Floor Statements

First of all, Madam President, I want to thank my colleague from West Virginia, Senator Capito, for her comments. I know shortly we are going to hear from the Senator from Pennsylvania. We heard from the Senator from Ohio.

This is sometimes hard for me to say as a former Governor of Virginia to a former Governor of West Virginia, but I want particularly those who are following this issue to know that no one in this body has fought for miners harder, longer, more passionately, more consistently than Joe Manchin.

It was only through his repeated efforts--and this man is like a dog with a bone in his mouth who will not let it go. At times he is stiff in the spine with folks on this side of the aisle when they wanted to say: Well, maybe no. We ought to move to something else. He has come back and back and back again.

So I am honored to stand with him one more time. Let me again say that it is with some challenge that someone from the Commonwealth of Virginia has to say these many nice things about somebody from West Virginia, but the folks in the Gallery ought to know there has been no one who has been a better advocate for miners than the Senator from West Virginia.

I don't think there is a Member of the Senate--I know at least on this side of the aisle--who has not heard at least a half dozen times about the promises Harry Truman made to the miners in 1946 and how it is our obligation to keep that word and to keep that promise.

The Senator from West Virginia has indicated why this is timely. Again, it is because we have the challenges around the pension fund. We have other challenges, but we have a crisis right now.

We talked about Westmoreland--the Westmoreland bankruptcy, 1,200 miners, 500 of those live in Virginia. If we can't get a solution on this deal right now on the American Miners Act, then a lot of those miners and their families are going to go bankrupt because their day of reckoning is already upon us.

I want to echo what the Senator from West Virginia said to urge the majority leader and, for that matter, the minority leader that there is a way--if we do the rational, sensible thing and not shut down the government on Friday, we ought to take advantage of making sure the American Miners Act is part of that provision. I can think of nothing better, as we go into the work period, than to try to give miners some certainty.

Let me just mention one other item that the American Miners Act had, and that is the strengthening of the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. This is also an issue that, if we don't get it resolved, the amount of contributions that go into that trust fund will drop in half.

I don't think many folks realize--and I think this is particularly the case in West Virginia and Southwest Virginia--black lung is still a real, enormous medical challenge. As a matter of fact, we have now seen growth in large populations in my State, and I know in West Virginia, as well, of advanced black lung cases called complicated black lung, which has an even more devastating effect.

If this trust fund is cut in half, based upon legislation that took place at the end of calendar year 2018, the ability of the trust fund to meet the needs of these miners and their families, who are still hard hit by a debilitating disease--we are not going to be able to give them, again, the high-quality care they deserve. It is way past time to fix this problem. Let's take that step.

We have one of these large pieces of legislation, hopefully, that the President will not decide to veto, that we will get through. Wouldn't it be--I ask the Senator from West Virginia this

before I cede to the Senator from Pennsylvania, but sometimes, with these giant bills, strange things pop out at the end of the day, and you kind of wonder how they got in. Wouldn't it be great if, on this mini giant bill, one of the things that popped out might be the promised relief for our miners in terms of healthcare and their pensions? This is something I believe, we, as a country, owe to the miners--back, yes, to President Truman's promise in 1946.

I stand with all of my colleagues on this issue. I particularly thank, again, my friend the Senator from West Virginia for his great leadership and his willingness to stand tall time and again. Let's see if we can get it done this time.

With that, Madam President, I yield to the Senator from West Virginia.

Right, all we have to try to do with the trust fund is to get it back to the status quo.

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

Madam President, I rise today to oppose the nomination of William Barr to be the Attorney General, a nomination that the Senate will be taking up later today.

I have a number of concerns about the nominee on policy grounds. I echo what my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee have said about Mr. Barr's troubling record on important issues affecting Americans' constitutional freedoms. He has advocated for harsh, mandatory minimum sentences, as well as the President's Muslim ban.

I also have serious concerns about his past statements about LGBTQ equality and the role of government in women's reproductive healthcare. As one telling example, he testified in his 1991 confirmation hearing that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled.

On all of these issues, this nominee, I believe, is out of step with the views of the vast majority of the American public, but for me, this nomination and my objection to this nomination is not simply an objection based on policy grounds, nor is it a question of Mr. Barr's experience. As a former Attorney General, Mr. Barr has long been well respected within the legal community, but, frankly, the nominee for our Nation's highest law enforcement position must be measured by more than his resume. Instead, for me, particularly at this moment in time, this is a question of Mr. Barr's fidelity to our Constitution. I find Mr. Barr's actions in the months leading up to his nomination to be deeply disturbing. As a result, I have serious doubts about this nominee's independence and willingness to stand up for rule of law.

Last June, Mr. Barr wrote a secret, unsolicited memo attacking Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into potential obstruction of justice by the President. Mr. Barr then took this unsolicited memo and passed it on to administration officials. We all know what happened afterward.

In November, President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions after months of public abuse over Attorney General Sessions' unwillingness to rein in or kneecap the Mueller investigation. For a temporary replacement, he chose Matt Whitaker, whom we have seen recently in his testimony over on the House side and whose primary qualification to be Acting Attorney General appears to have been an op- ed he wrote decrying the scope of the Mueller probe.

With Mr. Barr's nomination, it has become again clear--and we heard it again in some of the President's comments last night in El Paso-- that the President's major concern in choosing a new Attorney General will be to choose someone who will shield him from the special counsel's investigation. To me, Mr. Barr's unsolicited memo looks much like a job application to try to appeal to the President on those qualifications. The President has reportedly dangled the possibility of pardoning potential witnesses in this special counsel's investigation. In Mr. Barr, the President has a nominee who has been outspoken about his expansive views of the appropriate use of pardon powers.

Let's be very clear. Any attempt by this President to pardon himself, his family, or key witnesses in the Mueller or the Southern District of New York investigation would represent an abuse of power that would require a response by Congress. Special Counsel Mueller's investigation, as we already have seen from the record, has led to numerous indictments and convictions--convictions that even include the President's own campaign chairman from the 2016 campaign.

While we have no idea when the Mueller investigation will finish, we must make sure that the Mueller investigation remains free from political interference until it gets to the truth. Then, we need to ensure that its findings must be released to Congress and the American public. Under our constitutional system, no one is above the law, not even the President. We need an Attorney General willing to vigorously defend that principle.

Consequently, I will oppose the nomination of Mr. Barr and urge my colleagues to consider the same.

Thank you, Madam President.

I yield the floor.

I suggested absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, let me first of all echo the comments of my friend, the Senator from Tennessee. We will never fully know what was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, but I do believe that under the leadership of the Senator from Alaska 16 of us came to the floor yesterday and made these comments, with Senators on the Republican side saying: Please, let's reopen the government, and Senators on the Democratic side, like myself, saying: I am open to increasing the dollar amount on border security.

After the Presiding Officer's comments, I rise to welcome the news that sanity has prevailed--at least temporarily. After 35 painful days, we are finally poised to reopen the government and pay our hard-working Federal employees. It is not a moment too soon because under normal circumstances, today is supposed to be a Federal payday, but this morning, thousands of Federal employees went to work one more day knowing full well they would not be getting the paychecks they earned. Thousands more have been furloughed, waiting for the President and my colleagues to come to their senses to let us reopen the government.

For the last 35 days, 800,000 Federal workers have been held hostage through no fault of their own. Frankly, that is just scratching the surface of this destructive shutdown. That number of 800,000 doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of Federal contractors who are not getting paid.

I know I have talked to my friend the Senator from Alaska and appealed to the common sense and good sense of the Presiding Officer. We have some legislation that may not be perfect but would look at trying to make at least partially whole those low-paid Federal contractors--folks under $50,000--who, if we don't find a way to take care of them, will come out of this--more than 1 month of their annual salary--with nothing at all to show for it.

We also know--and the Senator from Alaska raised this issue with me-- that even if we were to move toward low-salaried contractors, the solution that we announced today and that hopefully will be signed later today really will do nothing to take care of the small businesses whose customers were furloughed or working without pay.

I am thinking about the Senator from Alaska, who had the powerful picture on the floor of the brewery in Kodiak, AK. I copied her efforts and went to Port City Brewery in Alexandria--I believe it was yesterday--where not only were they down dramatically in terms of customers, but they had five new brews they were trying to bring to market, and none of those were approved.

The truth is, the damage to those folks in the private sector is done, and I am not sure there is much we can do to rectify it. Candidly, thinking about here locally, there is no way we can undo the harm to the food truck owners--some have had their food trucks repossessed--who sit outside the Smithsonian waiting for the tourists to come. Those losses are permanent, as

they are in my State and the Presiding Officer's State for those restaurants and campgrounds that are outside the Great Smoky Mountains or outside the Shenandoah Valley. As a matter of fact, there is no way we are going to be able to make whole the contractor who told me he was closing his doors and laying off 72 workers because he just couldn't meet the payroll during the shutdown.

Frankly, it is too late for the President or any of us to help those folks. The only thing we can do now is to end the shutdown, get the Federal workers and contractors back to work, and try our darnedest to make sure this never happens again.

We also need to make sure those folks get backpay. Again, I would especially urge that we take a hard look at making sure those low-wage contractors, who are suffering so badly right now, get an opportunity to get their backpay as well. I am cosponsoring legislation sponsored by the Senator from Minnesota, and I hope all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will look at that legislation.

By reopening the government temporarily, we now finally have the opportunity to take a timeout and give both parties the space to negotiate a compromise. We are clearly not there yet, but there is room for common ground.

Over the weekend, the President proposed additional funding for screening vehicles and cargo coming across the border at points of entry. The DEA says this is how the majority of illegal drugs come into our country. It is something we can work on together. If the White House wants to seriously discuss providing real, long-term security for Dreamers and TPS recipients, let's have that conversation as well. I think we can do it, but it will take time. In the meantime, let's make sure the President signs today the legislation that will allow our Federal employees and contractors to get back to work.

Before I close, I want to take a moment for self-reflection on what has happened over the last 35 days.

In many ways, we are right back to where we were in December, right back to where we were when this body nearly unanimously passed legislation that would have prevented this stupid crisis. For 35 days, this body has refused to fill its role as a part and coequal branch of government. We can't let that happen again.

I hope the White House will take some lessons from this crisis as well. They can start by realizing that no one wins a shutdown. If you shut down the government, the only thing we know for a fact is that the American people lose. I hope the President will also realize that you need to empower those around you to help make a deal. The Vice President came to the Senate with a deal in mid-December. I don't think he even left Capitol Hill before the President basically took back the Vice President's deal. Senator Graham proposed almost exactly this deal that we came to 3 weeks ago, but unfortunately, again, the President cut off his good friend at that point.

It is my hope that in the coming weeks, we can have a good-faith negotiation where both sides have an opportunity to come out ahead. Imagine that--a win-win proposition coming out of the Halls of Congress. But to do that, we have to have enough of the stunts and the political tit-for-tat that we have seen over the past few weeks.

In a moment of optimism, if there is anything good that can come from this shutdown, let's make it the last time that a President or a Congress uses shutting down the government as a negotiating tactic.

I have legislation, and it took some hard work to come up with the acronym, but the legislation is called the Stop STUPIDITY Act. That will make sure that Congress and the White House are the only ones who suffer when the Congress and the White House can't come to a funding agreement. Maybe the particulars of that legislation can change, or maybe even responsible Members like the Presiding Officer would think we don't need to put into law something called the Stop the STUPIDITY Act, so I am open to changing the name. But the final language in any deal that comes out 3 weeks from now should put strong provisions and strong penalties in place to prevent this tactic from being used by either party or any White House or Congress in the future.

In my mind, perhaps the best and easiest way to do that would be--and I know there is Republican legislation on this--to continue to fund government. In my idea, it would say that the only people who would actually be the victims of a shutdown going forward would be the Congress and our staff and the White House and its staff. A little bit of common sense tells me that we wouldn't be here 35 days into this shutdown if all our staff were experiencing the same kind of shortfall and economic distress that 800,000 of our fellow Federal workers experienced.

The truth is, our Federal workers need to get those paychecks. The truth is, our country can't afford another self-inflicted disaster. Let's go ahead and get that CR passed. Let's go ahead and sit down and negotiate in good faith on border security. Most importantly, let's make sure we are never back in this circumstance again.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate my friend, the Senator from Maryland, yielding time. I appreciate the fact that this may be the first time, at least in the last few weeks, where a group of Senators from both sides of the aisle are actually coming together to find agreement--not to score ``gotcha'' points but to find agreement. I promised the Senator I would be very brief.

It is clear this government shutdown needs to come to an end. My hope would be that as we move toward that conclusion, we will also look at the issues revolving around, particularly, low-paid Federal contractors who will get no relief when the government reopens. I also hope we can work together.

I have legislation called the Stop STUPIDITY Act. It is a good name. It may need further amendments that would try to prohibit future shutdowns being used by either party on a going-forward basis.

What I think we need to do, and I think other colleagues will acknowledge this, is let's take a 3-week, short-

term CR. Let's consider the President's proposal. Let me be clear. The President is watching. This Senator will commit to good-faith negotiations. This Senator will commit to supporting increased border security beyond what we just voted on in the so-called Democratic proposal. I hope the President will take that kind of commitment for increased border security as a good-faith effort and will be responsive so we can get this government reopened on a short-term basis and that the kind of horror stories we all can recount about our workers, contractors, and oftentimes private businesses that surround those Federal installations--that will see no relief--can actually get their operations back open.

I thank my friend, the Senator from Maryland, for granting me this time. I thank the Senator from Alaska for leadership on her time. Let's see if this eight can go forth and multiply so, before this weekend is over, we can get our workforce back to work doing the people's business.

I yield back to the Senator from Maryland.

Yes, Madam President.

Madam President, let me thank the Senator from Alaska for her comments and my dear friend from Virginia for his comments. I am going to somewhat echo what has already been said, but what I don't understand--and for those who are listening or viewing, the four of us and many others on both sides of the aisle have been working in good faith to try to say: How do we get out of this?

The question I have is--I wonder if all of our colleagues have actually gone out and sat with Federal workers or folks who are affected. How could anyone sit with anyone who is affected by this self-imposed personal, financial, and economic disaster and not say: Let's not talk about money; let's get the government reopened. We can figure this out, but let's get this government reopened.

I will recount some similar stories, and I appreciated the Alaska stories of the Coast Guard in Kodiak. In Virginia, we have a major Coast Guard facility down at Hampton Roads. But, as the Senator from Alaska has mentioned, it is not just Federal employees; it is contractors and private businesses and a host of other folks.

The Presiding Officer is part of the group who has been trying to say: How do we get to yes? How do we get to reopen?

Maybe we can renew our efforts and urge all of our colleagues. Many of them have gone home, but I hope they will sit down and have these kinds of sessions.

I don't know how anybody can look at people who are out of work and without pay due to nothing they have done individually and not say that no matter who is winning the inside-the-beltway battle of the day, we owe it to them to get this government reopened.

Madam President, I rise today out of deep frustration with the administration's treatment of Federal workers during this government shutdown. I will come back to this again, but I wish--I wish there were some indication that the President, the Vice President, or any of his top advisers would actually go out and do a listening session with Federal workers. That doesn't seem to be too much to ask. I want them to look those Coast Guard spouses or those TSA employees or those air traffic controllers in the eye and tell them why they are being held hostage on an issue that, frankly, has nothing to do with their work as public servants.

We are now on day 29 of what I call the President's shutdown--the longest shutdown in U.S. history. In many ways, we are creating the legacy of this administration, a legacy that--the President claimed in mid-December that he was ``proud'' to have initiated the shutdown that is plunging so many Americans' lives into chaos.

More than 800,000 Federal workers have missed a paycheck, and that number, I think the Senator from Alaska has alluded to and the Senator from Virginia has alluded to, is actually a fraction of the folks who are actually being affected. That doesn't count the countless contractors--I will come back to that in a moment--or the host of businesses, like the brewery in Kodiak. They are not Federal workers. They are absolutely being affected, and let's recognize that. Even when we are reopened and those Coast Guard workers are paid back, that brewery is never going to make back its lost revenue.

The President has found time for an Oval Office address, he has found time for a trip to the border, and he has found time for a tit-for-tat with Speaker Pelosi, but what he has not found time for--or, for that matter, anybody else in the White House--is to sit down with the Federal workers who are being affected, and I believe that is a national disgrace.

Again, I appreciate the Presiding Officer and your colleagues listening. I know you have made efforts, and you are continuing to work with other colleagues on both sides of the aisle to try to hopefully find some sense in this disaster, but the truth is, people's time is running out.

Over the last couple weeks, Senator Kaine and I have heard from so many Virginia families who are shouldering the burden from this shutdown. I wanted to share some of the stories.

The Senator from Alaska told a story about a 13-year-old who couldn't cash a Christmas check. At least for me--I can't speak for Senator Kaine--the most compelling story, heartbreaking story--and I am going to tell a number of them, but this is the one I have kept coming back to. Senator Kaine and I, with the press, had a series of Federal workers tell their stories. One of the Federal workers didn't want to come and do it on camera, but he came up and talked to Senator Kaine and me afterward. He was a relatively young guy, about 35. He was a veteran. He was an air traffic controller. He has now gone 4-plus weeks without a paycheck. His wife had served in the Air Force in an intel capacity and was suffering from pretty significant PTSD. Because he hadn't had a paycheck, he couldn't pay the $90 copayment for his wife to continue to see her psychiatrist and continue to pay for her drug treatment. Not unlike the story the Senator from Alaska told, he said he has his wife to take care of and their two kids, a 4- and 5-year- old. The 4- and 5-year-old kids came to their parents and brought their piggy banks and said: Mom and dad, can we give you what we have in our piggy banks to help our family?

This is the United States of America. These are two veterans. We say we honor their service. This is somebody who is still going to work and working overtime without pay to keep our air safe. This shouldn't be.

A few days earlier, we met with other workers. A young father whom we met works with the Department of Justice. He brought his 7-week-old daughter to this session. He said when his daughter was born, he wanted to make sure he could get his daughter on his Federal insurance plan. That is his right. But the person who was supposed to submit the form to the insurance company had been furloughed. He went to the doctor and his infant daughter had an illness and had to get a prescription. He didn't have the money to pay for the prescription, and his daughter wasn't registered on his insurance company, not because of any fault he had made. He wasn't able to pay for the insurance. In this case, thank God, the insurance company actually worked with him, and they brought extra proof and went through other hoops, and he was able to get the medicine. How many other

young families are going through that same stress right now?

Eric, a Federal law enforcement agent and father of three, wrote me an email this week. He said missing a paycheck caused ``a tremendous amount of strain'' on his family. This is a law enforcement officer. Eric said he had some money saved up in a rainy day fund, but he continued to tell me, in terms of his rainy day fund:

It's raining extremely hard right now. At some point, I am

going to have to make some tough decisions to ensure that my

family has a roof over its head and food on the table.

Unfortunately, a lot of the employees Senator Kaine and I have been talking to don't have that rainy-day fund.

One of the things I think we all knew, maybe intellectually--and we have all seen the statistics--is that half of Americans couldn't afford an unexpected $400 bill without going into financial ruin. We are seeing that play out right now--again, not because somebody has been mismanaging their funds, but because they expected if they worked for the United States of America and if they were willing to continue to do that work, they would get paid.

We are now into this crisis 29 days, and if we think we have seen the stuff hit the fan so far, wait until this coming Thursday when families go through that second pay period where, adding insult to injury, they get a paycheck that says zero, or in the case of one air traffic controller, a penny, as you get into the new month when all their bills come due.

Yesterday, I volunteered at a food bank in Arlington where Federal contractors and furloughed workers were coming because their families were running out of money. Some of these folks came up to me and said: I viewed myself always as middle class. I have been working for the Federal Government for double-digit years. They felt an enormous amount of shame to come to the food bank. You shouldn't feel shame to come to the food bank, but their appeal was to get the government reopened.

The President, who has never worked for a paycheck in his life, says he can relate. He says he is sure that the Federal workers ``will make adjustments.'' This is the very same President who has not had the common decency to sit down with any Federal workers and listen to their stories.

Here is what some of those adjustments look like.

Lisa in Arlington wrote me an email that says:

I am forced to look for multiple part-time jobs to make

ends meet and my savings will soon run out. Creditors and

landlords have only so much patience with us.

Another worker whom Senator Kaine and I met on Thursday broke down crying when she said how hard it was for her to send her infant child away up for a week to 10 days to stay with relatives because her mom, who had been taking care of that child, had to go up and deal with her own personal business, and she couldn't afford daycare. That is dispiriting and disheartening.

The Presiding Officer has already pointed out the problem in terms of recruitment and retention. Those people who are actually trying to serve others now suddenly see their livelihoods in jeopardy through no fault of their own.

The truth is that this shutdown is having a devastating effect--not only on the short-term morale but on the long-term morale of all our Federal workforce.

The fact is, since we have already agreed to pay them when we reopen, why shouldn't we at least go ahead and, even if we are shut down, pay these Federal workers come Thursday so they don't have to incur additional pain and suffering? I commend so many of us, particularly my friend the Senator from Virginia, along with Senator Cardin, who led the effort so that we are giving Federal workers backpay when we reopen.

Backpay alone doesn't make up for the hurt if you had to draw down from your IRA and have a tax penalty. It doesn't make you whole if you have taken an advance against your credit card and you have to pay those fees in paying those dollars back. It doesn't make you whole, as the Presiding Officer indicated, if you get dinged on your credit rating or if you are in the process of trying to get a security clearance and that security clearance is withheld because it appears you have bad credit, not because you did anything wrong but because the Congress and the President can't agree on how to pay you when you are still asked to do your job.

The number of current Federal employees who are eligible for retirement is supposed to be about 30 percent over the next few years. How many of those Federal employees, whom we have trained and worked with and who bring enormous expertise, are not going to wait until they have to retire but actually say: I am going to get out of this job now.

The last thing we need to do is further undermine the competitiveness of our Federal workforce.

The Presiding Officer made this point and Senator Kaine has made this point that it is not just the Federal employees, but Federal contractors. I heard from one Federal contractor from Ashburn who says the shutdown has ``rocked the financial stability of my family.''

You see folks in the Gallery. We probably have a few more tourists than we might normally have on a Saturday because the Smithsonian shut down. I heard from someone who is in leadership in the Smithsonian, begging me, saying those folks who work at the Smithsonian, on one level, may get reimbursed, but all the folks who pick up the trash, clean the bathrooms, and serve the cafeteria food are all contractors. They are not direct employees of the Federal workforce. So even when we reopen, even when the Federal workforce gets reimbursed, they are out.

This is one of the things Senator Kaine and I have been working on, and I hope the Presiding Officer will look at this, and I hope some of our other colleagues who want to work toward a solution will work on this. It is complicated. In all the previous shutdowns, we never found a way to reimburse contractors. We have a piece of legislation that may not be perfect, but it says that for those workers who make less than $50,000, we ought to find a way to make sure they get reimbursed and, then, for those above, some small percentage. If not, these folks will never be made whole.

Again, think about some of the tourists. Normally, there are a whole lot of food trucks surrounding the Smithsonian and elsewhere around downtown. We heard from a number of those folks as well. They can't continue because if the Smithsonians aren't open, the tourists aren't coming. If you have taken out a loan to buy a food truck to try to employ a few folks, once that business is shut down, once your loan is pulled, once you lose that truck--even when we come to a solution--they can't reopen.

Again, I know it is unprecedented. We have not looked at Federal contractors in the past, but at least for the folks in low or moderate incomes who cannot make back the 29 days of pay--Lord knows that we listen to the President who says he doesn't mind if it is weeks, months or even years--I hope we find a way to somehow make them whole.

We have also seen small businesses. In Virginia, we have disproportionately a lot of small contractor businesses. A small business owner and contractor in Arlington wrote me and said:

My disabled-veteran-owned small business will have to shut

its door after serving the Federal Government for the last 2

decades. . . . I am going to have to put 72 families out of

work because our reserves aren't big enough to support the

payroll expenses of $35,000-$40,000 per day during this

political impasse.

It doesn't take a lot of math to figure out that if you are closed roughly 30 days, you are talking about over a million dollars in payroll that this veteran-owned small business can't meet. When they reopen, there is no guarantee that this business comes back.

It is not just the small businesses that actually serve the government. It is the brewery in Kodiak. It is the restaurants around the battlefields in Richmond, near Senator Kaine's home. It is some of the campgrounds that surround the Shenandoah National Park in our Commonwealth. I think there may be a number of our colleagues who maybe don't have the same concentration that Alaska or Virginia or Maine has. If they think this problem hasn't gotten to them and isn't spreading like the plague, it will come to their States as well.

Why do we have to put all of these families and our economy through this kind of turmoil?

Senator Kaine and I have worked really hard recently. Those of us who live in the national capital area know the Metro is an important way we commute. The Metro has had its share of problems the last couple of years. Actually, in a good-news story, Virginia, DC, and Maryland came together and ponied up more resources so Metro could make some of the improvements--safety improvements and operating improvements--trying to improve quality of service for our Federal workforce and for tourists in our Nation's Capital. Every day--every weekday--that the Federal Government is shut down, Metro loses $400,000 in lost fares per day. Metro can't get a break. Where is that money going to rematerialize from? I am not sure we are going to appropriate millions of additional dollars.

We have had debates before, but if there has ever been one that the American public has a right to be frustrated with in terms of the shutdown--historically, the longest shutdown ever--it is this one. The President says he wants money for a border wall--a border wall that he promised the American people was going to be paid for by Mexico, a border wall for which he says that before he will reopen government, give him $5 billion. I think it is up to almost $5.9 billion. There are some arguments that now it is up to $7 billion or $8 billion.

The truth is--and let me be clear--if the President and his White House allies are listening, this Senator is willing to look at any reasonable investment in additional border security, but it ought to be done in a way in which we are not holding these hundreds of thousands of families and--literally, indirectly--millions of Americans hostage. Rule No. 101 of hostage taking is you don't not negotiate with the hostage taker. You don't reward a bully. As I think some of my colleagues on the other side have at least acknowledged privately, if we allow this tactic to work today, it will be reused in April when we have the debt ceiling, and it will be reused at the end of the fiscal year when the next year's appropriations are due.

Again, I hope the people of good will will also try to see if we can commit to putting enough of a poison pill in place so that this tactic can never, ever be used again by any Congress or any President without inflicting some damage, frankly, on the legislative branch and on the office of the White House. That is part of the remarkable thing. Our offices--and I say this to the good folks who work for us in Congress-- are not feeling any of the pain. The White House staff is not feeling any of the pain.

I do wonder, as the President starts to selectively decide based on one's ability to lobby and promote, who is going to come back and what will get reopened. Frankly, I am more than a little disappointed, while it is important that mortgages get processed, that he has decided to bring back certain folks to process mortgages and certain folks in the Department of Agriculture to process farmers' loans and that they have, suddenly, mysteriously, found some money in the State Department to reopen part of the State Department. I would love to see that same priority for the folks who process food stamps. I wonder what kind of Federal buildings we will go into where the toilets haven't been cleaned and the trash hasn't been taken out and the food services haven't been provided.

I say to the White House that we will negotiate, that we will work through this process. Some of us have even said--and I know the Chair has been part of this effort--that we will put it through regular order. We will consider his proposal in a reasonable way, but let's do it with the government open and with people getting paid.

I thank my friend Senator Kaine from Virginia. I know and acknowledge, as somebody who actually lives only 20 minutes away in Virginia, that it is a little bit easier for me than being a Senator from Alaska or a Senator from a host of other places around the country, but I think it is proper and right that we are here today, and I will be back this coming week to continue to raise this point. When we heard from some Federal workers that Congress was taking a break for another 10 days when they were supposed to reach another pay period but that they were going to make it goose eggs and when they have the beginning of February looming when their rents and mortgages and tuition bills will be due, I thought it was appropriate. I thank him for forcing us to be back here to continue to raise these issues.

The last point I want to make is that I think we owe a huge debt to our Federal workers--the TSA, the air traffic controllers, the Coast Guard, and, for that matter, the folks who process food stamps and the lady we saw who was supposed to investigate chemical spills who is desperate to get to Houston where there was a spill 10 days ago, but they still haven't been able to investigate. Without pay, whether you are furloughed or, in many cases, are being asked to work overtime without pay, they are still showing up. They are still being asked to commute to work--some from a distance--as has been mentioned by the Presiding Officer. If you put a bill on a credit card that has your name on it, your credit rating is at risk. Whether you are a prison guard and have to commute an hour and a half in your car and may not have money for gas, you are still finding a way to show up for work.

As somebody who worked longer in the private sector than I have in the public sector, I wonder how many folks who work in the private sector--if you work for Facebook or Google or if you work for Ford or Northrop Grumman--would continue to show up week after week after week without pay or how many folks in the private sector would show up and work overtime without pay and still perform.

In a moment in which I was looking straight at the press pool that was with me yesterday at the Arlington food bank, I asked all of the press folks--when the cameras were off--how many of them would show up tomorrow if they had gone 4 or 5 weeks--with no end in sight--without any payment. The press was supposed to cover this, but there was not a single reporter or camera person who didn't at least acknowledge to me--and I wish we had had it all on tape--that, no, they wouldn't be showing up to their jobs.

For those of us who are policymakers or who are, candidly, visitors in the gallery, sometimes it is easy--and there have been politicians who have made careers out of this--to trash Federal employees. I think it is wrong. I think it is disgraceful. I think now, more than ever, we owe them a debt of gratitude. I know there are at least reports of people at airports and others who have said thank you or who have tried to slip somebody food or something else. The remarkable thing is, because of our rules that in conventional times are appropriate, we can't even, in many cases, give additional compensation to these Federal workers, but we can give them a personal thanks.

My hope would be, in going forward, for a commitment from folks on both sides of the aisle to think twice before we come to the floor of this Senate and berate and degrade Federal workers. I would hope, on a going-forward basis, when we get the government reopened, we could find a bipartisan way to actually make sure that what this Senate passed in terms of a relatively meager 1.9-percent Federal pay raise increase for this year would override this administration's spiteful Executive order that tries to take away that pay raise. If not--maybe not next week but the next time this happens--I don't know if those TSA workers will show up. I don't know if those air traffic controllers will keep working. I don't know if those Coast Guard employees will still sign up for service in places as remote as Kodiak, AK.

We have it within our power to end this. If the President of the United States will not end this, we have a bill that is at the desk that 96 of us agreed to in mid-December when there was not this crisis. Now, when we hear these stories--when we hear of this pain--if the President will not act, then the Senate must act and put that legislation on the President's desk. Let him choose to not, simply, postulate but to then make a decision as to whether he will sign or veto it.

I thank the Presiding Officer. I know that she and others will be back. Part of the burden on the majority is of showing up to that presiding space. We, as the Virginia Senators, disproportionately had that opportunity during

these kinds of circumstances. Regarding her stories, the Senator from Virginia's stories, the Senator from Maine's stories, and our other colleagues' as well, I hope that the White House is listening and that we can find that common agreement to get this government reopened and demonstrate to the workers, the contractors, and the folks who depend upon the Federal Government that we value their service and that never ever again will they have to be put through this kind of tragedy.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to express my support for S.J. Res. 2, a resolution of disapproval on lifting sanctions against the energy and aluminum companies En+, RUSAL, and EuroSibEnergo.

To start from the beginning, the United States of America has had very good reasons for sanctioning Oleg Deripaska. There are a number of significant national security risks at play. That is why repeatedly-- not just in the current administration but in prior administrations-- this individual has been denied a visa and why he has been personally sanctioned by the Treasury Department. As a matter of fact, the Treasury press release announcing the sanctions noted that Deripaska ``has been investigated for money laundering, has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering.''

These are not the qualifications of someone who should get relief from the United States. I appreciate the fact that his company, RUSAL, has an enormous effect upon the aluminum markets. I appreciate the efforts the Treasury Department has tried to make in restricting his control. But any businessperson knows that if you take an ownership position from 70 percent to 45 percent, and even with the voting power of 35 percent, you still control a company, particularly when this company was founded and the management team was all created by Mr. Deripaska.

As we see continuing challenges coming out of the Russian Government, as we see continued efforts of Mr. Deripaska, being one of Vladimir Putin's closest allies and closest cronies, we would send absolutely the wrong signal if we in this body were to remove these sanctions.

I know my friend the Senator from Texas wants to speak in a moment. I simply want to refer to the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Chairman Burr, who has frequently pointed out that Deripaska and his associates have come up a number of times in our Senate Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation. All those facts can't be laid out here right now, but I strongly urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this resolution that will come up later today, that we don't send a signal that we are open for business with individuals who have the reputation of Oleg Deripaska, and that we maintain the sanctions on both him and his company, RUSAL.

I yield the floor to my friend the Senator from Texas.

Mr. President, let me pick up where my friend the Senator from Virginia left off.

We are now in the history books: the longest shutdown in American history on this President's watch--a President who, a few weeks back, said he would be proud to own this government shutdown; a President who, in the lead-up, said: Gosh, don't those Democrats know that most of the folks who aren't going to get paid are Democrats--

which was, frankly, one of the most insulting comments any elected official in my lifetime has ever made.

I wish the President or somebody from his White House had been with Senator Kaine and I when we sat down with Federal workers from Virginia last Friday. Senator Kaine may have already mentioned a couple of these stories. I am going to briefly recap a couple of them.

A number of Federal employees who came and sat with us said they were in Federal service because they thought it was national service, many of them former veterans who felt they had an obligation to continue to serve our Nation, to protect it.

One lady, who worked at a small Agency that investigates chemical spills--and there had been a chemical spill in Houston the week before--felt her job was to get out and investigate.

A young man who served in the military now was supposed to be approving the safety of helicopters that are supposed to be deployed to Iraq. This guy is not able to do his job. Who is going to watch out for the safety of those helicopters? What about the needs for those helicopters that may be for troops in harm's way?

There is the story of one worker who said she had a little bit and could get through with her savings, but she went into her IRA to draw down that money. As Senator Kaine mentioned, she will get repaid, but even if she gets repaid, she will not get repaid the tax penalty for an early withdrawal from her IRA.

Another employee was able to get a couple thousand dollar advance on a credit card, but even when he is repaid in terms of backpay, that will not make up for the fees and interest that is charged on the credit card.

My apologies to the Presiding Officer if the Senator from Virginia already recounted this story. A young couple, both Federal employees, brought their 7-week-old baby to this meeting and said they wanted to bring this small bundle of joy because they had the unthinkable happen. When they tried to get their daughter put on their Federal healthcare insurance, whoever was supposed to send in the form had been furloughed. So when they took their daughter to the doctor and the doctor prescribed medicine, at the drug store they couldn't pay the bill because the folks didn't have their insurance. They had done nothing wrong. In this case, it didn't end up in a tragedy. The insurance company, with additional documentation, put the child on the insurance plan, and this family was able to get medicine for their child, but no parent who has earned the right to have their kid covered by health insurance should have this kind of action interfere in their life.

I did hear Senator Kaine mention, we had some of the air traffic controllers there, and they brought a series of their checks. It almost added insult to injury to get checks that said 1 cent or a zero on it. It is better to not even send them a check. As Senator Kaine mentioned, do you really want, in the crowded airspace over Dulles, your air traffic controller spending 30 percent of his time figuring out how he will pay the mortgage or pay his kids' tuition? You want 100 percent of that Federal employee's focus on landing that plane safely.

So 800,000 thousand Federal workers, about half of them furloughed, half of them working not just full-time but in some cases overtime.

Another colleague, earlier today, had some folks working at a Federal penitentiary. A lot of the workers weren't showing up to work not because they were upset or because they want to rightly protest, they couldn't afford the gas because they live 2 hours away from the Federal penitentiary.

We have a President who is willing to go to the border and go on TV but who is not willing to sit down with any of this workforce. That is embarrassing and, frankly, disgraceful.

If you were saying this is only about Federal workers, that would be bad enough. What about the contractors? Even though there are a group of us trying to put legislation in place, even if we reopen government, many of these contractors will never be made whole.

We have in our State a number of small businesses. One veteran-owned business with nine employees had to shut down last week because she couldn't meet her payroll. Now, will that small business be able to reopen? I don't know.

We in Virginia are blessed with incredible National Parks, the Shenandoah National Park and around the area where Senator Kaine lives in Richmond, civil war battlefields. This isn't just Federal employees. What happens if you are a campground around the Shenandoah National Park? What happens if you are a little restaurant right outside of Petersburg Battlefield? When those facilities shut down, those small businesses will never see that income come back in.

We have a flourishing craft brewery industry in Virginia, as I know they have in New Mexico and I imagine even in Alaska. Port City Brewing, based in Virginia, can't bring a couple of new brews to market because ATF workers are furloughed.

There has already been mention of the growing lines at TSA and the airports. In fact, ag workers, farmers, are waiting to see whether the President's support checks are going to come in. They are not going to come in right now. You have bad trade policy reinforced with the bad business practices of a government that is shut down.

As a matter of fact, we can look at this at a more macrolevel. What is the cost to the taxpayer? The cost to the taxpayer has already exceeded $3.6 billion. Why, in good gracious' name, can't we at least just vote on what the House has already voted on, what 96 Senators voted on in the middle of December?

If we want to continue to litigate how we can better protect our borders, count me in. I am in favor of additional resources for border security. I am sure we can find a way to get to yes, but why hold 800,000 Federal workers and hundreds of thousands of contractors and, for that matter, the whole county hostage?

I know my friend, the Senator from New Mexico, is here. I am only going to take one more moment. In my career, I have spent longer in business than I have in government, and most of my career in business was about trying to do deals. I was a venture capitalist, which is all about doing deals. I was an entrepreneur.

Subsequent to that, I was Governor of a State that had a 2-to-1 Republican legislature. If I was going to get anything done as Governor, I had to find common ground with a legislature of a different party. I am proud to say, we did find common ground, and Virginia got independently recognized as best managed State and best State for business.

So I have had a little experience doing deals, and I will wager this; that when this shutdown comes to a conclusion, that business schools and management consultants will write case studies about how not to negotiate based on Donald Trump's activities. Donald Trump, who sold himself to the American people as the ultimate dealmaker, has, I think, in the last 24--even days before that--violated every cardinal rule of how to get a deal done. Let me briefly go through this.

The first thing you learn in business when you are trying to do a deal, even if you have a slight advantage, you try to make it at least appear like it is a win-win circumstance for both sides. There has been nothing out of this White House that has been any effort toward those who don't agree with the President any sense of a win-win. It has been all about my way or the highway. That is not the way you practice business.

The second rule of business is, if you have somebody negotiating on your behalf, you back up your negotiator. You don't cut their knees off. This President has humiliated not only the majority leader of the Senate, who had the misfortune of taking and accepting the President's word and having the Senate vote 96-to-2 on a plan that he thought the President was going to sign and then have his knees cut off, but a few days later, he had the Vice President come to Congress and offer a plan as at least a starting point. I don't think he even got back downtown before the President of the United States had cut off his own Vice President's negotiating skills.

In the last few days, one of the folks whom--I think, at least, based on reporting--a friend of all of ours, the President, is supposed to listen to, Senator Graham from South Carolina, has been shot down as well.

Rule No. 2, don't kneecap your negotiators.

Rule No. 3, realize that no matter how important the deal is, there is always going to be another deal. You have to leave something on the table. This President has so broken faith with folks in his own party and folks on our side of the aisle, how can this individual think he is going to have any credibility--regardless of how we resolve this issue on any forward-going basis--to be a strong negotiator?

Rule No. 4, have somebody that is willing to speak truth to power. Unfortunately, in this administration, any independent voice has quit, been fired, or if they quit, as is the case of the Secretary of Defense, the President changes the terms and says he fired them, after all.

Finally, for management 101, if you are asking your workforce to go through tough times, show a little empathy. I have never seen a leader in our country, in my time in politics, ever be more disrespectful of the Federal workforce, and both parties have done this. Whenever, over the last decade, we have gone to the well to try to cut programs, the part of the programs we always cut are what we call in Washington-speak domestic discretionary. In English, that means the folks who work on food stamps, the folks who work at our national parks, the folks who work at TSA, and the folks who work on the Coast Guard. Yet there has been zero empathy from this White House for those workers who all of us have spoken about, who are asked to do more, who aren't getting paid, or are asked to work overtime. We are a better country than this.

The President who said he was dealmaker supreme, I think, will go down, at least in modern management history, and will be studied but not studied on how you get a deal done but, frankly, on how not to get a deal done.

So I think it is incumbent upon us in the Senate to do our job. We do not have to ask permission from this President to reopen this government, to pass legislation that could override his veto should he choose to do that, to make sure the 96 Senators who voted in favor of keeping the government open in December would have a chance to reaffirm that vote on a going-forward basis.

I appreciate the time to come to the floor. I am going to hand off to my friend, the Senator from New Mexico. It is my hope that we don't make further history this week and that we find some way in this next day or so to get this government reopened so we can get this Federal workforce back to work.

Madam President, first of all, I want to thank my good friend and colleague from Virginia, Senator Kaine, for appropriately saying to the balance of the Senate yesterday that this is not business as usual and for objecting to our going into recess as 800,000 Americans--many of them who are working as we heard earlier this morning, many of them working overtime--are getting paychecks that have zero on them.

Senator Kaine has probably already outlined where he just came from. I want to give the same comments, and I want to also thank the Chair because I know she has come to the floor as well and raised concerns.

We have a lot of debates in the Senate. There are legitimate policy differences we have, and part of our job is to resolve those. Part of our job should never be to shut down the enterprise of the greatest government in the world, the United States of America.

I think about Mr. Trump, who has spent a bunch of time going on TV and running to the border. My goodness, I just wish that Donald Trump or someone from his White House could have sat in the room that Senator Kaine and I just sat in with 16 Federal employees and just heard their stories.

What we heard, virtually from all of them--and I am sure Senator Kaine has already acknowledged this--is the fact that they viewed public service and serving the government as a noble calling. I heard many of them who had been in the Air Force, Army, or Navy and who had served in our Nation's defense but felt they were continuing to serve when they joined public service.

We heard another person who works in one part of the government that I am a little familiar with--frankly, not that much--that does investigations into chemical spills. It is a small, tiny agency of 40 professionals. There was a chemical spill in Houston 1 week ago, and no one has done any investigation about what the effects of that spill might be on that community. She was there saying that somehow she doesn't feel like her job is nonessential.

We heard from a young man who had moved to Virginia just a few years ago and bought a House. He thought he could get through one more mortgage payment. He helps to approve food stamps and the grocery stores that apply to take in food stamps. I think he said there are 2,700 grocery stores in this period that are in the process of trying to get approval to take food stamps and haven't gotten approval. To say to him that, somehow, making sure folks in this country get food is a nonessential job was both insulting and, frankly, a little bit demoralizing.

To hear, as well, from--I can't recall which organization he works for--someone who was saying he understood that as a Federal employee, when he came and joined the Federal workforce, he gave up his right in many ways to organize and to strike, but he felt like he gave up those rights but the deal was that the government was going to pay him for his job. In many ways, what is happening right now, kind of in labor terms, is that, effectively, the government is locking out our workforce.

I don't want to steal Senator Kaine's thunder. He may have mentioned this comment, but I thought it was telling. We had a number of air traffic controllers there, and these folks are not only working without pay, but many of them are working overtime without pay. With our air traffic controllers, about 35, 40 percent of them are at the eligible age of retirement today. They could throw it in, cash it in, and say: We are done.

One of the things about the shutdown, as well, is that we have been working for some time with Paul Rinaldi, the head of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. I would advise any Members who would to talk with him because he can scare the dickens out of you about the safety of our air system. We have had a challenge for the last decade of making sure we replace those air traffic controllers. Well, the next class of air traffic controllers is shut down.

Senator Kaine made mention, and I think Mr. Rinaldi made the point: Do you really want an air traffic controller who is working an 80-hour week with overtime to not be spending 100 percent of his or her focus on keeping the skies safe but probably spending 20 percent of his time thinking about paying the mortgage and another 15 percent of the time thinking about whether he can pay his kid's tuition? Is that really what we want from folks who are tasked with such an important job?

Now, due to the good work of Senator Kaine and others and the Presiding Officer, we passed--I think, 2 days ago--an act so that all of our Federal employees are going to get reimbursed. I think the House has passed it now, as well, and the President has signed it. Let's not presume, by any chance, that this is going to make everybody whole.

We heard from a lady this morning who had not saved very much but had done what we all urge and had put some money in an IRA. She is taking her money out of the IRA and paying the tax penalty of getting that money out so she can get by. She gets a back paycheck but that doesn't replace the tax penalties she pays on her statements.

We have another person who took an advance on his credit card. We know credit cards have value, but those rates are not cheap. If you take an advance against future pay from your credit card, and if you get your back pay, that is not going to make up for those penalties.

Again, Senator Kaine may have mentioned this already, we in Virginia--and I know Alaska has the same issue--have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of workers who are contractors who, even when we reopen the government, have absolutely no guarantee that they will be reimbursed. As a matter of fact--again, Senator Kaine may have mentioned this already--there was a veteran-owned small business contractor that had about nine employees that this week is probably going to shut down because he can't pay his workers. He maintained as long as he could, but he couldn't continue to pay his workers.

What about the folks who are never going to get the hours back who work providing food services or cleaning up our buildings and who are the lowest paid employees--oftentimes contractors who are never going to get those hours back--who are going to be stuck with Christmas presents but never get the income from that time?

The list goes on and on, and it is not just Federal employees and contractors. Alaska and Virginia are both blessed with great heritage sites, great national parks. There is the Shenandoah Valley, and around where Senator Kaine lives, there are a lot of battlefields around Richmond. I am sure it is the same in Alaska. There are a lot of private businesses that are the restaurants, campsites, and other facilities that may not be on national park grounds, but they get all their business from tourists who come, oftentimes, during the holiday period. Those folks get, even when we reopen the government, goose eggs.

So I thank the Presiding Officer. I thank my friend from Virginia as well.

I believe we will find a way to get this government reopened. My hope is that our colleagues, when they are home this weekend, will be refreshed by hearing from workers who are doing their jobs without pay, and we will find a way to get this government reopened. But we should be very clear about the damage that has been done--the damage that has been done in terms of how Americans view all of us, regardless of where we are on this policy--and how Americans view our Federal Government and how the rest of the world views us now that we have this shutdown that I believe by tomorrow becomes the longest Federal Government shutdown in American history. I hope and pray that we all--maybe in the

aftermath--step back and find a way to make sure that people who pay undue financial penalties because, through no fault of their own, the government shut down are compensated; and that we can sort through the complicated issues around contractors and those private businesses that are around Federal facilities; that we try to come to some kind of joint agreement, that never again will we use an unconnected policy issue to hold hostage 800,000 folks who work for us and hundreds of thousands of others--and, frankly, millions--who depend upon these services going forward.

I may be being overly optimistic that somehow or other we will get this resolved. If we do, we ought to find--those of us who are part of the groups that find common accord--to put some marker down to never ever do this again.

I have stories from a variety of Virginians here. I know the Presiding Officer wants to get out of the Chair at 1 p.m. I ask unanimous consent that these statements be printed in the Record.

As somebody who has been in the private sector longer than the public sector, like my friend the Senator from Virginia, we both had the honor of being Governors of Virginia. We have both been in executive positions. We have both been in positions where we had workforces. As a business guy, you could tell how well the business would do by how you treated your workforce. That is the most important asset you have, your human capital.

If we think back on the past decade, we found ways, appropriately so, for our military to get funded. We found ways, I think irresponsibly, to dramatically cut our taxes, particularly for folks at the top. Every time we had to try to make cutbacks. Where we made cutbacks has been in what we call domestic discretionary, which in English are things like the TSA, like air traffic controllers, like the Agriculture Department, like the Coast Guard, and each year, whenever we find short cuts, we cut those programs.

As a matter of fact, domestic discretionary spending is at the lowest percentage it has been since the 1960s. So we asked all these folks who were furloughed or being asked to work without pay, we asked them to do more with less, which isn't great for the workforce morale.

Now we have a White House--and, my gosh, I wish somebody from the White House could have sat there today. I would have loved for them to try to explain how they ought to go back and negotiate with their landlords about the rent due, or how they ought to make do with a side job, or how they ought to do, as some folks were doing, as I was going to report--some Virginians are selling their personal possessions on eBay to pay the bills. The fact that this White House is willing to go to the border for a political photo op--the President's words, not mine--or get on television and blast his political opponents but not be willing to send anyone from this administration to sit down and listen to the concerns of our Federal workforce is disgraceful.

I again thank my colleague from Virginia for his great work on this. I think it is appropriate that we are in session today raising these issues. Think of the level of angst that is going to take place over the next 48 hours as more and more people get those paychecks with zero on it. We haven't seen anything yet. The kind of angst we felt in Virginia, in Maryland, and the District, people will feel all over the country.

We need to bring this government shutdown to an end. We need to put our workforce back to work, and we need to make sure the services they provide are being applied in a way to make our country safer and find a way to make sure that never ever again will we use these folks' lives as what they are being used right now--their words, not ours--political pawns. They are more important, their jobs are more important, their lives are more important than the way they have been treated over these last 21 days.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank my colleague the Senator from Connecticut for giving me a chance to very briefly-- less than 1 minute--add my voice as well.

I echo what my friend the Senator from Vermont has said. I want to commend the leadership of my friends the Senators from Maryland, Mr. Cardin and Mr. Van Hollen. The Commonwealth of Virginia is experiencing the same kinds of challenges and crisis that Maryland is. We have a disproportionate number of Federal employees, and I think we underestimate what is going to happen when these employees don't get their paychecks on Friday--that coming on top of countless number of contractors. I have small business contractors who have had to shut down their business because they can't make the payroll. Even reopening the government will not mean those businesses will come back into operation.

I simply wanted--I am sorry the majority leader is not here. The majority leader keeps saying, you know, that we are powerless in this body to do anything, that the only way we can pass any legislation is if the President agrees.

I do not want to overstate the case, but I would simply refer the majority leader to article I, section 7, clause 2 of our Constitution, which gives this body, if it reaches a two-thirds vote, the ability to override a Presidential veto and make the legislation, which has already passed this body by a 96 to 2 vote. If those same votes stand by the legislation that we all agreed to before Christmas--if it was a good idea before Christmas to reopen the government and continue the debate on national security on a separate path, how is it not a good idea today, when Federal employees are going without their pay?

So the majority leader's unwillingness to allow us to vote, to have our voices be heard--and if that vote would in any way appear close to where this same body voted before Christmas, we would have a solution to this crisis. I simply wanted to point that out.

I know the majority leader knows our laws and knows our Constitution, but I find it a little bit rich when he says that we have no ability at all to weigh in on this process and he refuses to take any action that will not meet with the agreement of this President.

The Constitution of the United States gives the Senate the ability to have their voices heard. We have already voted in margins that would well exceed the veto requirements laid out by the Constitution. I hope he will give us the right to vote and let us have our voices heard and potentially be able to have the government of the United States reopened.

With that, I thank my colleagues for giving me the chance to add that small item to the debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kaine and I each be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes prior to the scheduled vote.

Mr. President, I want to join my colleagues from Maryland and my friend, the Senator from Virginia, as well, to speak out on this manufactured crisis.

This President is holding 800,000 Federal workers hostage, folks who are going to work, some of them without pay, and others who are furloughed. As has been mentioned, this is not just affecting Federal workers. Senator Kaine and I have been talked to by a number of contractors, small business owners.

A couple of them are closing their doors this week because they have now gone for weeks without being paid. You can't put a business back together after you have closed its doors. So there are 800,000 Federal employees, there are contractors, but there is a whole slew of other folks who are already immediately affected.

The complete lack of thought this administration had in this shutdown--they tried to say: We are not going to make it seem like a shutdown. We are going to leave the parks open. Now we see destruction going on in our parks. We see in our State that Shenandoah National Park has trash overfilling. We have the battlefields where people have engaged in inappropriate activities. We have seen as well a whole slew of businesses that depend upon a high volume of tourist travel during the holidays--none of that took place.

I also wonder whether Donald Trump, who says this is about security-- well, if it is about security, we ought to make sure our Coast Guard is paid. We ought to make sure our TSA agents are paid. We are seeing dramatic numbers of folks calling in sick, dramatically reducing the ability to maintain security at our airports, where, frankly, most of our vulnerability on the border actually takes place. That is going to get exponentially worse after Friday when these employees go without a paycheck.

The fact is, these workers don't work for Donald Trump; they work for America. Echoing what my colleague said, our first order of business ought to be making sure we get this government reopened.

The final point I want to make is this: The heartlessness of this President in his comments about our Federal workers that somehow they can manage through without a paycheck, that somehow they can negotiate with their landlord if they can't pay their rent--rather than Donald Trump putting on a political show tonight on TV and a political trip to the border tomorrow, I invite the President to come anywhere in Virginia, Maryland, or the District and sit down with Federal employees and explain this crisis and why they are not getting paid.

So my hope is that, echoing what our Senators from Maryland have said, the Senate shouldn't be complicit in this. We need to reopen the government. If we want to negotiate additional border security, I am all for it, but not holding hostage, literally, our Federal employees and countless others.

I yield to the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. President, I rise today out of deep frustration with the Trump administration's treatment of Federal workers due to the government shutdown.

It has been 17 days since more than 380,000 Federal workers were furloughed and more than 450,000 began working without pay.

Once upon a time, we were told that Mexico would pay for the President's border wall. Now the President is demanding taxpayers cough up more than $5 billion, and he is holding our Federal workers hostage until he gets it.

At first the President tried to paint Federal workers and contractors as political actors. Now he imagines that Federal workers are actually cheering him on.

But rather than imagining what Federal workers are going through, I encourage the President and my Republican colleagues to listen to the firsthand accounts of how this shutdown is affecting the real families caught up in it.

Here are some of the messages I have received from Virginians whose families are experiencing significant financial hardship because of this President's shutdown.

Rebecca in Chesapeake writes: ``. . . I just want my husband to be able to go back to the work he loves and to have stability for my family returned . . . The stress of not knowing how long this will last is eating at both my husband and me.''

Rosemarie in Falls Church shared this: ``My husband was diagnosed last week with advanced lung cancer and now on top of that stress, I have to worry about not getting a paycheck . . .''

The President, who has never worked for a paycheck in his life, says he can relate. He says he is sure Federal workers ``will make adjustments.'' Here is what those ``adjustments'' actually look like.

Lisa in Arlington writes: ``I am forced to look for multiple part- time jobs to make ends meet and my savings will soon run out. Creditors and landlords have only so much patience with us.''

How disheartening it must be to dedicate your life to serving others, only to find your own livelihood in jeopardy through no fault of your own.

That is why I am doing everything I can to make sure Federal employees receive back pay for any time spent furloughed or working without pay.

That means low-wage Federal contractors, too. The other day, I received a letter from a Federal contractor from Ashburn, who says the shutdown has ``rocked the financial stability of my family.''

These folks who serve the Federal Government as custodians, cafeteria workers, security guards, and in many other important roles should not suffer because of this President's actions.

We also need to reverse the President's unilateral Federal pay freeze--a slap in the face to hardworking Federal employees--announced just a few days before Christmas.

The truth is, Federal workers are sick and tired of being treated like bargaining chips by this administration.

Here is what Chad, furloughed NASA engineer from Suffolk, told me: ``I'm disappointed to once again find myself barred from doing the job that I love. I find it offensive to be used as a political pawn and find the recent executive order to freeze civil servant pay at 2018 levels, while on furlough no less, to be shockingly disrespectful and wrong.''

Federal workers aren't in this business to get rich; they are public servants who often forgo higher pay in the private sector to serve their country.

Dishonoring this sacrifice with a shutdown, with a pay freeze, and with the President's utter indifference to our Federal workers is a national disgrace.

It is having a devastating effect on morale and the Federal Government's ability to recruit and retain talent.

Here is how Joanna, a DHS employee from Woodbridge, put it: ``I love my job, but being a pawn for those who have no compassion for me or those I work beside is going to drive me and many, many others out of public service.''

At a time when the share of Federal employees eligible for retirement is expected to jump to 30 percent in 5 years, the last thing we should be doing is actively undermining the competitiveness of the Federal workforce.

In conclusion, I thank my friend, Senator Kaine, for bringing us together this evening and for his partnership in fighting for Virginia's Federal workers and contractors.

Thank you as well to my constituents Rebecca, Rosemarie, Lisa, Chad, Joanna, and others for allowing me to share their stories.

I want to reassure them and every Virginian that I remain committed to ending this unnecessary shutdown and making sure every worker impacted by it is made whole.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I am going to be here on another matter in a moment, but I wanted to add my thanks to the great work that Senator Kyl has done.

I remember coming here as a freshman Senator in early 2009, and Jon Kyl was one of the people who was kind enough to take me in. We didn't always agree. I still remember a very famous battle over slots at National Airport. But Jon Kyl has always been someone I have enormous respect for. I think Senators on both sides of the aisle have respect for him, and we very much appreciate his willingness to come back into service, fulfilling part of the tenure of his dear friend, Senator McCain.

I know enough about Jon Kyl to know that, shall I say, his livelihood prior to coming back into the Senate was quite good, and his willingness to give that up to serve Arizona and the country is a real tribute to the individual and the patriot he is. We will all miss him, and I wish him all the best going forward.

Mr. President, I want to join with the chairman of the committee and basically echo what he has said.

Bill Evanina is a true professional. I have had a chance to work with him for a number of years in my role on the Intelligence Committee and, more recently, as vice chair. Let me cite one example.

Outside of his lane--not a duty as required--Bill has been a consistent voice in raising concerns about the challenges and threats that are posed by China. As a matter of fact, the chairman and I were recently in Austin, and Bill came down and gave one of the most powerful briefs I have heard,

which he has done a number of times for the committee and increasingly for the business community, talking in an honest, straightforward way about the security threats, the intellectual property theft, the host of concerns that confront our country by China.

Bill Evanina is one of those rare public servants, and I don't think--as the chairman has pointed out, since he received unanimous confirmation from the Intelligence Committee--that there is any question about his service, any question about his temperament, any question about his ability to do the job--no partisan challenges to him, as the chairman has mentioned. He has served in his current position for 3\1/2\ years.

We do him and other intelligence professionals a disservice when they are arbitrarily held up for confirmation, not because of a substantive issue that this individual may have performed or not performed but because of a totally extraneous issue.

My intent today, along with the chairman, was to ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the Executive Calendar nomination, getting Bill Evanina permanently confirmed to this job. He is an individual who, if we are not careful and don't act on soon, may decide to take his extraordinary professional skills and find much higher remuneration in the private sector rather than serving our country.

I am not going to ask for that UC today in deference to one of our colleagues who has lodged an objection to the nomination. It is my hope that before the end of this session, the chairman and I will come to the floor one more time and make this request.

I implore the Member who has a challenge against Mr. Evanina, again, not based on his performance, not based on his politics, not based on any professionalism he brings to this job--my hope is that the Member will reflect and decide to remove this extraneous objection and allow this great professional to be confirmed to a position he has already served in for the last 3\1/2\ years.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I wholeheartedly support the nomination of VADM Joseph Maguire to be the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, NCTC. Had I been able to cast my vote today, it would have been to support this exceptional-nominee.

The Director of the NCTC is one of the most important positions in the intelligence community, especially at this critical juncture in our Nation's history. Admiral Maguire has a long and impressive record of achievement and of service to his country, and I applaud his willingness to once again return to public service after completing a Navy career that spanned 36 years, including as the commander of Naval Special Warfare Command.

The National Counterterrorism Center is the U.S. intelligence community's premier organization for tracking and countering the continuing threat from terrorism. Our country still has men and women on the frontlines in the fight against extremist groups, and they must get it right each hour of every day to ensure the safety and security of their fellow Americans.

As Admiral Maguire and I have discussed, our counterterrorism capabilities are greatly strengthened by our relationships with the allies and partners with whom we have fought shoulder-to-shoulder since September 11, 2001, in this struggle. This is why it is important for the United States to hold onto and strengthen our traditional alliances such as NATO-- and not to heedlessly undermine them.

I am satisfied by the ironclad commitments Admiral Maguire gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee during his confirmation hearing to ensuring that the men and women serving under him will always be empowered to assess and analyze intelligence free from political interference. He has also committed to present these assessments to those in leadership positions free of any political considerations. In short, he has committed to ``speak truth to power,'' and I expect him to live up to these commitments.

This is especially important at a time when we have sometimes seen those in power unjustifiably belittle and denigrate our Intelligence Community and law enforcement agencies.

I trust that Admiral Maguire and those he leads at the NCTC will continue to selflessly work day and night--whether on the 24/7 watch floor or on the front lines, to protect the United States and our allies from the terrorist threat. I salute him for stepping up to this challenging task.