Floor Statements

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago this very evening, I had just finished my time as Presiding Officer over the Senate, and I made the decision that early the next morning I would be returning to Florida instead of staying here the following day. The reason was that at that time and in that moment, the strongest storm ever recorded out of the Atlantic was bearing down first on the Caribbean and headed not just toward Florida but actually toward the city in which I live. Then the Nation and State watched over the next few days as that storm took its track.

There has been a lot said about Hurricane Irma since that time. I have heard some say that it could have been worse, and I imagine in some particular instances perhaps that is true. Had that storm entered through Tampa Bay, FL, the loss would have been incalculable. Had it hit directly throughout the southeast coast, right through the major metropolitan areas of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties, the economic costs would have been very significant. So it is possible that the storm could have had an even greater impact, but it is difficult to say that to the people who were impacted by it.

It was a unique storm in a lot of different ways, like the sheer scope of it. One of the things that really perplexed people in Florida, including myself--we were thinking perhaps we should move our families to another part of the State. We have a very good building code in Florida, but there are no structures under our building code that can withstand the hurricane winds of a category 4 storm. It is very difficult to do that, given the height and level of construction.

One of the difficult things about figuring out where to go is that the whole State was covered by it. It was a huge storm in its size and an enormous storm in its impact. I know for a fact that dozens of people left South Florida, as an example, and drove to another part of the State, only to find themselves actually worse off than they would have been had they stayed home. There was no way to know that at the time.

I can tell you, maybe it is because of our history with hurricanes. Obviously, in 1992, as a student at the University of Florida, I was home, the semester was about to begin, and Hurricane Andrew came barreling through there. It fundamentally altered what South Dade looked like.

Whether it was the impact of the storms in 2004 or 2005 or perhaps it was the images from Harvey from just a few weeks ago and the impact it has had on Houston and the State of Texas, people took the threat incredibly seriously, and there was a massive evacuation, perhaps the single largest evacuation in the history of the United States.

In any event, the storm did come. We measure the impact of the storm first and foremost by the loss of life, and there were 59 people who lost their lives--directly related to the storm in one way or another. Eleven of those people died after the storm from carbon monoxide poisoning. When power is lost, people run generators, sometimes even running them inside their homes. Carbon monoxide gets on them, and before you know it, they are dead. At least a dozen more didn't die, but they had been poisoned. It is an incredible threat after storms that we see every single time.

Nine people died in Monroe County, some from natural causes, although it

is hard to imagine that having a heart attack in the middle of the storm or in the aftermath wasn't somehow related to the stress such a storm brings.

Of course, we all heard the horrifying news last week that eight senior citizens had lost their lives because a nursing home's air- conditioning unit failed them in the middle of the night. The heat became unbearable, and they passed.

You can only think, despite these horrible tragedies of losing 59 people, how many more would have died had they not heeded the warnings to evacuate.

So I begin talking about the storm today by thanking the men and women who responded before and after the storm--and even during it--who kept so many people safe, and they did so even though their own families were being impacted by the storm. If you see a police officer or a firefighter from a community in Florida, they have homes, they have children, they have families, and they, too, are concerned about the impact it could have on them. Even as they are out there getting the rest of us ready, they have to think about themselves and about their own families. We thank them for the extraordinary work they do every day but in particular--at this moment--because of the storm.

We think about the National Guard. These were people who, on Monday or Tuesday of that week, were at the accounting firm or doing whatever their job might be. They were called up, and within a matter of hours found themselves on the road and headed toward an uncertain number of days that lay ahead.

We think of all the people throughout the emergency operations centers--from the State center in the capital to all of the counties-- who put in over a dozen hours a day, if not more, preparing to handle the storm.

We thank the Coast Guard for the extraordinary work they do and the Department of Defense, particularly the Navy, which were prepared to respond--and did so--to the storm, even as many of them were coming off similar duty just a few weeks earlier responding to Harvey.

Of course, we thank the first responders, who came in from all over the country. I was in the Florida Keys on Friday, and I ran into firefighters and police officers from as far away as Colorado, and we thank them for coming all the way to Florida to help us. We could not have done it without them.

I would also be remiss if I didn't thank the National Hurricane Center. The improvements that have continued to happen year after year have helped improve not just the forecast track of the storm but its intensity, even though I can tell you, all hurricanes are bad. Obviously, the stronger they get, the more damaging they become. I would just say that the work they do--we had 5, 6 days to get ready for this, and it all began because of the National Hurricane Center. They don't always have that much time, but they were able to give us and everyone proper notice. You can't carry out these evacuations unless you have accurate meteorological information, and they did an extraordinary job and continue to do so now, monitoring the new storm that tomorrow is going to make landfall over the island of Puerto Rico, potentially as a category 5 but certainly a category 4; I will talk about that more in a moment. We thank them and so many others. There are so many to mention that we would run out of time, but we thank them.

Let's first talk about some of the challenges. The first challenge, as I said earlier, is the scope of the storm. If you know anything about Florida, it is a peninsula, the third largest State in the country in terms of population. But it is a peninsula that sticks out into the Gulf of Mexico and into the Caribbean Basin in the Florida Straits. It is a huge State.

From Jacksonville, FL, in the northeast all the way down to Key West is a long distance, and we are talking about a storm that had damage in Key West, damage in Jacksonville and the southwest in Naples and the central part of the State and the southeast. Literally, the entire State of Florida was impacted by the storm because of its size and because of the route that it took, and that poses all kinds of challenges.

Our emergency operations system is built on the idea that if two counties are hit, all the other counties help respond. Well, every county was being hit. Every county was getting ready. So that right away put a real strain on our emergency operations system. We were counting on other counties being able to help us, but they couldn't because they themselves were getting ready to deal with the impact of the storm.

There were prepositioned assets in Alabama and Georgia getting ready to come down and help us, but they themselves were also in the track of the tropical storm and winds headed in their direction, not to mention the impact it had on their ability to get there. So it impacted the entire State.

You know, we have gotten trained, in watching these storms, to see images of destroyed buildings. Obviously, that is a terrible thing. We lived through that with Andrew, and we have our share of that. If you see the images of the Florida Keys, you can tell quickly that a storm went through there. But underneath the surface, underneath the structures that might still be standing and the roofs that might still be intact are deep scars and damage that will be around and will impact us for months if not years to come.

Think, for example, of the Florida Keys. If you haven't been there, it is an incredibly unique place. There is only one way in and one way out. It is a chain of small islands built on a coral rock formation, and it is truly unique. The further south you get in the Keys and the further southwest you get as it turns, the more unique it gets. It is a place where I have spent many days, especially with our family. Some of our best memories with the family were made in the Florida Keys. We spent a number of days there not long ago before the storm.

If you know anything about the Florida Keys, this is not a place with Johnny Rockets or TGI Fridays. It has a lot of small businesses, not just in the restaurant industry but in the hotels, the bait shops, the charter captains, and everything in between. There are a lot of small businesses, and many of them are generational businesses. The families have been there and have been doing it for 60 years. Those businesses are literally going to have no customers now or for the foreseeable future. They still don't have power in many places. They don't have internet. They don't have fuel. They certainly don't have tourists.

Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a small restaurant and you have to go 30 to 60 days without any revenue. I can tell you that most businesses don't have that kind of reserve, not to mention your employees who may not get paid.

When you think about the Florida Keys, it is an expensive place to live because it is a valuable piece of land right on the water, which is an enormous challenge for the workforce. The people who work in the Keys don't want to drive 3\1/2\ hours a day from South Dade to get down to the Lower Keys, or anywhere, for that matter, depending on the day. That housing stock in many places is trailer parks, mobile homes, or small apartments. The trailers are gone. The apartments have suffered water damage, and they certainly are not livable now, in many cases because of water and wind damage.

Think about agriculture. I know Florida is not thought of as an agricultural State. I promise you, there is an extraordinary presence of agriculture in our State and a great variety of crops.

Florida is one of the largest cattle producers in the country. You don't associate Florida with cattle, but it is an enormous part of our agriculture. Our signature crop is citrus, the sugar cane growers, fresh vegetables, and the nurseries. The nurseries produce tropical plants that you see in big developments or all of the indoor plants. Much of that is grown in Florida.

There are also dairies. Florida is a dairy provider to much of the Southeast. Every single one of them has suffered significant damage and, in the case of a couple of them, catastrophic damage.

The citrus industry was already being hurt by citrus greening, a disease that kills trees. Senator Nelson and I went to a grove two days after the storm, and more than half the fruit was already gone and more was dropping. That fruit is gone. Those farmers live off of that fruit. The whole fruit

goes to the whole fruit market, and the bulk of it goes to the juicing market. Much of it was green. So it wasn't even ready to pick. But once it hits floodwater, it cannot be used or sold. The FDA says it can no longer be consumed safely. They lost all of it, on top of the fact that their yields were already lower because of greening. They lost the fruit they had.

It gets worse. They lost trees. It is not simple. You don't just go to Home Depot and buy an orange tree and next year it produces oranges. These new trees take at least 4 years before they begin to produce the fruit to sell, if it survives greening. They lost trees, and they are still losing fruit, and they will still lose more trees because all of those groves are under water. All that water is sitting on the roots, and those trees will not survive. This is a catastrophe.

I don't mean to leave anything out. I can tell you the truth that there will be no Florida fresh vegetables. There will be no Florida vegetables in November. Those green beans that many of you eat on Thanksgiving Day will not come from Florida. We will have to make up the gap from foreign producers because that crop is gone entirely. I don't mean to leave anything out. I am just stating that the hit to agriculture was extraordinary. Unfortunately, for agriculture, this has happened, but there has not been a lot of media coverage about it because not a lot of agriculture is near metropolitan centers. There is not a lot of media coverage.

Look, I am not here to beat up on the media. I thank the media, and I have done so because a lot of the work they did on the national and local news was what got people motivated to get up and go and get out of harm's way. But there are not a lot of camera crews stationed live in a citrus grove. So the power gets put back on and the schools reopen, and most people forget that these farmers--most of them--are not wealthy landowners. Some of these are fourth generation growers who have been on that land and are producing and are already stretched because of some of the challenges they have, whether it is with trade or citrus greening or whatever the challenges might be. It has just gotten worse for them.

Do you know who else got hurt? The entire industry that serves them. Everyone in the towns built around them. This is big trouble. It is truly a catastrophic agricultural event in every part of the State. Virtually none of Florida's agriculture went without being impacted by this.

I think about the migrant workers who work there. Some were afraid to come forward because of their immigration status. They thought that, if they showed up at a shelter, they would be deported, but more importantly, in terms of life, some of them have nowhere to live. Their housing, to begin with, is precarious. A lot of the mobile homes are damaged by water. There is no electricity. They are not near a metropolitan center, and they are afraid to come out. Thank God for so many groups that have come forward to try to help them.

We scoff about power outages. I don't know how people lived in Florida before the invention of air conditioning with the heat and humidity. It is an inconvenience for a lot of people, but it is life threatening in the case of senior citizens or people who require refrigerated pharmaceuticals for their survival. It has had an extraordinary impact on them.

All of these circumstances have a true impact and are among many of the challenges that we now face. There is a special focus, for example, on Monroe County, in the Florida Keys. This storm threatens to fundamentally alter the character of Monroe County if we do not help the Florida Keys, because these trailer parks are on valuable land, and the owners of that land are going to be tempted to build on them, not mobile homes, again, but to build structures designed for visitors that have more money. That means that we will lose our housing stock, but ultimately it means that we will lose the character of the place--all of the small businesses that service the fishing boats and the diving.

We have some of the greatest collections of coral reefs in the world right off Marathon, by Sombrero Key in the Florida Keys. All of that will be out of business for a long time. Can they survive? I don't know.

There are small business owners that might own an apartment building. They use it in the summer for their family and rent it in the winter. It is damaged. So they can't rent it this year. So guess what. They may not be able to pay the mortgage, which will lead to foreclosures.

I mentioned agriculture. I don't know how Florida agriculture-- particularly citrus--can recover from the storm without significant help.

This storm exposed a real vulnerability to a State with so many senior citizens. It is not just the nursing homes and the ALFs. We have apartment buildings, section 8 HUD housing and the like--entire apartment buildings with 13, 14 stories. There are towers of apartment buildings populated by senior citizens. What happens when the power goes out? The first thing is that all of the food in their refrigerators rots. So within 48 hours, I don't care how much they stored for the hurricane, they can no longer eat a lot of the food they need for their nutrition.

You might say: Why don't they get up and go see to a relative's or go somewhere where they are handing out food?

They are on the 13th or 12th floor of a building where the elevator doesn't work. They can't walk down 13 flights of stairs. This exposed a real vulnerability that we will have to examine.

Then there is debris removal. Some of these counties are small counties. Some of these counties still owe money from storms last year. FEMA dispersed the funds to the State. The State hasn't dispersed it to them yet. Now they have to go out and hire, and they need hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up these roads, and they don't have that in their budget. There is a huge strain in that regard.

Senator Nelson and I spent 2 days together traveling last week. We will continue to work together to help so many different people. On Friday we had an event in Immokalee, which is a migrant community in Southwest Florida, and 800 people applied for assistance.

We were in St. Augustine yesterday, and close to 1,000 people applied for assistance.

In Jacksonville today, there were 1,800 people applying for assistance. We will be going to Naples, FL, and Fort Myers later this week. We will be back in Immokalee again on Friday, and we are about to start out in the Florida Keys helping people.

It is funny. They say: FEMA--go online and apply there. Here is the problem, when you have no internet and no power, how do you go online and apply? So we are trying to get out there to help as many people as we can.

Now, I don't want to leave on a negative note. There is nothing positive about a storm, but there are some uplifting things to point out. I will be brief and to the point. I am uplifted by these crews sent down by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or the LDS church, who are out there helping people who can't afford it or who don't know how to do it. Professionals are out there helping people cut down trees and remove debris from their homes and put tarps on their roofs. They are volunteers who came on their own to do it. I was uplifted on Saturday by visiting the North Carolina Baptists' men's relief society, who were in South Florida, and 120 people were preparing hot meals to send down to the Florida Keys. They have fed thousands of people in a very impressive operation. I am uplifted by the Red Cross volunteers from New York and New Jersey who I have run into who flew down, rode out the storm, and were there working in the shelters. I am uplifted by stories of school principals who took over these shelters because people didn't show up to run them who were supposed to show up. So these principals, custodians, and cafeteria managers showed up and took care of all these people. I am uplifted by stories like the one today in Jacksonville, where a gentleman and his wife who were disabled came forward. They lost their home and they had to be saved from floodwaters. They were living in temporary housing. A donor had put them up for a week. It ran out, and they had nowhere to go tonight. We were able to match them with a donor, who insists on remaining anonymous, for another week of temporary housing while, hopefully, we can get them the housing they need.

One of my favorite stories--and I believe Senator Nelson shared this the other night--is this one that I wanted to close with. He and I ran into this at Ave Maria Catholic University, which is literally out in the Everglades, between Naples and Miami. We went out there to visit, and we were told extraordinary stories of some of their students.

On the night before the storm, there were about 300 migrants from nearby communities--many of whom are probably undocumented, in the country illegally--who didn't want to evacuate. They were afraid of being deported. Ultimately, they saw that the storm was bad. They showed up at Ave Maria. Ave Maria opened its doors and welcomed them into the gym. There were students who stayed behind and played with the kids, entertained the kids throughout the storm, and took care of them.

What was really uplifting was the story of two nursing students. Right before the storm hit, right before you could no longer go out, the sheriff's office shows up at Ave Maria with eight seniors from a nearby ALF. The staff at the ALF quit. They literally left. They didn't show up. They abandoned them. The sheriff's office brings them, and these two nursing students bring the eight seniors into their dorms. They brought them into the women's dorm and cared for them for two days, triaging the medicine they needed to take, understanding how to do this, that, and the other. These are amazing stories about these young people. If there is any doubt about the future of America, think about the extraordinary work these young people put in. Nobody told them to do it. They could have left. They could have gone back to wherever they were from, but they stayed and took care of them.

We have a long way to go, but we want to thank all the people for the great wishes we got from all of my colleagues and from people around the country. This is a storm that impacts Florida in ways we are going to feel for a long time.

Let me close by asking all of you to take a moment tonight, if you can and you wish, to pray for the island of Puerto Rico, a U.S. Territory, where millions of our fellow Americans are staring down the barrel of the most powerful storm that ever has perhaps hit that island, and this after already getting hit by Irma just a week ago. It has the potential to be an extraordinary catastrophe. We pray that is not the case. I hope we stand ready to assist our fellow Americans on the island of Puerto Rico. Let's pray for them tonight because tomorrow morning is going to be a very difficult time for them as this extraordinary hurricane, Hurricane Maria, is about to slam right into them.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, due to ongoing efforts from Hurricane Irma, which devastated many parts of Florida, I am staying in my state to assess the damage and help marshal the full capacity of recovery resources available to us. Today I met with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and personally showed him various parts of Florida's agriculture lands that were damaged by Hurricane Irma.

(At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. President, due to ongoing and urgent recovery efforts from Hurricane Irma, which devastated many parts of Florida, I am staying in my State to assess the damage and help marshal the full capacity of recovery resources available to us. Congress

has passed authorizations for use of military force, AUMFs, that the President is using to fight the war on terror and conduct counterterrorism operations against our enemies. This includes the Islamic State, which the State Department recently reaffirmed is guilty of genocide, and other terrorist groups that continue to pose grave and persistent threats to the United States and our allies.

Paul amendment No. 871 would repeal these critical congressionally passed AUMFs, so I therefore oppose this amendment.

(At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. President, in my absence today, I would like to note my support for the confirmation of Mr. Kevin Hassett to be Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Due to ongoing and urgent recovery efforts from Hurricane Irma, which finished its course through Florida only yesterday, and the lack of commercial air travel in the wake of this disaster, I am staying in my State to help coordinate and marshal the full capacity of recovery resources available to us.

Had I been able to attend today's vote, I would have voted in favor of Mr. Hassett's confirmation as Chairman.

(At the request of Mr. Schumer, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. President, today I am home in West Miami, FL, which is now under a Hurricane Watch for Hurricane Irma and currently projected to take a direct hit from a category 5 storm. Tropical storm conditions are expected in south Florida less than 48 hours after the time of this vote. Had I remained in Washington, DC, the earliest possible return to south Florida would have given me less than 12 hours to safely secure my home and my mother's home and otherwise prepare my family to face the brunt and the aftermath of a potentially catastrophic storm. Therefore, given these circumstances and the fact that my vote would not have been determinative of the outcome of the measures before the Senate, I felt the prudent course of action was to remain in south Florida, take appropriate actions to protect my family and helping to coordinate efforts between Federal, State, and local officials.

If I had been able to participate in today's Senate vote in Washington, I would have voted to approve the supplemental package before the Senate, but my vote would come despite significant reservations about some of the other items attached to this legislation.

As I have always done in the past, I support providing additional emergency resources for disaster aid and recovery. Disaster relief is an appropriate function of the Federal Government. Unlike some previous disaster relief legislation, these funds are to be spent immediately, and are properly targeted to assist the areas impacted by Hurricane Harvey and potentially Hurricane Irma.

The rest of this spending package, however, contains items that, under normal circumstances and offered separately, I have opposed.

I strongly disagree with the decision made by the administration to agree to pair funding for FEMA and emergency disaster relief to short- term extensions to the continuing resolution, the debt ceiling and the National Flood Insurance Program unaccompanied by significant reforms.

During my service in the Senate, my support for increasing the debt limit has consistently in the past and will again in the future be conditioned on meaningful spending reforms that address our long-term debt.

Absent extenuating circumstances such as the outbreak of the Zika virus last year, I have consistently opposed passage of short-term continuing resolutions because it is an incredibly inefficient way of spending taxpayer dollars and fails to provide the certainty required for effective planning.

I am frustrated that Congress has once again temporarily reauthorized the outdated National Flood Insurance Program without enacting a long- term solution that makes much-needed improvements for the people of Florida and places this vital program on a sustainable path.

It is shameful these necessary and important measures are not being considered separately. Linking them to funds needed to assist our fellow Americans recovering from a devastating natural disaster is a cynical effort to avoid subjecting these measures to the scrutiny and debate they merit.

Today I was informed by its director that FEMA has less than 2 days of emergency funds remaining. Given that Texas continues to recover from the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Harvey and that the State of Florida is facing the most powerful Atlantic storm ever recorded, I have no choice but to support this measures, but I consider the manner in which this measure was structured, linking emergency disaster relief for victims which requires immediate action with other controversial measures we still have time to debate through the regular order, to be among the most politically cynical efforts I have ever witnessed.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to voice my support for the FDA Reauthorization Act. Within this legislation is a very important measure that will support the development of innovative and promising cancer drugs--the RACE for Children Act,

which is a law that I introduced with Senator Michael Bennet of the State of Colorado.

RACE for Children is sorely needed, as it would close a loophole that exists in current Federal law and prompt companies--pharmaceutical companies--to examine the safety and the efficacy of powerful cancer drugs and how they work on children. This, in turn, will provide doctors with the necessary information to properly treat children battling cancer.

Pediatric cancer is a leading cause of death by disease among children. A startling statistic: One in every 285 children is diagnosed with cancer before the age of 20. While the good news is that researchers are continuing to make significant advances to treat and cure cancer for adults, the progress to develop safe drugs for pediatric cancer sadly lags far behind.

One of the problems is that current law, the way it is today, directs pharmaceutical companies to study the safety and the efficacy of adult drugs on children. So if you develop a drug on diabetes or heart disease or anything for adults, it also requires you to do some of that on children because you want to make sure that it works on both populations and you don't want to keep a drug out of the market for children that could work for them. Of course, this requirement is only in place if the FDA believes that there is a pertinent need--in essence, a condition that children suffer from. There are some conditions that are unique to adults; there are few, if any, pediatric populations who have that disease, so maybe they would decide it wasn't pertinent to require it.

However, this provision in the law specifically exempts cancer drugs. In essence, it says to a pharmaceutical company: If you are going to study the safety and the efficacy of a drug on adults, if there is a pertinent need, if there is a real population out there that suffers from the same condition in children, you have to test it on children, as well, except if it is a cancer drug. One of the reasons that exemption is in there is because technology--medical technology at the time that law was put in place--didn't allow researchers to target the genetic structure of cancer. In essence, at the time, it didn't allow them to say: We can go in and find the genetic markers of a specific cancer and test against it. That is why it didn't have that requirement.

Now, however, we do have that capability. Today, the technology exists to pinpoint the similarities in adult and childhood cancer genomes. So the technology has now reached a point where you can treat the specific genome of a cancer whether it is in an adult or in a child. That is how far the technology has advanced, but the law has not been updated to keep up with it. The result is that there are a lot of adult advances being made, and we don't know if they work on children because they haven't been forced to test it.

So the RACE for Children's Act, which is a law that Senator Bennet and I offered and is included in the FDA reauthorization, closes that loophole.

Let me say that getting to this point here on the floor was not easy. So I do need to take a moment to thank the chairman, Senator Alexander of Tennessee, and obviously Senator Bennet, but also the pediatric cancer community, including organizations like the Live Like Bella Foundation in my hometown of Miami, Lambs for Life, the Alliance for Childhood Cancer, St. Jude's, St. Baldrick's, Nemours Children's Hospital, Arnold Palmer Hospital, the American Cancer Society, and so many others that came together to the table to address this important issue in a way that would not limit future innovations for cancer treatment. It has taken over a year and a half to reach this point, and I am grateful to all of them for their participation because I would not be standing here giving this speech without it.

Suffice it to say that, tragically, many of my colleagues in Congress, here in the Senate but also across the country, have been affected by cancer. Whether you are fighting cancer yourself or it is your child, your sister, your brother, your cousin, your friend, I want to make one thing clear: You are not alone in your struggle.

I would venture to say that I do not know anyone who has not been impacted by pediatric cancer. I have it in my own family, and some have confronted it in theirs, in loved ones and children who went to school with your kids. In fact, Live Like Bella Foundation was founded for a young girl by the name of Bella from Miami. She was a classmate of my nephew in grade school, and she lost her battle with cancer. Her father has been a tireless advocate for this cause. He moved Heaven and Earth to try to reach a point where they could find a cure for her. That did not come in time. He has now made it the mission of his life to honor her life by continuing this work. So we have all been impacted in some way.

As I said, unfortunately, across this country this disease is a reality. I want to share some stories of a few of the children who have been impacted by cancer and who have impacted our office and helped us to make this a priority over the last year and a half.

The first is the story of a young boy named Jeremy. He is only 5 years old and has been in treatment for 4 of those 5 years. He has had more than 150 surgeries so far, and ultimately had to have his eyes removed because of cancer, which left him completely blind, obviously.

Then there is Tatum, who was diagnosed with a rapidly developing brain tumor just before she was supposed to start kindergarten. Her parents were told by the doctors that they should take her home and they should enjoy the little time they had with Tatum because they had no options to treat her.

There is Princeton, who was diagnosed with cancer when he was 5 years old. He is now 7. In those 2 years he has undergone 6 chemo cycles, a bone marrow transplant, 9 surgeries, 12 rounds of radiation, and 6 cycles of immunotherapy. Because of this intense and time-consuming treatment schedule, Princeton built friendships with others who were also in the hospital for treatment. Sadly, he has lost many of these friends.

Princeton's best friend was Trevor. Trevor passed away right before Princeton's birthday party. Princeton came to my office asking the Senate to do more for kids like them. Here is what 7-year-old Princeton said: ``I don't want my friends to die, and I don't want me to die.''

There is the story of Derek. He was a healthy, happy baby until he developed an aggressive form of cancer and it produced tumors all over his body. His body was literally taken over by tumors. At only 5 months of age, baby Derek lost his battle against cancer.

These are real stories. They are real, heartbreaking stories--stories of our neighbors, friends, and family and what they have endured.

But with the developments in medicine today, there is no reason these children shouldn't have a second chance. Yet the treatment options for children with cancer is much more limited than it is for adults, and some of the reasons why are the issues we are trying to address about this law here today.

Recent advancements in cancer treatment enable oncology drugs to specifically target the genetic structure of the cancer, and that makes it possible to transition certain adult cancer drugs for pediatric use. However, the basic information you need to do that--about dosing and safety--needs to be determined to guide the doctors responsible for treating these children. These treatments, these advances are providing new-found hope for cancer patients, but mostly only for adult cancer patients.

Fortunately, we have a chance and an opportunity to change this, and that is the goal of the RACE for Children Act.

The House recently passed the RACE for Children Act as part of the FDA user fee reauthorization bill that is before us here today. It is now our turn to do so and to send this important and potentially lifesaving legislation to the President for his signature.

In a place where we have had some heated debates over the last 7 years, since I have been here--6\1/2\, and more to come--sometimes it feels as though, perhaps, our service here doesn't make much of an impact. But from time to time, we have unique opportunities to vote on laws and legislation that slightly alter the arc of history and potentially help people. Standing here today, I can't tell you if there will be

1,000 children, 100,000 children, or 5 children who will benefit from a cancer treatment because of this new requirement in which these adult drugs will have to be tested on children. We don't know.

Standing here today, believing that we all walk on Earth and our days are numbered to the glory and grace of God, frankly, we don't know if one of our own children, God forbid or someone we deeply love or one of our children's classmates will be impacted by pediatric cancer. But we know that 1 in about 300 children will be. So the chances are that at some point, we will once again have someone we care deeply about impacted. We hope that when that moment comes, if it does, that there will be options for their parents and their doctors and that they will have the opportunity to use for them treatments that perhaps would not have been available, had this requirement not been in the law. That is why I hope and I urge my Senate colleagues to join me in supporting this initiative.

In fact, sometimes we give these speeches with a sense of mystery: If this passes; if it doesn't pass; there is no reason this isn't going to pass. We all expect the FDA reauthorization bill to pass. I imagine when people vote on this tomorrow, they will read the title of the bill, ``FDA Fee Reauthorization.'' It sounds like taking care of the normal course of business--it is important in its own right, by the way--that this is just this bureaucratic exercise to reauthorize an expiring law. Embedded in that law is a very important law, one that I hope will lead to real life-changing innovation in a way that will impact lives, change and save the lives of children here in our country but ultimately in other parts of the world as well.

That is why I felt it was important to come to the Senate floor and, obviously, urge my colleagues to support this initiative but also to urge my colleagues to be proud of it.

We are about to go home, whether it is tomorrow or next week, and answer to our constituents for all the things we didn't do. There are some significant issues we have not confronted and solved for the country, but this is a significant issue. There aren't going to be a lot of articles written about it; there aren't going to be blaring headlines on the websites about it, mailers and campaign commercials. That doesn't mean it isn't important. We live in a society where oftentimes good news doesn't draw ratings, and good news doesn't drive eyeballs and clicks to a website. It doesn't make it unimportant. It doesn't make it insignificant.

This is significant. This is an opportunity. This is evidence that more often than perhaps people realize, fellow Americans of different points of view, representing diverse States and communities, who approach the political process with very different ideologies and aims, come together to make a difference. I am pleased that while there are many things we have not done, we will leave here tomorrow or next week knowing that at least we did one thing that will matter. It is an important thing because these children whom we are trying to help do not have the time to continue waiting for us to step up and take action.

I thank the Chair.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a statement by Julio Andres Borges Junyent, President of the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I would like to highlight the outstanding accomplishments of Lt. Zachary Hodges of Gainesville, FL. Four years ago, I nominated this impressive young man to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy.

I recently received a letter from Zachary letting me know that he has graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy--a major milestone that his family and friends should be very proud of.

Zachary also said he plans to attend medical school at the University of Florida and looks forward to serving our Nation as an Air Force physician.

I am very proud to have nominated Zachary, who has already accomplished so much at the age of 22. His enduring commitment to his studies and his country is a testament to his will to succeed and serve. I have no doubt he will inspire others around him to do the same.

I wish Zachary the best of luck and look forward to hearing of his continued success; I am sure he has a very bright future ahead. May God bless him and all of the men and women who serve our Nation in the Armed Forces.

Mr. President, I have, since the year 2014, come to the Senate floor on numerous occasions, perhaps more than I hoped to, to discuss the developing situation in the nation of Venezuela.

The reason why I have taken such an interest in this issue is because of the impact it has, first and foremost, on my home State of Florida. We are blessed in Florida, particularly in my hometown of Miami and in South Florida, to have a vibrant and diverse community with people from across the world and, particularly, from the Western Hemisphere. That, of course, includes a very substantial number of people from Venezuela, some who live in Florida for part of the year and some who have made it their permanent home. They have contributed greatly to our economy, to our culture, and to our lives.

It is through their eyes that I have witnessed the tragedy that has unfolded in that nation over the last 5 years. I use the word ``tragedy,'' but I don't use it lightly. Venezuela is one of the richest countries in the world, blessed with natural resources that God has blessed that nation with and the largest crude oil reserves on the planet--certainly, more than the United States and Canada combined, as an example. They have highly educated and capable people and a long tradition of democracy. Venezuela has one of the oldest traditions of democracy in the Western Hemisphere. As much as anything else, not only is it a tragedy for the people of Venezuela--what has happened--but it is a tragedy for the hemisphere and, ultimately, for the world. We look at some of the great causes that the world is confronting and think what a democratic and prosperous Venezuela could be contributing, what its extraordinary people could be contributing. But the last 5 to 10 years--particularly the last 5--have largely been taken up by internal strife.

At the end of the day, my interest on the issue of Venezuela has never been the removal of anyone from power. It has been about the restoration of the democratic order so that the people of Venezuela can choose their path forward. We look at the history of our hemisphere, here in the Western Hemisphere, and we see that up until about 25 years ago, most of the nations in the Western Hemisphere were governed by dictators and strongmen on both the left and the right, and few, if any, people in our hemisphere had a role to play in choosing their leaders. Today, but for the exception of a handful of places-- predominantly, Cuba and the Caribbean and some others--almost all of the people of the region get to choose their leaders, and that has been the story of Venezuela up until very recently. Sometimes they choose leaders who agree with America, and sometimes they do not. But they choose their leaders.

In the end, we know that democracies very rarely start wars because their peoples do not tolerate it. Democracies always seek stability and prosperity because their peoples demand it, and they get rid of leaders who don't deliver.

So our goal from the beginning--my goal, in particular--has consistently been the restoration of the democratic order and, through that, the respect for basic rights and dignity of all people, particularly in Venezuela. It is sad to see what has happened because I think it is fair to say that the situation today in Venezuela is worse than it has been at any point since 2014.

We saw about a week ago the horrifying images of armed thugs storming the National Assembly--the democratically elected National Assembly-- and attacking members of that assembly. It would be the equivalent of protestors storming the Capitol doors and attacking Senators and Congressmen. We saw images of uniformed personnel, some of whom, basically, are the equivalent of our Capitol Police, roughing up the very members of that assembly whom they are supposed to be protecting. We have seen the images of protests in the streets, of national guard troops firing on people with tear gas and rubber bullets and, in some instances, with guns.

We have seen these irregular groups called ``colectivos'' going after people in the streets. By the way, in fairness, we have seen violence on both sides of it, although the vast majority of people in the opposition--the enormous majority--seek a peaceful resolution to this. Anytime you put hundreds of thousands of people in the street, chaos happens.

You think not just of the protestors, but you think of their family members on the other side of it. We forget that these national guard troops, holding up their shields and wearing the uniforms, have sisters and brothers and husbands and wives and loved ones on the other side of that barricade, deeply dividing this proud nation with an incredible history of contributions that it has made.

The situation has now reached what I believe is the tipping point. Later this month, the Government of Venezuela--I should say the executive branch, under its current President--has scheduled an unconstitutional assembly. They call it a constituent assembly. It violates the very Constitution of the country, not to mention that the supreme court has already kind of canceled the democratic order and this adds to that. I just say this with deep

sadness. If that goes forward, I think it fundamentally changes the situation permanently.

I had an occasion early this morning to speak to the President on this topic for a few minutes, as I know he is headed overseas. He expressed his continued dissatisfaction with the course of events. I think it should be abundantly clear to everyone that this government in the United States is prepared to take additional significant measures if, in fact, that constituent assembly moves forward at the end of this month--basically, all but admitting to the world what we already know; that is, that the democratic order in Venezuela has ended.

I do believe that there is still a path forward--a path forward that doesn't involve vengeance, that involves reconciliation; a path forward designed to restore the democratic order. I believe deeply that all of my colleagues here in the Senate and in the Congress and the President of the United States are prepared to play whatever role they can to help facilitate that. I think that, obviously, ultimately, it would involve restoring democracy. It would involve respecting its own Constitution. It would involve holding free and fair elections, internationally supervised, not by the United States but by the United Nations or by neighboring countries. I just left a meeting a few minutes ago with the Foreign Minister of Mexico, a nation that has shown that it is willing to step forward and be constructive and productive in this endeavor.

That is the goal. The goal is to restore peace and order and to restore democracy and to grant amnesty and freedom to those who have been imprisoned because of their political views. Within that space, there are those within the government who themselves perhaps seek the same thing but feel trapped by the circumstances before the nation today.

So I do believe there is a path forward, but I also think it would be unfair if I didn't make clear that the time for that path is running out and the door will permanently close if, at the end of this month, the Maduro government moves forward with this assembly, which is illegal and unconstitutional. At that point, it would be clear for all that they have no interest and no intent of restoring democracy. I fear the consequences of that, not simply because of what the U.S. Government and the Trump administration might do but what it would mean to those in the streets who are already desperate as it is.

I do think that path is there. I do believe that opportunity is still available, but it will not be around forever. My hope is that cooler heads will prevail. My hope is that patriots in Venezuela--no matter what side of this debate they have been on up to this point--realize it is time to step up and further this process of reconciliation, not with a goal of vengeance or punishment but with a goal of freeing those who have been imprisoned unjustly, with the goal of having free and democratic elections, with the goal of living up to constitutional principles, with the goal of restoring democracy to a great people and a great nation.

I know that I, for one, despite all of my criticisms and all of the speeches I have given and all of the measures we have taken, am prepared to do all I can to be helpful in that endeavor, to help the people of Venezuela take control of their destiny once again and restore the democratic order, the constitutional order in a way that unites the country, not one that further fragments and divides it.

I know the President has expressed a willingness to be involved in that process in whatever capacity is appropriate, knowing that other nations in the region are prepared to lead as well.

I thought it was important on this 11th day of July, as we get closer to that measure--which I think will do irreparable harm to this possibility--that I come here to the Senate floor and express this. In the end, I think all of us in this hemisphere and, ultimately, the world would benefit greatly from a Venezuela that fulfills its potential--the potential of its people, the potential of its economy, the potential of its proud history of democracy. Whatever we can do to be helpful in that endeavor, I know that this Nation is prepared to do in whatever capacity is appropriate in the eyes of the people of Venezuela.

Ultimately, the future of Venezuela belongs to the people of Venezuela, and that is what we stand for. We hope that we can be helpful in a process that brings them together--and not further divides them--and restores what they once had and deserve to have again: a proud democracy, a vibrant economy, and a people with extraordinary and unlimited potential to achieve great things on behalf of their nation, their countrymen, and the world.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to pay tribute to the memory of a man who was a great friend of mine: Dr. Michael Gordon.

A professor at the University of Miami, Michael's love for medicine and people impacted the lives of so many, both inside the classroom and out. Michael first came to Florida in 1960 and eventually returned in 1966 to teach at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, a move that would keep him in the Sunshine State for the rest of his life. His tenacity intelligence led to critical medical breakthroughs, But it didn't come easily.

Michael's first invention, ``Harvey''--the cardiopulmonary patient simulator used across the globe--was initially viewed with contempt and suspicion amongst his contemporaries. But that did not discourage Michael. And thank God for that, because the once-ridiculed invention has since been used by many in the field of cardiology around the world. His relentlessness and ambition served as a testament to his character. He was a man with unfailing dedication to the well-being of others.

He also created UMedic, a system fostering research and learning in cardiology. Michael also devised training for first responders, which undoubtedly saved many lives over the years. He founded the Medical Training and Simulation Laboratory, which was eventually named the Michael S. Gordon Center for Research in Medical Education. The center focused on the mission of improving medical techniques and training paramedics and firefighters.

So many of us in the Miami-Dade community cherish his memory. While some in our community may never know his name, their loved ones may very well be saved by one of his innovations or the training he provided to first responders. Over the course of his life, Michael would bear many titles, including professor, mentor, innovator, doctor, inventor, friend, father, grandfather, and husband. To put it simply and quite literally; his friendship and passion touched many.

I am proud to have known such a tremendous human being and benefactor to the Miami community. My wife Jeanette and I will forever miss him and we join our friends at the University of Miami and his family in honoring his legacy.

May God bless him, his family, and those who continue his mission of saving lives and advancing medicine.

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

Mr. President, a year ago today, Americans--myself included--awoke to the shocking news that 49 of our fellow Americans had been killed overnight in one of the deadliest mass shootings, mass attacks in our Nation's history.

I recall that day. It was a Sunday morning. I was home, and we were getting ready to go to church, as we do. The news was on. We don't usually turn on the TV. That day, the text messages were coming in, and it spoke about this horrifying incident that occurred overnight. The news reports were still sketchy.

For whatever reason--be it because of our work here or a bad gut feeling--I remember telling my family that I was going to get in my truck and drive the 3 hours to Orlando to be there because I felt there was something beyond the scale and scope of it, a little bit different about this horrifying attack. As I drove north on the Florida turnpike, the updates on the radio kept coming in. The scale of it was unbelievable. The numbers kept climbing, and there was still not a lot of detail about what was behind it.

After I arrived on the scene and was able to interact with some of our Federal authorities and State authorities who were there, the picture still wasn't abundantly clear, but the one thing that began to emerge was, this was the act of a single individual inspired by an ideology of hate and supported in the pursuit of that ideology by people who before that and since then have been responsible for attacks all over the world.

I think the part that was perhaps most troubling for a lot of people is--especially for me, I found myself at that time, 45 years of age, at the halfway point between the age of the people who would have been there and the age of someone whose child might have been there, and the randomness of it--the notion that a lot of young people went out that night to have a good time with their friends. It was Latin night. This was a well-known nightclub in the LGBT community in Central Florida. I don't think that when you get up at night and get dressed and go out that you think one of the risks involved is you are going to end up interacting with a jihadist terrorist. That is what happened that night.

The other part that was so startling is, so often for so many of us, these bad things happen somewhere else. They happen in France. They happen in London. They happened on 9/11 in New York City. This happened in Florida, just down the street from a place that I had been a year earlier--a small business, furniture store whose owners I had gotten to know as I was writing a book about small businesses and the like. The familiarity of it, how close it was to home, and the idea that the war on terror had not just come to America that day but it had come to Central Florida. Ultimately, we learned it had come to impact people whom we knew through others and whose stories sounded quite familiar.

We now know it was the worst attack on U.S. soil since September 11 of 2001. In this time when we are having so many debates about whom we are going to allow into our country and what criteria we are going to use and from what places they can come, it is important to stop and remember that the individual--whose name I will not even say because I think one of the hopes he had is that he would go down in history as a famous person, but this individual lived in our country for a long time. He lived among us since the day he was born. He was not someone who had come on an airplane or had recently arrived from another culture, another society. He was an American, born and raised in the United States. If my memory doesn't fail me, I believe he was born in Queens, NY.

What strikes me is, he benefited from everything this country offers: freedom, liberty. He knew people. He lived among fellow Americans his whole life. He went to work every morning alongside them. He had all of the blessings and the opportunities and everything this country provides. Yet even that was not enough to somehow inspire him not just to take on this evil ideology but to act on it.

Obviously, the attack was personal for the 49 families with stories of their own and of course the countless others who were injured. I know it was personal to the LGBT community and Central Florida. As I said, Pulse was a well-known cornerstone of the community, particularly for younger people.

As I said earlier, this was deeply personal for Floridians and for the people of Central Florida. I will get to that in a moment because I am extraordinarily proud of that community. I think it was personal for all Americans.

When I arrived, I saw these people, largely still--I don't know what time it was, but the attacks weren't even 12 hours old. I saw family members of people they loved or loved ones who were outside in desperate mode. You know that look on your face where, ``I want to know what happened. I don't know if the person I love is inside there. I haven't heard from them.''

One of the most chilling things I heard from law enforcement was that

the cell phones were still buzzing as people were calling their loved ones. It brought home that this wasn't just 49 as a number. It is so easy to see that scroll across the television set. It is even easy to say it now, 49. They were 49 human beings, 49 human beings with families who loved them, parents who loved them, siblings who loved them. I saw that firsthand when I got there. I saw the look of people behind the yellow rope who had no idea if someone whom they deeply loved and cared for lay dead on the other side of that tape.

I remember not long after, crowds began to form and people started showing up with signs that said things like: ``We're with you.'' ``We love you.'' This was early. I am talking about 12 to 13 hours after the attack happened.

I commend the law enforcement--Federal, State, local--who came together and responded. I saw people coming off duty, people who were not on duty that day, putting on the uniform and showing up to see how they could help. We saw the long lines of everyday citizens bringing food and water to support their efforts. Later that day, we saw long lines of Floridians lined up to donate blood.

There is no doubt that this was a community that was heartbroken, but it was also a community that was unbroken; that I believe woke up stronger and more united than it was when I went to sleep the night before.

I think, ultimately, the man who committed this attack and the people who inspired him to do so would have been horrified by what they saw. I think they would have been horrified to see First Baptist Church in Orlando--a pillar of the Christian evangelical community--opening its doors to the LGBT community and welcoming them and their families and holding services there. I think they would have been horrified by that. I think they would have been horrified by people putting aside, if but for a moment, their voter registration cards, their preferences in the upcoming elections, their backgrounds, the way their last names are pronounced or whom they love. They put all this aside and said: These are 49 Americans--and their families--who just died at the hands of an evil terrorist. We are committed to doing everything we can to provide support for them. I think these terrorists would have been horrified to see what has happened since that time.

In so many ways, Central Florida grew up--and I mean that in a positive way--so much in the last year, in terms of coming together, in the sense of community, and obviously it is sometimes in tragedy that we see that happen. I think it served as an extraordinary inspiration to communities all around the country who hope to achieve the same level of unity without the tragedy.

While the attack may have succeeded in sowing death and heartbreak, it failed in sowing doubt about our way of life. In the year that has followed, we have seen hundreds of thousands of Americans come together in Orlando to celebrate the lives of the victims and to begin that healing process.

In the weeks and months after the attack, memorials were established throughout downtown Orlando, marking the loss of 49 of our brothers and sisters. We saw ceremonies held in every part of the State, from Pensacola to Miami, FL.

One thing that really stands out in particular is, one of the memorials was a set of 49 white crosses that rested aside the Orlando Regional Medical Center, the trauma center where a number of the victims were taken that morning. Those crosses are now at the Orange County Regional History Center. Each one of these crosses is about 3 to 4 feet high and has the name of one of the 49 victims. People from all across the Nation visited this memorial, including, at the time, President Obama and Vice President Biden. They came to pay their respects and to leave a token of their mourning in the honor of those taken that night--cards and pictures, teddy bears and flowers were set around each cross, and people wrote notes and well-wishes on the crosses to honor the memory of each of the 49.

When the crosses were taken by a police motorcade to the history center, one mother--I have chosen not to list her name because it is not for me to do, but she was there to assist that Tuesday with moving that cross that represented her daughter. She and her husband, I think, by now know this, but we share a mutual friend in the Orlando area, and I have learned firsthand from him just how hard the loss of their daughter was for them.

In the end, before I am a Senator or anything else I do, I am a husband and a father, and I have a child whose name is the same as their daughter. I, for the life of me, cannot begin to fathom what they have gone through in the past year, along with 48 other families.

As they moved her cross with her name on it, they saw a note on it that had been written by someone in the community. They don't know who it was. The note was very simple, but it was very powerful. The note said: ``I never knew you but I love you.''

It strikes me that line, ``I never knew you but I love you,'' for those of us in the Christian faith, reminds us of what Christ said is one of our greatest Commandments, to love your neighbor as yourself.

For the past year, we have felt the deep pain. We have also seen in Orlando that it is united. ``One Orlando.'' At a time when we can always find something to divide us, a community came together to honor the memory of those who were lost. Each of them was a son or a daughter, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, or a partner. In the end, they were a part of our families and our communities. Each of them, like all of us, had immense promise and hope. Each in their own way were a part of what makes this country a great nation, and they were lost that terrible night 1 year ago, but they were loved.

A year later, we remember them and those they left behind. I hope we will honor them by finding a way as a nation to remember that despite our differences on a vast number of issues, we are still one nation under God, the greatest Nation on Earth, the most extraordinary people who have ever lived, a nation that is not simply a people bound together by a common blood or common heritage, a common ethnicity. America is more than a country. It is an idea, the idea that every single human being has a God-given right to live life as they so choose and to fulfill their potential. I hope we will continue to work here and everywhere we can to live up to that powerful idea that changed the world.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator for his kind comments. This issue is one that I think matters to all 100 Members of this Chamber and every American.

I, too, find it timely that here we are, 73 years to the day of the incredible sacrifices that were made on that beach in Normandy and that we have the opportunity to honor the men and women who have served for us, then and since then, particularly those who are now in need of services, with the passage of what is truly landmark legislation, and I will talk about that in a moment. It is the hope of all of us who are supporting this that it will help bring accountability for generations of those who have served and will serve to protect our great Nation.

We live in a time of an outrage culture, where in order to make the news every evening, you have to be involved in some controversy or say something over the top. That is just the way things are these days. So when something positive happens, it doesn't get a lot of coverage. It is my sense that while we are not doing this for purposes of getting coverage, many Americans tonight, as they watch the news or go on the internet, will have no idea that the Senate took this up. I think that is unfortunate because in addition to the importance of this piece of legislation, it is a testament that despite all of the important issues, noise, and arguments we hear every day on television, that our Republic still works and that men and women of good faith can come together across political ideology and partisan lines on an issue that wasn't easy to work with for a couple of years.

I hope there is an opportunity to point to this and say that on something that was important--this is not a symbolic resolution; this is a change in the laws of our country that will bring accountability to one of the most important functions that our government provides to the men and women who serve in uniform, and that is the Veterans' Administration. That is why I preference my comments on all this and the fact that this is not getting a lot of attention because this is not controversial. If there were a big fight on the floor about this and people were bickering or arguing, it would get more coverage, but the fact that we were able to come together across party lines on this issue and get it done should not be a reason not to recognize its importance. That is not why we are doing it. We are doing it to make a change.

I think it is important to preface my remarks by saying that it has been an honor and a pleasure to work with Chairman Isakson and with the ranking member, Senator Tester, and all the members of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee on what is now truly bipartisan legislation that is before the Senate. I remain grateful to the committee for their efforts to help bring needed accountability reforms to the Department. This is an issue, as I said, that we have been working on for several years, and I am pleased that we are now on a path to enact real change.

This spring marks 3 years since light was shed on the veterans who died while they were stuck on secret waiting lists at the Department of Veterans Affairs. After it was revealed that the Phoenix, AZ, VA facility had widespread mismanagement and misconduct by employees, Congress came together and acted promptly. In the wake of that deplorable situation, this Chamber responded in a bipartisan way by passing the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014.

While many of those reforms have begun to make a difference, we knew even then that it would not be enough. As reflected in the legislation that is now before us, in this law we are seeking to address those shortcomings and doing so in deference to what the courts have decided is consistent with the Constitution of the United States.

As virtually every Member of this Chamber--if not everyone--has done, over the years I have met with veterans throughout my home State of Florida, and I have found that many share a common frustration and disappointment and often express resignation that meaningful accountability has yet to come or occur at the VA. It is my hope that will begin to change with this vote today. These men and women, our veterans, have sacrificed much for our country, and it is our duty to take care of them when they come home after taking care of us. Sadly, for many, this solemn obligation and promise has not been kept.

Plain and simple, ineffective governance is unfair to our veterans and to the American taxpayer. The VA must be properly managed so that it can provide timely, quality care to veterans and be held accountable to all Americans.

Let me follow up what I just said by making it abundantly clear that the overwhelming majority of the people who work at the VA are good, hard-working employees who serve our veterans well. Many of them are veterans themselves. This is not a punitive measure, nor is it meant to degrade the work they are doing under very difficult circumstances. But it has become clear that under the current law, the VA often is unwilling or unable to hold individuals appropriately accountable for their actions and/or misdeeds--usually not because they don't want to but because under the law they just can't. Even in instances in which disciplinary action against an employee was attempted, the complexity and the lengthiness of the process prevented meaningful consequences.

The unfortunate reality is that those few but significant number of negligent employees often went unpunished. To shield such employees from the consequences brings down the entire Department, demoralizes the workforce, and undermines the core mission of the VA. That comes not from political talking points but from many of the men and women who themselves work at the VA.

We cannot and must not allow bureaucratic redtape to get in the way. Our VA is staffed by those who belong there and are willing to perform the important tasks of serving our heroes.

It is our hope and my belief that this law will change the VA, and it will change it for the better. Simply put, the law gives the VA Secretary the authority to reprimand, to suspend, to demote, or to remove any employee if their behavior or their performance warrants such an action.

Importantly, these reforms establish a period of adequate notice, response, and final decision on a disciplinary action initiated by the Secretary and is under an enforceable and capped timeframe. So while the employee is getting due notice and the opportunity to defend themselves, it doesn't drag on forever.

It also provides a new avenue for whistleblowers so they can come forward without fear of retaliation through the establishment of an Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection. This is critical because, as we have seen, in order to uncover many of these abuses at the Department, we oftentimes need to rely on information directly from those who have seen it happen and are involved.

In summary, this bill will protect our veterans while also serving as a means to protect the countless well-performing, dedicated VA employees and whistleblowers in the Department who are frustrated that just a handful of bad apples are standing in the way of providing the service they signed up to provide. This bill will also ensure that VA employees' due process rights are respected and not infringed upon. This is not an anti-VA employee law; it is designed to reward those who work hard and perform and to identify and remove those who do not.

I am proud to say this bill would not have been possible without the support of our current VA Secretary. We worked closely with him and his office to ensure that the provisions would provide the tools they need now and for future Secretaries so they can carry out their important mission.

In addition to the Secretary, the bill has been endorsed by the Office of Special Counsel, Project On Government Oversight, and several veteran service organizations, including the Paralyzed Veterans of America, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Concerned Veterans for America, the Reserve Officers Association, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, American Veterans, and the Military Officers Association of America. These organizations serve our veterans admirably, have valuable knowledge of veterans' needs, and they agree that this legislation provides overdue reforms to the VA's current broken civil service system. We are all grateful for their help, for their support, and for helping and informing us in tweaking this law so that it actually solves problems.

There are two more points that I want to make.

I am proud that we were able to come together as a unified body-- Republicans and Democrats--to show the Nation that the Republic can still work and that we can work together to solve problems. Hopefully, that spirit will carry over into other issues that confront our Nation.

With today's vote, I think we move one step closer to achieving the worthy goal of bringing accountability and, as a result, an improvement in the VA. I thank my colleagues for joining this fight to better serve our Nation's veterans.

I close by thanking the people who worked day in and day out on this, including the staffs for Chairman Isakson and Ranking Member Tester. Adam Reece and Jorge Rueda worked tirelessly on the bill. I thank Hazen Marshall and Tom Hawkins with Senator McConnell's office. I thank our cloakroom staff--Laura Dove, Chris Tuck, and Tony Hanagan--for their work in getting this bill here today.

On my own personal staff, I thank J.R. Sanchez, who has worked on this personally for 2\1/2\ to 3 years. I don't know what he is going to do with his time now because he has spent so much time and passion on this, and he knows many of these veterans personally.

This is a good day, and I look forward to eventually getting this bill over to the President's office so that accountability and improvement in performance can finally come to the VA and so that the men and women who have taken care of us will finally be taken care of the way they deserve.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.