Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I recognize Hannah Tipton, a 2018 summer intern in my Orlando office, for all of the hard work she has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

Hannah is a student at Charleston School of Law, where she is pursuing her juris doctorate. She is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of her internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Hannah Tipton for all the fine work she has done and wish her continued success in the years to come.

Mr. President, today I recognize Shawn Tullock, a 2018 summer intern in my Orlando office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

Shawn is a student at the University of Florida. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Shawn Tullock for all the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

Mr. President, today I recognize Marco Useche, a 2018 summer intern in my Orlando office, for all of the hard work he has done for me, my staff, and the people of the State of Florida.

Marco is an incoming freshman at Loyola University. He is a dedicated and diligent worker who has been devoted to getting the most out of his internship experience.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to Marco Useche for all the fine work he has done and wish him continued success in the years to come.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, in my home State of Florida, we have a rich history in manufacturing hand-rolled premium cigars. For those who aren't familiar with them, a hand-rolled premium cigar is not the same thing as a cigarette.

Number one, premium cigars are an expense product, and they are consumed very differently from a cigarette or some other tobacco product. I would say that they are more like wine than they would be like a cigarette, for sure.

The interesting thing about the cigar industry and its history--not just in Florida but in this country--is that, almost exclusively, the manufacturers of premium hand-rolled cigars are small family-run businesses. By the way, so too are the retailers that sell them. This is not the kind of thing you go and buy at 7-Eleven. There are stores that specialize in the sale of premium cigars. They cater to a clientele that can afford to buy these things. They are significantly older than someone who would walk into a convenience store and buy a pack of cigarettes from behind the counter.

The companies that are involved in this endeavor are not the big companies that we see involved, generally, in the tobacco industry. They are family-owned business, both at the retail level and also at the manufacturing level.

In addition to all of this, they represent a rich part of the cultural history of the Cuban community in Florida. Ybor City in Tampa is an example of it. It was an area that was settled over 100 years ago by Cubans that came to Tampa to start a very vibrant hand-rolling cigar industry. Again, these are hand-rolled premium cigars. These are people literally sitting down and rolling the leaves, and these are high-end products.

This industry is on the verge of extinction, and I will tell you why. In 2016, the previous administration finalized a rule based on a 2009 law, and, by

the way, its intended target was not premium cigars. They meant to go after tobacco products that we mass marketed and mass produced.

This 2009 law was interpreted in a way in the rule that would require premium cigars to regulate the manufacture, the import, the packaging, the labeling, the advertisement, the promotion, the sale, and the distribution of their products. With each new product, they would have to do it over again.

From year to year, the premium cigar industry may change the blend inside the hand-rolled cigar. They come in boxes of 8 or 12, and every time that one of these things is changed, you would have to redo the labels, redo the packaging, and everything would have to be completely redone, which is simply cost prohibitive because these blends change constantly, especially as you bring new markets.

I have offered an amendment to the minibus that is before us that would exempt premium hand-rolled cigars from the FDA regulations, not just so that the industry can survive but so that it can thrive and also to free up the FDA to go after what it is intended to go after-- what everybody thought this was about--which is common tobacco products, like cigarettes and some of the others things that we are aware of.

Now, anytime you talk about this, it gets a little tricky because people talk about tobacco use causing cancer. I am as sensitive to that as everyone. My father was a lifelong smoker. He lost his life in his early eighties because of cigarette smoking.

I think we need to do everything we can to discourage people from smoking and consuming tobacco, especially cigarettes that are consumed in mass quantity and are cheap to buy in large quantities.

I would note that it is already illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone who is under the age of 18.

I would also tell you that beyond that, the numbers have continued to decline in tobacco use. So we know that the laws that are in place and the programs have worked, but one of the things that we have focused on is that tobacco is a legal product and small manufacturers of premium cigars are being harmed by this, but the regulations were not intended for them. The regulations were designed to target cigarettes. They were designed for flavored fat cigarettes and other commonly used tobacco products, the kinds that could potentially be marketed to young people and that are not like a premium cigar--at $5, $8, $10 for each one, or $80, $90 a box--but the sort of flavored fat cigarettes and all the new stuff that is coming out that you can buy from behind the counter. They are very cheap to buy, and they are mass manufactured. That is what the rule was about. It was never intended to apply to premium cigars, but the way it is written and the way the rule is interpreted, that is what it is now doing. It is putting the same requirement on a completely different product, and it is a requirement they simply can't meet.

The irony is that all of the things that are targeted under this new rule are going to survive. They are still going to be around. They may be a little bit more expensive, a little harder to bring to market, but they are still going to survive. All the mass-produced tobacco products will survive and continue to be more accessible to young people. They will be able to stay in business, but the premium cigar manufacturers are going to get wiped out.

One more irony in all this: It is still illegal to mass-import Cuban cigars, but you can bring them in in individual quantities. Those are not impacted by these regulations at all--none whatsoever. Think about that for a moment. A product made in another country doesn't have to meet the same guidelines but has all the same attributes.

I talked a moment ago about Tampa and in particular Ybor City, and today in Ybor City, after all this time, there is only one factory left, a company called J.C. Newman. It is within Ybor City, and it is known as Cigar City. They have been making premium cigars--not cigarettes, not flavored cigarettes, not JUULs so people can vape; I am talking about premium, expensive, hand-rolled cigars. They have been making them since 1895, and that is all going to come to an end in the near future if this rule goes through. They are a profitable company. They sell about $10 million worth of products annually. That sounds like a lot of money, but it is nothing compared to mass-produced products. It is going to cost them three times that amount just to comply with the FDA regulations--three times as much--upwards of $30 million to comply with this rule, the way this rule has been interpreted.

The sad part about it is that everyone knows this. You go to the FDA, and they say: Look, we get it. The law wasn't supposed to go after these guys. But that is the way it is written, and that is how we are going to have to apply it.

It was never meant to be about them. Everyone admits it. Yet that is the way it is going to be, and that is going put not just J.C. Newman but also other companies out of business. The retailers, the specialty cigar stores, those that sell premium cigars that are contained in a humidor--that is going to put them out of business very soon, all because of a stupid regulation that was written as a result of a law that was not properly drafted and was interpreted inappropriately.

The Federal Government is going to put these guys out of business. The irony is that the people they were trying to impact with the regulation are going to survive and remain in business and be as accessible as ever, and the people no one meant to harm are going to get wiped out. This is the epitome of government overreach and abuse.

Regardless of whether the business is 10 years or 100 years old, this industry represents the livelihood of hundreds of American families. There are people who work in those factories. There are people who own those retail stores. They are going to be out of work, not because the market shifted, not because Americans no longer want to smoke premium cigars, they are going to be out of business because no one can stay in business if the cost to follow the law is three times as much as what you make. You can't do it.

This is a legal product made by hard-working Americans who have been doing this for a very long time. They are not the intended target of this rule. It is unjust for these small businesses to be singled out. It is unjust, unfair, and it is wrong.

The worst part about this rule is that it is written retroactively. So not only will they have to start complying moving forward--because you could argue, well, just change your blend in the future--it goes all the way back to 2007. They are going to have to go back and relabel and repackage everything they have been making for the last 11 years. That explains a little bit about the $30 million cost for just this one business.

By the way, they have broken no laws. Yet they have been singled out, and this threatens their livelihood.

This is a bipartisan, bicameral issue. A number of Members in the Senate from across the aisle agree with this. I have been working with Senator Nelson on this for a long time. This is not a partisan issue, not a Big Tobacco issue; this is a premium cigar issue. These are consumed differently than cigarettes by different groups of people in different ways. You don't smoke 10 cigars a day. We just know this. It is common sense. But this is what is going to happen. We are going to wipe these guys out because of a government rule and the way it was interpreted even though it was never meant to be about them.

We have an amendment. We have a law that fixes all this. I am not going to offer it on this bill because it is already part of the House package that lines up with the appropriations bills that are before us, but I wanted to point this out because I know that people in Ybor City and people around the country who care about this issue are watching, and I want them to know that when this issue gets conferenced with the House, we are going to be fighting for this. This needs to get fixed.

This is the last chance. That is the other point. This rule is about to kick in. The comment period is about to end, and the rule is going to kick in. This is our last chance. If we don't get it right here when we work this out, this is going to happen. You are going to be reading about it. Maybe it doesn't matter in some places. It matters a lot to Florida, and it matters a lot to this company in Ybor City in Tampa. It matters a lot to hundreds of thousands

of people across the country who work in the retail shops that sell them and who work in the places hand-rolling and making them.

This is wrong, and we should do everything we can to stop it from happening. I hope we will deal with this issue in conference. I am glad it is in the House version. I wish we could get it in the Senate version. We are going to fight to include it in the final version. We are not going to watch as J.C. Newman and small businesses like it are put out of business by a rule that was never supposed to apply to them.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we were sitting in the cloakroom between the last two votes that just happened in the Senate, and everybody's phone started buzzing at the same time. That is because everyone receives these alerts from the National Weather Service. The alert said: Flash flood warning until 9:15 p.m. this evening.

I thought it was ironic because I was headed to the floor to speak about flooding--and in particular flood insurance--which is a threat to so many different States across the country. It was an ironic moment that reminds us what that means to us here but also what it means to people in the real world who are impacted by this.

Earlier today, the House passed an extension of the National Flood Insurance Program, and it extends it for 4 months and will expire November 30 of this year. I am here today to tell you how critical it is that the Senate act on this as soon as possible because this program will expire next Tuesday, July 31--6 days from today--if we do not take action.

Let me preface everything I am about to say by telling you that this program is badly broken. It is not financially stable. It is not financially sustainable. It is a program that needs to be reformed. I don't like the way it is designed one bit. I have been working for years to try to reform it and to try to open up space for the private sector to come in and compete with the program and provide more options for people who need it.

I want everybody to understand that in many parts of Florida--I am sure it is true in other parts of the country--you can't buy a house in some places if you don't have flood insurance. They will not write it because of the threat of damage to the property and the loss of value. That is widespread throughout the State of Florida. There are many places where that is a fact.

While I don't like the way the program is designed, and I desperately want us to reform it to be consistent with market principles and sustainable in the long term, the answer is not to let it expire. The answer is not to let it expire because if we do, we are going to have an economic catastrophe. If we allow flood insurance to expire, there are real estate closings that will stop.

I will add one more point to it; that is, we would be allowing this to expire in the middle of the hurricane season. We went through a hurricane season last year that impacted Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico. The damage that it did, economic and otherwise, was extensive. We don't know what this season holds, but we are right smack in the middle of it. I can't think of anything worse than allowing it not just to expire but to expire in the middle of the hurricane season. I would have hoped the extension would have been for 6 months, the way we got done in the Senate farm bill. I believe a 4-month extension is better than none at all.

My biggest fear is that it is going to get lost here in all the other issues we are dealing with. My hope--and I ask you here today--is that the leadership of this Chamber bring this extension for a vote, perhaps as early as Monday evening when we return, because to allow this to drag into Tuesday, Tuesday midnight--I am telling you, it is going to have a dramatic and negative impact on people in Florida and across the country.

Let me go back to one of the reforms that need to happen. One of the organizations that I agree with a lot was out there--what they do--key scoring this vote in the House against it. They make great points about how broken this program is. They are absolutely right about that. I personally support reforms that will increase private market involvement in this program. I want to go back to the practicality of it.

While I want there to be reforms, I cannot hold hostage and we should not hold hostage real people and families whose homes and lives will be at risk

while Congress tries to figure this out. It has to be done. I don't want to be in a cycle of perpetual extension. I am as frustrated about it as anybody else. I wish we could find some permanence to this in a way that didn't wipe everybody out by raising the rates but was also sustainable in the long term. We have to continue to work through that.

As a Senator from Florida recognizing that over one-third of the total policies nationwide are in the State that I represent, I have to come here today with a strong sense of urgency and argue on behalf of my neighbors and my constituents and my own family who depend on flood insurance in order not to just protect their homes in the middle of a hurricane cycle but to be able to transact real estate deals--selling a home, buying one, even commercial buildings--all these things that depend on this market being healthy.

In terms of the long-term reforms, affordability has to be a key part of any one of those reforms. The last time we extended this for 5 years, in 2012, the premiums in the State of Florida skyrocketed. What it did was it caused a massive exodus from this program, particularly out of Florida. A bunch of people left the program.

That is a problem because the key to having a sustainable program is having enough people in it. That is the whole purpose of insurance. You need to have enough people so you can spread the risk. But if people begin to migrate out of the program--and it usually is going to be the safest properties that are going to leave because they are the ones less willing to pay the higher premiums--you are going to be left with adverse selection. We have heard that term used in health insurance debates. If you don't have enough properties and enough safe properties to spread the risk, it drives up the premiums even more, and it makes the program even less healthy. That is why the key to any reforms has to be a program that is affordable enough to have that sort of participation, but we can't expect people to participate in a program they can't afford.

I think the one component of flood insurance reform that everyone should agree with is the importance of strong mitigation funding. FEMA and numerous other groups have repeatedly cited statistics confirming that every dollar we spend on mitigation--mitigation against flooding, mitigation against sea level rise, mitigation against all these things--results in $4 or more saved in future disaster recovery. Every single year now, it seems like we are spending millions upon tens of millions of dollars on storm recovery packages. Imagine if we could prevent some of that at the front end by funding mitigation efforts in concert with State and local governments.

Flood insurance reform is going to require a proactive approach to a problem that has only been approached in a reactionary way up this point. Simply raising rates without fundamentally changing what plagues the program will only lead to more people, more individuals leaving the program and an even larger disaster supplemental package when future storms occur.

Floridians deserve a program that is transparent and that is affordable. Right now, this program is neither. I believe the House and Senate can come to an agreement on a law that will achieve these goals. I think we need to do so in a way that is long term and sustainable. That is why once we pass this 4-month extension--and I say ``once we do'' because I cannot imagine not doing it. I cannot imagine leaving next week at some point for a 1-week recess in early August and leaving this thing lapsed. It can't happen. It is not an option. It has to be dealt with.

Once we do that, then we truly need to work on enacting this before November 30, when this extension will expire, and work on the fundamental flaws of the program and allow the Flood Insurance Program to move forward on a path that is responsible, affordable, and sustainable, not one that continues to require the government to bail it out. That is what I hope will happen.

In the strongest possible terms--I cannot emphasize this enough--I truly hope we will bring this reauthorization for a vote as soon as possible and that my colleagues will cooperate because Tuesday at midnight next week, if we have not acted, there will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across this country--many of them in my home State--who are going to find that their property, in the middle of a hurricane season, is not covered against water damage because they cannot get flood insurance. That would be catastrophic for our economy, and it would be catastrophic for Florida and the impacted States.

I am here to repeat and urge as strongly as I can that the leadership bring this up for a vote as soon as we are done dealing with the four appropriations bills that are before us. There is no other option. We cannot allow this to expire.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the events of the last 36 hours, particularly the issue that now dominates the media coverage in America, and our political debates on the floor cause me to come today to the floor of the Senate to speak for a few minutes to my constituents in the State of Florida but also to anyone else who clearly should care about this issue across our country, for it is one that impacts our Nation in ways that I don't think have been fully vetted or are clearly understood by enough people.

The idea that the Russian Federation, at the command of Vladimir Putin, interfered in our election is something that most Americans are now familiar with. It has been a topic of ongoing conversation, discussion, debate, argument, and dispute, pretty much since the fall of 2016 and to the present day. It has morphed into something that has become domestically more of a partisan issue. It is hard to believe. If you were able to get in a time machine and go back just 5 years and tell someone that Russian interference in our election would become a partisan issue, along the lines in which we see it play out now, few would believe you.

I will spend very little time today talking about the past and saying ``you guys did this on the other side of the aisle before we did'' and vice versa because it isn't constructive and means nothing to the future.

It wasn't long ago, in a major Presidential debate where the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, pointed to Russia as the greatest geopolitical challenge of the United States, that he was roundly mocked not just by President Obama, who was running for election and subsequently won, but by many in the press. I don't say that for purposes of drawing a ``you guys were wrong back then'' kind of argument. I say it solely for purposes of understanding how far we have come and where we are today.

By the way, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that statement. I believe, by and large, that the greatest geopolitical challenge for the United States and the world in the 21st century will be whether China's rise is peaceful and productive or not.

When the story of the 21st century is written, there will be some chapters in that book about Vladimir Putin and Russia, and it is a topic that increasingly dominates our domestic debate today in ways that I think require more careful examination and understanding if we are to make from it good public policy and good decisions for the country.

I think it begins with something that I talked about last week; that is, understanding the nature of this conflict. It begins with a man, Vladimir Putin. I don't know the man, but I know enough about him and have certainly learned enough about him to make some pretty clear assessments that I believe in deeply. The first is that this is a man who was raised in the Cold War Soviet Union, where people were trained to be suspicious about each other, and who then went on to a career in the intelligence agency of that country, the KGB. The result is that he is, by nature and by all accounts, both a suspicious and a paranoid individual, as someone probably would be if they spent their whole life lying to other people. You begin to assume that everyone is a liar. This is a man who made his living by deceiving westerners and manipulating them.

He also grew up in a society where neighbors spied on each other and kids turned their parents in, and you never really knew who the other person you were talking to was. But if you were reported as someone who was against the government, your career, your ability to go to school and the quality of life for your family would be deeply impacted. There is no way that you grow up in a society like that and in an environment like that and, then, later on, go and work as a spy and it does not somehow frame the way you operate or think for years to come.

The other thing that is pretty clear--for reasons I don't fully understand because I don't know him, I don't know his family, and I don't know his upbringing--is that he takes everything deeply personal. Any sort of effort against Russia is not a geopolitical decision or something that he can depersonalize. He seems to absorb all these things as a personal attack on him. As a result, he, I think, has come to view himself as Russia--as the embodiment of the Russian Federation.

You add to all of that his views as a leader, and it is interesting because, if you go back to Vladimir Putin 15 years ago, he wasn't nearly as confident or as bold as he is at this moment. There are a lot of reasons for it, but this is a person who accidentally became the leader of Russia. He is kind of almost the guy who stumbled into the role because of a series of circumstances. He was hardly known before he started his career as Prime Minister but went on to the Presidency, nonetheless. He is someone who wound up in this position almost by accident, but since then, he has solidified his hold.

There is the Vladimir Putin from the first time around and the Vladimir Putin from the second time around, but one thing is abundantly clear from his public statements, and that is that he viewed the end of the Cold War as a disaster for Russia, and not for the reasons some people think. It is not an ideological rationale, but because Russia, which already has a deep and long history in its geopolitics of feeling ignored by Europe and Asia and disrespected by the world--at the end of the Cold War, Russia was a nation that faced incredible challenges.

Imagine for a moment that you are in the government or living in the Soviet Union and you oversee this incredible empire that covers all of this territory and have all these nations within your sphere of influence, and overnight, it all evaporates. Overnight, all of the countries in your periphery begin to join NATO. They start having elections. They start becoming allies of the United States. Your territory shrinks. One day, Ukraine is part of the Soviet Union; the next day, it is its own country.

Then add to that, over the next 12 to 15 years, the sort of emergence of the United States for much of that period of time as the world's sole superpower, while Russia was struggling to have an economy or even be relevant in the global discourse.

Then you come to see that Vladimir Putin viewed that period of time in world history, up to the present day, as an example of the strong America and strong West abusing a weak Russia, because this is ultimately how he views life and how he views the world. It is a battle between the weak and the strong, where the strong prey on the weak. You know who he wants to be. So because of all of that and because he is paranoid and because he is suspicious, he believes the United States, for example, was behind the protests in 2011 that broke out on the streets against his rule. He believes the United States is behind everything that is happening in Ukraine. All of this leads him to the two goals he has, and there are two goals that have become crystal clear, especially beginning his second time around as President.

A lot of people forget that he was President, he left, and his handpicked successor served for a period of time. Then he came back for the second time. It is the second Putin we are now dealing with.

Since that time, two things have become pretty clear about his goals. The first is that he wants to reestablish Russia once again as a world power, like the time when the Soviet Union was on par with the United States of America. He can't do that economically. A lot of people don't realize this, but Russia is the 9th or 10th largest economy in the world. To put it in perspective, the Italian economy--Italy is a great country--the Italian economy, with less territory, less oil, fewer people, is bigger than the Russian economy. It is about equal to the Spanish economy. I would dare say--for example, my home State of Florida has an economy now at about $1 trillion. Russia is at $2 trillion. There are States in this country that have a bigger economy than Russia's. So he is not a global economic superpower. The only thing that makes him a global superpower is the fact that they possess thousands of nuclear weapons and conventional military capabilities that are significant and have improved as he has invested in them. He quickly realized: The way I am going to become relevant in the world again is not through my economic or diplomatic prowess; the way I am going to become relevant in the world again is I am going to use my conventional weapons, my conventional capabilities, along with some asymmetrical ones, to inject myself in the discussion in different parts of the world and show people that Russia and Vladimir Putin are strong again.

That is what he has done. It actually began back in 2008 with the invasion of Georgia--we now commemorate the 10th anniversary of that-- but it also plays out in his intervention in Syria or the annexation of Crimea. I believe he would have moved forward into Kiev and broader Ukraine had there not been the EU and U.S. sanctions against him as a result.

The first objective is to make Russia a world power again. The second objective, which he thinks is tied to the first, is that he has to make America weak. Vladimir Putin is a strong believer in zero-sum propositions--not in the idea that somehow we can both be better off or that there can be a win-win but a true believer in the idea that in order for me to be stronger or us to be stronger, you have to be weaker.

It plays out that in order for Russia to be stronger, America, which he views as his greatest geopolitical competitor, has to be weaker. That is why they chose to interfere in the 2016 election.

Let me say this: I don't think Vladimir Putin interfered in our elections; I don't believe he interfered in our elections; I know it for a fact. By the way, so does everyone who has looked at this issue and knows anything about it. There is zero doubt about it. What I think we are missing in our debate is the why and the how.

The why is not what people think. He may have had a personal preference in an election, but his interference and his efforts to interfere in our elections began well before the President of the United States descended down those escalators in New York in the summer of 2015. They intended to do this long before that period of time.

His No. 1 objective was to ensure that no matter who was elected President of the United States, that person would assume office under a cloud of nagging and persistent controversy. He wanted to weaken them internally because, as an intelligence officer, he understood the power of being weakened from within. He understands it so much that he jealously protects his image in Russia, he guards it, disclosing very little about himself or about his personal life. He never puts himself in a position to appear vulnerable. He only shows pictures of things he wants people to see and actually allows no dissent--to the point where a substantial number of the people who opposed Vladimir Putin are not out of politics or even in jail; they are dead. Sadly, the world is littered with story after story of a Russian opposition figure found dead in his hotel room, strangled, fell out of a window, poisoned. It happens over and over again. These things are not a coincidence.

He wanted to weaken whoever was the next President of the United States. No matter how this election turned out in November, whether the President was named Trump or Clinton, we would be dealing with a President right now under a cloud of controversy because he had it lined up either way.

The second thing he wanted to do as part of the first part is undermine confidence in our institutions--I mean all of our institutions: our elections, the media, our political figures, everything. It has extended to important institutions like the FBI and our intelligence agencies. He undermined confidence so that no one could be believed. And the President is under controversy. Divide us against each other so that there are no authorities in which we trust. Some of this, by the way, was already happening in our country, but they had the nuanced understanding of it to be able to exploit it.

The third, as part of the first and second, is to really drive divisions--not just to weaken the President and undermine confidence in our institutions but look for ways to do so by exacerbating preexisting tensions in our society.

These were the aims of the Russian interference campaign beyond everything else. It was not about electing one candidate or another; it was about these things. It would be hard to see what happened yesterday and the reaction to it and not conclude that this effort succeeded his wildest expectations. Today, the President of the United States has operated for the better part of a year and a half under a persistent cloud of controversy.

On the one side, his political opponents are intimating that his Presidency is illegitimate, that his election was not real. I heard words like ``treason'' thrown around yesterday.

On the other side is complete denial that there was any interference and the undermining publicly of important institutions in this our country, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which, by the way, is made up of thousands of employees, the vast and enormous majority of whom are patriotic Americans who keep us safe every single day. Undermining confidence in our institutions is tied to the point I just made, not to mention the fact that, increasingly, Americans get their news and information from someone who tells you what you already believe and confirms your bias even further, which drives our divisions.

There is no way you could see what was happening in this country over the last year and a half--which was already happening, by the way, and for which all of us in American politics are somewhat responsible--and not conclude that Vladimir Putin's plan to undermine the Presidency, no matter who it

was, to undermine confidence in our institutions, and to drive divisions in our country has been wildly successful, at a very low price.

Interestingly, yesterday one of the interviews that he did--I think it was Mr. Wallace at FOX News who asked him about this, and his response was that none of the things that were leaked are untrue, as if to almost say with a wink, even if we colluded--or not colluded--even if we hacked and even if we did all these things and interfered, so what? We didn't lie. These are all true things.

So what have I heard in response to some of this? I will not spend a lot of time addressing some of the arguments made by the President's opponents. There is an ongoing investigation being conducted by Mr. Mueller, which I believe should reach its conclusion naturally as he continues to do his work. I have said this, and I will repeat it: It is in the best interest of the President of the United States and of our country for Mr. Mueller to do his work without interference and be able to conclude it. No matter where you line up or whom you voted for, we should all want to know the truth. That truth will ultimately have to be proven in a court of law.

From his history, I have no reason to believe that Mr. Mueller will not conduct a full, thorough, and fair investigation. Ultimately, it is truth and the light of the truth that will help us overcome a lot of these controversies we find today. Until that has happened, any accusations are unfair, unwise, and counterproductive.

But one of the arguments I have heard from people on my side of the aisle is that this is not a big deal because everybody does it. And if by ``everybody does it'' you mean everybody spies, yes, virtually every nation on Earth has an intelligence agency, and some do a better job than others. But do not be misled--everyone does not do what we saw in 2016. Our problem in 2016 was not that the Russians spied on Americans or that the Americans spied on the Russians or that the Chinese spied on us; our problem in 2016 is that the Russian Federation, under the command of Vladimir Putin, weaponized information. One thing is to gather information; another thing is to strategically leak it in an effort to influence the domestic politics of another country. And that is what Vladimir Putin ordered done for purposes of undermining the next President, whoever it was, and undermining confidence in our elections and our institutions.

They hacked into emails. They released these emails through a third party. It was picked up in the media, it was reported, and then we fought about it. That is what they have done. They have done it in other countries for years. They did it somewhat in the Cold War. They did it in 2016. And they will do it again. Let there be no doubt--they will do it again. Then after they released all this stuff, they used their army of bots and trolls to drive this information online, on platforms, particularly trying to drive it to certain groups and people to divide us even further against each other.

One of the most dangerous things they did, which is now open record in the indictment issued last week by the Mueller investigation, is they probed the electoral systems of our States and counties. A lot of people are saying: They didn't get in the ballot box. Absolutely. I tell you with full confidence that the reason President Trump won had nothing to do with Vladimir Putin--nothing. But I think we are wrong if we think all we should be worried about is the ability to change votes at the ballot box because if they can somehow change people's registration and enough people on election day go to vote and are told ``You aren't allowed to vote,'' their trolls will be ready to drive that news out there on election day. Then come election day, no matter who won, the other side will say that there were these weird things that happened down there in some county or some State, so the election is not valid.

Imagine that for a moment. Imagine an election in 2000 in my home State that was decided by less than 600 votes. Imagine that in a Republican county, a bunch of Democrats went to vote on election day and were told: You can't vote today because you are not registered. If that happened to enough people, the Russian trolls would jump all over it. They would start driving it on the news. It would be featured on cable news that day.

That night, if they lost, they would be arguing ``The election was rigged. The electoral officials in the Republican county rigged the elections''--all driven by the Russians, and vice versa, by the way.

That is the danger, that we can one day potentially elect a President of the United States who swears into office with a substantial number of people believing that the election was stolen, undermining not just the President at that point but our very system of democracy. That is what they did. Anyone who tells you that everyone does that is lying. Everyone does not do that. The United States does not do these things. I am a big critic of the Chinese, but the Chinese don't do these things. I have other problems with them. The Belgians don't do this, and the Japanese don't do this. Only one country in the world has weaponized information in this way in order to interfere in an adversary's election, and that is the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin.

The other argument I have heard is: What is wrong with better relations with Russia? Nothing is wrong with better relations with Russia. I will tell you right now that the world would be a better place, a more peaceful place, and our lives would be a little easier. We would be stronger if, somehow, we had a partner in the Russian Federation with whom we could work to deal with things like terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and Iran and all sorts of issues--North Korea. We all wish we had that.

The reason that isn't happening, frankly, is not because of us. It is because of Vladimir Putin. For Vladimir Putin, better relations are not what he is interested in. He is not seeking a partnership with the United States. What he is seeking is geopolitical, perceptional equality. He wants to be viewed as being on par with America, both as a leader and his country as a whole, and he believes the only way he can do that is to pull himself up and tear us down. I, frankly, have to tell you that it is very difficult to have better relations with someone who believes that the only way for him to be better off is for you to be worse off. As long as the Russian Federation is led by someone who has total control of his government and has these views, it is going to be very difficult to have better relations.

That does not mean we don't meet with Vladimir Putin. Anyone who says that the meeting, alone, is wrong is not being wise and is being disingenuous. As 90 percent of the nuclear weapons on this planet are possessed by the United States and the Russian Federation, that alone is reason for us to engage with Vladimir Putin. We have to. We have no choice. Yet we should engage with him with clear eyes and a clear understanding of what he is up to and what he is trying to do. We should engage with a very clear understanding that this is a man who, throughout his life as leader of the Russian Federation, has never passed up an opportunity to exploit the weakness of an adversary or a competitor. Every time he sees weakness and the opportunity to gain an advantage, he will take it, and any engagement with him in which that is not understood is a dangerous one.

So I have no problem with having better relations with Russia. Frankly, I am not one of these people who is over the top on Russia to the extent of the threat it poses. It does have nuclear weapons, but we have bigger threats than Russia. Yet it is a very significant one that needs to be addressed.

Our moving forward is what, I hope, we will focus on. Mueller will continue his work, and the Intelligence Committee, which I sit on, will continue its work. Yet we are going to have an election in a few months. We are going to continue to have elections every 2 years, hopefully, forever, and there is no reason to believe that they will not try to do this again.

That is why, earlier this year, along with Senator Van Hollen, I proposed the DETER Act, which is the only thing that Vladimir Putin understands--deterrence. The DETER Act says here is a list of sanctions, and these sanctions will go into effect immediately if the Director of National

Intelligence, after an intelligence assessment, determines that Russia is, once again, interfering in our elections so that before he even does it, he has a very clear understanding of what the price is going to be.

Men like Vladimir Putin operate as cost-benefit analyzers. They weigh the costs against the benefits, and then they decide what action to take. There is no doubt, in 2016, he saw that the costs of what he did were very low. He thought he could hide it. He thought, by the time we would have figured it out, it would have been too late. He thought that America would be in such disarray that it wouldn't be able to get its act together and actually impose any additional sanctions. He saw the benefits as extraordinary, so he took action, and he will do it again if he doesn't think the costs are high enough.

My hope is, over the next few days and in a short period of time, we will figure out a way, in working together as Americans on this issue, to set aside all of the stuff about yesterday--that probe will continue, and our work on the Intelligence Committee will continue--and focus on the future.

No matter how you feel about 2016, who among us would say that if Russia interferes in 2018--or in any year for that matter--it shouldn't be punished? Who among us would say, if we had the opportunity to put into law strong consequences for interference that could deter such an attack, we wouldn't want to do it? That is why I hope that no matter how you may feel about the other things that are going on that the Senate can come together and work together to pass this law, because, otherwise, we are leaving our Nation vulnerable.

I will close with something I said back in October of 2016, which is that Vladimir Putin is not a Republican, and he is not a Democrat, and he is not a conservative, and he is not a liberal. Do not ascribe to him any of the attributes of American politics. He interfered in 2016 in order to create chaos and controversy, not to elect any particular party or individual. By far, that was his strongest motivator, and he will do it again.

I believe, if left unchecked, he will target Members of the Senate who he thinks are his opponents. He will target Members of Congress. Eventually, he will even target our debates outside of elections. I believe, if left unchecked, he is going to take the next step and not just leak information but will make it up. He is going to come up with 9 emails that will be real and will embed a 10th that will be fake. It will be reported, and it might cost one an election or might cost someone enough heartache that one has to resign.

Information is a very powerful weapon. If you go online, you will already see the ability to produce these deepfake videos that look real, videos that only an expert could tell are fake. They are of people saying or doing things they never said or never did. Imagine those being in the hands of a nation-state and being leaked 2 days before an election. A nation-state is going to do these things. It is going to happen if we do not deter it from happening and if we do not prepare our Nation and the American people. If you think this is chaotic, then allow that to happen without informing us and preparing us and strengthening us and putting in place a deterrent against that. Then you will know chaos--a chaos that will shake us to our core.

I hope that we can take this small but important step of coming together as Americans and protecting our elections for years to come against an adversary who is determined to tear us down in order to build himself up. This is reality. This is the world and the threat we face. The sooner we address it the safer our Nation and our people will be.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, if you are like me, a Member of the Senate in the hallways this week, I think the two questions that have come up over and over again were about the NATO meeting that just transpired in the last couple of days and the upcoming meeting on Monday between Vladimir Putin and President Trump.

I had intended to come to the floor and speak about policies toward China on trade. There is a lot to cover.

There was an article this morning in the Associated Press about how the Chinese Government has turned the American business class into lobbyists. They are basically telling these guys that are doing business in China: You should go back to Washington and lobby your government to stop imposing tariffs on us or you guys are going to pay a price. But I will have time to talk about that next week. That was really my intent.

I want to focus on the meeting on Monday between President Trump and Vladimir Putin because there is a lot of hyperbole. Someone came up and asked: Are you concerned that the President will meet one-on-one with Vladimir Putin and nobody else in the room?

I said: First of all, I guarantee someone else will be in the room because Putin doesn't speak English and President Trump doesn't speak Russian. It will not be a productive meeting if one or two other people aren't there. That should be the least we should focus on.

We should take this stuff seriously. It is an important and serious meeting. I don't take a back seat to anyone in terms of being clear- eyed about Vladimir Putin, and I want to talk about that today a little bit.

I want to start out by saying: Let's all take a deep breath and be reasonable. It is not unusual for the President of the United States to meet with the President of Russia because, of the 16,000 nuclear weapons on this planet, 90 percent of them are possessed by these two countries--almost equally divided. This is the reason other Presidents have met with President Putin or whoever the leader is of the Russian Federation. And that is why those meetings are important and will continue.

That said, it is important--when we analyze these meetings, what we hope they are about, and what we hope they will produce--to understand not just who you are meeting with and what they do but to understand why they are doing it. If you do not understand what the other side wants and what motivates them, then the meetings are not nearly as productive, and neither is our analysis or the suggestions we make about our policy toward that country.

First is understanding Vladimir Putin. I have never met the man. I don't think you need to meet him to believe a couple of things about him. First, is he is a very suspicious human being himself--suspicious of others. I think his KGB background has probably influenced that. He also grew up in the Cold War in Russia in the Soviet Union when Russians didn't even trust each other.

Imagine growing up in a society where people spy on each other, and you don't know, if you say something to your friend in school, if he will report you to the authorities--not to mention the authorities themselves looking at you all of the time. Then imagine actually being a product of their intelligence services.

I think when you grow up in that era, in a place like that, you are naturally going to be suspicious of other people, and you are going to ascribe to them attributes. So that is the first thing.

By the way, I think that also informs his view of the United States. It is impossible, I believe, for someone like this to grow up in that era, in that place, working where he did, and not have deep suspicions and views--negative views--about the United States and the West at- large.

The second thing that is pretty apparent just by watching him, is this guy is competitive. He views everything as a personal thing. Personal-level dominance is important to him, but, more importantly, his relationship with the United States is a competitive one. I think, by and large, he views the world as a zero-sum game, but he most certainly views the relationship between the United States and Russia as a zero-sum game--meaning that in any sort of interaction we are having with Vladimir Putin, there is no scenario in which he envisions that we both do well. He believes there is only so much success in the world, and the more we have of it, the less he has of it. I do believe it informs all the decisions he makes. There can be only one winner.

I think he is also deeply driven by his personal image. I will tell you that he probably wouldn't last 2 weeks in American politics where people are habitually mocked, and if you run for public office or you are a public figure--whether it is social media or the like--everyone gets ridiculed, mocked, and attacked. I am not sure he could ever put up with that sort of scrutiny. He is probably sensitive about it.

The one thing you can tell by watching him is that this is a person who works very hard to control his emotions. He never wants to look angry. He never wants to look as though he is afraid of something or worried about anything. He never wants to look as though he is in doubt about anything. He is very image-driven, and that drives a lot about how he controls his emotions.

But the other thing that I think is common sense is, if you grew up as a spy in the KGB, you know how valuable personal information is and how personal information about you can be weaponized. So that is why we know very little about him as a person--his personal life, his health, or any of these things. You would never know about it other than what he allows us to see--photos of him on a horse without his shirt on or whatever else he wants to show us that day--because he wants to control the personal information that is available.

He also wants to be able to control how his image is portrayed. The image he wants to portray is twofold. No. 1, he wants an image that portrays Vladimir Putin as an important world leader, an indispensable world leader; he is the guy that matters, and in every major crisis on this planet, he is a person whose opinion, views, and positions have to be taken into account. That drives a lot of the decisions he makes. It is the reason they are in Libya right now. It is the reason they are in Afghanistan right now. It is the reason he is trying to figure out how he can finagle his way into the talks with North Korea. It is because he wants to be an indispensable world leader, and there should not be any major discussion on the planet that he is not in the middle of. So oftentimes he injects himself into these things for that reason.

That is tied to his second end goal, and that is the one that drives most of what he does. He wants to restore Russia as a great world power, equal to the United States of America. He cannot do that economically. The Russian economy's GDP is $2 trillion, which makes it roughly the size of some of our States here in the United States and also roughly the size of Italy, Spain, and other countries. So he is not an economic superpower; therefore, he can only be an asymmetrical superpower, meaning the use of things that are not traditional, such as cyber warfare, his role on the security council, and the military--the ability to project power and to threaten with nuclear weapons and also with their conventional capabilities to invade neighboring countries or to intervene in places like Syria.

Ultimately, what drives him most of all--in addition to being, personally, an indispensable leader--is that he wants Russia and the United States to be viewed as equal powers on the world stage.

I think it is pretty clear from what he has said publicly that he views the 1990s as an era of humiliation for Russia. He looks at the end of the Cold War until the time he took over just in the last few years, and he sees that Russia was weak and America was strong, and we were preying on a weak Russia.

By the way, that is probably how he views the world. He views the world as a zero-sum game, a place where the weak are preyed on by the strong. Therefore, they must be strong, and they must be seen as equal to us.

Understanding all of that and any interaction with him is critical to having a positive, productive, or, at a minimum, not damaging interaction. If we go in with any illusions that this is, somehow, someone who, if we just get along with him better or if we work on some things together, then he is going to change behavior and be less problematic, that is a fool's errand. At the end of the day, if you believe the world is a zero-sum game and if you believe that the competition between the United States and Russia is one in which every time we win, they lose, and vice versa, then it is going to be very hard to find areas of interest that we can truly work on for the mutual benefit of both countries.

That does not mean that you are unnecessarily antagonistic. The bottom line is that the United States is both economically, militarily, and diplomatically superior to the Russian Federation Government in terms of our influence and our ability to do things in the world. When you are stronger--not an image, necessarily, but in reality--it should give you a level of security to be able to figure out ways in which we can work on things that are good for our country but also not lose the wisdom of understanding that you can often fall into traps. What we do not want is to fall into traps.

By the way, on this whole point of strong versus weak, I know a number of my colleagues had the opportunity to travel to Moscow during the last recess. It is interesting how it was covered in the American media--how they portrayed the visit--and how the Russian media portrayed it. I know many of them are frustrated by this. The Russian media basically portrayed them--again, it is state-controlled media, so they are going to portray it any way they want. But they almost made it look as though weaklings from America had gone over there. They were very frustrated by this. It just tells you--it gives you insight into the way they view things in the world. That is why you will very rarely see an interaction that they couch as a meeting that is respectful. They always want to put Putin in a dominant position, and they always want to put Russia in a dominant position.

By the way, one of the tactics Putin uses to accomplish this is before meetings even happen, he announces ahead of time that a deal has been struck, almost as if to trap you into the deal. Obviously, since he is announcing the deal, it sounds as if it is something he came up with.

All of these are interesting points, but where do these conversations lead us? There are a few things I think we need to keep in mind. The first is invitations to work together. They will probably happen, and he will probably announce them before the visit. One, he will say: Why don't we work together on counterterrorism? A lot of people would say: Well, that makes a lot of sense. They don't like the terrorists; we don't like the terrorists. So why can't we work with Putin to go after the terrorists?

Ideally, the answer would be: Yes, we have strong disagreements about a lot of things. Whether it is an ISIS element or an al-Qaida element, if we have a chance to work together on it, then we should pursue it.

There is a problem, though, and this what I hope everyone is clear- eyed about. They are not very good counterterrorism partners. To begin with, their capabilities are just not very good. We have seen that in Syria. They are not targeting terrorists. They are bombing schools and hospitals, and they are--not only have they committed war crimes, but they have assisted Assad in committing war crimes.

If you were going after terrorists, you would go to the places where the terrorists are. For much of that conflict, they have largely spent their time going after nonterrorist rebels--or at least non-al-Qaida, non-ISIS rebels. They are going after those rebels instead. So they are not very good at counterterrorism. They are not very capable.

The other thing is they use that as an opportunity to spy on us. When you are cooperating together militarily, you are embedded alongside each other and sharing information, so that gives you a lot of opportunity to spy on the people you are working with. We need to be wary of that.

Any effort to work together on counterterrorism has to be real. It has to be truly about terrorists, and it has to protect the United States and our information.

The second thing they love to talk about is: Well, why don't we work together on arms control? There are two problems with arms control. It sounds good on paper. The first is they cheat and they violate it. They deny it, but they violate it. The other is that they are for arms control as long as the arms that are being controlled are the ones we have more of or as long as the arms that are being controlled are the ones we are technologically superior in. They seek to use that as an advantage.

It is difficult because if you go out and you talk to people and say ``Hey, the Russians want to work together on arms control,'' everyone says ``Well, that is a great idea.''

I understand. It sounds very good on paper, but the reality of arms control is something very different. It means this: We are going to look for opportunities to cheat on our end, and we are going to try to strictly enforce it on your end.

Remember, it is a zero-sum game. If they enter into a counterterrorism relationship with us, it will be one in which they win and we lose because Vladimir Putin does not foresee a cooperative agreement with anyone, especially the country he is in direct competition with.

If it is an arms reduction agreement, remember, it is a zero-sum game. He is motivated by the desire to win at our expense, and he will use arms control as an opportunity to do that if he can structure it appropriately.

The other thing we hear him talk about is cyber. People chuckle about that. Imagine a cyber deal with the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin. But, again, Vladimir Putin knows that the U.S. private sector and government have cyber capabilities that are superior to his. So if he could come up with some sort of cyber agreement that would create rules which take away our advantage but allow him to continue to cheat and deny they are cheating--zero-sum game--he would be able to jump on top of us. These are things we want to keep an eye on.

The other thing to keep an eye on moving forward in this relationship is the unexpected. One of the things you have seen in his behavior and the zero-sum game sort of analysis of our relationship with them is that any time he sees an opportunity to do something because we are distracted or because the world may not act, he takes advantage of it: 2007 in Georgia; 2013 and 2014 in Ukraine. We could see the Ukrainian hostilities resume. The world is focused on North Korea. We are focused on the arguments regarding NATO. We are focused on the trade situation with China, Canada, Mexico, and everyone else. Everyone is talking about something different, and Ukraine is falling off the headlines.

You could wake up one morning and all of a sudden realize that hostilities have resumed or maybe it will be a massive cyber attack. Maybe it will be ramping up their involvement in places such as Libya or Afghanistan or one morning we will wake up and realize they have deployed significant military assets to one of those two countries--or both, for that matter.

It would be very reminiscent of what we saw him do in Syria, when he saw the--and the excuses would be: The Russians were already there. We are working with the government. They have invited us to come in and bring more people to help them. You would have to foresee that.

The one thing I think we should anticipate Putin will push very strongly on is to get the United States to completely pull out of Syria. What he ideally, probably, wants is some sort of ``international process'' to resolve it but an international process in which Russia not only is a key player, but they get to stay in Syria; they get to keep their naval base; they get to keep their air assets; they get to keep a unified government in Syria that is friendly to them, all supervised by the international community. But the United States has to leave first.

He would love nothing more than an opportunity to set up that sort of scenario because in a zero-sum game situation, he foresees a world in the next 5 years in which Russia has significant

military and other assets in Syria permanently, potentially in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and all of a sudden, the countries in the Middle East are saying to themselves: You know, Russia's Vladimir Putin is a guy who can be an interlocutor, a mediator of the disputes in this region. This is a person we should be working with. This is a person who actually is more reliable to work with in the Middle East. He would love nothing more than that, and he would be able to do it without committing 100,000 troops or 50,000 troops or a large loss of Russian personnel. It is a zero-sum game, great power politics, the notion that he wants to be equal to the United States.

Imagine if he could create a scenario in which--if he hasn't done so already--Russia and the Middle East, under Vladimir Putin, are at least as important as, if not potentially more important than, the United States, a situation in which they have permanent military assets and a friendly regime in Syria, potentially in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and other places, and the United States is pulling out of Syria, being forced to reduce its presence in Iraq and in other places. They become de facto more important in the Middle East, and he takes one step toward achieving the goal of reaching parity with the United States of America as far as being an influential global power.

By the way, these efforts to increase their influence would not be limited just to the Middle East. You could foresee them doing this in the Western Hemisphere. I read an article a few days ago. It was a big fanfare. They opened up what they call a counterdrug school in Nicaragua. I can only tell you that while it may very well be called a counterdrug school, anytime a country welcomes an unlimited number of Russian military personnel and others, they are welcoming in spies and influence agents and the ability to project power. They have long wanted permanent--or at least semipermanent--basing opportunities in the Western Hemisphere like those they had during the Cold War.

They already have intelligence facilities. They already have a presence in Cuba. They would love nothing more than to get into a place or to expand their presence in a place like Nicaragua and even potentially Venezuela, for that matter. We need to keep an eye on all of these things.

This is an important conversation, but it oftentimes gets lost in all of the rhetoric that is going on around the elections and American politics. We have to understand very clearly that we are not dealing with Belgium here. We are dealing with Vladimir Putin, who has used the world as a zero-sum game, the strong versus the weak, and who is trying to position Russia and himself as the strong versus others whom he hopes he can weaken.

There is no interaction between us and them in which he does not want to come out ahead. He does not feel there is such a thing as a mutually good deal. The only good deals for him are deals in which they win and whomever he is dealing with loses, especially if it is the United States.

I will wrap up by saying that, with all of this in mind, I would not diminish the threat that Russia continues to pose to our electoral system, to our society, and to our politics. The No. 1 objective of Russian efforts in 2016--and it would be their No. 1 objective moving forward--is encouraging infighting in our politics. They have a clear understanding of American politics and its nuances--our societal divisions, the things we like to fight over, how we fight over them, and where we fight over them, and they have figured out and have gotten even better at being able to drive those narratives.

When people ask ``What was the real goal of those efforts in 2016?'' beyond anything else, it was not electing one person or another. His No. 1 objective--No. 1 objective--was to leave a country, the United States, deeply divided, at each other's throats, constantly fighting. No matter who won that election, that is the result he wanted, and that was the result we were going to get. Those efforts continue.

The second effort that I think they have as a priority, by the way, is to create pro-Russia constituencies in the United States. What I mean by that is there are people in American politics who actually take the Russian side or the Putin side of a debate. You have already seen the early phases of that in some places. It is still a minority thought process, but it is not unusual in many cases these days because it has gotten wrapped up in other things that are going on.

It is not outside the realm of the possible that you could see the growth of some pro-Putin element. It is maybe not like what you see in Europe or in Russian-speaking parts of Europe--but some pro-Russian types of constituencies in the United States. Whether that is somehow wrapped up around partisanship or the like, these remain their goals. Remember what I told you earlier. They cannot compete with us economically, but if they can divide us from within, it weakens us, at least in his mind. It is one of the things he can point to and say: Look how weak America is. All they do is fight with each other. Their democracy is a fraud, and look how strong we are because there is no dissent, there is no infighting going on in my Russia.

Obviously, what he doesn't tell you is that whoever fights against him winds up dead or in jail and that there is no press by which people can fight with him anyway. So these are the things to keep in mind as we move forward because the tools that remain at his disposal are still very significant. For example, I could foresee the time or day where--a lot of times there is a lot of focus in America about what if they go into the ballot box and change the votes. That is probably much harder to do because of the way we conduct elections in this country--so decentralized.

Here is what a cyber actor could do. They could change party registration. They could go into the database and suddenly erase a bunch of voters. Imagine if they do so by being able to use analyticals to identify here are the people in this town who we think are likely to vote for this candidate or that candidate. We are going to knock out a bunch of them so that on election day, a bunch of people who support certain candidates go vote, and they are told they are not registered. If you get enough people to do that and enough of those people complain to the press, we are going to see stories saying: Guess what. Supporters of candidate X or Y were not allowed to vote in the election. Fraud. Democracy is dead. We could foresee that at some point in the future. It is a real threat.

We could see Vladimir Putin taking the next step and doing here what he has done in parts of Europe; that is, creating an enemies list, politicians he believes are anti-Russia and targeting those individuals, targeting them with information he steals by hacking their emails, disclosing documents, even doctoring fake documents; perhaps doing something like deepfake, which is something we will be talking a lot about next week. That basically is off-the-shelf technology you can buy right now where you can produce a video that without the proper technology, you could not tell it is fake, where a person is saying something they never said or is doing something they didn't do--a doctored video that looks real. Imagine that, on the eve of an election, a video pops up online--and the media starts to report it--of a candidate saying something offensive they never said or taking a bribe because of a doctored video that looks real, and unless you are a technical expert, you can't tell. It is called a deepfake. They are not that hard to make, and they are not that hard to make for someone with off-the-shelf technology.

Imagine if a nation state decides to use it. You could foresee them targeting specifics races.

They have, as I said, a pretty good understanding of American politics. You could foresee where they would say: There is a congressional race or a Governor's race or a Senate race somewhere in the country that is going to be a really big deal. It has an outsized influence on American politics, and that is the race we are going to interfere in. We are going to do something to impact the outcome of it because we think that will further our narrative one way or the other.

We have to be clear-eyed on all of these things as we go into this.

I would say, perhaps, the greatest goal Vladimir Putin would have in the short term is weakening NATO, not just limiting its expansion but weakening its resolve. NATO, at the end of the day, beyond military hardware

that is a part of it, is no better than the true commitment of a nation to a member of NATO to live up to the organizing documents and commitments we make to one another; meaning that we have a commitment, along with our partners in NATO, that if one of us is attacked, we have all been attacked. That has only been invoked one time in its history, and that was after September 11, 2001.

If he somehow could not just keep us from expanding NATO but begin to undermine it from within, it would be an enormous victory because, again, for him, it would be a sign that America is diminishing, that the threats against him are diminishing, and his influence and Russia's role in the world has increased.

So this is an important meeting. It probably will not be the last time they meet, but more important than the meeting are the issues at play between the leader in Russia who views everything as a zero-sum game, in which either he wins or America wins, but it can't be mutually beneficial.

We have to deal with him. He possesses a significant percentage of the world's nuclear weapons. Between the United States and Russia, we have 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons in these two countries. We do have to talk to him, but we need to be very clear-eyed; that is, that it is a complicated but important relationship, and we should clearly understand what motivates him and what motivates his decision making and what their ultimate goals are in any conversation we have.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 912.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 913.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 924.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of and the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 558.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 574, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 575, submitted earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 3 p.m., Monday, July 16; further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed. I ask that following leader remarks, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Executive Calendar No. 936, Scott Stump; that the time until 5:30 p.m. be equally divided between the two leaders or their designees and that the Senate then vote on confirmation of the nomination with no intervening action or debate; further, that 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.