Floor Statements

Mr. President, for the second time in over a year, events compelled the Senate to hold an impeachment trial for President Donald Trump. By once more acquitting the President despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the Senate has again abdicated its responsibility to the American people and our democratic Republic.

The Founders fashioned our constitutional system to at once defy history and reflect its enduring lessons. They understood that since the first human societies, rule of the strong had prevailed across ages of warlords, monarchs, emperors, and tyrants. From the examples of ancient Greece and Rome, they also knew that rule by the people was the fragile, flickering exception.

To ignite America's experiment in self-government, the Founders handed us a constitutional system unique in human history, with inalienable rights for the people, free and fair democratic elections, the rule of law, and coequal

branches of government to check the unbridled ambitions that risked dragging us into tyranny. Our system was never perfect--far from it-- but over 234 years, Americans have fought and sacrificed to make it more democratic, more fair, and more free.

The Founders also understood that, however well-crafted the Constitution may be, its fate would inevitably depend on the public officials sworn to protect it. They could give the Senate the unique power to convict a President, but they could not guarantee Senators would exercise that power when the moment required it.

Their fears were realized on February 13, 2021, when the Senate failed to convict President Trump, a man who defied every standard of conduct and decency the Founders expected of public officials.

Months before Americans cast their ballots, Donald Trump made our democracy his enemy--manufacturing false claim after false claim to undermine the 2020 election. He warned the election would be stolen or rigged, dead people would vote, and voting machines were not trustworthy. He repeated these claims incessantly on social media, at his rallies, and in interview after interview on cable news. He repeats these lies to this day.

When Donald Trump lost the election by over 7 million votes, he refused to concede. Instead, he waged a months-long war against the peaceful transition of power. First, he challenged the election results in court. He lost 61 out of the 62 cases, often being howled out of court by Federal judges, many appointed by the President, for failing to produce any evidence of widespread fraud. Former Attorney General William Barr, one of the President's most steadfast allies, confirmed that there was no such evidence.

So the President changed course. He threw the weight of his office against State and local officials hoping he could coerce them into overturning their States' lawfully conducted election. He called election officials in Wayne County, MI. He summoned State senators from Michigan and Pennsylvania to the White House to urge the legislature to intervene. His aides hounded the Governor of Arizona to echo the President's baseless claims about the election. Most notoriously, he browbeat Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a recorded phone call to ``find'' another 11,780 Trump votes and badgered the Vice President to reject the certification of the electoral results. In my view, these actions alone warranted impeachment. But he didn't stop there.

In the end, President Trump stopped at nothing. As Congress gathered on January 6 to certify the electoral college results, he incited a mob to invade the Capitol and ``stop the steal.'' They scaled, as if it were an enemy rampart, the platform built for President-elect Biden's inauguration and the peaceful transition of power. They chanted President Trump's name as they smashed doors, broke windows, and looted private offices. They repeated the President's lies as they cursed, speared, and bludgeoned the men and women of law enforcement who defended our democracy.

At virtually every step of the way, our constitutional system held its ground because patriotic Americans fulfilled their obligation to our Republic. From the Capitol Police to the nonpartisan election officials, to the State and Federal judges, to the Vice President of the United States--all refused to bend to the President's lawless demands. We should shudder to think how events would have unfolded if these Americans had made a different choice.

Yet somehow, confronted with these examples of individual patriotism and the overwhelming evidence of the President's impeachable offenses, 43 Senators still voted to acquit, including the Senator minority leader, Mitch McConnell.

The minority leader refused to contest the case laid out by the House managers. He conceded that President Trump was ``practically and morally responsible for provoking the events'' of January 6, committing what he called ``a disgraceful dereliction of duty.'' Instead, the Senator hid behind a strained reading of history and dodged his duty to hold President Trump accountable on the feeble ground that the Senate lacked jurisdiction. Through this sophist sleight of hand, the minority leader tried to place one foot on the right side of history without taking the hard vote it actually required. In doing so, he provided cover to every Republican Senator who joined him to acquit President Trump, including many who have failed to denounce the former President for anything he has done to undermine American democracy.

The Constitution grants the legislative branch authority to hold accountable any President who would seek to undo our democratic system of government. This Senate's refusal to exercise this authority and convict Donald Trump is a stain on this body. We had the responsibility to serve as a check on his anti-American actions and reassert the standard of government our Founders imagined. We chose otherwise.

With the permission of the Senate's acquittal, Donald Trump refuses to admit his defeat and continues to mislead his supporters that the election was stolen. In so doing, he continues to perpetuate, in another form, the insurrection he unleashed on January 6.

Our democracy stands today, not as a result of our actions, but those of law enforcement officials at the Capitol and State and local officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin-- men and women who didn't surrender to President Trump's tyrannical demands.

Nearly 2 months later, the U.S. Capitol remains ringed with razor- wire. As I have walked through the perimeter each morning, I have reflected on those who kept us safe from the President's anti- democratic mob--the law enforcement officials, the people who maintain and clean the Capitol, congressional staff. They risked life and limb, not only to defend Senators and Representatives but to defend basic American principles of our constitutional order: free elections, the peaceful transition of power, the rule of law, and the separation of coequal branches of government.

And then I think about the State and local officials, many Republicans, who held their ground under pressure from the President of the United States, often accompanied by threats from angry citizens caught up in his ``Big Lie'' that an election he lost by over 7 million votes was somehow stolen from him. These brave men and women did their duty to protect our constitutional system.

They are true patriots no different than the millions of other citizens who have done their part to defend the way of life we share under our Constitution. They join the African-American regiments who defended the Union in the Civil War, the code talkers in World War II, and the sons and daughters of immigrants who have defended our country from Yorktown to Normandy to Kandahar.

The Constitution of the United States is not a machine that runs itself; it is an exercise in self-government. American citizens-- including those elected to serve them in the Senate--must keep it working and always ensure that it becomes more democratic, more fair, and more free.

As Americans, we should take comfort that there have been many, from Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony to the other courageous citizens who rose to moments far more difficult than our own to protect the Republic and push it closer still to our highest ideals.

They are why the United States remains, for now, the longest lasting government by the people in human history. But as the Founders understood, democracy will always be vulnerable to demagogues who stop at nothing to hold on to power. History will record the names of those who stood on the side of the Constitution, passing down to the next generation the high standard of citizenship our democracy demands. Hopefully, a future Senate will meet that standard.

Mr. President, I send a question to the desk.

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

Mr. President, I want to say what a pleasure it is to see the Presiding Officer in the Chair and to know that, together, we have the opportunity, the great privilege, to represent the greatest State in America--the State of Colorado. And welcome to the Chamber. It is great to have you here.

S. Con. Res. 5

Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about our State. The last time I was running for office, 2016, I remember I went to Rifle, CO, which the Presiding Officer knows well, and I met there with a group of moms who were showing off the early childhood center that was there. It was newly created, and they were extremely happy to have it because before that early childhood center was there, in order to get childcare or early childhood education for their kids, these moms were having to drive through the canyon to Glenwood Springs--about 35 miles away, I guess, or so--and then go to work and then go back and pick their kid up and bring them back. So they were very, very happy that it was there.

But at a certain point during the conversation, one of the moms looked at me, and she said: Michael, I work so I can have health insurance. And every single dollar I make goes to pay for this early childhood center so I can work--that triangle that she is trapped in because of the compression of wages in this country that is a story that millions of American families can tell about an economy that, for 50 years, has worked really well for the people at the very top but not for anybody else.

Ninety percent of the American people, basically, for 50 years, have not seen a pay increase in this country in real terms. That is terrible for them, obviously, because they can't afford health care, housing, higher education, or early childhood education. They feel like they can't live a middle-class life or, if their kids are living in poverty, they can't get their kids out of poverty.

It is a danger to our democracy because democracies do not do well when prosperity is not shared and when you have one group of people at the very top who are doing extremely well and everybody else is struggling to get by, everybody else is struggling to get into the middle class or stay in the middle class or lift their kids out of poverty. That is where we have been as a country for a long time.

We have some of the lowest mobility rates of any industrialized economy in the world, and it is taking its toll. It is taking its toll on the American dream, and that is before COVID. COVID has made matters much, much worse for families in our State--for families in urban parts of the State and rural parts of the State.

Even before COVID hit, when people would ask me--I used to be the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools--people would say: What has changed in education since you were superintendent until now, what I would tell people is mental health, mental health, mental health. That is what teachers talk about in the meetings that I have with them--the mental health of their students, the mental health of their families, and their own mental health. It comes up in every single conversation before class size, before how pitifully we pay teachers in this country. We have to confront that as a country now, too, on to of everything else.

And the economic inequality is greater. The folks who have been on the frontlines during this pandemic have had the toughest time economically of everybody. That is why I am so glad that the administration has come with the package that they have to this floor, $1.9 trillion--$1 trillion of which is direct aid to families and another big piece of which is to support the public health infrastructure in this country so that we can actually vaccinate people in a timely way, so we can test people in a timely way, so we can distribute PPE.

It has been shocking to see how poor the response has been from the United States, a developed country unable to contend effectively with this pandemic, and we have lost almost half a million Americans as a result.

So that investment in our public health infrastructure--in effect, the health force, like the one that Kirsten Gillibrand and I have proposed--is something we desperately need if we are going to reopen this economy quickly and if we are going to reopen schools and keep them open.

There is one other piece of this I wanted to mention this morning on the floor, and that is the provision in this bill that is based on the work that I have done for many, many years with Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio. One bill is Bennet-Brown, and the other one is Brown-Bennet. I love both of them the same, even though the order is different.

But the President has decided to include these bills in his package. It is a dramatic increase to the child tax credit, a substantial increase to what is called the childless earned-income tax credit, so we will stop taxing working people into poverty, which is what we are doing in this country today.

With the passage of the American Family Act, this child tax credit alone, we will cut childhood poverty in the United States of America by almost 50 percent. We will cut childhood poverty for Latino kids by 60 percent, for Black kids by more than 50 percent, for kids living in Tribes by more than 60 percent without adding one bureaucrat to the Federal Government, without creating one more program. Just by taking the tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000, $3,600 for kids under the age of 6, by making it fully refundable, which means that the poorest people in America who have been left out of this tax credit--23 or 25 million children--now will have the benefit of the tax credit for the first time, we will cut childhood poverty in this country by almost 50 percent. I can't think of anything that we could do that would better recognize the structural nature of the challenges that the American people are facing in this economy before COVID but, certainly, in the wake of COVID.

I hope the proposal will be able to attract bipartisan support in this Chamber, and that once we have done it, that we will make it permanent, we will make it last, and that we will imagine that we could live in a country in the United States of America that actually has eradicated childhood poverty because it is no American's choice

to be born poor. It is no child's choice to be born poor.

There are many things we can do to improve economic mobility in this country, and I think that this new administration is going to create the beginning of an era that is going to lead us to a place that, when the economy grows, it grows for everybody--not just for people at the very top--and that families can move themselves up through hard work, save something for retirement, and leave something for the next generation.

That is all anybody in this country has ever really wanted, and that hasn't been true for most Americans for a very long time. This is the beginning of change in that, and that is why this bill has my enthusiastic support.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, yesterday, I voted for H.R. 335, which waived the requirement that a commissioned officer be retired from the military for at least 7 years before serving as Secretary of Defense. I believe civilian control and strong civilian-military relations strengthens our democracy. Congress designed the waiver process to guarantee that someone dedicated to the principle of civilian control can lead our military and to prevent the politicization of the officer corps. I continue to believe that the waiver should only be granted in unique cases. Secretary Austin is uniquely qualified to lead at this moment in our country's history, which is why I voted for his waiver. I believe Secretary Austin will work to maintain the safety and integrity of our institutions and further our Nation's interests at home and abroad. In the future, I will review any waiver that comes before this body with the care and consideration befitting this process and subject.

Colleagues, it has been a terrible day for everybody here and for our country.

One of the things I was thinking about today is something I often think about when I am on this floor, which is that the Founders of this country, the people who wrote our Constitution, actually knew our history better than we know our history.

I was thinking about that history today, as we saw the mob riot in Washington, DC--thinking about what the Founders were thinking about when they wrote our Constitution, which was what happened to the Roman Republic when armed gangs, doing the work for politicians, prevented Rome from casting their ballots for consuls, for praetors, for senators. These were the officers in Rome, and these armed gangs ran through the streets of Rome, keeping elections from being started, keeping elections from ever being called. In the end, because of that, the Roman Republic fell, and a dictator took its place, and that was the end of the Roman Republic--or any republic, for that matter--until this beautiful Constitution was written in the United States of America.

So it is my fervent hope that the way we respond to this today, my dear colleagues, is that we give the biggest bipartisan vote we can in support of our democracy and in support of our Constitution and in rejection of what we saw today and what the Roman Republic saw in its own time.

There is a tendency around this place, I think, to always believe that we are the first people to confront something when that is seldom the case and to underappreciate what the effect of our actions will be. We need to deeply appreciate, in this moment, our obligation to the Constitution, our obligation to democracy, and our obligation to the Republic.

There are people in this Chamber who have twisted the words--twisted the words--of a statute written in the 19th century that was meant to actually settle our electoral disputes, to leave them with the States, as the Senator from Utah was saying, to give us a ministerial role, except in very rare circumstances. That is what that law is about that the Senator of Texas was talking about today. And that is the law that is leading us to be asked to overturn the judgments of 60 courts in America, many of the courts in Arizona, some of whom have howled the President's lawyers out of the courtrooms because there is no evidence of fraud.

By the way, the fact that 37 percent or 39 percent of Americans think there is evidence of fraud does not mean there is fraud. If you have turned a blind eye to a conspiracy theory, you can't now come to the floor of the Senate and say you are ignoring the people who believe that the election was stolen. Go out there and tell them the truth, which is that every single Member of this Senate knows this election

wasn't stolen and that we, just as in the Roman Republic, have a responsibility to protect the independence of the judiciary from politicians who will stop at nothing to hold on to power. There is nothing new about that either. That has been true since the first republic was founded.

So now we find ourselves in the position, just days after many Senators here swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution-- every single Member of the House of Representatives swore the same oath, as well, and I think we have a solemn obligation and responsibility here to prove, once again, that this country is a nation of laws and not of men, and the only result that we can reach together is one that rejects the claim of the Senator from Texas and the other Members of the House and Senate who seek to overturn the decisions that have been made by the States, by the voters in these States, and by the courts.

If we follow what they have proposed, we will be the ones who will have disenfranchised every single person who cast a vote in this election, whether they voted for the President or they didn't.

I urge you to reject this, and I deeply appreciate the opportunity to serve with every single one of you.

Thank you.

(Applause.

Mr. President, I wish to recognize the 30th anniversary of the Outdoor Industry Association, OIA. Based in Boulder, CO, OIA is the leading trade organization of the outdoor recreation gear and apparel industry.

Founded by a group of 14 brands and specialty retailers, OIA has grown to include 1,300 companies that are the backbone of an $887 billion outdoor recreation economy supporting 7.6 million jobs across the United States. For the past three decades, OIA has represented American businesses and individuals whose vocations and avocations are connected to this Nation's best idea: our public lands and waters. OIA is motivated by a shared commitment to protecting, maintaining, and expanding outdoor recreation infrastructure and ensuring every person in the United States has equitable access to nature.

From its earliest days, OIA has partnered with conservation organizations to advocate for our public land and water. OIA helped to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and they continue to press for full funding. They have also supported wildfire funding legislation, rails-to-trails, and similar transportation infrastructure programs and continue to work toward responsible climate and energy policy. The organization also produces outdoor recreation economy report that highlights the influence of the outdoor recreation sector on the national economy, including statistics on consumer spending, tax revenue, and job creation. This report is an incredible resource for lawmakers, land managers, and local planners. As a result, over the past half decade and following Colorado's leadership, States have created State offices of outdoor recreation to ensure that government leaders and business leaders are working together to grow their recreation economies.

I am honored to continue to work with OIA to protect our public land and water. Earlier this year, OIA announced their support for the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act, S. 241/H.R. 823, our bill to protect 400,000 acres of public land in Colorado while safeguarding existing outdoor recreation opportunities. OIA stated that they are ``one hundred percent in support of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act because it would protect nearly half a million acres of public lands across Colorado and support the state's $28 billion outdoor recreation economy while honoring its history in protecting Camp Hale, the origin of the 10th mountain division during WWII.'' I appreciate OIA's support for conserving public land in Colorado.

OIA members exemplify the collaborative and altruistic stewardship at the heart of the outdoor recreation industry. For that, I congratulate OIA on this 30-year anniversary and thank them for their contributions to our American outdoor heritage.

Madam President, later today, the majority leader will use the so-called nuclear option to once again break the Senate rules. This is going to be the latest episode in a series of decisions that have been made around here--mostly by the majority leader but not only by the majority leader--to degrade the Senate's responsibility to advise and consent.

What has happened here is a travesty. We have destroyed--this generation of American politicians has decided that somehow we have prerogatives that the people who came before us didn't exercise.

I think part of the problem we have is that people are so sick and tired of the dysfunction around this place, they are not even paying attention to what is happening here even though, in theory, it is happening in their name.

Two days ago--on the first of April, fittingly--the majority leader wrote an op-ed laying out his case. He wrote:

Since January 2017, for the first time in memory, a

minority has exploited procedure to systematically obstruct a

President from staffing up his administration.

Let's read that again.

Since January 2017, for the first time in memory, a

minority has exploited procedure to systematically obstruct a

President from staffing up his administration.

Senator McConnell went on to write:

Crucial jobs are still being held empty out of political

spite.

He seems to have completely forgotten the Obama administration when he was the leader of the minority, when he was systematically denying President Obama the right not only to put people in his Cabinet and in his administration but to put judges on the bench as well.

Before President Obama arrived in Washington, the filibuster had been used 68 times on this floor--68 times since that rule was created sometime right before 1920. In the first 5 years of the Obama administration, the Republicans filibustered his nominees or used the filibuster in some other way 79 times. It had been used 68 times from when the rule was created to when President Obama became President, and then over the first 5 years of his administration, they used it 79 times. And they can't remember a time when a minority systematically denied a President the ability to put judges on the court or to staff their administration.

When President Obama was President, they filibustered the Secretary of Defense nominee for the first time in the history of America, and he was a former Senator and a Republican. His name was Chuck Hagel. They filibustered him. Secretary of Defense seems like a pretty crucial appointment.

In President Obama's last 2 years, the Republican Senate confirmed only 22 judges. That is a smaller number than at any time since the Truman administration. Twenty-two judges was all he got.

President Obama left 100 vacancies to President Trump to fill--a record number. There were more vacancies at the end of his term than there were at the beginning.

It has been a concerted strategy of Senator McConnell's for a decade--for more than that--and he has succeeded.

He led the most famous blockade that has ever happened in the Senate, and that was the blockade he led of Merrick Garland.

When Justice Scalia died 342 days before the end of President Obama's term, Senator McConnell responded to that by saying: ``This vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.'' He called President Obama a lameduck President. There were 342 days left in his term. He had an entire year left in his term.

Until that point, the Senate had never refused to consider an elected President's nominee because the vacancy arose in an election year, which they claimed over and over again wasn't the case. Since the Nation's founding, the Senate has confirmed 17 Supreme Court nominees in election years; it has rejected 2.

The majority leader would later say:

One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama

in the eye and said, ``Mr. President, you will not fill this

Supreme Court vacancy.''

He did it because he knew he could get away with it, and he thought he would roll the dice. It was shameful. And it wasn't true that it was consistent with our history; it was completely inconsistent with our history.

Whether you support Donald Trump or you don't support Donald Trump, I think you can thank the majority leader for electing Donald Trump because by keeping that vacancy on the Court, he made that the issue in the election, and he galvanized the Republicans around a candidate who otherwise wouldn't have been very appealing to many of them. People say that he stole a Supreme Court seat. It is bigger than that--he won the Presidency for Donald Trump. And we know what has happened since that time.

But it amazes me that in the name of things not moving quickly enough, he can come out here and claim that the most significant thing he has ever done is what he did to Merrick Garland and then the record he has set putting judges on the circuit courts and the district courts since Donald Trump was elected President. Nobody has ever had this many judges put on the court as fast as the majority leader has put them on the court. Now, for district court judges, he wants to do it in 2 hours of time. He is just going to crank the machine until it is not available to him anymore, and it has been clear that has been his objective from the beginning.

But it is not just that the judges are conservative judges; it is that they are not as good as they used to be.

You know, until the group of people in this room--including me, by the way--in 2013, out of desperation, I came to this floor and voted to change the

rules so that President Obama could actually get some nominees confirmed, some judges confirmed, and some administrative appointments confirmed. I have said on this floor before that that is the worst vote I have taken as a Senator, and I apologize for that vote. I share some of the responsibility for where we find ourselves today.

The majority leader said at that time: ``You're going to come to regret this decision.'' And I will say this about him: He was right. I do. Not for me and not for the Senate but for the American people who are having their judiciary infected by the mindless partisanship of this place, which is hopefully temporary partisanship. But those are lifetime appointments that we are confirming that we can't take 30 hours to confirm anymore, and now we are going to do them in 2 hours just to make sure we populate the court with conservative judges whose views are consistent with the majority leader's and the President of the United States.

But, as I said, it is not just about their point of view, their judiciary philosophy, it is also their quality, because if you have to earn 60 votes for a lifetime appointment or--when I was in law school and you were a qualified judge who was nominated by a President for the Supreme Court, you would then command 90 votes or 95 votes, and that gave the American people confidence that the judiciary was insulated from politics, that it was insulated from partisanship. Now, because of what the majority leader has done to the Supreme Court, we are going to put people on that Court with lifetime appointments by the barest partisan majorities. It is impossible for me to see how that is going to build confidence in the judiciary.

So when he says he has just put it back to the way it was before anybody around here started to filibuster circuit court judges, that is not true because before that, you would get 90 votes for somebody who was qualified for the Supreme Court, and today, you get whatever you get from the partisan majority that happens to be in power.

By the way, I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen when we have a President of one party and a majority of another party and there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, or two or three. If we don't change our behavior around here, those vacancies are just going to remain until we have a President and a Senate of the same party, however long that takes. But if you only need to get 51 votes, I guess you don't have to be that qualified.

The Senate confirmed a nominee recently to the Sixth Circuit who wrote blog posts peddling conspiracy theories about Barack Obama and compared abortion to slavery. He was confirmed 51 to 47. He would never have survived the vet before.

The Senate confirmed a nominee to the Fifth Circuit who dismissed concerns about glass ceilings for women, sexual harassment, and the gender pay gap as a Trojan horse for government intervention. He was confirmed 50 to 47. This man would never have gotten to this floor before we changed the rules, and he now has a lifetime appointment.

The Senate confirmed a nominee for the Eighth Circuit, even though the American Bar Association rated him unanimously as ``not qualified''--a unanimous rating of ``not qualified,'' and he is now a circuit court judge with a lifetime appointment. It has never happened in our history. The ABA questioned whether he ``would be able to detach himself from his deeply held social agenda and political loyalty.'' He was confirmed 50 to 48. They said he was unqualified unanimously because they thought his ideology would blind him, and now he has a lifetime appointment.

The Senate confirmed a second judge the ABA deemed unqualified for a district court in Oklahoma. According to the ABA, this nominee frequently missed work, and when he did show up, it was often in the middle of the day. He was confirmed by 52 votes.

Last December, the Senate confirmed a third judge the ABA found unqualified with 50 votes. He barely made it, but Vice President Pence made a trip from the White House to break the tie.

The partisan temper that is destroying this place needs to come to an end, and we need to make sure, between now and whenever that happens, that we don't take down the rest of government with us.

The Founders didn't design the court to be an extension of our partisan foolishness. The independent judiciary is responsible for enforcing the rule of law, which is at the heart of our democratic Republic. It is what separates us from so many other countries around the world that have failing economies because no one subscribes to the rule of law or that are filled with corrupt institutions, where rules are bent, broken, or ignored, with no thought about what is going to be left for tomorrow but just the looting of the economy for the benefit of people today.

The Constitution makes it clear that the Senate has a responsibility--we have a constitutional responsibility--to advise and consent on judicial nominations. There is no one else assigned that responsibility. The House of Representatives has nothing to do with it.

Through this decade-long--it is more than that--20-year-long series of preemptive retributions, where one party says: If we don't do it to them, they are going to do it to us, we are now at the point where we are destroying the judiciary, and I think we should pull back from the brink. I don't think the majority leader should invoke the nuclear option today, should break another rule around here. No one else in America runs their operation by breaking the rules.

Just in this session alone, we have seen not only this, not only this violation of our norms and our customs, of the rule of law, of our responsibility to advise and consent, we have seen the same people support the President's extraconstitutional destruction of the rule of law when he claimed an emergency to fund his wall or to fund $5 billion for his wall, which, by the way, he said had already been largely built.

Just like the majority leader today is saying, we have a record number of judges who have been confirmed since President Trump has been put in office, but we are not moving quickly enough so I have to change the rules by using the nuclear option.

I need to declare an emergency to build the wall, even though it is almost complete because of my excellent administration.

It is all gibberish, and it is all meant just to get a result for partisan reasons.

I think when the history is written about this period of our political system, this is all going to look like a tragic farce--all of it. People are going to know, when they write an op-ed piece on April Fools' and say one thing, and they have spent the last 20 years doing something else, that is not going to be lost to the pages of history. People are going to know how the system worked when we arrived here, when the people who were in this Chamber arrived, including myself, and maybe in some tiny, little footnote there will be something that says: Well, at least Bennet was out here admitting the mistake he made to contribute to this disaster.

For the life of me, I don't know why we aren't correcting course. We are free people. Everybody in this Chamber, I think, should have an incentive to try to be remembered well and to be remembered as a good steward of this place and of the work we did here. I doubt very much, when our careers are at an end, what people are going to say is, the good news is, they broke the rules.

I know what the result is going to be today. I know my friend from Oklahoma has actually worked hard to see if he could get a bipartisan result here, and today that has been impossible, but what I really hope is that we can change what we are doing in the Senate so we can protect and preserve the independence of our judiciary and that maybe we will even move beyond the bipartisanship that is bringing the Senate to its knees today.

With that, I yield the floor.

I thank Senator Gardner. I agree with his assessment and those of Chairman Murkowski, Senator McSally, and Senator Cortez Masto, about the urgency and path forward for DCP implementation. I would like to reiterate that this bill does not exempt or waive any environmental laws. In drafting the DCPs, both the upper and lower basin carefully considered the environment and the existing environmental analyses and compliance documents. Additional NEPA compliance would be needed if Federal actions are outside the scope of effects analyzed in the existing compliance and decision documents.

I ask Senator Sinema, if this is also her understanding?

Madam President, I wish to pay tribute to the bravery and service of PFC Frank K. Pantleo, a recently passed World War II veteran from Pueblo, CO, who served with honor in the Pacific Theater.

Private First Class Pantleo served in the U.S. Army in World War II from 1943 to 1945 with the 132nd Engineer Combat Battalion. He fearlessly aided in the Bismarck Archipelago Campaign, the Eastern Mandates Campaign, the Southern Philippines Campaign, and the Ryukus Campaign.

Private First Class Pantleo was awarded the American Service Medal, the Asiatic Pacific Service Medal, the Philippine Liberation Ribbon with one service star, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Good Conduct Medal during his time in the service to this Nation.

Every day, men and women in uniform like Private First Class Pantleo heroically serve on the frontlines of our Nation's defense. I stand with Coloradans today to honor his sacrifice and his memory.

Mr. President. I wish to honor the distinguished career of Bruce Benson, the outgoing president of the University of Colorado. Through his tenacity and hard work, Bruce made the university and the State of Colorado a better place. CU is one of the Nation's great universities, and Bruce's contributions, including the record- breaking growth in research funding, have made it a source of statewide pride.

Bruce would admit that he was originally reluctant to take the job and with good reason: He had already enjoyed a long and fruitful career in politics, philanthropy, and business. However, those experiences and relationships were exactly what made Bruce so effective. As only he could, Bruce was able to use these experiences to further CU's standing as one the Nation's prominent public universities and research institutions.

Under Bruce's leadership, the university's research funding reached record levels, surpassing $1 billion during the last academic year. This money allowed for critical research in biotechnology, healthcare, energy, and aerospace and a number of other fields. Additionally, CU had its 6 best fundraising years during his time at the helm, including a record $440.4 million between 2017 and 2018. All the while, Bruce guided efforts to implement operational efficiencies, cut bureaucracy, and improve business practices at the university. Successes like these solidify Bruce's legacy and his commitment to the future of Colorado. It is worth noting that he is retiring as the longest serving CU president in more than half a century.

Bruce has always been a tireless champion for Colorado's young people. He worked to make the DPS Foundation into the great civic organization it is today. He has also done extraordinary work at Children's Hospital Colorado.

Bruce has consistently worked to change the lives of children and students across the State of Colorado, from the youngest of kids to college graduates. I know I speak on behalf of all of Colorado when I say that we are all grateful for his service.

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

Mr. President, I want to congratulate the Presiding Officer on being in the Senate and presiding over the Senate.

I come to the floor to remind us how we got here. President Trump told us over and over and over again during his campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall. He said it at the beginning of the campaign. He said it in the middle of the campaign. He said it at the end of the campaign.

He made that promise over and over again. The U.S. Congress didn't make that promise. There is no way for Congress to force Mexico to pay for the wall. We cannot force Mexico to pay for the wall. It is not Congress's fault. It is the President's fault, and it is his promise he has broken.

Instead of going to Mexico to get them to pay for the wall, as he said he would do over and over again, he has now asked Congress to pay for it. He has now asked the American taxpayer to fulfill his broken promise.

By the way, that is after 2 years of having a Republican majority in the Senate and a Republican majority in the House who said: We don't want to build your wall. We are not going to help you keep your promise. In fact, you promised Mexico would pay for the wall. Go get Mexico to pay for the wall is what the Republican Senate and the Republican House said.

So he was frustrated. He said how frustrated he was. He went out to the American people during the 2018 election, and the people rewarded him by electing Democrats to be the majority in the House of Representatives.

Then, last December, those Democrats offered the President $1.3 billion for border security. It wasn't for his medieval wall. It is for what he now calls steel slats.

Instead of accepting that fact--the fact that nobody here wants to fund the wall he said Mexico would pay for--he shut down the government for 35 days. Then, after all the misery he inflicted, after the billions of dollars he cost our economy, to say nothing of what he did to the Federal workers, he basically got exactly the same deal as he got before he shut down the government, making the shutdown pointless, making the billions of dollars of lost wages and economic activity in America pointless, all a casualty of his inability to keep his promise that Mexico would pay for the wall and his inability to get Republican majorities in the House and the Senate to build his wall.

So having failed to get Mexico to pay for the wall, having failed to get a Republican Congress to pay for the wall, he now says he is going to declare a national emergency to pay for the wall.

We should ask ourselves--we must ask ourselves--whether this is an appropriate use of emergency power. By the way, if it was an appropriate use of emergency power, why didn't he just declare an emergency before he shut the government down for 35 days? Why cost the economy billions and billions of dollars if you can just do this by declaring an emergency? The easy answer for that is that it is not an emergency.

He is only doing this now because he lost the negotiation. He lost his leverage. He embarrassed himself by having the longest shutdown in American history.

This is not a national emergency. This is just plan B. The President has admitted as much as he was signing the declaration itself--the declaration of emergency. He said:

I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster.

. . . I just want to get it done faster, that's all.

It is not an emergency. He just wants to get it done faster, which is astonishing coming from a guy who has not spent the money that Congress has already appropriated for the wall. He

hasn't even spent that money, and now he is saying he wants to go faster, and he has to declare a national emergency to do it.

By the way, America, you may have noticed that the President is also now saying that ``much of the wall has already been fully renovated or built.'' ``Much of the wall has already been fully renovated or built.'' That is what your President is saying to you at the exact same time he is saying that he needs a national emergency to build the wall. It is preposterous. It is a joke.

On top of everything else, he is not telling the truth about that. He has not built a mile of this wall since he has been President of the United States, even though Congress has appropriated more than $1 billion--I think about $1.7 billion--to do it.

When he signed the emergency declaration, he said that national emergencies have ``been signed many times before. It's been signed by other presidents from 1977 or so; it gave the presidents the power.''

``There's rarely been a problem'' the President said. ``They sign it. Nobody cares.'' That is what he said.

Nobody cared because those were real emergencies, not fake emergencies. They weren't emergencies being declared by Presidents who had promised that Mexico would do something, and then it didn't happen, and now they had to declare an emergency. They certainly were not cases where the President came to the Congress, including a Congress of their own party, and said, I want to do something, and they said no. Then, they said: Well, we are going to declare an emergency.

That has never happened before in American history.

By the way, if we go down this road, this will not be the last time this happens. This will happen time and again, which is why every Member of the Senate should vote for this measure of disapproval.

Since 1976, when Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, Presidents have declared national emergencies 58 times. Fifty-three of those times have been to do things like block the sale of weapons to foreign countries or to sanction governments, like Iran and North Korea. The four remaining cases were after two U.S. planes were shot down by Cuba, after we invaded Iraq and desperately needed to protect critical infrastructure, after the outbreak of swine flu, and after 9/ 11.

Failing to fulfill his promise that Mexico would pay for the wall is not a national emergency, and if he thinks it is, he should sanction himself for failing to keep his promise.

As I said earlier--and this should bother everybody who believes in our system of checks and balances and who believes in the Constitution--never has a President sought to enact a national emergency like this after Congress has said no. In our Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse. Every single Senator should be voting to protect that.

Over the months and now stretching into years, I have been shocked at how the people around here who declare that they are constitutional conservatives have put up with a President who obviously doesn't care about the rule of law, doesn't care about the separation of powers--as you see here--isn't concerned about having an independent judiciary, and wants to threaten the leading journalists of this country, calling them fake news.

I would think this step would be one step too far, even for anybody in this Chamber who supported this craziness up until this point.

Let's add it all up. What has it gotten us? The President couldn't get Mexico to pay for the wall. He couldn't get a Republican House and a Republican Senate to pay for the wall. So now he is violating the Constitution to steal money that has been appropriated by this branch-- by Congress. He is stealing that money from the Department of Defense, from our warfighters, and from the U.S. military to expropriate private land held by American farmers and ranchers--many of whom I assume are Republicans--through eminent domain.

As I have said on this floor before, if any President tried to do that in Colorado, there is not a person in our delegation who would support that--stealing our farms and ranches.

It must be said that, for a politician, he has a very unusual view about eminent domain. Here are some quotes of his: ``I think eminent domain is wonderful.''

For those of you who don't know what eminent domain is, it is when a government decides it wants a project, and your house is in the middle of where that project is going to go. Then, the government can use this thing called eminent domain to take your house and pay you for it. That is what it is. It is rarely used because most people don't want the government deciding whether they can live in their house or on their farm or on their ranch, which--in the case of people on the border of the United States--has been in their family for generations. That is why the local Congressman down there doesn't want this wall built. I think he is a Republican.

But the President said: ``I think eminent domain is wonderful''--not sometimes essential, not a tool that is useful from time to time. He said it is ``wonderful.''

He said: ``Eminent domain is something that has to be used, usually you would say for anything that's long, like a road, like a pipeline, or like a wall, or a fence.''

He didn't say steel slats, but I am sure the same thing applies.

Here is another quote. This is fascinating. I have not met a single person in Colorado who would agree with this--not one--and I bet you there is not a person in Mississippi or Texas or Alabama who would agree with this sentiment either. This is what the President of the United States said:

Most of the time, they just want money. It's very rarely

they say, ``I love my house, I love my house, it's the

greatest thing ever.''

Here is another quote--and just for everybody who is watching this because people are going to come out on this floor and say: Oh, no, the money will not be used for it in this case--not for a wall, not for eminent domain.

Donald Trump says:

We are going to need a little eminent domain to get that

wall built, just so you understand. . . . You need eminent

domain, you have to take certain areas, okay?

That is the kind of language you would expect out of some autocrat someplace, not in a democracy.

I say to my Republican friends here who are going to vote with the President on this bill, that is what you are supporting when you are voting with him on this bill.

I don't know how anybody goes home and defends that. For anyone who wants to go home and defend misappropriating money that has been dedicated to the Department of Defense and to our military and to take that money extra-constitutionally and use it to take the property of law-abiding citizens, I don't understand how you defend it.

I am not making any of this up. These are his words. By the way, it is no wonder he can't get it through the people's Representatives in Congress because there is not a single person here who would ever admit to doing what he is about to do and what he says he wants to do. What a betrayal of conservative principles this is.

As I said, this whole exercise itself is an admission that he has broken his promise to the American people.

We didn't break it, Republicans in the Senate. We didn't break it, and we should not help him keep it if it is going to break the Constitution. In fact, we can't help him keep it unless somebody around here has a way of persuading Mexico to build the wall or pay for the wall, which I don't think there is a single person here who has that kind of influence, as influential as all of us think we are.

I don't understand it, but it is amazing to me why people would cash in their conservative principles so cheaply--$3.6 billion.

The idea that you would be willing to give up your principles in such a tawdry exchange should be infuriating to the real conservatives who I know are in this country. Many of them live in my State of Colorado, which is a third Republican, a third Independent, and a third Democratic. Don't come to our State and tell us you are taking away our houses because we don't care about them--that we will just take the money instead for a broken promise that you didn't keep. That would not sell in Colorado. I don't know why it sells in Texas. I can't imagine that it does. I don't know how anybody could support that.

By the way, that is not even the most important point. The most important

point is that we have ground ourselves up for a 35-day government shutdown, for 3 months of media cycles on this fight by the President on a wall that he now says is almost fully built, while he is declaring an emergency to build a wall that hasn't been built.

While we are screwing around here to keep a broken promise that Mexico is going to pay for the wall, this is what was going on in China. By the way, I know somebody is going to say: Hey, they have a wall. They do have a wall. They built it 500 years ago. That is not what they are working on today. They took care of that medieval wall 500 years ago.

Today, what they are doing is they are spending $125 billion on high- speed rail this year alone. That is $125 billion on high-speed rail. You get on one of those trains and you could hear a pin drop. If you go on Amtrak, which I take all the time--I feel grateful that we have it-- it is less than half the speed, and you can't put your Coca-Cola on the table in front of you without it falling over or falling on your neighbor.

China has spent $300 billion on new roads, bridges, and ports across the globe through their Belt and Road Initiative. They have bought stakes in 16 different ports across Europe and the Mediterranean, some of which have fallen into their hands because--and this is part of the plan--the debt that the countries have put on to build the ports is so onerous that China gets to own the ports. They have built the longest sea bridge in the world. They have laid over 3,700 miles of fiber optic cable to connect Africa to Latin America and, ultimately, to China. On that Belt and Road Initiative, they have laid their technology over that with fiber optic cables so they could extend the surveillance society that they are building inside of China right now, while we screw around with this wall.

By the way, on the $3.6 billion for the wall, here is an interesting chart. Here is how much cement China used over a 3-year period, from 2011 to 2013. This is what they used in 3 years, 2011 to 2013. I was in the Congress then. We were in the depths of the great recession during that period of time. It was 6.6 gigatons of concrete. Here is how much we have built in concrete in 100 years: 4.5 gigatons.

They used 4.5 gigatons in 3 years. They have used dramatically more than we have used in 100 years, and we can't even get an infrastructure bill off this floor. The White House can't even write an infrastructure bill.

All night, every night, on the cable, all we hear is $3.6 billion for the wall, the wall, the wall--the wall that the President says has already been mostly built, that he is now declaring a national emergency to build.

The world is racing ahead of us, as I have said on this floor over and over again, while we are getting run around by one inane distraction after another. It has been said that the President is somebody who is mostly concerned with winning the politics of any given day. That is what he tries to do, and he is often very effective at it. We spend a lot of time talking about him and his priorities, unlike figuring out a plan to counteract what China is doing or others are doing.

I bet they have a great strategy in China and Iran. Russia is not so obviously good at that strategy. Actually, come to think of it, they are pretty good, too. If you can stay off FOX News, the President will not pay any attention to what you are doing, so go do whatever it is you want to do while we fritter away one day after another of the American people's time over a broken promise that he never could keep.

Unless we are prepared to be the first generation of Americans to leave less opportunity, not more, to the people coming after us, we need to do a lot better than what we are doing, and part of that is to ensure that we preserve the institutions that built this country, like the one we are standing in right now.

I know that among some people there is an effort to divide the government from the American people and that there are people here who think they have been sent here for one purpose, which is to discredit the Federal Government.

I have a lot of problems with the Federal Government--lots of them. I was a school superintendent before I came here. I have a lot of problems with what is happening to poor children who are going to schools in our public system of education across the country, so I am not here to defend government or the way it works right now. In fact, I don't think Democrats should be the party defending bad government. We should fix it where it needs to be fixed.

We are talking here about our institutions. We are talking here about the rule of law. We are talking here about the Constitution that generation after generation after generation of Americans has preserved--not always perfectly, often very imperfectly.

Every generation of Americans has seen it as their obligation, their responsibility, to at least try to live up to the pages in our founding documents, and where we failed, we got up and we tried again. This whole country is founded on the idea that we will have disagreements because we live in a Republic, and in a Republic, you have disagreements. There is no King or tyrant to tell you what to think. That is the reason we live in a democratic Republic.

This place here and the Chamber down the hall are part of the mechanisms that were drafted into our founding documents for us to resolve our disagreements. The Founders believed something. They had no good example in the past, but here is what they believed. They believed that out of that vigorous disagreement, we would create more imaginative and durable solutions than any tyrant could ever come up with on their own. That is why they designed the institutions the way they did, and that is why they created the checks and balances that they did. There is a reason no President has ever done what this President is trying to do.

They exercise self-restraint because of what is in the Constitution and because nobody on this floor would have supported him. There are many ways this generation of politicians--and I accept my share of the blame. There are many ways in which we have degraded these institutions in our time. We have destroyed the Senate's responsibility to advise and consent on judicial nominations and Supreme Court nominations. That has been turned into a purely partisan exercise by this generation of American politicians. I am ashamed of that. I am ashamed to have been here when we did that, and I take my share of the responsibility.

What I say to my colleagues is that we cannot continue to degrade these institutions and expect that the next generation of Americans is going to look back on us with anything except contempt. Generation after generation after generation of Americans has preserved these institutions so the next generation could have the opportunity to resolve their disagreements in these Chambers. We will regret it. We will regret it if we go down this road.

As the majority leader said in another time: Things have a way of changing around here sooner than you think, and someday the shoe will be on the other foot. If this Republican sets this precedent and some Democratic President follows it, that is one more step away from living in the Republic that we all claim we cherish, from the democracy we all claim we cherish, to put power in the hands of a tyrant who may or may not represent the will of the American people.

We may never get another vote like this around here. This is going to be the time that each of us is going to decide whether we are going to act to preserve these institutions for the next generation or whether we are going to continue to degrade them in our mindless partisanship and, in this case, to somehow fulfill a promise the President never could keep. That would be a shameful day in the U.S. Senate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to honor the career of Sam Mamet, who recently announced his retirement as the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League. Sam spent the better half of his adult life working to empower communities and local governments across Colorado. It is not an understatement to say that every corner of the State is incredibly grateful for his work.

Sam joined the Colorado Municipal League in 1979, when he spearheaded the organization's advocacy in the State capitol. After 26 years in that position, Sam would go on to spend the rest of his time in the organization as its executive director. There, he worked tirelessly to foster partnerships across the State and the country that have benefited Colorado's 270 towns and cities. He also spent time as an adjunct professor of political science at CU Denver.

Throughout my time in public service, I have always appreciated Sam's thoughtful approach to policymaking, his collaborative spirit, and his unwavering advocacy for our local communities. When I worked in local government, I always knew I could count on Sam to ensure that our perspective would be heard at the State and Federal level. After joining the Senate, I have had the benefit of his advice across issues, ranging from infrastructure to tax policy.

Going forward, I will miss Sam's wit, humility, and sense of humor-- attributes in short supply in our politics today.

Although Sam is retiring from the Municipal League, I suspect he will continue to serve the State of Colorado with the same passion that has characterized his career. We wish Sam well in retirement and extend our deepest thanks for his lifetime of public service.

Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to the bravery and service of PFC Floyd K. Lindstrom, a Colorado Springs World War II veteran who has earned our Nation's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor. I also want to recognize the significance of February 3, 2019, which marks the 75th anniversary of his death. He was killed in action at the battle of Anzio.

It is my pleasure to commend the efforts of the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System and Colorado's veterans community, which worked to bring a Medal of Honor for display at the Lindstrom Colorado Springs Community-Based Outpatient Clinic.

Much has been said about the battle that compelled Lindstrom to act above and beyond the call of duty where he earned his place in the Hall of Heroes. According to the citation, Lindstrom acted with ``conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity'' in defeating a German counterattack on a hill near Mignano, Italy, November 11, 1943. When the enemy counterattacked, Lindstrom and his platoon were forced to fall back to a defensive position. Unable to eradicate the enemy nest from this position, Lindstrom fearlessly picked up his heavy machine gun and ran up the hillside to gain a new position, only 10 yards away from the enemy machinegun; yet again, Lindstrom was unable to reach the gunners who were hiding behind a large rock. Lindstrom charged uphill once more facing a steady stream of fire and killed both gunners with his pistol. In this moment, Lindstrom embodied the true spirit of self- sacrifice.

Every day, men and women in uniform like Lindstrom heroically serve on the front lines of our Nation's defense. I stand with Coloradans today to honor his sacrifice and his memory.

Madam President, as you know, I seldom rise on this floor to contradict somebody on the other side. Over the years, I have worked very hard to work in a bipartisan way with the Presiding Officer and with my Republican colleagues, but these crocodile tears that the Senator from Texas is crying for the first responders are too hard for me to take.

They are too hard for me to take because when the Senator from Texas shut this government down in 2013, my State was flooded. It was under water. People were killed. People's houses were destroyed. Their small businesses were ruined forever. Because of the Senator from Texas, this government was shut down for politics.

He surfed to a second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses but was of no help to the first responders, to the teachers, and to the students whose schools were closed with a Federal Government that was shut down because of the junior Senator from Texas.

It is his business--not my business--why he supports a President who wants to erect a medieval barrier on the border of Texas, who wants to use eminent domain to build that wall, and who wants to declare an unconstitutional emergency to build that wall. That is the business of the Senator from Texas.

I can assure you that in Colorado if a President said that he was going to use eminent domain to erect a barrier across the State of Colorado, across the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and he was going to steal the property of our farmers and ranchers to build his medieval wall, there wouldn't be an elected leader from our State who would support that idea.

That comes to my final point--how ludicrous it is that this government is shut down over a promise the President of the United States couldn't keep and that America is not interested in having him keep. This idea that he was going to build a medieval wall across the southern border of Texas, taking it from the farmers and ranchers who were there, and have the Mexicans pay for it isn't true. That is why we are here, because he is now saying the taxpayers have to pay for it. That is not what he said during his campaign.

Over and over he said that Mexico would pay for the wall--over and over again.

I was going to talk about what he said about the junior Senator's father, but I am going to let that alone. It was after that.

Now we are here with the government shut down over his broken promise, while the Chinese are landing spacecraft on the dark side of the moon. That is what they are doing, not to mention what they are doing in Latin America and with their One Belt, One Road Initiative in Asia. That is what they are doing while we are shut down over a promise he never thought he could keep and didn't keep.

Finally, this idea that my colleague from Texas--and I am sorry to say this because I respect him. He is obviously a very intelligent person, but this idea that Democrats are for open borders is gibberish, and it is proven by what the Senator from Louisiana said, which is that time after time, we have supported real border security, not a wall that Mexico pays for that gets you attention at campaign rallies from some people in America and that gets talked about on FOX News at night.

In 2013, the Senator from Texas didn't support it. I did. In 2013, we passed a bill here in a bipartisan way. It got 68 votes. It had $46 billion for border security in it--$46 billion, not $5 billion for his rinky-dink wall that he is talking about building. There was $46 billion for border security. To be precise about it, it had 350 miles of what the President now refers to as steel slats.

By the way, America, do you hear him not calling it a wall anymore?

Now it is steel slats. Now it is a border barrier. There were 350 miles of so-called steel slats in that bill.

Do you know what else was in that bill? I think the Presiding Officer voted for that bill. In that bill, we doubled the number of border security agents on the border. They could practically hold hands on that border. There were so many border security agents in that bill. We had billions of dollars of drone technology so that we could learn what we have learned in Afghanistan and in other places, to see every single inch of that border--every inch.

We had internal security in that bill so that small businesses, farmers, and ranchers don't have to be the immigration police, and so that, finally, in America we could actually know who came here legally on a visa but overstayed their visa.

Forty percent of the people in this country who are undocumented are here because they came legally and overstayed. We still can't do that in America because that bill passed the Senate, but it couldn't get a vote in the House because of the stupidest rule ever created, called the Hastert rule, named after somebody who is in prison. That rule has allowed a minority of tyrants in the Congress to bring a Democratic President low--President Obama, whom they didn't let do anything--to ruin the speakership of John Boehner, and to allow Paul Ryan to almost accomplish nothing while he was Speaker, except leaving this place in a government shutdown.

The so-called Freedom Caucus has had a veto around this place for 10 years and completely distorted the Republican Party here, if I do say so myself. That may sound presumptuous, but I know a lot of Republicans in Colorado who don't agree with almost anything or anything that the Freedom Caucus has stood for. Yet they have had a veto on good, bipartisan legislation passed by the U.S. Senate.

So I am not going to stand here and take it from somebody who has shut down the government while my State was flooded or from a President who says that he wants $5 billion to build some antiquated, medieval wall, which he said Mexico would pay for, when I helped write and voted for a bill that actually would have secured the border of the United States of America, that would have secured our internal defenses as well.

This is a joke, and the fact that it consumes the cable networks all night, every night, and all the rest of it--this government should be open. We can debate whatever it is we want to debate.

Do you think the Chinese don't know that we can't land a spaceship on the dark side of the moon? Do you think the Russians don't know that for the first time since John Glenn was sent up to orbit this planet, America cannot put a person into space without asking the Russians to do it? Do you think the rest of the world doesn't know that we are not investing in our infrastructure; that we are not investing in the young generation of Americans; that we are willing to lose the race for artificial intelligence to the Chinese; that we are going to break all of our longstanding alliances since World War II at a moment when China is rising; that China's GDP has quadrupled since 2001, tripled since 2003, doubled since 2009? Do we think that no one in the rest of the world knows all of that about us?

We should reopen this government today. We should reopen it today. Then, what I hope much more than that is that we actually come together to figure out how we are going to govern this country again and stop playing petty, partisan politics, which is going to do nothing to educate the next generation of Americans, which is going to do nothing to fix the fiscal condition of this country.

For 10 years--for 10 years, I have heard the junior Senator from Texas

and I have heard the Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives talk about how important it is to get the fiscal condition of our government fixed. In fact, that has been the pretext for shutdowns and for fiscal cliffs and for all of this stuff that does nothing but denigrate our democratic Republic.

Now, for the first time almost in history--it happened once before during the Vietnam war--we are actually having our deficit shooting through the roof while unemployment has fallen. It has never happened before. These are the people who called Barack Obama a Bolshevik and a socialist at the depths of the recession, when we had a 10-percent unemployment rate, and didn't lift a finger to do anything. They have now given us a fiscal condition where our deficit is going up while our unemployment rate is falling. Do you know how hard it is to accomplish that? Do you know how irresponsible you would have to be to accomplish that? Yet that is what has been accomplished.

When I was first here--it was actually a little after I was first here--I used to walk through Denver International Airport, which we are very proud of in Colorado. By the way, it is the most recent airport that has been constructed in America. While we have been closed, other airports around the world--new airports have been opened just while we have been closed.

Denver International Airport is the most recent airport in the country to be opened. It was opened 25 years ago--a quarter of a century ago--and during moments like those when the Senator from Texas shut down the government while Colorado was underneath floods and people had lost all of the things I talked about earlier--their houses, their jobs, and their lives--I used to want to walk through that airport with a paper bag over my head because I was so embarrassed to be part of this.

I often wondered why anyone in their right mind would want to work in a place that has a 9-percent approval rating. In fact, I brought a chart--two charts--one day to the floor, one that showed we hadn't always had a 9-percent approval rating, to remind people how far we had fallen in the public's estimation over the time that the Senator from Texas and I have been here. Then I brought out another chart that looked at who else has a 9-percent approval rating. I can't remember all--it has sort of been lost in the mist of time--but I do remember that the IRS had a 40-percent approval rating; there was an actress who had a 13-percent approval rating; more people wanted America to be a Communist country--11 percent--than approved of this Congress; and Fidel Castro had a 5-percent approval rating, which was lower than our 9-percent approval rating. He was the only one who had a lower rating than that.

So my question, often, was this: Why would anybody want to work in a place that has such a low approval rating, and why would they want to behave in a way that only made matters worse?

I am sorry to say this, but there is an answer. If you think you have been sent here to dismantle the Federal Government--and I have lots of problems with this Federal Government. I think it does a lot of things very well, and, as a westerner, I certainly believe we need to not be in the business of defending bad government. We need to be improving the government. But if you think your job is to dismantle it--as the Freedom Caucus does, in my view--then a 9-percent approval rating suits you just fine because you get to go home and say ``See how terrible all of those guys are? See what idiots all of those guys are?'' while you are taking your pay while the Federal workers are not getting paid, while you are keeping your job while they are losing their job.

There has been an effort not just to dismantle the Federal Government but to separate it from the American people, to claim that it is someone else's or that it is corrupt. In many ways, I think it is; I believe it is. I believe this place is one of the most corrupt parts of the whole thing. But because it is corrupt or because it can't get its act together or because it is too far away from the people or, I think I would say, because it is populated by a bunch of self-interested politicians who don't care about the priorities of the American people--whatever the reason is, it is not separate. It is not separate. The reason that is important is that we live in a democratic Republic, and the Founders of this country did two things that had never happened in human history: They led a successful armed insurrection against a colonial power in one generation, and they formed a democratic Republic whose Constitution was ratified by the people who would live under it.

What they knew because they were enlightened thinkers--or I should say not what they knew but what they believed because they had only bad examples from which to draw when they sat there in Philadelphia writing that Constitution--but what they knew was that in a Republic, we would have disagreements. That was their expectation, and their belief was that out of those disagreements we would--and, by the way, they knew we would have disagreements because they had disagreements, and they had failed on some very important things. It has to be said. They perpetuated human slavery because they couldn't come to an agreement about that, and other people, whom I think of as Founders--just as important, just as significant as those Founders--ended the enslavement of human beings in America and did other important things, such as make sure my daughters had the right to vote. Those people also are Founders. But what they believed at their core was that through our disagreements, we would forge more imaginative and more durable solutions than any King or tyrant could come up with on their own. That was their belief. That was their expectation.

I would say that our country, in many ways, has eclipsed any expectation they ever had of what America would become. For the moment, we are the richest country in the world. We have the greatest capacity for self-defense of any human population in the history of the world. We are far more democratic and far more free, with all of our imperfections, than they would have ever imagined and probably than most of them would have ever wanted. We are the longest lived democracy in human history. But, for some reason, there is a generation of politicians in America today who don't think it is necessary to live up to the standard that they set and the standard lots of other people have set from the founding of our country 230 years ago until today.

I don't even know what day it is anymore of this record-long shutdown, but the pretext for it is an invention. It is a creation of something in the President's mind. It was something we have learned from reading the press that was a mnemonic device used during the campaign to remind him to talk about immigration in an effort to divide Americans from one another instead of an effort to bring us together, in an effort to turn what just 3 years ago was a bipartisan issue in the Senate--securing our southern border with $46 billion--into a cudgel to be wielded at campaign rallies.

In any case, the least we could do while we have these shabby disagreements that are not worthy of our predecessors, that are not worthy of the State I represent--which is one-third Democratic, one- third Republican, and one-third Independent--that are threatening to make our generation the first generation of Americans to leave less opportunity, not more, to the people coming after us, a generation of politicians who are openly suggesting that America's role in the world should be diminished--the least we could do is reopen our government and stop pursuing this self-inflicted harm that it creates in having hundreds of thousands of Federal workers out of work and not being paid, not able to support their families while we continue to stand on this floor, having mindless arguments that are going to do nothing to advance the future of our country.

We shouldn't shut the government down, as it has been in this case, for a campaign promise the President, I am sure, knew he could never keep.

With that, I yield floor.

I thank the Senator from Texas for having this conversation. I don't think I was yelling--but I will go watch the tape--or screaming at you. I also have never called anybody on this floor a liar, as you did, in 2015. I get the theatrics of all of this.

I guess I want to say two things. One, I appreciate the fact that you, at least, seem to be accepting the fact that every Democrat who is here, on that immigration bill in 2013, voted for it--voted for the 350 miles of wall you are talking about. You didn't vote for that bill or the Senator from Texas didn't vote for that bill, and I assume you had your reasons.

By the way, I wouldn't presume to think what the Senator would think about as a person from a border State. My State is not far from the border. We see the effects for ill and for good of immigration in my State.

I do know this. There were two Senators from a border State--the border State of Arizona--who were on that Gang of 8 bill, with whom I sat, day after day, negotiating the provisions for months. They didn't have to just vote for the bill or against it, but they had to go home to Arizona--John McCain and Jeff Flake did--and explain why they supported it and why it was the right thing to do for Arizona, which, as the Senator from Texas knows, is a border State.

The idea that there is a problem to be solved here because Democrats in this Chamber are for open borders is false, as the Senator indicated. The second point is, the Senator from Texas referenced Ben Franklin.

Ben Franklin was standing outside the steps of Constitution Hall, and somebody who was passing by--this is while they were writing the Constitution--said: Mr. Franklin, what kind of government are you creating--a monarchy or a republic?

That was the question. As Senator Cruz has said, his answer was ``a Republic, if you can keep it''--if you can keep it. His answer was not ``a Republic''; it was ``a Republic, if you can keep it,'' because he knew that the words written in the Constitution weren't going to preserve themselves, that this exercise in democratic self-government, a democratic republic, would require generations of women and men--not just in this Chamber but as citizens and I would say as founders--to keep the Republic they created.

That is what is at stake here. That is what is at stake when the government has been shut down for politics, when we have a President who doesn't believe in the rule of law, who attacks judges whose decisions he disagrees with, who attacks the free press, who have that freedom because of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

It is that Republic which is at risk when we are not educating the next generation of Americans, when we are not investing in our infrastructure, when we have the unbelievable and unprecedented fiscal hypocrisy that has resulted in a ballooning deficit while the unemployment rate is going down. It is a farce. It is a farce.

My closing word is to say that I will work with anybody--including the Senator from Texas, if he will work with me--to put this sorry episode behind us. And I don't mean this sorry episode of this government shutdown, although that is a sorry and pathetic episode, but this episode of American political history where we have done so little for the next generation of Americans and done almost nothing to honor the legacy of our parents and grandparents and the people who came before them. That would be worth doing around this place before we all die.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, over the weekend, as you may have heard, our government set a new record. It wasn't for the number of roads being built or repaired in this country. It wasn't for higher math scores or graduation rates for kids in the United States of America. It wasn't for passing the most bills or investing the most dollars in our future. It wasn't for paying attention to the next generation of Americans. It was for the longest shutdown in the history of the United States--a selfish act taken by partisan politicians that is an embarrassment to our country and to our future.

It has been 24 days. We have Federal employees all over the State of Colorado and I am sure the State of Alaska, the Commonwealth of Virginia, as we heard before, who are out of work because of what Washington has done to them. It is nothing they have done. They have fulfilled their end of the bargain. But because we have a screw loose around here because we are the only modern, industrialized country in the world that shuts down its government for politics--our allies don't shut down their government for politics, and our foes don't shut down their government for politics. No local government shuts down its government for politics. No school district shuts down its government for politics. No State would ever think of doing it. No elected official at any level of those governments would show their face in the grocery store on the weekend after they shut down the government and said to the citizens of Alamosa or the citizens of Durango or the parents in Denver public schools: Sorry. Your kids can't come to school today because we are shutting down the government for politics.

It is ridiculous.

I met an air traffic controller today who got her check on Friday after she worked through the entire holiday. She had a kid. I don't know how old he was, but he was a baby who had to be carried. She worked the entire holiday, was separated from her family, got her check on Friday, and it was for 77 cents. The people in this body might as well be standing outside and lifting their middle finger at her and at the TSA workers who were there today at Denver International Airport making sure that we were safe, that the traveling public was safe, and who were not getting paid, unlike the people here during this shutdown.

By the way, that airport, which we are very proud of in Denver and in Colorado, the Denver International Airport, is the newest airport that has been built in the United States of America, and it was built almost a quarter of a century ago because we are not making the investments that anybody else in the world is making.

As I said, no other advanced country in the world shuts down its government for politics. I expect us to have disagreements. We should have disagreements, but we shouldn't shut down the government over this disagreement. It has been 24 days.

While we were shut down, other countries were actually investing in their future.

In the last 24 days, South Korea broke ground on an expanded bullet train outside their capitol of Seoul.

While we were shut down, Canada announced support for a new 5- megawatt geothermal plant--the first of its kind in that country.

India issued tenders to set up 7.5 gigawatts of new solar capacity.

New Zealand announced millions in new resources to improve the safety of rural highways.

You should see our rural highways. And it is not just this shutdown; it is a decade--a decade of fiscal fights made in the name of fiscal responsibility that have put us in the position for the first time since the Vietnam war and before the Vietnam war to see our unemployment rate falling and the deficit going up.

This same wrecking crew who called Barack Obama a Socialist and a Bolshevik and was incapable of bringing themselves to help at a moment when our unemployment rate was at 10 percent and we were at the depths of the worst recession since the Great Depression has now closed the government and given us a $1.5 to $2 trillion deficit while the unemployment rate is falling. And every one of them promised their constituents and my constituents that these tax cuts would pay for themselves.

God knows, when they add it up, what this shutdown is going to cost the American people. It is not saving them money.

Vietnam opened a new international airport near Halong Bay to attract tourists and boost the economy.

Singapore is preparing an Underground Master Plan to maximize its urban space by moving things like data centers, utilities, and water reservoirs below ground.

A new report shows that for the first time ever, Germany drew more energy from renewable sources than coal in 2018.

Ireland, in contrast to what I was just saying about the United States of America, ended the year with a budget surplus. Imagine the flexibility it gives legislators and policymakers there to think, what are we going to do with this surplus? How are we going to invest in the next generation? How are we going to shore up our equivalent of Social Security? Maybe we can have a real middle-class tax cut or lift some people out of poverty in our country. We can't ask those questions today because of our fiscal imbalance and because the Government of the United States is shut down.

While we were shut down, other countries moved forward with a trade partnership that excludes the United States. Once it is fully in place, it will represent a trading block of nearly half a billion consumers whom our manufacturers should be selling to and our small businesses should be exporting to.

Not surprisingly, China has been extremely busy over the last 24 days while we have been shut down. While we have been shut down, China landed a spacecraft on the dark side of the Moon. That has never happened before in human history. There was a time in our history--you will remember it--when the Russians launched Sputnik. That caught our imagination. John F. Kennedy said: We are going to put a man on the Moon within the decade. That is what he said. That is what we did. Now, because of the fecklessness of this Congress, did you know that America cannot send an astronaut into space without asking the Russians for permission to ride on one of their rockets?

A whole generation of Americans that I was part of was inspired by the space mission that NASA led. Unfortunately, in my case, it did not lead me to understand anything about mathematics or science, but it inspired us as Americans to have a big vision for what our country could do and for what our country could do in competition with our adversaries around the world.

Do you think the Chinese are not observing what we are doing while they are putting a rocket, a spaceship on the dark side of the Moon for the first time in human history--something they will always be able to claim; something we will never be able to claim? Do you think the Russians know that we can't put somebody up on the space station if we want to, that we have to wait for them to let us do it? Just after they put that spaceship on the other side of the moon, China announced that it is planning another mission to the moon by the end of the year and a mission to Mars by as early as 2020.

It announced that it is planning to invest in 4,200 miles of new railway lines this year, including almost 2,000 miles of high-speed rail. Do you know how many more that is than we have? About 2,000, and that says nothing about the investments that they have already made.

They have begun operating new high-speed rail lines in East China and Northern China with initial speeds of 155 miles per hour while our government is closed. That is another plan; that is another set of tracks. China has plans for a 6-gigawatt wind farm on the border with Mongolia that, once completed, would become the largest in the world. China continues its pursuit of a vast space-based communications network that will cover every inch of the Earth. If we are not careful--if we are not careful--they are going to deploy 5G a lot more quickly than we will. That is what the rest of the world is doing while we are shut down.

My view of this is that we don't need to wait for the President on this. That is what the majority leader keeps saying. He keeps saying: Well, I can't pass something the President will veto because it will not become law.

I don't understand the logic of that, speaking of math. We passed a bill in this Senate--this Republican-controlled Senate; I think it was virtually unanimously--to keep the government open. The House of Representatives passed a very similar bill to keep the government open, and in the middle of this, in the midst of all of this, President Trump said: I am not going to accept that because I am going to use this moment to extort Congress for $5 billion for my wall.

He said to the people he refers to as ``Chuck and Nancy'': Give me the $5 billion.

They said: Why don't you just open the government? The Senate has passed it almost unanimously, and the House has passed it.

His answer was ``because I will lose leverage,'' meaning: I will not have the misery I am creating for the Federal workforce. I will not have people who can't pay their mortgage, who can't pay for their early childhood education, who can't pay for their education. I will not have their misery to use to extort Members of Congress into giving me $5 billion for my wall.

This is notwithstanding the fact that he promised over and over and over again when he was running for President that Mexico would pay for the wall. That is not my talking point; that is not my coming out here and being unfair and trying to exploit a weakness or a misstatement. I think it is fair to say that almost all of his campaign was based on the idea that there was going to be a wall and that Mexico was going to pay for the wall. He could not have been clearer about that.

Now he's trying to shut down the government because he knows that Mexico will not pay for the wall. The rest of us knew the whole time he was telling America untruths about it. He has now turned, instead, to the American taxpayer to say: OK. I wasn't telling the truth about it then, but don't pay any attention to that. You now have to pay for the wall.

Our first response to that is: No, you haven't even spent the money that has been appropriated for the wall to date. He has not built an inch of the wall. Look it up.

The second problem is that anybody who has studied this question for any moment of time knows that his proposal is a waste of money for the United States. I am not going to be lectured by anybody on the other side about the need for border security. I was part of the Gang of 8 that negotiated the immigration bill in 2013. That was a bill that had not $5 billion of border security in it, not $2.3 billion of border security in it, but $46 billion of border security. It got 68 votes in the Senate, never went to the House, was never allowed to have a vote because of the tyranny of the so-called Hastert rule, which requires people not to vote their conscience but to vote only along party and partisan lines--another disgraceful chapter in modern American political history. That $46 billion in that bill doubled the number of security agents at our border. It built 350 miles of what the President now refers to as steel slats, as if he invented that idea. It made sure we could see every single inch of our border.

If the Chinese are going to be able to see every single inch of the world, the least we could do is see every inch of our border, and in that bill we were able to do that.

Meanwhile, he tells his base--and FOX News repeats it every single night--that Democrats are for open borders; Democrats are for terrorists pouring in over the southern border.

I have become convinced--and we spent years working on immigration, years working on border security, years working with my most cherished Republican colleagues on this issue in a bipartisan way--that the President doesn't want the wall. He wants the entertainment of the wall. He wants to rally his base around the wall. Meanwhile, he is taking the leading economy in the world, a country with the largest capacity for self-defense in human history, and he has shut down its government over a $5 billion, phony wall. It is a disgrace.

It is a disgrace for all hard-working Federal workers--and their families who depend on them--who are out of work, who are being furloughed, who aren't being paid. It is a disgrace for every person who works in State and local governments and in school districts all across this Nation, who would never think about shutting down their government but who understand what they possess as civil servants is a sacred trust to their community and to the next generation of Coloradans or of folks from New Hampshire or of Alaskans or of Americans.

We can't wait for the President--and I will finish with this--because he either doesn't want the wall or he doesn't have the capacity to get to a solution to it.

So we have to do our work as Senators. We have to vote to reopen the government. If that were put on the floor tomorrow, it would pass, and I will bet that it would pass with a veto-proof majority. Why? Because the constituents of everybody in this place would say: Are you out of your mind? Don't come back here and have another townhall and explain why you shut down the government over politics.

Instead, Democrats and Republicans should come together in this Chamber and set an example for the American people and say: All is not lost. This exercise in a democratic Republic is going to live to fight another day. We have come to our senses. We are not going to beat our own constituents to death for the purpose of empty partisan slogans or ideas that aren't going to advance the interests of the next generation of Americans.

I worry every night that I am here about what kind of history the next generation of Americans is going to write, about what we did when it was our responsibility to make sure that we fulfilled our commitment to them, the same ones that generation after generation after generation of Americans have fulfilled for people who came after them. That is what it means to be a citizen in a Republic like ours.

We are violating every norm of that approach to the work and allowing our competitors around the world to create advantages for themselves and potential liabilities for us. We shouldn't let this thing go into the 25th day or 26th day or 27th day. We should end it now.

I yield the floor.