterans' benefits are timely and that they get a good appeal. The timeliness in approving veterans' applications for that had gone to as much as a year and a half to 2 years before they had gotten decisions. Now we have better accountability with the improved results we are seeing in giving our veterans their benefits and their approvals in a more timely way. I hope, before I leave the Senate, whenever that will be, we will get it down to almost zero. They don't get the luxury of waiting when they are on the battlefield. They have to pull and fight when they are confronted. So we need to make sure they get that benefit today.

Lastly and most importantly, as we have said, our veterans are our most important people. We now have the Agency focused in the right direction. We have a good Secretary in Secretary Wilkie. We have a good focus in what we are doing, and we have passed the types of acts that are necessary to get a bureaucracy to become a responsible organization. We have seen to it that the benefits we are supposed to protect are not only protected but are delivered as well.

Thank you for the time I have been given to address the Senate. I hope all of us go home and remember that our most important people are our veterans. Also remember what each of you has done in passing these improvements--seeing to it that the GI bill is now permanent for everybody in that there are no more caps on their time; seeing to it that veterans in the Reserves and veterans on Active Duty are treated the same; and seeing to it that we have accountability and benefits for our veterans so no one is left behind and so the United States of America will continue to be the greatest country on the face of this Earth.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, my apologies to those on the floor who wish to speak. We have spoken a couple of times about this on the floor. I want to do it one more time.

I appreciate the motion by the gentleman who had been my ranking member on the committee for 2 years before this current session of the Senate. The blue water Navy has been an issue that has been controversial. It has almost been passed a few times, and it has been defeated a number of times.

Our veterans, today, who served in Vietnam and who have ended up contracting cancer--non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and things like that--do not have the luxury of presumption of cause on their service in Vietnam unless they served on the land. If they served on the land in the battlefield, they get the benefit, but if they served at sea, where most of this napalm and all of the other agents were delivered--on those ships--they don't have that benefit.

The VA bifurcated a benefit of healthcare to our veterans--many of whom contracted cancer and many of whom have died--and said: If you are on the land, you get it. If you are on the sea, we will not let you have it.

It is the wrong thing to do. No veteran who served on the land is more important or less important than the one who served at sea. We have a chance to do this, and we ought to do it. I am going to vote in favor of adopting the motion by the gentleman from Connecticut.

Let me just say one other thing. There is a letter floating around about the cost of this and about the cost estimates we had. We got a new cost estimate yesterday after our having spent years in the committee trying to get a better cost estimate. We got one yesterday that was higher than the day before. I don't know what its credibility is. I am not going to cast aspersions on the credibility of the CBS. Obviously, nothing should surpass a promise we have made for healthcare coverage to our veterans that they are not getting. That is what we owe to them, and I hope everybody will vote to support the blue water Navy benefit with regard to the motion by the Senator from Connecticut.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, knowing that we are in morning business, I would like the recording folks to divide my remarks in two separate places at the appropriate time in the Record.

I am here to do something every Senator does at one time or another in their career, and that is pay tribute to another politician, one back in my home State of Georgia who is retiring at the end of this year after serving two terms as Governor of the State of Georgia.

I am going to say great things about him because he is a great guy, he is a personal friend, and he has done a wonderful job, but I will tell you what else I am going to do. I am going to do something a little different.

When we elected Nathan Deal in Georgia, we had no idea at the time that it was a three-for-one. When Nathan, his wife, Sandra, and his chief of staff, Chris Riley, came, the three of them were a new A-Team in Georgia. Do you remember the A-Team on television? When you had a real disaster coming and you needed real help, you would call these guys, and they would come in from nowhere and solve your problem. They were tough. They were smart. Well, Nathan is that way too. He is tough, and he is smart. He is also crafty enough to realize that your wife always knows better, and he gave her a role in education in Georgia, and she has improved it a lot.

Chris Riley, his chief of staff and his pilot and a good friend, did a tremendous job and was a great liaison to all of government, whether it was other States or Congress, the Senate and the House.

Nathan has been a great Governor of our State. Georgia is now the No. 1 place in the country to do business. We have been elected I think 6 consecutive years or 6 out of the last 7 years as the best place in America to do business.

Georgia is thought of--by many people who think about it--as ``Gone With the Wind'' and the Old South, but Georgia is now the 8th largest State in the United States of America, having moved under his administration from 10th to 8th. Our votes in the electoral college are now prized, our role in politics is rising, and our influence in the country is rising--all because of that.

He has also brought new jobs to Georgia--not just repeat jobs or old jobs where we have added on but new jobs. Nathan was smart enough to realize that--when America started investing in cyber technology and when we found out that Fort Gordon, which is in Augusta, GA, was going to be the Cyber Command of the United States of America, our Governor didn't sit there and say ``Isn't that great?'' and go brag about what we were doing in the Federal Government; he established a cyber center in Augusta, GA, and invested $50 million initially to get it started.

Today, there are young people who are starting careers in Georgia in cyber technology, which is going to be a proving ground for jobs in the future, all because of Nathan's realization that if you build it, they will come. And if we built Fort Gordon, which the Federal Government did, and if the Cyber Command represented by the U.S. Army and the Signal Corps is going to be our cyber watchdog, then if we have cyber educational tools, like STEM subjects, in our elementary and high schools in our State, we will be so much better off.

Nathan did something else that very few Governors do--he built on another Governor's success and made it even better. Zell Miller, a former Member of this body and the person I succeeded after he left, created the HOPE Scholarship of Georgia, which everybody has heard about.

In Georgia, most of our kids who enter--from our State--a college go on a full scholarship paid for by the Georgia Lottery. It is called the HOPE Scholarship. Running for Governor on that proposal, Zell beat me, and he made me a big believer.

It has worked great, but Nathan said: You know, that is not good enough. We don't want to just help the top students who have B averages or better; we ought to bring up the bottom students so they have a chance to go and grow and maybe one day go to college. So he created something called REACH. REACH is a program he designed to reach out and bring in those who were not getting the help they should get. It stands for Realizing Educational Achievement Can Happen, and it is scholarships that go to kids who had no chance of having it happen, who subscribed to building themselves up and making themselves better.

Now, in Georgia, we have a lot of kids on the HOPE Scholarship, but 1,800 of those on the REACH Scholarship are kids who would have never been in college under a scholarship otherwise. His wisdom, his knowledge, and his ability to bring that REACH Program together is building future contributors who otherwise might have been future wards of the State.

Ironically, we are now debating the criminal justice system in the Senate. We are going to have some votes later on today on that and big debates about it all day long. We have been talking about both sides of the issue. Are you letting them out too early? Are you not letting them out too early?

Nathan Deal was the originator of reform of the criminal justice system to see to it that those who were getting ready to get out anyway--let me repeat that--those who were getting ready to get out anyway had an opportunity that when they got out, they would have more of an education or better preparedness for work because of the programs created by Governor Deal so that they could volunteer in prison if they wanted to, not just as a bribe for them to study or do something well but to give them a chance and sell them on the promise of a job and a future rather than just being a recidivist on early release.

By doing so, there are some amazing statistics that have happened in our

State in terms of the number of people who have gotten released who are getting jobs who weren't before and the increase in the number of African Americans in prison who are getting out and going to work rather than going back to prison. People he has reached out to in our prison system--we have had a decrease in our population not because we didn't convict them, not because they aren't serving their time, but because those who, when they got out--under the REACH Program and under the other programs we have, they got an education in their last couple years in prison and got out and made something of their lives.

That is the way you do things. It is easy for any of us to take the easy thing to do, but the hard thing to do is something a lot of politicians won't reach out for, but Nathan Deal has.

Something else hard to do is getting kids to read. I have three children and eight grandchildren. I was chairman of the board of education in my State, and I know some kids love to read, but a lot of them hate it. I used to always tell kids: You know, if you can't read, you can't do anything. If you can read, you can do everything.

Nathan's wife, Sandra, who is one of the most wonderful women you could ever possibly hope to meet, dedicated her services as first lady to reading comprehension for kids. In 8 years, she visited 1,000 schools in our 189 school systems and 159 counties. The reading scores in our State have gone up, not down. The focus on reading has gone up in our schools. Because of Sandra's leadership and her example, because she got in and did it, they are doing wonders.

When the Federal Government came out with our program on parks--you know the little passbook you get now when you go to a Federal park and you get it stamped, kind of like a passport--she did the same thing for our State parks, partnering with the Federal Government to increase the use by our kids and our families of the parklands they pay for as taxpayers.

I could go on and on and on, but to do so might be to talk too much. But you can't say too much about somebody who has contributed 8 years of their life to their State and brought home so many things--first in economic development, first in job creation, first in really making a difference in education, first in reforming the criminal justice system, first in getting cyber technology as the main heart and soul of Georgia's focus in the future--all those things. And his two partners on the A-Team--Chris Riley, his chief of staff, and his wife, Sandra-- deserve equal credit with Nathan. I know I am supposed to brag about just Nathan, but I want to brag about all of them because I know them and worked with them daily. Those three as a combination make a great team.

Mr. President, I would like to go to the second subject I was going to talk about and ask the clerk to divide this in the Record at the appropriate place.

The Blue Water Navy

Mr. President, I want to talk about the blue water Navy for just a second.

Everybody in this room, everybody in the Senate knows that is an issue we had last week on the floor for a UC. We lost by one vote. We had 1 objection out of 100. One Member objected to its being adopted by unanimous consent, so it has not been adopted. It is going to be pending--another UC--sometime in the next few days, and the people working on the bill--I as chairman of the Veterans' Committee and others on the committee--are doing yeoman's work to try to get it through.

There are those who had some concerns who are looking for any information they can find to maybe knock the legs out from us in terms of the momentum we have gotten on the bill. Most recently, as of 2 o'clock this afternoon, CBO decided all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, to issue a new correction on its last estimate of what the program was going to cost, and in that estimate, they doubled it from $1.2 billion to $2 \1/2\ billion. Of course, on that estimate that they before said they weren't going to make another estimate on--they decided to do it at the last minute--it is whatever figures they came up with, and I am not going to argue with their figures because they are as made up as any figures I might want to make up. I could make up as good figures as anybody else that show the cost of that to the taxpayer.

But I know this: There are somewhere in the area of 60,000 Americans who fought in Vietnam in the U.S. Navy, on the forces that used the water, who are not eligible for napalm- or Agent Orange-based cancers they developed because they didn't serve on the land. Blue water is those who served in the Navy and not on the land. The rest of those-- the soldiers on the land--got it. So today we have soldiers who served in Vietnam, fought, risked their lives--some of them have already died--who, if they get cancer, if they get non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, or if they get some of the other cancers that have been conclusively proved that this is a derivative or a contributor to, they get a benefit, but if they only served in the Navy and they never put a foot on the ground, the VA uses that to separate them from being eligible. It is just like what some of these insurance companies do when they want to lower their cost--they lower their benefits.

Well, the VA did this as an agency under their authority to do so. It wasn't passed by the Congress. What we are trying to do is take something that has been taken away from them and give it to those soldiers who have earned it, deserve it, and ought to get it. Is it going to cost a little more? Sure. But it always costs a little more to do what is right rather than perpetuate what is wrong.

So when you have the chance today, Members of the Senate, or tomorrow or the next day to vote on the blue water Navy UC that we are going to try to offer, if you have a question, if you have read the CBO letter, if somebody is lobbying you, come see me. I won't hurt you. I can't. I am not smarter than anybody, so I won't intimidate. But I will tell you the truth, because as chairman of the Veterans' Committee, I care about our vets. We owe them everything. They risked everything to be here today, and they deserve, if we made a wrong in the past, for us to fix it.

The VA deserves to be pointed out when they make a mistake, as they did in this, so they never make it again.

Together we can be a great team, but separated, we have veterans who lose, and we are never the great team we ought to have.

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

Madam President, as chairman of the Veterans Committee, for the last 4 years I have had the privilege of working with Dean Heller from Nevada.

In his opening remarks in his farewell speech, he spoke about his compassion for veterans. I have seen it up close and personal. His value as a member of that committee to me is invaluable. I could not have had a better member.

We had a lot of tough votes that had to be taken. A lot of times I had to count noses, and I knew I could count on him when it got to committee. This is a guy you could count on 100 percent of the time, every day.

He cares about what he is doing. He knows what he is doing. He is an affable person who is fun to be with, even if you disagree on things. Dean is one of a kind, in my opinion, and someone I am very proud to have served with on the committee. I wish he were going to be there for my last 2 years as chairman so that I could count on him a little bit more.

Dean is the real deal. He is the guy you can put money in the bank on. He has helped a lot.

I wish him the very best. His service to the country is invaluable. I served with him in the House and in the Senate. For the whole 20 years he has been here, I have been here too. I have seen him in countless tough votes. Whether it is Part D of Medicare or whatever it might be, he has always been there to be counted on.

He has stood up for the State of Nevada, whether the issue was nuclear energy, nuclear storage, nuclear waste, or nuclear bombs.

Nevada is a great State. This is a great Senate, and we have a great country. One of the reason we do is we have great individuals like Dean Heller.

God bless you, and I wish you the best.

Mr. President, I have had the privilege of serving with both speakers I have heard today, Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana. They represent the best of the Senate. All of us are proud to be here. All of us are proud of the opportunity to serve. But they are two special people. They are special because they have a smile on their faces. They are special because they are very smart. They are special because they know how to play the game in a bipartisan way--not block things but help them pass.

I have enjoyed getting to meet Joe. I have enjoyed getting to know Heidi. I am going to miss them a lot. America is very proud to have a great son like Joe and a great daughter like Heidi. I am very lucky to have had the chance to have them cross my way so I can become a friend of theirs.

God bless both of you. Thank you for your service. Thank you very much.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this is a special time of the year-- Christmas. All of us are in a hurry to get home. Our children are waiting for us to get home. Our families can't wait to share the joy of the day. We want fun around the fire and the household. I would hate to be the grinch who stole Christmas in the Senate. I don't want to think that 10 years from now, if only I hadn't said this, this wouldn't have happened or, maybe, if I had seen it coming, I would have done something.

In 2008 and 2009, the Senator from Montana, Senator Hoeven, and I, among others, went through the 2008-2009 housing crisis that ended up in mortgage-backed securities failures, in all of the trouble that happened on Wall Street--Dodd-Frank--and in the collapse of our economy. It was the worst collapse of our economy ever since 1927. We all remember what happened. We ended up getting the TARP. We ended up having crisis after crisis. Slowly but surely, we guaranteed enough stuff to get the market strong enough to begin to build back. Just now, it is back where it ought to be from the standpoint of values, which is a decade later.

Quite frankly, the housing market is not as strong. Its only strength is that there are not that many houses for sale. That is because people aren't putting them on the market. Builders can't build specs, and there is not near the credit that there should be. People who have resales are putting them off and fixing the houses up because they are staying longer. So they are selling them for more money.

On the Multiple Listing Service, in Atlanta, GA, when I left my company in 1998, there were 140,000 houses on the market in Atlanta in June of 1998. Now there are about 60,000. That is not because the market has failed. It is just that there is not that big a housing stock out there, and it is for all of the reasons I said. In terms of financing being readily available, it is readily available, and that is what I want to talk about.

I was thinking the other day. I heard an ad on the radio about no-doc loans, and I heard an ad about the VA's 100-percent loan--that we will approve what the banks will not--and stuff that I knew was patently wrong. So I turned to the business section, which I used to look at as a businessman every day but don't anymore because I don't have the decisions to make. I am glad that I did because it taught me a lesson, and I want to read you this from last Sunday's paper: How about a loan with no down payment, zero-down mortgages, and jumbo loans? We will approve what the banks won't.

That is exactly the thing that took us down the wrong path in 2008 and 2009. Greed took over common sense. Then, common sense failed, and we did some bad things. All of the things in the mortgage-backed securities market took place all at once. What happened was, because money was chasing rates and rates were starting to rise--and now they are starting to rise; that is happening in our economy--the instruments that yielded higher rates than the going rate for regular credit started being created to be sold and packaged on Wall Street. You would make money on the sale of the security, but you would also fund the mortgage at a higher yield to you, the investor, which is just fine and dandy until the person at the lower end of the spectrum, who gets approved with a no-document, no-down payment loan, ends up qualifying for it, gets it, does not make a payment, and gets foreclosed on. All of a sudden, the credit is lost. The house is lost. The same thing that happened in 2008-2009 starts happening all over again.

I am not saying that we are on the verge of a collapse. What I am saying is that it is a carbon copy--I mean a carbon copy--of exactly what was happening in 2008 and 2009 when the markets collapsed. We can't afford another one. Banking is stronger today for a lot of reasons. It is mainly because there aren't nearly as many of them. There aren't nearly as many of them because a lot of them failed. In the South--in Atlanta, GA, my State--we lost more than almost anybody in the country, simply because the capacity was not there.

As I said about the housing market, the number of houses available in the marketplace is much lower than it was back in the 1990s and back in 2005, 2006, and 2007. It is down because there is not as much to put on the market. There is not enough credit to finance it and put it on the market and have spec loans. People are very tight with their money because a lot of them got burned in 2008 and 2009. They see their parents who lost their houses and their savings. They see values collapse. They couldn't get through their college by borrowing against their homes because their home equity loans died.

There are lots of folks out there who are trying to put together instruments and package them in an attractive way to sell them on the New York markets and through mortgage-backed securities and to attract low-credit borrowers or young borrowers who aren't totally prepared to borrow the way they should be. It is of higher risk for us. It is a high risk for our economy. The middlemen make a lot of money early, but on a 30-year mortgage, you don't want to just make your money early. You want to have somebody with skin in the game for all 30 years.

So I just want to say to all of my colleagues--and I am talking to myself as

much as I am talking to you; I am not talking at myself; I am talking with myself--that we have to be careful if we see things happening that happened in our recent past that we didn't learn from. If we let them happen again, they will be worse. Then you will just say: Well, I wish I had seen it coming.

It is coming. Read the paper with me. I am going to come to the floor a lot in the next few months just to kind of monitor it myself. I see the creep of easy credit, the creep of no documentation, the creep of no underwriting for the quality of the borrower, and the creep of greed coming into the marketplace. The greater it gets, the worse the economy is and the faster it goes bad, and we all go bad with it.

So I just came out to wish everybody a Merry Christmas. I don't want to be the grinch who stole Christmas, but it is happening, and it is being advertised in our newspapers. It is happening in our cities, and it is happening in our backyard. We need to make sure that we don't let it get away from us because, if we do, we will have only ourselves to blame.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object and to take a couple minutes to give the Members the facts they need to make a decision tonight, I want to say a couple things.

I am chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. There are many Members in this Chamber who know their responsibility to that committee is greater than any other. I come down tonight to speak on an issue that has been bothering me and has been festering for years, but nobody has ever done anything about it. Nobody has ever done the hard work of saying this is what we need to do, and this is why we need to do it this way.

Well, the House has finally done it this year, and we have done it.

Granted, this is a UC motion and not a debate on the floor. It is because we finally addressed all the issues everybody said about the blue water bill that they didn't like, except that some people would like to say it differently.

Some people want another study even though we have studied it enough to do it. Some people want to wait until the VA says they need to do this, that, or the other. Some people say the VA could call and will tell you the other. Somebody said we don't even have the right numbers of how many people this might affect. Nobody has the right number about how many people will get sick in the future from a disease we don't know exists until the time they contract it.

What happened in this case is very simple. The Veterans' Administration, years ago, decided if someone contracted one of the cancers of which a contributing factor was napalm and Agent Orange, they qualified for benefits, except if they served on the blue water, which is not the rivers, and didn't serve on the ground, then they didn't. So in other words, we have ground troops who fought in Vietnam. We have river fighters in Vietnam who get the benefit. If you served on a Navy ship carrying napalm, but you never touched the ground and only stayed on the blue water, you are not eligible. So we have two classes of victims who are veterans of the United States of America who fought and risked their lives who have been trying for years to get an equal treatment with their other brothers.

This was done for many. I am not going to go over the things I have heard because some of them are outrageous. Nonetheless, everybody looked for a way to try and get some of the benefit back once the VA had it taken over.

What the Congress is about to do--and the House has now passed a bill unanimously this year that will benefit this motion. The Senate has had two hearings, and we have done a lot of work on it. I have done a lot of work on it because I knew how big the issue was. I talked to the people in the VA. I realize everybody in here can go find somebody who says they don't like it. There are people at the VA who don't like it, but let me tell you what I don't like: I don't like having two classes of beneficiaries for disease and health. I don't like not shooting straight with the same people who ought to qualify for the same thing. I really don't like putting off the decision 1 more year until we get one more study. This thing has been studied as long as it needs to be studied. We have the best information we possibly can get. I tried my best to give some of the Members the exact information they asked me for, but the CVA will not give it to me because they don't have it because it is predictive in the future, not present experience.

So I would ask every Member, before they consider casting a ``no'' vote against this UC, to think about what you are doing. You are saying no to those who had a benefit taken away from them by the VA itself. You are putting off a decision we are going to have to make in the future. You are not allowing us to do what we really ought to do. I would ask each of you to search your heart, search your past, and think about the veterans in your State and cast a vote for doing the right thing for the right people at the right time and not object to the motion made by the Senator from New York.

I have no objection.

Mr. President, I am honored to follow the Senator from Texas and to have shared time with President Bush, as he has, and appreciate very much his service to this Senate and this country.

You know, the hardest thing they ever ask you to do in public office is eulogize someone you don't even know. But because you are a Senator and they think you have a name that everybody back home knows, they think that would be a good idea. It is the hardest thing for a Senator to do.

The easiest thing to do is to be asked to eulogize somebody you know and love. You don't have to look up things and read things and do a biography. But that, too, is also very hard. It is hard to hold back the tears when you talk about the experiences you had with someone who has gone on to a better place. That is the role I am in today.

George Herbert Walker Bush did so many things for me in my lifetime that I can't begin to count them or recount them all for you, but I am going to tell a few of the stories. You have all heard about how he was in the CIA, how many planes he shot down, and how many times he did whatever he did. We all know he has a resume that is equal to none. I mean, nobody has one equal to his. We also know, those of us who knew him--and I know Senator Cornyn of Texas did--as a public servant, he was a passionate, compassionate, get-the-job-done, commonsense, conservative leader who wanted to see not just the promises made but the promises kept.

How did I meet George Herbert Walker Bush? I will tell you how I met him. He was Vice President of the United States of America. He was on Air Force One. He was Vice President under Reagan, who controlled Air Force One. We were riding from St. Augustine, FL, to Atlanta, GA, to do a fundraiser for me when I was running for Governor of Georgia. I knew him by reputation and by name and obviously by being in my party, but I didn't know him as a person.

He said: Why don't you fly down to St. Augustine and meet me there, and we will fly to Atlanta for a fundraiser that night? Bring your family. Let's have some fun and get you elected Governor of Georgia.

We had a ball. That was not hard. Winning the governorship was a little bit more difficult, but it was a lot easier to try when the Vice President of the United States came out and put his name on the line for me. I really didn't understand how he could risk his career doing that until I realized nobody cared who I was anyway, but he cared who I was because I was a potential candidate for Governor, I was a Republican, I was somebody he liked and admired, and I was somebody he wanted to help and work with.

So my family and I piled onto Air Force One, flew into Atlanta, Dobbins Air Force Base, and went to the Waverly Hotel. We raised three- quarters of a million dollars at that fundraiser. It was over in the flash of an eye, but I can still smell the room, indelibly remember the lights that were on, the banners we had, and the speeches made that night because he was an overpoweringly impressive guy. When he stood there and made a speech and Lee Greenwood followed him with how great it was to be an American, you knew you were among royalty--a special person.

He wanted me to work for him in his Presidential campaign. I said: Mr. Vice President, I would be more than happy to do that. And I did. I didn't run it. I was not the top dog by any stretch. Paul Coverdell, former U.S. Senator, was his campaign manager. Fred Cooper, his financier, was the one who raised the money. They did a lot to help him get elected, but we did help him in Georgia get elected when he won that race.

In 1989, when he was sworn in, he started out on a journey as President of the United States, after he had already been CIA Director, after he had already been Vice President of the United States, after he had already every other thing you could be--from Congressman, to head of the U.N. delegation, to everything in between. Now he was taking on the prize job of them all--the Presidency of the United States of America.

I polled well as I was running for Governor. In fact, halfway through his first term, halfway through it, when they did a poll, I was doing pretty good. I wasn't winning, but I was doing pretty good, and everybody attributed it not to me but to the fact that the President came down and helped me. And he was doing really well too. In fact, if you will remember, George Herbert Walker Bush in 1991 had an 89-percent favorable rating. When he lost 2 years later, he was down in the high thirties. What happened? How could this guy who is so great and so gracious, so wonderful, who did everything, fall so fast? I have answered that question many times because I wanted to rationalize it myself.

I watched that fall. I watched George H.W. Bush do what he thought was right even though what he did might be wrong for him. I want to explain that.

The speech he made in New Orleans to get the nomination in 1988--he used a simple little line. He talked about shining cities on the hill. He talked about a foundation. He talked about the Points of Light foundation he started. He talked about helping others who didn't have as much as they should and he wanted them to have. He talked about giving a little back to your country. He gave the speech equivalency to John Kennedy's Peace Corps speech or great speeches made by other American Presidents. He was a caring man.

He also gave a speech in which he said: ``Read my lips: No new taxes.'' I have never seen or heard anybody who took credit for giving him that statement, because that statement probably led to his most difficult time in his reelection campaign. But at the time he made it-- he made it because George Bush knew he might have to do that. He wasn't going to continue to run for President without saying: Look, I don't want to raise your taxes, but it is something we think might happen. And it did happen, and it cost him the election. He did what was right for the country, although it might not have been right for George H.W. Bush. He was that kind of guy. He put the test on what is best for the people, what is best for the country.

If you listen to or read many of the stories of the Iraq war when we first sent troops in, George Bush was the first one to do that. I remember riding home in my car from my office in Atlanta when the news broke. The President was about to do a press conference. When I turned the radio on, he was making the announcement about sending troops into Iraq from Kuwait and going after Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

We still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan today. We are fighting the ultimate war between good and evil, of terrorism versus the American way of peace and prosperity. That is a war that was engaged by George Bush not because he liked war but because he loved peace; not because he wanted to fight but because he wanted to demonstrate through strength that we can negotiate a settlement through diplomacy far easier and with less damage.

George Herbert Walker Bush did everything he thought was the right thing to do for the right reasons. Even if his final decision was not good for him politically, he still did it if it was right for the American people. You can ask no more of a politician. You can ask anything you want to, but you can't ask anything more of them than to do what is right regardless of the consequences. I love Mark Twain's quote: When you are confronted with a difficult decision, do what is right--you will surprise a few, but you will amaze the rest.

George Herbert Walker Bush was an amazing man, someone whose life will indelibly be in my heart and my memory, for all the things he did for me, my children, and my grandchildren, and all of the things he has done for you and all of us as Americans.

To his son, 43--he is a great chip off the old block. He is probably as good as his dad, but nobody will ever be nicer than his dad.

George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush, the entire Bush family, Barbara Bush--I send my sympathy and my support for you in this time of trial. I thank you for the sacrifice you have made for our country and for your family.

I pledge to you that I will try to always be as close as I can--I will never make it, but I will do as much as I can to be as good or try to be as good as George H.W. Bush was.

I hope that when I die and the papers report on that--if there is any--they will be as kind to me as they have been to George Bush. What they have done with George Bush is told the truth--not talk about any failures, where there might have been a few; they talked about his victories, his passions, and they talked about his love. Most of all, they talked about a great country, the United States of America. It is great today and will always be because of men like George Herbert Walker Bush.

May God bless his soul. I thank him for the service he brought to our great country.

I yield back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I wish to address the Senator before he leaves.

I represent the great State of Georgia, which is north of the great State of Florida. I have had the pleasure of serving with this Senator for a long time in a lot of capacities. He has made a huge contribution to his State and to his country. We worked together on a lot of other interests, like the Prayer Breakfast in the Senate and many other things like that.

I want to commend the Senator for his speech, commend him for his remarks, and commend him for his lovely wife, amazing Grace, whom I love very much. I thank the Senator very much for his service to the people of the State of Florida and the United States of America. May God bless him.

Mr. President, today I am proud to recognize in the Record, Disabled American Veterans, DAV, executive director Garry J. Augustine, who has a long record of service to our Nation's veterans.

Mr. Augustine has not only dedicated his life to serving veterans, he is a veteran himself. He served in the U.S. Army, enlisting after high school graduation in 1969. Mr. Augustine served as a member of the 198th Infantry Brigade in South Vietnam, where he was seriously injured by a land mine explosion. After spending 18 months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recovering from his injuries, Mr. Augustine was medically discharged from the U.S. Army in 1972.

Mr. Augustine has been a member of DAV for 46 years, and he has worked for DAV for the past 30 years. His first job with DAV was in 1988 as a hospital service coordinator for the Department of Ohio at the Cleveland Wade Park U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA, Hospital. Mr. Augustine has held numerous positions working on behalf of veterans during his three decades with DAV. He has served as executive director since 2013.

Under Mr. Augustine's leadership, DAV has been a partner with Congress, including with the committee I have the honor of chairing, the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, in accomplishing significant reforms for veterans. This includes overhauling VA's system of providing decisions to veterans on their disability claims appeals and improving VA's ability to provide community care. The John S. McCain III, Daniel K Akaka, and Samuel R. Johnson VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks (MISSION) Act of 2018, enacted in June 2018, strengthened healthcare for veterans and expanded VA's Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers to include veterans of all eras. DAV's initiatives, led by Mr. Augustine, have raised awareness for important issues such as caregiver support, care and benefits specifically related to women veterans, and advance appropriations for VA accounts.

Today, I pay tribute to Mr. Augustine for his service to our country and his steadfast commitment to veterans throughout his career. Congratulations to Mr. Augustine on his retirement and a career in which he has left a lasting legacy of advocacy for veterans.

Mr. President, today I am proud and honored to place in the Record well-deserved recognition and heartfelt congratulations to Jerry Giovaniello on his retirement from

nearly four decades of work for the National Association of Realtors.

Jerry Giovaniello has spent the last 37 years of his career tirelessly advocating on behalf of the Realtors and ends his illustrious career as senior vice president and chief lobbyist for the organization.

As a Realtor, I understand the important work the National Association of Realtors conducts on behalf of its many members nationwide who provide the needed service of helping prospective homebuyers achieve the American dream of homeownership.

Jerry's distinguished career has resulted in positive steps for more Americans by helping create and advocate for policies that have kept the housing market affordable, helped it remain a good investment, and kept it afloat during hard times.

Jerry has been named a top lobbyist multiple times by CEO Update, The Hill, and others, and he has at least twice been identified as among the most influential in real estate.

I close in congratulating Jerry Giovaniello on his success, and I thank and applaud him for his hard work, which has made a difference to countless Americans, helped our job market, and earned him a reputation of success that will be difficult to match in the industry.

Jerry, I wish you nothing but the best in your retirement.

Madam President, I want to acknowledge what Senator Blunt just said about the success of this Congress over the last 2 years. It has been remarkable. What they did on FAA is tremendous. I enjoyed working with them on that. But I want to rise and talk about our veterans and what we have done for our veterans and what we need to do for our veterans.

Before I do, my State of Georgia had a tough day and a tough night last night. The hurricane hit about 10 o'clock last night. Unfortunately, we lost one 11-year-old with a tree crashing through the roof. The Governor has declared a state of emergency for 108 of our 159 counties. We have 1,500 National Guard troops activated and ready to deploy if needed to help law enforcement, emergency medical, and hospitals to see to it that we meet the needs of the people in our State. There is a lot of search and rescue going on. We are blessed that a lot of things didn't happen, but we were certainly hurt by those that did.

For families who have lost property and families who need help, our sympathy is with them, and we are taking action. GEMA and FEMA are working hard. Governor Deal is working extremely hard. We have recovered a couple of times already in the last 5 years from hurricanes, and we will do it again. But on behalf of myself, Senator Perdue, and the United States Senate,

I send our best wishes to our people back in Georgia and also to our people in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida. Florida was hit worse last night. But now the storm has passed Atlanta and is going over South Carolina, and then North Carolina, which just came back from almost the worst storm in history, in which we had 48 inches of rainfall in one county. I couldn't believe that much water fell in one day, but it did. They are recovering and doing it nicely. They have done a good job. But all of us know these acts of nature and acts of God we have gone through affect our citizens, and we need to keep them safe. I urge all of our citizens in Georgia and in every State in the Union to play close attention to what their Federal emergency management people say. If they tell them to evacuate, they should. If they tell them to hunker down, they should. They should do whatever they can to follow the rules the best they can. Everybody we have to rescue takes a law enforcement officer and a medical person out of play to help somebody else.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture motion for the Stewart nomination be withdrawn and the Senate vote on confirmation of the Stewart nomination and, if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.