Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, reflecting on his accomplishments to date in his administration, President Trump recently said: ``I think we've done more than, perhaps, any President in the first 100 days.'' Throughout the campaign and since coming to office, President Trump has repeatedly attacked politicians who are ``all talk, no action.'' It seems to be appropriate that, now that the first 100 days have passed, we should apply the President's standard.

Over the course of the campaign, Candidate Trump promised to replace the ``very stupid people'' in our government who ``don't know how to win'' with the ``greatest minds'' and the ``best people.''

He said that the Presidency was ``going to be easy'' and that the ``jobs are coming back, folks; that's going to be easy.''

He promised a ``beautiful,'' ``terrific'' plan to provide ``such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost, and it's going to be so easy.''

He promised to build a wall so fast that ``your head will spin'' and that Mexico would pay for it. ``Just rely on me,'' he said.

He promised to be the ``greatest jobs President that God ever created,'' to ``bring us all together,'' and to create a ``unified Nation--a Nation of love,'' he said.

He predicted: ``We're gonna win so much that you may even get tired of winning, and you'll say, please, please, it's too much winning, we can't take it anymore. Mr. President, it's too much.''

He outlined that winning plan in no other place than Gettysburg last October. There, on that hallowed ground, where Lincoln reflected on his own ``poor power'' and wondered whether the world would little note nor long remember what he said there, President Trump--the man who said: ``I alone can fix it''--outlined his 100-day action plan to make America great again and restore honesty, accountability, and change to Washington. On that day, he promised that, on his first day, 18 different accomplishments would be achieved. He delivered just two of those.

Over his first 100 days, he promised to introduce and fight to pass 10 major pieces of legislation. That included a bill to ``grow the economy 4 percent per year and create at least 25 million new jobs.'' It included a bill to ``spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years.'' It included a bill to ``make 2- and 4-year college more affordable'' as well as bills to ``clean up corruption in Washington'' and ``discourage companies from laying off their workers.''

Today, more than 100 days into the Trump Presidency, where are we?

So far, the President's ``great'' team has not yet been assembled. There are 465 vacancies for which there are not even nominees yet. You cannot blame that on anything going on around here. There are 465 slots that still do not have nominees. Of the 10 pieces of legislation that he proposed on that day in Gettysburg, he has passed zero--none.

In his first 100 days, amidst the Great Depression, FDR stabilized the banks and put 250,000 Americans to work through a new Civilian Conservation Corps. Ronald Reagan rallied the country behind his agenda for taxes and spending. Facing an economic collapse--the likes of which we had not seen since the Great Depression--Barack Obama cut taxes and made historic investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and education in 100 days.

Notwithstanding this history--these facts--President Trump has repeatedly claimed in interviews and broadcasts how well the administration has done during the first 100 days. In fact, on day 90-- he did not even need to get to 100--he said: ``No administration has accomplished more.'' As evidence for this claim, the President referred to the 28 bills that he has signed into law--laws to rename a VA clinic in American Samoa, laws to make it easier to hunt bears out of helicopters, to improve weather forecasts, to appoint members of the Smithsonian Board of Regents. Those were in the 28 laws. Missing from that list, however, is any legislation that fulfills a single campaign promise that he made, including his promise to repeal ObamaCare.

In the absence of fulfilling the promises that he made at Gettysburg and on the campaign trail, he has also taken credit for a series of Executive orders even though, during the campaign, he railed against President Obama for using them. Candidate Trump said: ``We have a President that can't get anything done, so he just keeps signing executive orders all over the place.'' In fact, history shows that President Obama turned to Executive orders only after years of unprecedented obstruction and after he passed legislation through this Chamber and through the House.

President Trump turned to executive orders in the first 100 days despite controlling both Houses of Congress. With a Republican President, a Republican majority in the Senate, and a Republican majority in the House, he has to revert to the very same instrument that he was so appalled by in the hands of President Obama, and he still has no major legislative accomplishments to show for it. That is not fake news. That is the truth.

While we are on the subject, it bears noting, I think, that President Obama used his Executive orders to advance rights and opportunity for the American people. President Trump has used them to discriminate against refugees and immigrants in an unconstitutional travel ban, to weaken American competitiveness by reversing fuel efficiency standards for our cars, to weaken protections for our national monuments and endanger our economy and our environment by undoing the Clean Power Plan.

Not only has President Trump failed to keep his promises--it is actually worse than that--but he has actually proposed or supported legislation that would do just the opposite of what he has promised.

Look at healthcare. I hope I am not in need of any right now. Over the course of the campaign--I do not need to tell anybody in America this; we all saw it--Candidate Trump attacked ObamaCare over and over. He described it as a ``disaster'' that is ``imploding.'' So he promised: ``On day one, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of ObamaCare'' and replace it with ``something terrific.'' He pledged to ``take care of everybody,'' to champion what he called the ``forgotten man,'' and he assured America that ``everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now.''

More than 100 days after taking office, President Trump has not only failed to fulfill that promise, failed to repeal ObamaCare--the House has not yet even had a vote on it, as far as I know--but the White House has actually helped to write--and he endorsed--a proposal that would throw 24 million people, many of them poor and middle class folks, off of their health insurance, while slashing $300 billion in taxes for the top 2 percent.

That is what is in the bill that they are considering in the House right now. That is not a healthcare bill. That is a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans that is masquerading as a healthcare bill. That is not the promise that he made to the people who voted for him. That is not the promise that he made to the forgotten man. It seems that in the first 100 days the forgotten man remains forgotten, unless by ``forgotten'' President Trump meant millionaires who can avoid dealing with America's health insurance system by paying cash for their medical expenses with their having the benefit of the tax cut that President Trump has proposed to give them.

My point--and I want to be clear about it--is not to ask the President to fulfill these promises, most of which I opposed when he was running. I am simply pointing out that what he has said is not what he has done, including his promise to build a ``great, great wall on our southern border'' and force Mexico to pay for that wall. Instead, he asked Congress for $1.4 billion in taxpayer money to start construction.

I was part of the Gang of Eight in the Senate that negotiated the immigration bill--four Democrats and four Republicans--over 8 months. We had $11 billion of border security. By the time we passed the bill in the Senate, there was $40 billion of border security in that bill. It was paid for, unlike a lot of stuff we do, and it was not the taxpayers who were paying for it. It was the immigrants who were paying for it in their fees to this country.

Why is that not a better way of doing it?

Mexico is not going to pay for it. It has said it is not going to pay for it. He continues to say that it is going to happen, but it is just another broken promise. Instead, he went to the taxpayers and hoped nobody would notice that he was asking for $1.4 billion for the wall. Fortunately, both Republicans and Democrats alike in the House of Representatives and in the Senate rejected it--in particular, Members of the House of Representatives who represent border States or represent the border, who actually know what is going on down there.

I am sad to say that this inconsistent and erratic approach has spilled over to our foreign relations. On North Korea, President Trump bragged that the United States would easily ``solve the problem''--his language--without China, which he called a currency manipulator and on which, he said, everybody in Washington was soft, and he was going to fix it. Then he sat down with Chinese President Xi for 10 minutes and ``realized it's not so easy.''

When he was running, the President said: ``Maybe NATO will dissolve, and that's OK.'' He called it ``obsolete.'' Then he sat down with the NATO Secretary General and realized that it was, in fact, ``not obsolete''--his words.

At a time when NATO faces new pressure from Russian aggression and American troops are deployed to Eastern Europe to support our partners and our allies in the region, including the soldiers whom I met 2 weeks ago from Colorado's Fourth Infantry Division, they need a steady voice and a clear vision from Washington.

We need an administration that can face reality instead of one that spins its own. This is not a campaign anymore. This is governing.

During the campaign, Donald Trump promised: ``There will be no lies. We will honor the American people with the truth and nothing else.'' Over its first 100 days, the administration has honored the American people--it has been recorded--with 488 false or misleading claims, nearly 5 a day. Some people have actually lost count. It has honored them with 100 days of dog-and-pony shows of CEOs, campaign rallies, and photo-ops in semi-trucks on the South Lawn. It has honored the American people with empty theatrics where Donald Trump, the President, donates a portion of his salary to the National Park Service, hoping no one would notice his proposal to slash $1.4 billion in funding for the Department of the Interior.

This administration needs a reset for the next 100 days and the next 100 after that. The President needs to focus on what the American people need and what he said he would provide them instead of attacking the independent judiciary and the free press and blaming ``fake news''--his so-called fake news--in an effort to obscure a reality that he doesn't want to deal with. He needs to focus on the next generation instead of his daily approval ratings. He needs to focus on the future instead of complaining about how unexpectedly hard the job is or how great his previous life was.

And one more thing--a small thing. Candidate Trump loved to criticize President Obama for playing golf. He tweeted about it at least 26 times with lines like ``Can you believe that, with all the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.'' Well, President Trump has spent 19 days playing golf so far-- even with all of these vacancies in this administration--more than Presidents Obama, Bush, or Clinton. But that is not the only record he has broken for the first 100 days, which includes an average of more than five tweets a day, over a month he spent in this 100 days at Trump properties, and over $20 million in taxpayer dollars to finance his personal travel, which is on pace to exceed in his first year what the previous administration cost the American taxpayer in eight.

A better idea than repeating this next 100 days for the 100 days that are coming would be to actually drain the swamp, as he said during the campaign. He could start by releasing his tax returns, which during the campaign he falsely claimed he could not release because of a ``routine audit.'' There was no prohibition on his doing the same thing that every candidate in the history of America for the Presidency has done.

Now that he has put out a healthcare bill that slashes taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars for the wealthiest Americans and proposed tax reforms that would further deepen income inequality in this country, the least he could do is show the ``laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals'' what the President stands to gain and what they stand to lose from his proposals.

While he is doing that, he should focus on dealing with Americans' rising healthcare costs instead of trying to take health insurance away from millions of Americans, making it harder for them to see a doctor and take care of their families. He should focus on expanding opportunities in our communities with investments in infrastructure and on helping people compete in the global economy and reducing the national debt crushing the next generation of Americans. That is why he was elected President. To some degree, that is why all of us are here.

At the start of his first 100 days, President Trump promised in his inaugural address that ``America will start winning again, winning like never before.'' More than 100 days later, it is really not clear what we have won, but it is clear what we have lost--civility in our politics, facts in our policy, confidence in ourselves, and 100 days that should have been used to bring this country together to confront our great challenges.

The next 100 days must be better than the last because, as our President once said, the American people are ``tired of being ripped off by politicians that don't know what they're doing.'' On this, at least, I completely agree.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, before I begin my remarks, I just want to say, while the Senator from Arizona is still here, what a privilege it is to hear somebody come to this floor and actually speak about facts as they actually are--economic facts, facts related to immigration. If we had more people in the Senate who spoke on the floor the way the Senator from Arizona just did, there is nothing we wouldn't be able to accomplish together. It is a privilege to serve with him. It is a privilege to hear the clarity with which he spoke about these important issues. So I want to thank him through the Chair for that speech.

Mr. President, our founders knew that ``while history does not repeat, it does rhyme.'' That is why they mined the politics of ancient Greece and Rome for lessons about the promise and the perils of self-government. In their wisdom, they placed those lessons at the heart of the American political experiment. Two hundred thirty years later, that experiment has exceeded their wildest hopes, in no small part because generation after generation of Americans--including elected officials, including Members of this body--understood that our government is far more than the sum of our laws or the letter of our Constitution. Our system is also held together by rules, written and unwritten, that help elected officials resolve their differences without unleashing a downward spiral of recrimination that could endanger the Republic itself.

They understood, for example, that while civility, compromise, and cooperation are not required by law, laws cannot pass without them. They recognized that while the majority may have the power to rule on its own, it should not trample over the minority. They understood that, at some point, partisanship should give way to patriotism.

Throughout history, including moments far more difficult than our own, these principles were the quiet guardrails of our politics, keeping dysfunction at bay. But in recent years, we have begun tearing these guardrails down, and in doing so, we risk the revenge of history by ignoring it.

There is a tendency around here to think that our problems are unique and that the consequences of our actions are fleeting.

Some 2,400 years ago, the ancient history of Korsia was consumed by civil war. According to Thucydides, both sides spared ``no means,'' he wrote, ``in their struggles for ascendancy. . . . In their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment their own standard.''

As the civil war intensified, both sides struggled to end it because ``there was neither promise to be depended upon nor oath that could command respect; but all parties dwelling rather in their calculation upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things, were more intent upon self-defence than capable of confidence.''

The Founders read Thucydides. They knew that once factions cross the line, once they violate tradition in an escalating retaliation, it becomes very hard to turn back.

James Madison in particular understood the peril of faction. He wrote how people with ``a zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points'' have ``divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.''

They also feared that, once in power, majority factions would abuse that power to run roughshod over the minority. In a country with such diverse beliefs and traditions, doing so could threaten the very stability of the Republic.

For these reasons, the Founders embedded checks in the design of our government. That is why in the Senate we represent entire states, not gerrymandered districts. Colorado, for example, has roughly equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. That is why the Senate gives smaller States disproportionate representation, with Colorado receiving the same votes as California.

That is why traditions of the Senate hand the minority tools to encourage consensus between political parties. The filibuster is one of those tools, and it has been used for good and for ill throughout our history. By requiring the consent of 60 Senators to proceed on key votes, the filibuster ensures that the legislation we pass and the nominations we approve reflect at least a modest level of consensus. The filibuster is meant as a tool of last resort, but in recent years it has become yet another weapon in our endless partisan warfare. It was not always that way.

From George Washington to George W. Bush, the filibuster was used just 68 times against Presidential nominees. But during just the first 5 years of the Obama administration, Republicans used the filibuster 79 times against his nominees. That was my first term in the Senate, and at that time, I saw the filibuster the way many Americans still do--as an undemocratic tool for delay and gridlock. So in 2013, after unprecedented Republican obstruction of highly qualified nominees, I voted with the Democratic majority to end the 60-vote threshold for most Presidential nominations, invoking what is known as the nuclear option.

Although Republicans were wrong to abuse the rules, Democrats were wrong to change them. Even as we changed the rules, however, we made a point to retain the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, recognizing their profound influence on our country's laws.

Last year, dysfunction in the Senate reached a new low when Senator McConnell denied Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee for the vacancy left by the late Justice Scalia, the courtesy of even a hearing, to say nothing of a vote. That was an offense to the traditions of this body and our Constitution.

I recognize that it is impossible to separate politics from the courts, but at the same time, we must not allow the judiciary--and especially the Supreme Court--to become a pure extension of our partisan elections and politics. Alexander Hamilton wrote that ``liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments.'' Continuing, he wrote that because of ``the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches.''

Our actions over the last few years--and I would say over the last few days--jeopardize not only the Senate,

but also the judiciary. Today, some of my colleagues plan to filibuster President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch. The Republican leadership has responded by threatening to invoke the nuclear option, which would eliminate for all time the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees and allow them to confirm Judge Gorsuch with the narrowest partisan majority. This is precisely the outcome our Founders feared, when lifetime appointments to our highest Court, which touches every aspect of American life, become just another partisan exercise. We must not go down this road.

This President may have several more opportunities to nominate a Supreme Court Justice during his term. If that happens, Republicans would face enormous pressure to nominate an extreme candidate, knowing that they could confirm them without a single Democratic vote--indeed, that they would be expected to confirm them without a single Democratic vote. And to those who believe that President Trump could not nominate someone more outside the mainstream than Judge Gorsuch, I would say to just look at some of President Trump's Cabinet nominees, some of whom are among the least qualified and most radical ever confirmed by this body. By the way, under the change to the rules that we made, it is the first Cabinet to be confirmed requiring just 51 and not 60 votes.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you don't like the ring of Judge Gorsuch, how do you feel about Justice Pruitt, who doesn't believe in climate change, or Justice Sessions, who has a record of opposing civil rights and equality? If we continue down this path, both of those could be confirmed with a slim majority vote.

With respect to Judge Gorsuch, I am proud he is from Colorado. But I am concerned by his judicial approach, which too often seems to rely on the narrowest interpretation of the law with little appreciation for its context. In particular, I believe he has far too much confidence in the original meaning of the words in legislation or, for that matter, even the Constitution. Having worked on legislation for nearly a decade now, I know these words, so often written in the dead of night in meager attempts to let everybody go home, cannot be explained without reference to the legislative context or human history or lawmakers' intent. Sometimes a comma really does end up in the wrong place.

Although I have reservations about his approach to the law, I do not have reservations about his qualifications for the Court. He is a committed and honorable public servant, and that is why so many members of the Colorado bar and bench support his nomination. Qualified nominees deserve an up-or-down vote. That is the tradition of this body. How members vote is a matter of conscience for each of us.

For all of these reasons, and in the hope of preserving the minority's voice in our government, which so many generations before us have done, I will oppose efforts to filibuster this nomination. If we go down this road, we will undermine the minority's ability to check this administration and all those who follow.

Today we have a President who does not appreciate the separation of powers and who has made unprecedented attacks on the free press and the judiciary. The country needs an empowered Senate minority right now, more than ever. More than that, the country needs a Senate that can forge a consensus about our future, rather than carrying on the bitter and tired divisions of the past. I know it can be hard. I have been here long enough to know it can be hard for both sides to see beyond the partisan tactics of the moment. Lawmakers will never lack for an excuse to break with custom or change the rules to their benefit. They may even argue, as some recently have, that the damage is not that bad--that everything can continue on as normal.

We should know better than that. Our Founders certainly did. They would recognize our path today in the currents of history. The Roman Republic endured for nearly 500 years, but it was brought low by events that should seem eerily familiar to people in this Chamber.

In 60 BCE, the Roman Senate was consumed by a controversial land reform initiative. One side was led by a Senator named Cato; the other, Julius Caesar. To stop land reform and other initiatives, Cato employed delay tactics similar to the filibuster, freezing the Roman Senate for months. While the action was within the rules, it broke with Senate custom. Caesar vowed to press forward. Cato's allies responded by declaring a religious holiday for the rest of the legislative calendar, stopping the reform effort in its tracks.

In a further break with precedent, Caesar bypassed the Senate and took the bill to the people's assembly for approval. Furious, Cato's allies boycotted the government and postponed the next election by 3 months. While Caesar eventually triumphed, the incident intensified a cascade of recrimination that the Roman Senate struggled to escape. Legislative strikes, delayed elections, and believe it or not, shutdowns grew in frequency. Manufactured crises became routine.

As the dysfunction grew, the Senate became increasingly irrelevant, as power flowed to Caesar and military leaders. Even as Senators recognized the danger, they failed to correct course. Too much damage had been done. Centuries-long custom had been broken. Trust among Senators had eroded. Confidence in the body collapsed.

As dysfunction in the Senate rose, so did popular calls for a strongman to clean up the mess. Within a decade, Caesar crossed the Rubicon with an army, and the Republic soon gave way to tyranny. It would take 1,300 years for another large Republic to emerge--this time in the United States of America.

Unlike us, our Founders knew this history as well as their own. But they could not guarantee that we would heed its lessons. That is why they built institutions to check the worst impulses of faction, to help us navigate profoundly consequential decisions--like confirmations for the Supreme Court--without tearing each other apart. But the Founders also placed their faith in the willingness of elected officials to resist the lure of narrow interests or passions of the moment and rise up to defend their institutions and our traditions, especially in hard times. We must not betray their faith.

With each escalating crisis, we damage not just the Senate, but the Republic. The Rubicon may be far, but with each rule and custom broken, we draw nearer. Choices on both sides have brought us to this low point, but I have faith that we can choose--and we should choose--a different path. We can choose to step back from the brink to find common ground, to fulfill our obligation in the time we are serving here to sustain the American experiment for the next century and beyond.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am pleased to be here with the Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the ranking member of the HELP Committee to address this important issue.

You would think that after the healthcare debacle last week, the other side would have gotten the message, which is that the American people didn't send us to Washington to take away their healthcare.

When I think about healthcare in Colorado, I think about sort of a circle that contains healthcare that people in my State are either getting or not getting, and some part of that is ObamaCare, that is for sure, but a lot of it has nothing to do with that. They are unhappy with the way our healthcare system works. They want more access than they have. The House bill went at this in exactly the wrong direction from where they are interested in going.

I would like to work with Republicans and Democrats to solve that, but this afternoon we are here once again because the resolution before us would risk funding for vital primary care, preventive and family planning services for more than 4 million Americans across our country, especially women and those who live in rural communities of my State and other States.

Since 1970, this body has supported title X funding to expand access to affordable healthcare for low-income men and women. We did that because we understood that it wasn't just the right thing to do, we recognized that it was a good investment. Each dollar invested in publicly funded family planning programs saves the government over $7 in Medicaid-related costs.

The other side rails against Medicaid spending. In fact, last week, they had a bill that cut it by about $850 billion. But if they succeed on this vote today, Medicaid spending will almost certainly rise as a result of what they are trying to do.

We supported title X funding with both Republican majorities and Democratic majorities in the Senate. Now a narrow majority is trying to ram this measure through.

This isn't supported by a consensus of Americans, and you know it is not when Vice President Pence has to drive over here from the White House to cast a tie-breaking vote. Just yesterday, the Vice President was at a White House forum on women's empowerment. It begs the question: Did he learn anything at the forum?

It is easy for Senators, apparently, to vote against healthcare for struggling Americans. I wonder sometimes whether the reason for that is that we are not affected by this vote. That is doubly true when 50 Senators--overwhelmingly men--vote to cut healthcare for millions of low-income women.

The vote today has real consequences for Colorado. If this measure passes, it will threaten to cut funding for title X health centers serving over 52,000 men, women, and teens each year. It will also risk funding for the over 20 Planned Parenthood clinics throughout Colorado that provide healthcare services to more than 86,000 men, women, and teens. Planned Parenthood is a critical part of Colorado's healthcare system, providing essential services in a quarter of the State's counties. This support is especially vital for our rural areas. Two weeks ago, I visited Alamosa and Durango, CO, where these health centers are some of the only places women can turn to for preventive care and family planning services.

We should not do this. Pediatricians are against it. Family physicians are against it. Nurses are against it. But on the other side, we have a narrow majority voting to strip funding for vital primary and preventive care, including breast cancer screenings and HIV testing.

I would invite anyone voting against this measure, including the Vice President, to come to Alamosa and Durango and see what these health centers are doing in our communities. I invite them to come and meet the people they help, the lives they change.

I urge my colleagues to vote against this measure. It will hurt many of our fellow Americans. It will hurt women in my State and particularly working people, and it should not pass.

I yield the floor.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, even with all the dysfunction in Congress, somehow the American people continue to expect that Washington will enact policies that bear at least some relationship to the challenges they face. Unfortunately, the administration's new Executive order on energy fails even that low bar.

This order will not expand energy production, it will not make us more energy independent, it will not create more American jobs, and it will also not protect us from the ravages of climate change. That last point is somewhat less surprising than the first because, unlike millions of Americans and 99 percent of scientists, this administration does not believe that climate change is real or that humankind is contributing to it.

To understand where this Executive order comes from, I think it is important to see where we were before this administration took office. Put simply, the United States was already on track to achieve energy independence. Our country is producing a tremendous amount of low-cost energy. Since 2008, solar energy production has grown more than 50- fold, wind power is up 3-fold, and oil production in the United States of America is up 75 percent. In fact, 5 years ago, we began producing more oil than we import.

You can see on this slide that over the period of time that the Obama administration was in office, oil production rose like this, and net imports have gone like this--an important fact considering our geopolitical situation in the world. We are also now producing so much natural gas that facilities that were built originally to import gas are now being reengineered to export gas from the United States. I, along with other people in this Chamber, have worked hard to try to make sure those facilities are expedited so we can get the benefit of that exported natural gas.

Even before President Trump rode to the rescue with his Executive order, the Wall Street Journal told us that exports of natural gas could more than double over the next 5 years, just based on what we are doing already. We are also using energy far more efficiently in our homes, our appliances, and our automobiles, which is why the administration's action to reverse higher fuel standards last week-- well, I just would say, talk about a solution in search of a problem. That is one.

There is not a person in Colorado who said to me: Michael, do you know what we ought to do? We ought to reduce the fuel efficiency standards on automobiles. We ought to create a regulatory environment where the United States can't sell competitive automobiles in the world. Nobody has said that because not only are they concerned about climate, they are concerned that we lead the world when it comes to innovation. And that order, just like a budget that cuts the EPA by 30 percent, that targets the climate scientists at the EPA, that targets the satellites that are above our heads so that we can't see what is happening on our planet--this is all so we can perpetuate a willful view that climate change doesn't exist, and it is the same thing with this Executive order.

All of the trends that are in place right now--right before this administration took office--have combined to reduce our reliance on foreign energy in recent years, even as our economy has grown and average prices at the pump, because of the abundant supply, remain under $2.30. We are just a few years away from exporting as much oil and gas as we import. That is important for our country.

Colorado has been a huge part of America's growing energy independence and, by extension, our national security. That is because in many ways Colorado led the way in developing a commonsense approach to expanding energy production while ensuring clean air and a healthy planet. We brought environmentalists together with the oil and gas industry to develop one of the first State limits on methane pollution. It became a model for the country. We passed the first voter-led renewable energy standard in the Nation, which became a model for the country. We established our own limits on carbon pollution at the State level, and in this process we have created 13,000 renewable energy jobs, with wind jobs alone expected to triple by 2020. On average, these jobs pay over $50,000. This is not some Bolshevik experiment or some socialist experiment. These are manufacturing jobs in the United States of America, in Colorado, that would not be there if it hadn't been for the policy decisions that were made in this body and in other parts of Washington, DC, and the supply chain that goes along with those manufactured turbines is critically important to our economy. At the same time we were doing all that, we preserved over 56,000 oil and gas jobs, even as drilling has slowed because of, again, abundant supply, to say nothing of the jobs Colorado has created just because it is a place where other people would like to live. They want to come to Colorado, as they want to go to Nevada, because there is a high quality of life. There is a lot of sunshine in both places.

I am pleased to have the chance to work with the Senator from Nevada to make sure we not only extended the investment tax credit with respect to solar, but we put language in there together--Republicans and Democrats together--to create an idea that those credits would kick in at the beginning of construction, not having to wait until the end. That has made a big difference to our solar industry.

Long ago, the State of Colorado and, I would say, many other States have broken past the false choice between our economy and the environment. That is the course we have charted in Colorado, and if the President were serious about energy independence, he would support that approach. Instead, he is trying to undermine it with this new order. By undoing national standards for carbon pollution, the order threatens to undercut our thriving clean energy industry. There are 465 solar and wind businesses across our State supporting over $8 billion in investments. By retreating from the fight against climate change, the order recklessly endangers Colorado's $646 billion outdoor recreation industry, not to mention the health of our national forests that line the banks of some of the most vital watersheds in America.

As the President targets our environment and clean energy economy with this Executive order, he has dressed it up as something good for jobs, as he did during the campaign. Yesterday, the President stood before a group of coal miners and promised to ``cancel job-killing regulations'' and ``put our miners back to work.''

Just 2 weeks ago, I was on the Western Slope of Colorado, a region with a number of mining communities. These communities, some of whom have helped invent hydraulic fracture and directional drilling, know that their challenges have far more to do with low prices and competition from natural gas than from the EPA. They know that their way of life and the way of life of communities like theirs all across the United States require real solutions to help them grow and diversify their economies. These communities get it. They understand it, but the President clearly does not.

Just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran this article entitled ``Despite Trump Move on Climate Change, Utilities' Shift from Coal Is Set to Continue.'' According to the article, last year, power from coal plants fell while power from natural gas rose 35 percent. Nationwide major utilities are shedding coal and increasing natural gas and renewables. That is the reality of our energy market and of the global economy, but this administration, when it comes to energy and when it comes to climate, is not operating in reality. It is operating amongst political slogans. It is operating in the theater of the absurd, where policies have no relationship to problems, facts don't matter, and false promises to struggling Americans are just another political tactic to win a cable news cycle.

The American people deserve so much better. Colorado deserves so much better than that. That is why today I am introducing a bill alongside more than 30 Senators to rescind this disastrous order, protect American jobs, and preserve our path toward energy independence. The stakes could not be higher for our kids, our planet, and our economy. We cannot let this stand.

Mr. President, even with all the dysfunction in Congress, somehow the American people continue to expect that Washington will enact policies that bear at least some relationship to the challenges they face. Unfortunately, the administration's new Executive order on energy fails even that low bar.

This order will not expand energy production, it will not make us more energy independent, it will not create more American jobs, and it will also not protect us from the ravages of climate change. That last point is somewhat less surprising than the first because, unlike millions of Americans and 99 percent of scientists, this administration does not believe that climate change is real or that humankind is contributing to it.

To understand where this Executive order comes from, I think it is important to see where we were before this administration took office. Put simply, the United States was already on track to achieve energy independence. Our country is producing a tremendous amount of low-cost energy. Since 2008, solar energy production has grown more than 50- fold, wind power is up 3-fold, and oil production in the United States of America is up 75 percent. In fact, 5 years ago, we began producing more oil than we import.

You can see on this slide that over the period of time that the Obama administration was in office, oil production rose like this, and net imports have gone like this--an important fact considering our geopolitical situation in the world. We are also now producing so much natural gas that facilities that were built originally to import gas are now being reengineered to export gas from the United States. I, along with other people in this Chamber, have worked hard to try to make sure those facilities are expedited so we can get the benefit of that exported natural gas.

Even before President Trump rode to the rescue with his Executive order, the Wall Street Journal told us that exports of natural gas could more than double over the next 5 years, just based on what we are doing already. We are also using energy far more efficiently in our homes, our appliances, and our automobiles, which is why the administration's action to reverse higher fuel standards last week-- well, I just would say, talk about a solution in search of a problem. That is one.

There is not a person in Colorado who said to me: Michael, do you know what we ought to do? We ought to reduce the fuel efficiency standards on automobiles. We ought to create a regulatory environment where the United States can't sell competitive automobiles in the world. Nobody has said that because not only are they concerned about climate, they are concerned that we lead the world when it comes to innovation. And that order, just like a budget that cuts the EPA by 30 percent, that targets the climate scientists at the EPA, that targets the satellites that are above our heads so that we can't see what is happening on our planet--this is all so we can perpetuate a willful view that climate change doesn't exist, and it is the same thing with this Executive order.

All of the trends that are in place right now--right before this administration took office--have combined to reduce our reliance on foreign energy in recent years, even as our economy has grown and average prices at the pump, because of the abundant supply, remain under $2.30. We are just a few years away from exporting as much oil and gas as we import. That is important for our country.

Colorado has been a huge part of America's growing energy independence and, by extension, our national security. That is because in many ways Colorado led the way in developing a commonsense approach to expanding energy production while ensuring clean air and a healthy planet. We brought environmentalists together with the oil and gas industry to develop one of the first State limits on methane pollution. It became a model for the country. We passed the first voter-led renewable energy standard in the Nation, which became a model for the country. We established our own limits on carbon pollution at the State level, and in this process we have created 13,000 renewable energy jobs, with wind jobs alone expected to triple by 2020. On average, these jobs pay over $50,000. This is not some Bolshevik experiment or some socialist experiment. These are manufacturing jobs in the United States of America, in Colorado, that would not be there if it hadn't been for the policy decisions that were made in this body and in other parts of Washington, DC, and the supply chain that goes along with those manufactured turbines is critically important to our economy. At the same time we were doing all that, we preserved over 56,000 oil and gas jobs, even as drilling has slowed because of, again, abundant supply, to say nothing of the jobs Colorado has created just because it is a place where other people would like to live. They want to come to Colorado, as they want to go to Nevada, because there is a high quality of life. There is a lot of sunshine in both places.

I am pleased to have the chance to work with the Senator from Nevada to make sure we not only extended the investment tax credit with respect to solar, but we put language in there together--Republicans and Democrats together--to create an idea that those credits would kick in at the beginning of construction, not having to wait until the end. That has made a big difference to our solar industry.

Long ago, the State of Colorado and, I would say, many other States have broken past the false choice between our economy and the environment. That is the course we have charted in Colorado, and if the President were serious about energy independence, he would support that approach. Instead, he is trying to undermine it with this new order. By undoing national standards for carbon pollution, the order threatens to undercut our thriving clean energy industry. There are 465 solar and wind businesses across our State supporting over $8 billion in investments. By retreating from the fight against climate change, the order recklessly endangers Colorado's $646 billion outdoor recreation industry, not to mention the health of our national forests that line the banks of some of the most vital watersheds in America.

As the President targets our environment and clean energy economy with this Executive order, he has dressed it up as something good for jobs, as he did during the campaign. Yesterday, the President stood before a group of coal miners and promised to ``cancel job-killing regulations'' and ``put our miners back to work.''

Just 2 weeks ago, I was on the Western Slope of Colorado, a region with a number of mining communities. These communities, some of whom have helped invent hydraulic fracture and directional drilling, know that their challenges have far more to do with low prices and competition from natural gas than from the EPA. They know that their way of life and the way of life of communities like theirs all across the United States require real solutions to help them grow and diversify their economies. These communities get it. They understand it, but the President clearly does not.

Just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran this article entitled ``Despite Trump Move on Climate Change, Utilities' Shift from Coal Is Set to Continue.'' According to the article, last year, power from coal plants fell while power from natural gas rose 35 percent. Nationwide major utilities are shedding coal and increasing natural gas and renewables. That is the reality of our energy market and of the global economy, but this administration, when it comes to energy and when it comes to climate, is not operating in reality. It is operating amongst political slogans. It is operating in the theater of the absurd, where policies have no relationship to problems, facts don't matter, and false promises to struggling Americans are just another political tactic to win a cable news cycle.

The American people deserve so much better. Colorado deserves so much better than that. That is why today I am introducing a bill alongside more than 30 Senators to rescind this disastrous order, protect American jobs, and preserve our path toward energy independence. The stakes could not be higher for our kids, our planet, and our economy. We cannot let this stand.

Mr. President, I wish to honor the life of Joseph ``Joe'' Celestino Gallegos, a beloved leader and constituent from my home State of Colorado. Mr. Gallegos passed away on December 11, 2016, at the age of 60, after a battle with cancer. He was a true visionary and leader in his hometown of San Luis, the oldest town in Colorado, where he was elected to a fourth term as Costilla County commissioner just a few months ago.

Mr. Gallegos was a fifth-generation farmer and rancher with deep ties to the American West. His family property, the Corpus A. Gallegos Ranches, was settled in 1860 and recognized as a ``Colorado Centennial Farm'' in 1990. The son of educators, Mr. Gallegos spent his youth in Pagosa Junction and Colorado Springs, CO, and in Questa, NM. He spent his weekends, vacations, and summers working the family ranch in San Luis and tending to livestock in the surrounding mountains of the Sangre de Cristo Range.

After graduating from Colorado State University in Fort Collins with a degree in mechanical engineering, Mr. Gallegos became an engineer in the oil fields. His work took him to Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Ireland, and Africa before he returned to San Luis permanently in 1986.

Working with his father on the family ranch, Mr. Gallegos soon became a trailblazing advocate for the land, water, people, and culture of San Luis and Costilla County, working selflessly to preserve the area's rich local traditions. Mr. Gallegos was one of the founders of the Sangre de Cristo Acequia Association, which protects some of the oldest water rights in the State of Colorado, and his work has inspired younger generations to respect local water rights and acequia conservation. He served on the Costilla County Conservancy Board for 13 years and was also a member and ditch rider of the San Luis People's Ditch, which holds the oldest water right in Colorado.

Mr. Gallegos was elected as a Costilla County commissioner four times, serving in office for 12 years. He was passionate about creating and sustaining local jobs; rehabilitating infrastructure and historic structures; and supporting veterans, senior citizens, and youth. One of the projects of which he was most proud was the restoration of the old Costilla County courthouse. Built in 1883, it is one of just two intact adobe courthouses in Colorado. Mr. Gallegos also worked to restore the Lobatos Bridge, the southernmost bridge over the Rio Grande River in Colorado, originally built in 1892.

He oversaw the construction of a Health and Human Services complex and a senior citizens' center; helped create a county Trails, Open Space, and Recreation Program; supported the effort to name State Highway 159 as the Costilla County Veterans Memorial Highway; and developed the Costilla County Biodiesel Project. He also pursued other renewable energy initiatives such as biomass heat for county shops and solar electricity for county buildings.

Outside of his work, Mr. Gallegos also earned a second-degree black belt in martial arts and was gifted at training and riding horses.

Mr. Gallegos was a man whose generosity touched the lives of countless others. Over 500 people attended his funeral service at Centennial High School in San Luis. He is survived by his daughter Patricia Vialpando, her sisters Annmarie Gonzales and Cristina Miers, and their families; his sister Marie Rafaela Gallegos-McCord, his brothers Aquino ``Jerry'' Gallegos, James ``Jimmy'' Gallegos, and their families; his niece Elaiza Gallegos; his nephews Adrien and Django Gallegos; and two very special people, Rose Mendoza-Green and her granddaughter Celena.

I join with the people of Costilla County and the San Luis Valley in honoring Mr. Gallegos's life, and I send my deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.

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

Thank you, Mr. President.

Last week, in his address to Congress, President Trump called education ``the civil rights issue of our time.'' I completely agree with that.

Millions of American kids are trapped in underperforming schools with little hope of gaining the skills needed for good-paying jobs in the 21st century economy. In America, poor kids hear 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers by the time they get to kindergarten. If you don't think that makes a difference, you ought to talk to any kindergarten teacher in America.

By the fourth grade, only one in four kids in the United States can do math

at grade level, and even fewer than that can read at grade level in this country. About 9 in 100 are going to receive a college degree or its equivalent by the time they get to the age of 25.

As a Nation, we are falling behind the rest of the world. American 15-year-olds rank 15th in reading in the world, 19th in science in the world, and 37th in math in the world. These numbers are shameful. They are a national disgrace. Because these results fall mainly on communities of color in this country, this is a civil rights crisis in the United States--as the President said, the civil rights issue of our time.

It is for those reasons and other reasons that Congress passed No Child Left Behind in 2001, so as to strengthen the accountability and transparency for public education all over this country. Despite its good intentions, the law came with onerous requirements that did not work for many communities, including my own.

When I was the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, there were few experiences more miserable than dealing with the Federal bureaucracy and their auditors, who would make judgments that were driven more by compliance than by the needs of our children. Somebody who understood that well was Margaret Spellings, who was, at that time, the Secretary of Education for this country. We owe her a debt of gratitude for the work that she did as Secretary. I, personally, owe her a debt of gratitude for the waivers she granted to the Denver Public Schools, when I was superintendent, to allow us to focus not on the compliance of rules that made no sense but to focus on the kids in this school district.

I know that was the experience of educators all over America, which is why, in 2015, the Senate came together--and I am a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--to replace No Child Left Behind. Finally, 8 years too late--8 years after it was supposed to be reauthorized--under the leadership of Chairman Alexander and Senator Murray, we were able to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act. The bill earned overwhelming support. The country was ready for a change.

The law brought much needed reform to the Federal Government's role in education by giving States far more flexibility for innovation, while preserving important, core accountability protections, which are critical for those of us who are interested in the civil rights mission of the Federal Government. It was a rare example of bipartisan cooperation and smart policymaking in Washington, DC. In fact, I cannot think of another case in which we received that much bipartisan support on such a difficult issue in the time that I have been here.

The way I see it--and I say this as a parent of three children in the public schools in Denver and as a former school superintendent--the only reason for Washington to be involved at all in public education is with regard to civil rights, and that is an important reason for us to be involved. All kids should have access to great schools regardless of where they live, what ZIP Codes they are born into, or who their parents are.

With Every Student Succeeds, the new bill, States will design their own accountability systems and interventions when schools struggle. That is a big change from No Child Left Behind. It is a welcome change. The law shifts enormous responsibility from the Federal Government to States and transforms over 15 years of education policy. The law is not perfect, but it represents one of the most significant changes and, I would say, importantly, one of the most significant retrenchments of the Federal Government in domestic policy in modern American history. That should be acknowledged. It should be welcomed.

As States shift to the new model, many are asking for clarification about how to implement the law and make the most of greater State control over education. That is why the Department of Education issued rules last year to provide much needed clarity, stability, and flexibility to States, making it easier for them to transition from the broken system that we had under No Child Left Behind to the newer and more State-driven approach that we now have.

Now some in Congress have targeted this regulation. They have invoked the Congressional Review Act to repeal the rules wholesale. That would be so foolish after the progress we have made and the direction in which we have headed. It would tie the hands of the Department of Education from properly implementing the law and delay much needed flexibility and accountability for the States. It would be a disservice to students, to educators, to teachers, and to principals all across the country, and it would undermine the implementation of the entire law.

As I have said many times--and I have learned this the hard way--when it comes to education policy in particular, bad implementation can be just as harmful--even more harmful--than bad policy.

Repealing the rules would also sow confusion among States about when they must comply with this new law. The Every Student Succeeds Act includes a timeline for transition so that States have time to plan, but many specifics of that transition are unclear. The Department of Education's rules clarify that timeline and give States the flexibility with which to implement some parts of the law later than others.

Why would we want to take that away? Repealing the regulation would throw all of that away. Will schools have to fully comply with all aspects of the law by 2018, or is there some flexibility to stagger its implementation?

Beyond the timeline, striking the regulation wholesale would also throw States into limbo by creating uncertainty over other important parts of the law. For example, the act includes a major change in how the law applies to English learners, which is one of the fastest growing populations in our schools throughout the country and now represents nearly 1 out of 10 students nationwide. In the new law, many provisions concerning English learners moved from title III to title I.

As States undertake this shift, they need clarity on how to design accountability systems that include English learners in order to ensure kids do not fall through the cracks. For example, the rules make it clear that States can create proficiency goals for different groups of English learners rather than creating a uniform goal for all students.

Striking the rules would also undermine core elements of the law, like the requirement for States to report on school spending and resources. The regulation clarifies that States must create a uniform procedure for this reporting, which is vital for transparency around funding and investments and, I would say, is vital with respect to the civil rights mission of this law.

It is easy to publish numbers. Believe me; I have seen it. It is a lot harder to publish numbers that are accurate and meaningful by which parents and kids can make informed decisions.

Right now, as we sit here, States are developing accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act, and they are drawing on the current rules to guide that process. A change now could delay the submission and approval process for these plans. States will not know whether to use different templates or the ones they already have. They do not know if they have to restart public comment periods, delaying submissions and throwing the entire timeline into uncertainty. There is no reason we should be doing this to our schools, our teachers, and our principals.

Repealing the rules would also suppress innovation and limit flexibility. I know that is the clarion call on this floor a lot of the time. In this case, people are going to get the opposite of what they expect. Flexibility is central to the Every Student Succeeds Act. I fought for many aspects of the law in order to give States the ability to design their own accountability systems, and I believe in that. Yet, in the absence of express, legally binding guidance from the Department of Education about where and how they can experiment, States will respond to that uncertainty by embracing the safest course. I saw that all the time when I was superintendent.

States stand to lose a lot of money if they are not in compliance, particularly $15 billion in annual title I funds for students who live in poverty. They do not want to risk it. It may seem odd, but we need these rules in order to ensure flexibility and innovation for States. Nonbinding guidance is not enough.

Finally, if we use the Congressional Review Act to repeal this rule-- a very, very blunt instrument--the Department of Education will not be able to publish any rule that is ``substantially the same'' unless the Congress passes a new law--the Congress that took 8 years longer than it was supposed to in order to reauthorize No Child Left Behind the last time. This could mean that the Department of Education--and this is something people here need to pay attention to if they care about civil rights--would not be able to issue any new regulation to provide clarity for States as they transition to the new law. They would be left completely in the lurch, potentially hamstringing education policy across the country for a decade.

What is a shame about it is that there is absolutely no reason to do this. If the rules need to be changed, we should work together to improve them, but a CRA is not the correct policy tool. That is especially true when passing it would prevent all future regulation on core aspects of the Every Student Succeeds Act.

There has to be a better way for us to come together than this. I agree with the President that education is the civil rights issue of our time, and we should defeat this vote on this CRA.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, as we continue to debate H.J. Res. 44, a resolution of disproval to nullify the BLM planning 2.0 rule, I would like to bring to the attention of my colleagues an editorial published last week in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. It outlines many of the reasons we should oppose the repeal of the BLM planning 2.0 rule.

I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, last year was the hottest year on record, and 16 of the last 17 years have been the warmest years ever recorded. Climate change science is some of the most thoroughly established and well-tested research in history, and 97 percent of the published research says climate change is real and caused by humans.

Climate change is an urgent threat to our health, our national security, and our economy. How we address it is what we need to debate, not whether it is real.

As I have said before, I will work with anyone in this Chamber-- Republican or Democrat--to address this issue. That is appropriate because survey after survey of people in Colorado--a State that is a third Democratic, a third Republican, and a third Independent-- demonstrates that they believe the science, no matter which party they belong to.

In a very welcome sign, just last week, a group of statesmen, including former Secretary of State James Baker III, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, Jr.,--all Republicans--released what they described as a ``conservative climate solution.''

These distinguished leaders have come together at just the right moment--at the perfect moment--because our new President says that he is ``not a big believer'' in climate change. In fact, he claimed during the campaign that climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.

Consistent with that view, the President's nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, recently said that the debate over climate change is quote ``far from settled.'' He wondered in December whether global warming is ``true or not,'' whether it is caused by humans and whether the Earth is cooling instead of heating. As attorney general of Oklahoma, he sought to prevent the very Agency he has been nominated to lead from fighting climate change, suing the EPA 14 times.

It is important, I guess, to note that while it is rare for somebody in America to share these views, Attorney General Pruitt is not alone in his extreme views in the new President's Cabinet. Rick Perry, the nominee to be Secretary of Energy, wrote in his book that climate science is ``all one contrived phony mess'' and that the Earth is actually ``experiencing a cooling trend.'' Ben Carson, the nominee to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said: ``It is not clear if temperatures are going up or going down.'' Rex Tillerson, the new Secretary of State, said: ``None of the models agree on how climate change works.'' Mr. Trump's CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, said: ``There are scientists who think lots of different things about climate change.''

When the Pope was talking about the importance of addressing climate change, which he said was a very real threat, there was an American politician who said that the Pope should stick to religion and that he wasn't a scientist. In fact, the Pope studied chemistry. I am glad he is using his voice on this important issue.

To be clear, some nominees seem to have undergone a confirmation process evolution on climate, but this seems more an effort to hide their extreme views in an effort to be confirmed rather than a genuine conversion based on facts or science, and that is a shame because the world cannot wait for this administration to stop ignoring the science.

Over the past 150 years, human activity has driven up greenhouse gas levels in our atmosphere higher and faster than at any time over the last 400,000 years. That is not surprising because we have pumped almost 400 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. As a result, carbon dioxide concentrations have risen from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million for the first time in recorded history. That significant change over an insignificant period of time is dramatically changing the Earth. These emissions act like closed car windows: They allow light and heat in, but they don't allow most of the heat to ever escape.

Already, record heating has melted ice sheets as large as Texas, Georgia, and New York combined, adding billions of tons of water to our oceans every year. These rising seas have partially submerged cities in Florida and Georgia several times per year. They threaten 31 towns and cities in Alaska with imminent destruction. They are forcing a city in Louisiana to relocate its residents away from what is now an almost permanently flooded coast. By 2030, there won't be any glaciers left in Montana's Glacier National Park.

While extreme events and natural disasters become more frequent, so do the effects climate change has on our daily lives. In my home State, 7 out of 10 Coloradans know that climate change is happening, and nearly half say they have personally experienced its effects. Shorter winters are already a threat to Colorado's $4.8 billion ski and snowboard industry and its 46,000 jobs.

Since the snow is melting sooner, there is not enough water for what are now longer summers. Colorado's farmers are forced to grow food with less water, a changing growing season, and higher temperatures. Our agriculture industry employs over 170,000 Coloradans and contributes more than $40 billion a year to our economy. These changes are not only threatening farmers' livelihoods, they are changing production and food prices at grocery stores.

Our beer industry is even weighing in. This week, I received a letter from 32 brewers from around the country, including three from Colorado, who oppose Scott Pruitt's nomination because they depend on America's clean water resources to brew their beer.

Hotter summers and the droughts they prolong cause wildfires that now burn twice as much land every year than they did 40 years ago. Together, State and Federal agencies are paying nearly $4 billion a year to fight those fires. Warmer waters and drought are hurting animals everywhere, like our cutthroat trout populations in Colorado. That is not just a problem for the fish; in Colorado, rivers generate more than $9 billion in economic activity every year, including supporting nearly 80,000 jobs.

As warmer temperatures increase and spread across regions, so do incidents of vector-borne diseases like the West Nile virus and the hantavirus. And what do we do when we have longer, hotter summers? We crank up the air-conditioning, burning more fossil fuel and only perpetuating the problem.

I understand that sometimes it is hard to focus on climate change when the effects seem distant, but it should be impossible to ignore the immediate national security threat posed by climate change that is here today. Here in the Senate, in 2015, we passed a budget amendment with bipartisan support to promote ``national security by addressing human-induced climate change.'' That is what the amendment said. It got bipartisan support.

The former Secretary of Defense, the former Director of National Intelligence, and the former admiral in charge of U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific have all warned us that climate change is a threat to our national security.

Around the world, climate change is increasing natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water, complicating American involvement and security. Climate change is linked to drought and crop loss and failure in southern Africa, leaving more than 6 million children malnourished by famine. It is increasing monsoons and heat waves in Pakistan, driving 11 million people out of their homes. It is even connected to water and food shortages that have intensified civil unrest from Egypt to Syria.

At home, climate change already has cost us billions to relocate and buffer military infrastructure from coastal erosion and protect military installations from energy outages. At the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk, VA, the largest naval installation in the world, sea levels have risen over 1 foot in the past 100 years. All the systems that support military readiness, from electrical utilities to housing at that base, are vulnerable to extreme flooding.

When the Department of Defense ``recognizes the reality of climate change''--those are their words--``and the significant risk it poses to U.S. interests globally,'' we should listen. When the Nation's most recent national security strategy says that ``climate change is an urgent and growing threat,'' we should act.

As a Senator from Colorado, I understand very well why people sometimes are frustrated when the EPA, for instance, does take action-- or sometimes when it doesn't take action.

There are certainly some regulations that don't make sense, where a well-intentioned idea or an ill-intentioned idea--I think they are usually well-intentioned--from Washington ends up not making sense when it hits the ground. That is why I fought to revise EPA fuel storage tank regulations that hurt Colorado farmers, ranchers, and businesses in my home State. I supported an amendment making the Agency take a look at a new regulation that burdens families trying to remodel older homes. There are other regulations that I voted to get rid of. I supported, for instance, lifting the export ban on crude oil from the United States of America, a bill that we passed last year in connection with a 5-year extension of the tax credits for wind and solar energy, a great deal for the State of Colorado--both the lifting of the crude oil export ban and the extension of the tax credits for wind and solar.

I have also supported and fought for our coal community. In Colorado, working with my colleague Senator Gardner, I fought to keep a Colorado mine open to protect good-paying jobs in my State. I am proud to have a hard hat in my office bearing the signatures of the people who work at that mine.

I have to say tonight that the often-asserted claim that efforts to regulate carbon or more generally to protect our water and our air have significantly led to job losses in this country is false. This argument is a fraud perpetrated by politicians making promises that are broken from the start.

The reality--and it is important to understand the reality so we can remedy the situation--the reality is that free market forces and not mostly Federal regulation are transforming American electricity production.

American coal employment peaked in the early 1980s, long before we began seriously expanding natural energy. Natural gas has been gaining market share compared to coal since before 1990. Colorado, for example, has benefitted greatly from the natural gas boom. In almost every part of the United States, natural gas plants are now cheaper to build than coal plants. Facilities that were built when I became a Senator 8 years ago were built to import natural gas and are now being retrofitted to export natural gas to the rest of the world. That is good for our environment, and it is good for the geopolitical position of the United States.

Innovation is making renewable electricity more affordable for everybody. Between 2008 and 2015, the cost of wind power fell 41 percent. The cost of large-scale solar installations fell 64 percent. This has led to a 95-percent increase in solar deployment in 2016 over the previous year. The annual installation doubled in 1 year.

If we truly want to support our world communities, we should listen to Teddy Roosevelt, who once said that ``conservation and rural-life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at the bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily given to the future.''

The truth about the future is that there may be a lot of sound reasons to review, revisit, and even retire any number of Federal regulations, and I will bet there are, but cutting regulation will not reopen shuttered coal mines.

It is not about regulations or the EPA or about a War on Coal. Economic factors, market factors are driving the shift from coal to natural gas and renewables, and we need to recognize this shift and help coal communities adapt to a changing energy economy. They have contributed to building the economic vitality of this country. Their work helped us win World War II. We have to recognize the contribution; we can't just turn our backs. But we also need to acknowledge what is causing the changes that are occurring in our energy production because if we can't acknowledge the causes, we can't fix the problem; we can't make a meaningful difference for people in the communities that are affected by these changes; we can't fulfill what have become empty political promises instead of making real commitments on behalf of the American people.

We also have to take advantage of the changes in energy production to fuel economic growth and create new jobs. Already, renewable energy is creating jobs throughout the country. Energy efficiency employs 2.2 million Americans. Solar and wind companies employ more than 360,000 Americans, including more than 13,000 in my home State of Colorado. Colorado now ranks first in the country in wind energy manufacturing. All together, clean energy employment grew 29 percent between 2009 and 2014 in Colorado.

This isn't a Bolshevik plot, as I said on the floor before. These are American jobs. These are manufacturing jobs. These are plants where it is not just about the wind turbine but about all of the supply chain that goes along with it that can't be made in China and shipped to the United States and installed here. These jobs in this supply chain are American jobs. They are good jobs that pay a good wage, and they are meaningful to our economy. Last year, solar jobs grew 17 times faster than jobs in the rest of the national economy. They increased by 20 percent in Colorado in 1 year.

The expansion of natural gas, as I mentioned earlier, is also aiding our transition to a cleaner energy economy. Between 2005 and 2012, natural gas production grew by 35 percent in the United States. In Colorado, it expanded by 139 percent. Colorado now ranks sixth in the country in natural gas production as 10 of the Nation's 100 largest natural gasfields are now located in Colorado.

These industries together create good-paying jobs that can't be exported overseas; and all of these changes, taken together, are beginning to address climate change. From 2008 to 2015, the American energy sector reduced its carbon emissions by 9.5 percent. We reduced our carbon emissions by almost 10 percent while the country's economy grew by more than 10 percent, and we are starting to see the same trend around the world. Global emissions stayed flat in 2015 while the global economy grew. Turning our backs on reality is not a recipe for job creation in this country, but embracing the reality is.

So I would ask this new President, after the campaign he ran and the promises he made, why he would promote policies that will kill American jobs and industries. Unfortunately--I regret to say this--even though 70 percent of Coloradoans say climate change is real and that humankind is contributing to it, the answer to my question about this administration's policies comes back to what it believes--to what it believes is a debate on climate change.

If we allow science to become debatable, we can contort our thinking to fit any fiction at all to support or undermine any public policy. We risk discarding facts we don't like and ignoring experts with whom we don't agree in favor of special interests, which

often dominate our political system. Our country needs more from us than that. Our national defense demands more than that from us.

When State Department analysts concluded with evidence, with science, that the Keystone Pipeline would not materially increase carbon emissions--facts lost in the phony debate here in Washington--I voted for it against intense opposition from my own party and many of my strongest supporters. That was a painful vote, one of the most painful I have ever taken and difficult to explain to many people I admire, but I was guided by the facts, not by politics, guided by the science, not by politics.

We have always drawn strength as a country from our belief in science, our confidence in reason and evidence. It is what Harry Truman called our ``unflinching passion for knowledge and truth.'' In school, we teach children to support theories with facts and look to science to explain the world. When it comes to climate change, we cannot allow the narrow limits of political expediency and special interests to cloud our sound judgment. That is not a lesson we should be teaching our children who need us to act on climate. That would set a horrible example for the people who are coming after us.

Our ultimate success in addressing climate change will rely on the same scientific method that sent us to the Moon and eradicated smallpox. If we surrender evidence to ideology, when it comes to climate change, we abandon the process of scientific inquiry. We leave ourselves completely unequipped to defend what we discover to be true. We loosen our grip on the science that allows us to understand that evolution is real and vaccines are effective; that something is true and something else is false. That, not doubt and denial, is the lesson we should leave our children; that we have the courage to confront this challenge without bias; that we have the wisdom to follow facts wherever they lead. That is what this Senate should do. That is what our country should do.

We have seen the evidence now. It is not theoretical anymore that we can grow our economy, the fact that we will grow our economy, that we can conserve energy while we do it, that we can create entirely new industries and technologies to power the most significant economy that human beings have ever seen in the history of the world, and that we can deal with climate at the same time. The two are linked.

Apparently, that is not what this President believes, and that is not what his nominee to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency believes. Because that is so far out of step with what Colorado believes and for all of the reasons I have talked about today and for the sake of our climate and for good-paying American jobs all over this country--but particularly in Colorado--I am compelled to vote no on the President's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

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

Mr. President, I wish to begin by congratulating our new Senator from California for her first speech in the Chamber. I know it is not her first official speech, but she is here on this important night to talk about the state of public education in this country and this confirmation process. So I thank her for her remarks. I also want to thank the ranking member of the Education Committee of the Senate, Senator Murray from Washington State, who is here tonight as well. I know she has been here all day today and was here all day on Friday as well, because the set of issues we are discussing are so important.

As I sat here listening to the Senator from California, I was thinking about the work we have done recently on the committee on which we both serve--the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee-- with the leadership of Chairman Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, and Ranking Member Senator Murray, from Washington State, to pass a new reauthorization of No Child Left Behind--a bill that if you said: Let's have a rally on the steps of the Capitol to keep No Child Left Behind the same, not a single person in the United States would have shown up for that rally. It took this body 7 years--7 years after we were supposed to reauthorize No Child Left Behind--to actually do the work. But when we did the work, we were able to get it through the committee once unanimously. This committee has on it, among other people, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Senator Rand Paul from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. They seldom agree on anything, but they agreed on that bill. We got it out of the committee almost unanimously, and then passed it on the floor of the Senate with over 80 votes. It passed with a huge bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives, and it was signed by the President. It was 7 years too late, but we were able to do it in a bipartisan way--which is what education issues should always require. It is a shame that tonight we are here with a partisan divide because of the selection President Trump has made to lead the Department of Education.

So I just want to say thank you again to Senator Murray for her leadership.

Since our first days before we founded this country, education has been an American value. In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, colonists recognized their collective responsibility to educate their children. They wrote into law that children, both wealthy and poor, must be taught to read and write, and to learn a skill, like blacksmithing, weaving, or shipbuilding, to secure their economic independence. As democracy took root in early America, public education became not just an ideal but an imperative. An enlightened public, the Founders believed, was essential to self-government.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that we must ``educate and inform the whole mass of the people. . . . They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.''

Benjamin Franklin believed: ``The good education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths.''

With education, the common man would be able to select leaders wisely and fight back against the tyrannical instincts of those in power. He would be able to understand, maintain, and protect his rights, so that government could not usurp authority and devolve into despotism.

In a country ``in which the measures of Government receive their impression so immediately from the sense of the Community as in ours,'' George Washington explained, ``knowledge . . . is proportionally essential.''

This set of beliefs represented a fundamental break from the aristocratic ways of the old world. A republic that was ``for the people'' and ``by the people'' required an educated people.

With this new world also came a new conviction that individuals could determine their own future, that their birth or circumstance no longer limited their potential. This foundational idea grew to become the American dream: Every child, regardless of who her parents are or where she came from, could achieve an education and grow up to achieve a better life.

Over time, as our Republic became more and more democratic, as the right to vote and lead was secured by African Americans and women, education became the fundamental means by which Americans sought to secure their liberty and their equality.

Perfecting our Union by expanding education has not come without struggle, but we have often succeeded because we have recognized that symbiotic relationship among the needs of our country and the success of individual Americans and our aspiration to move forward. This included the need for a universally literate workforce in the 1830s and the creation of Horace Mann's Common School Movement; the demand at the turn of the 20th century to replace out-of-date Latin schools with progressive high schools that prepared students for the emerging industrial workforce; the challenge of providing World War II veterans with a career path and the creation of the GI bill for college education; and the need to tear down the barriers of Jim Crow school systems in the 1950s and 1960s.

Too often, as a country, we confronted these challenges too late and at the tragic expense of our fellow American's potential. ``With all deliberate speed'' has proven not fast enough, especially for children living in places like the Mississippi Delta and South Central Los Angeles.

At each of these turning points, we have asked for more from our public schools. To their credit, our educators--teachers, specialists, and principals--have risen to the challenge, many times much sooner than the rest of us. They have helped us build a nation admired for our forward progress, for opportunity, and for equality.

That is the American ideal from our founding until today. I come to the floor tonight with a sense of urgency because our generation is at risk of being the first American generation to leave less opportunity to our children than we inherited. If we do that, we will have broken a fundamental American promise to our children.

In our Nation, education is supposed to be at the heart of opportunity, but today our education system fails far too many kids. Schools that once were engines of opportunity and democracy are now too often traps for intergenerational poverty.

As a result, only 3 out of 10 children born to very low-income families in the United States will make it into the middle class or higher. Only 4 out of 100 will make it to the top 20 percent of income earners. Already, the United States has less social mobility than at least 12 other developed countries--among them, Canada, Japan, and Germany.

In America, children growing up in poverty here hear 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers by the time they reach kindergarten. In fourth grade, only one in four of our students in poverty is proficient in math, and fewer than that can read at

grade level. As few as 9 will receive a bachelor's degree by age 25.

As a nation, we are falling behind the rest of the world. When George Bush, the son, became President in 2000, we led the world in college graduates. Today we are 16th in the world. American 15-year-olds score lower than their peers in 14 countries in reading, 36 countries in math, and 18 in science.

Much of the rest of the developed and developing world is figuring out how to produce more and more educated citizens, while the United States is standing still and therefore falling behind. We must refuse to accept outcomes that are a tragedy for our children, a threat to our economy, and an immeasurable risk to our democracy.

To make change, we need to stop treating America's children as if they belong to someone else. To meet our children's needs, we must invent a 21st century approach to education, a system for the delivery of free, high-quality education built for the future, not for the past.

We must have the courage to shed old ways of thinking, abandon commitments to outdated approaches, and explore new ideas. This reenvisioned system must focus like a laser on what is best for kids, not what is convenient for adults. It must be comprehensive and integrated from early childhood to postsecondary education.

A 21st century system of public education must set high expectations, demand rigor, and create meaningful accountability. This system must embrace different kinds of schools and create a culture that is focused on continuously learning from each other--among traditional, charter, and innovation schools, and across districts, cities, and States.

We need to change fundamentally how we prepare, recruit, place, train, retain, and pay teachers and school leaders. That entire system belongs to a labor market that discriminates against women and said you have two professional choices: one is being a teacher and one is being a nurse. So why don't you come teach Julius Caesar every year for 30 years of your life in the Denver Public Schools, where we are going to pay you a wage far lower than anybody else in your college class would accept.

Those days are gone. We had discrimination in the labor market that actually subsidized our school system because very often the brightest students in their class--very often women--had no other career options and therefore were willing to teach.

That whole system needs to be transformed in the 21st century. We have 1.5 million new teachers whom we have to hire over the next 6 to 8 years in this country, and we have no theory about how to hire them or how to keep them. Fifty percent of the people are leaving the profession now in the first 5 years.

This new system of public education should embrace technology and personalized learning. We must create space for innovation in school autonomy, and we must also provide choice to parents and kids, but our goal is not, and should not be, school choice for choice's sake.

For a youngster in a low-income family, there is no difference between being forced to attend a lousy school and being given the chance to choose among five lousy schools. That is no choice at all. It is certainly not a meaningful one. The goal is, and must be, to offer high-quality education at every public school so parents can choose among grade schools in their neighborhood and throughout their cities and towns.

We must refuse to accept the false choice I have heard over and over again during this confirmation process that you either support school choice in whatever form or you defend the status quo, just as we must reject the idea that you cannot support public schools and advocate for change.

This old rhetoric and manufactured political division will not work for our kids. We need to rise above the narrow, small politics that consume our attention and permit and prevent us from making tough choices. Instead, we need to recognize that a 21st century education can and should look very different than a 19th century education or a 20th century education, and no matter what approach or method of delivery, it must be high quality.

The good news is, we know it is possible to reverse course and create meaningful change. Several cities around the country have already begun creating roadmaps to this 21st century approach. Denver is one of them.

In Denver, we made a deal--create a public choice system that authorizes charters, creates innovation schools, and strengthens traditional schools. We empowered schools through autonomy and worked to create a culture of shared learning and innovation focused on all ships rising. We demanded quality, and we implemented strong accountability. High-performing schools were rewarded, replicated, and expanded. Low-performing schools had to be improved or be shut down.

We made tough decisions. We closed schools. I sat in living rooms, classrooms, and gymnasiums with parents urging them to demand more from the school district, even if it meant that their child had to go to a different school. Along with concerned citizens, teachers, and principals, I went door-to-door to enroll kids in new schools.

Denver created innovative teacher and school leadership policies. We tried to rethink the tired model of the last century and create a new career for this one. That is why today in Denver you will find teachers teaching other teachers and being paid for it, knowing that their job is not only to educate their students but also to improve the honorable craft of teaching so our kids can achieve even more.

We used the levers of Federal law, strong accountability, and civil rights protections as the backbone of change. We cannot have made the changes we did had it not been for the national demand for improvement in our schools--the civil rights impulse that underlies the Federal involvement in public education, as well as the courage of our community to demand something better for our children. Denver has begun to see the results of hard work.

Over the last decade, Denver Public Schools students' achievement growth increased faster than the State's in both math and English. This outcome was achieved by students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch and also students not qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch. Latino and African-American students' achievement in English and math grew faster than their counterparts' throughout the State.

Sixty-one percent more students graduated in 2016 than in 2006. We have a long way to go, but I would suspect that if we could say of every urban school district in America that we are graduating 60 percent more students this year than we were a decade ago, we would be feeling a lot better about where we are headed as a country. In Denver, over that time, the overall ontime graduation rate increased almost 30 points, and the ontime graduation rate for Latino students has doubled since 2007.

Since 2006, Denver Public Schools' enrollment has increased--many cities have lost enrollment--over 25 percent, making it the fastest growing urban school district in America, partly because Denver has grown but also because parents and kids and families have now found schools that are responsive to their families' needs and supportive of their children.

I am the first to say, and I always will be the first to say, that we still have a lot of work to do to make sure the ZIP Code Denver's children are born into doesn't determine the education they receive. But cities like Denver are moving in the right direction. Now we need to move a nation in the right direction.

Tonight, as we stand here in this marbled Chamber among these statues that tie us to our past, I am thinking of our future. I am thinking of the millions of poor children across time zones our Founders could not have imagined, heading home after a long day at school, shifting their backpacks of books to find a comfortable spot, sharpening pencils for math and pastels for art, clearing a space on a busy dinner table for homework. I am thinking about children teaching other children, older brothers and sisters teaching their younger siblings, expecting that they will have more opportunity than their parents. I am remembering the naturalization ceremony I attended just last Friday at Dunn Elementary School in Fort Collins, CO, where Kara Roth's fifth grade class welcomed 26 new Americans from 13 countries to the United States. I am thinking about

teachers and principals and students--while we are here speaking--who are up tonight, planning for tomorrow, and hoping for a future that allows them to review at home before they teach tomorrow the best lessons for teaching the productive and destructive forces of volcanoes, what Scout learns in ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' or the mathematical reasoning that calls on us to invert the second fraction when we divide. I am imagining a country that fulfills our generational responsibility by providing quality early childhood education to every American family who wants it--a K-12 school for every child to which every Senator would be proud to send his or her child or grandchild and access to college and skills training that prepare students for economic success without shackling them to a lifetime of debt.

All of that leads me to comment briefly on President Trump's nomination for Education Secretary. I have no doubt that Mrs. DeVos sincerely cares about children. It is not her fault that President Trump nominated her. So let me be clear that I am addressing the President and not Mrs. DeVos when I say that this nomination is an insult to school children and their families, to teachers and principals, and to communities fighting to improve their public schools all across this country.

Even with the limited questioning allowed at the education committee hearing, it quickly became clear that Mrs. DeVos lacks the experience and the understanding to be an effective Secretary of Education. The bipartisan progress of American education achieved over the last 15 years was predicated on a deep commitment to three principles: transparency, accountability and equity.

Mrs. DeVos's testimony and public record failed to establish her commitment or competence to protect any of these foundational principles. Her ``let a thousand flowers bloom'' approach asks American school children to take a huge step backward to a world without the high expectations and transparency that we need to give parents and taxpayers the information they deserve on how our schools are performing. Those high expectations, paired with the clear commitment to accountability, ensure that our successful schools should be replicated and our struggling schools should be held accountable for improvement, regardless of whether it is a choice school or a district school.

Finally, we know that the Secretary of Education holds the sacred job of ensuring that every child in America gets the resources and the support they deserve, regardless of their income, background, or educational needs. This commitment to equity is at the core of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Mrs. DeVos has shown no evidence of her commitment to be the torch bearer for both excellence and equity. Her ideology and dogmatic approach communicates a lack of understanding and appreciation of the challenges we face and the depths of solutions they demand.

A commitment to choice without a commitment to quality serves ideology rather than improvement, and a commitment to competition without a commitment to equity would forsake our democratic ideal that a free, high quality public education must open the doors of opportunity for all. For the first generation of students to whom that promise feels elusive, they deserve an Education Secretary who has the courage, competence, and commitment to orient our mighty education system to build opportunity for all. Mrs. DeVos shows none of those skills, and our young people cannot afford to wait 4 years for their chance at the American dream.

Millions of Americans recognize this, which is why this nomination has generated more controversy than any other. I look forward to working with anyone--as I have over the years, including even Mrs. DeVos--anyone interested in improving our children's opportunities and taking seriously the future of our democracy. But I will not support her nomination. I will vote no on this nomination and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

Mr. President, the hour is late, or early in the morning, and my colleague from Hawaii is here. Before I leave the floor, I want to say how pleased I am to see the Senate actually debating the state of education in America.

I said earlier today when I was here that if you are born poor in this country, you arrive at kindergarten having heard 30 million fewer words than your more affluent peers, and if you are born poor in this country, by the time you get to the fourth grade, only about one in four kids is proficient in mathematics, fewer than that are proficient readers. What it all adds up to is that if you are poor in the United States, your chances of getting a college degree by the time you turn 25 are about 9 in 100.

I often think about that when I am in this Chamber because there are 100 desks here, and if we were poor kids living in America, the desks that would be occupied by college graduates would be the three desks that my colleague from Hawaii is sitting at in the front row over there, the four desks behind him, and then two more desks in the following row. Every other desk in this Chamber if they were occupied by poor children in this country, would be occupied by somebody who didn't have a college degree.

Sometimes people say to me: Well, don't you know that not everybody will go to college. College isn't for everybody. I find that when people say that, they are often talking about other people's children, not their own children. Even if that is true--and I do believe we should build a robust system in this country that is not about a college degree but is about acquiring skills and knowledge that can put people on the path to acquiring a salary that is actually worth something. In fact, the Presiding Offer and I have a bill together that would allow students to use Pell grants for those kinds of educational opportunities that may not get you to a college degree but will put you on the pathway to acquiring greater skills.

I think it is very important that we have a system where people are acquiring that kind of knowledge, but it also is true that it is, I think, completely at war with who we are as Americans; that there is a class of people in the United States, in the land of opportunity, who because they are unlucky enough to be born poor, are unlucky enough to go to schools that nobody in this Chamber would ever be content sending their kid or their grandkid to.

In fact, if we had the results that we have for poor children in America for the children and grandchildren of the Members of this body, I am sure we would all leave and go back home and fix this problem. We don't talk enough about the State of public education in this country. We almost don't talk about it at all.

We just had a Presidential election in this country where the issue didn't come up almost at all. I am glad we are having the debate, and I strongly believe that the person President Trump has nominated is ill- equipped to help the country overcome the challenges we face in public education and put us on the path we need to be on, which is a path that says that we are going to provide in the United States robust, high- quality early childhood education for every family in America that wants it.

We are going to have a system of public education in this country that provides a K-12 school for every single child in America that is a school that any Senator would be proud to send their kid. We are going to make sure that every young person in the United States, and maybe even people who aren't so young, has the ability to graduate from college or acquire the skills and knowledge they need to compete in the 21st century and do that without acquiring a mountain of debt that requires them--in the case of people graduating now from colleges in Colorado--to take 22 years of their lives to pay that debt back. It doesn't make any sense.

This is the land of opportunity. The gateway to opportunity is a high-quality education, and too many of our kids in this country in the 21st century don't have access to it. My hope is that when we get through this debate, we can focus on the work that is happening in places like Denver, CO, where we have seen, in just a 10-year period, a 60-percent increase in the number of kids who are graduating from high school.

I am the first to say that we have a long way to go in Denver in terms of making sure that a kid's ZIP Code doesn't determine the education they get. I said earlier tonight and I believe if we could say that every single city in America, every single urban district and every single rural district where there are poor children and kids of color going to school that we had increased the graduation rate over the last 10 years by 60 percent, I think we would feel a lot better about where we are headed as a country.

That is a fundamental challenge for this country. It is the most important domestic issue we face, and I hope this debate tonight, this 24 hours we are spending on this nominee, is not the end of our debate.

As I said the other day in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I think it would be a useful exercise for that committee to spend the next year studying what is going on in public education in this country, what is working well, what is not working well, and figure out how we can work--the Federal Government can work--with States, local governments, and local school districts to provide the kind of opportunity that every kid in America deserves.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I see the majority leader of the Senate. I will suspend until he has finished.

Mr. President, I too wish to congratulate my colleague from South Carolina on his remarks. We don't share the same view on this, but he is an important voice in the Senate, and I am glad that he is a colleague on the Education Committee in the Senate.

As a matter of fact, the other day I said that I wish the President had the sense to appoint him Education Secretary. The kids whom I used to work for in the Denver Public Schools would have been very, very well served by him.

The President, of course, is entitled to choose his team, and that is partly

what elections are about. The Attorney General, more than any other Cabinet official, must be the people's lawyer, an advocate for the rule of law above all else.

My office has received nearly 23,000 calls and emails opposing this nomination. Many of them I cannot read today on the floor for fear of violating the Senate rules. But it is clear from these comments that young Coloradans who came to the United States and know no other country but this country, who arrived here illegally, but, through no fault of their own, fear they will be deported back to a country they don't know--it is clear to me from the comments that I have received in these letters that Coloradans in the LGBTQ community fear that an Attorney General Sessions would turn a blind eye toward discrimination. It is clear from these comments that Senator Sessions has not earned the confidence of many Coloradans who may soon rely on him to protect their rights and to identify abuses of constitutional power. And Coloradans, many of whom I know, fought for equality and justice during the civil rights movement, and fear that it will turn back much of the progress we have made.

We have a disagreement about Senator Sessions' role before he came to the Senate, but the fundamental reason I object to his nomination as Attorney General is that he led the fight in 2013 against our bipartisan effort to reform the broken immigration system in the United States. And I sat here on this Senate floor night after night after night listening to the Senator use fear and inaccuracies to derail our best chance in years to fix this broken immigration system.

Now, in time, I have come to understand that people come to this floor and they don't always--they are not always accurate in what they say. Sometimes they don't mean to be accurate; sometimes they are just mistaken. That was the first time I had ever heard that kind of relentlessness, saying things that just weren't right. I am being careful with my language because of last night's ruling.

He claimed that our bill--and, by the way, that bill, unlike almost anything that has happened in this place in the 8 years that I have been here--started out as a bipartisan effort, four Democrats and four Republicans working together for 7 or 8 months in a room trying to solve each other's issues.

There is a lot about the Senate today that the American people should not and cannot be proud of, and I will come to that in a minute. But as to the work of the Gang of 8, I would have been happy for people to have seen what happened behind closed doors in those 7 months. It is how the Senate ought to operate. It went to the Judiciary Committee where Democrats and Republicans together amended the legislation. They made it better. And then it came to the floor of the Senate and we had more amendments, and it passed with 68 votes.

It still hasn't passed the House. It has never even gotten a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Senator Sessions claimed during that debate that our bill would have ``dramatically increased incidence of criminal alien violence, officially legalizing dangerous offenders, while handcuffing immigration officers from doing their jobs.''

He claimed it would have legalized ``thousands of dangerous criminals while making it more difficult for our officers to identify public safety and national security threats.''

Senator Sessions claimed our bill would lead to a ``huge increase in immigration,'' invite a flood of immigrants into our Nation who would steal jobs from ``struggling American workers.''

These claims are demonstrably untrue. If our bill had become law, we would have secured our borders, we would have bolstered internal security, we would have better protected American workers, and we would have strengthened our economy.

Contrary to his characterization of what was in that bill, the 2013 bill provided far greater security than President Trump's plan.

The first two words in the title of that bill were ``border security.'' That has been completely ignored by the critics. It has been completely ignored by people who want to make an issue out of this in national campaigns. But the reality is it provided billions of dollars toward new technologies to monitor the border. It called for the building of a 700-mile fence. By the way, none of the rest of it would come to pass until we took care of the border.

Nearly 20,000 new Border Patrol agents--four times more than ordered by President Trump and double the current number--and not paid for by raising taxes on the American people at our border with Mexico, not paid for in a way that would destroy our trading relationship with Mexico, but paid for by fees that people were paying as they were becoming lawful in the United States of America. It had protections in the bill for American workers to ensure that employers hired American labor first. I know he objected to this, and I understand we had a difference of opinion, but the bill included a tough but fair path to citizenship, requiring people to go through background checks as part of a long path to citizenship.

During the Presidential campaign, Senator Sessions advised President- Elect, now-President Trump on immigration policy. In fact, my understanding is the President's immigration Executive orders-- including one being challenged in court--mirror Senator Sessions' positions. These positions are antithetical to our history, to our values, to whom we are as a country.

Last Friday was the highlight of my year. I got on a plane and I left Washington--that was pretty good in and of itself--to go home to Colorado. On Friday, I went to Dunn Elementary School in Fort Collins, CO, where Kara Roth's fifth grade class welcomed 26 new Americans from 13 countries to the United States. It is an International Baccalaureate program in this elementary school. This is an annual event.

We were there in the gym, and the fifth graders were there singing; a young girl had won an essay contest on ``What it Meant to be in America.'' There was a color guard. Kids came in wearing their Boy Scout uniforms to post the colors, the American flag, and the flag of Colorado. The fourth graders were there watching what they would be doing next year as fifth graders.

There was no need for a politician to tell anybody in that room that America is an exceptional country. No politician needed to say that to the fifth graders in Mrs. Roth's class who were studying the Constitution and studying immigration. We certainly didn't need to tell that to the immigrants from all over the world. I think I mentioned, they were from 13 different countries.

One of the great parts of the ceremony was when they asked people to stand up to the country from which they came, and fifth graders also stood up if they were from that country. There were kids from China; there were kids from Mexico standing up in this fifth grade class; incredibly, three kids from Libya whose parents are at the university in some capacity in Fort Collins.

As always in these naturalization ceremonies, people had tears in their eyes because as one of them once said to me at another time in Colorado, his dream had come true the minute he became a citizen of the United States because he knew his children would be citizens of the United States of America. Everybody in the room knew that.

What is important for us is these fifth graders' perspective on American government, on democracy, and on the history of this Republic I think probably may not be quite exactly right because they, thank goodness, have been untarnished by special interests, untarnished by campaign money and partisan fighting, and power struggles that have nothing to do with the American people or their priorities.

Their view of what the essence of self-government is all about is really what it is all about. It is really what we are supposed to be doing here: a commitment to a republic and democracy, a commitment to the rule of law, a commitment to the separation of powers. The stuff they are reading in their little Constitution just like this one is what this place is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be what we are doing here. It is the reason why I am objecting to this nomination.

The Denver Post editorialized yesterday, stating the obvious horrible truth here:

American journalists have been killed reporting on

terrorists. They've been beheaded. . . . To suggest that some

kind of shared bias exists throughout American newsrooms so

strong that it compels journalists to hide truth and thereby

endanger the public is as dangerous as it is demonstrably

untrue.

That is right. It is dangerous. It is dangerous for the leader of the free world to be saying that journalists are crooks; that the facts they are publishing in newspapers and online are untrue when they are true. It is dangerous when we are engaged in an experiment of self- government that goes back about 240 years to the founding of this country to refute things that are absolutely true as false and to claim that the reason they are being raised is because people lack integrity; that journalism is all about false news.

The White House put out a list of, I think it was in the seventies, of terrorist attacks they claim had never been reported, and newspaper after newspaper after newspaper had to run lists of the events that the White House described as unreported and then have links to the stories in their own newspapers and other newspapers that had reported on terrorists. As the Denver Post noted, and it is worth remembering this, there are journalists who have lost their lives trying to cover this story to have us better understand what is happening in the Middle East, what the threat of terror looks like, and have been beheaded on television because they took that risk.

With respect to the judges, for years it has been so painful around here to get anybody confirmed. I see these folks who are lawyers who have to put their law practice on hold for something that should be the greatest reflection of achievement of their life, being appointed to a Federal district court in this country, and who wait and wait and wait because of the unconscionable delay and disputes and partisan bickering that happens here instead of getting people on the court to do the job that they need to do.

Now we are going to be in the business of accusing judges and the judiciary of being crooked, of not following the law, of just playing politics. I think it is really important for us--not just Democrats but also Republicans--and I know my colleague is here from Florida. I wish to say in this body how much I appreciated his comments last night. He may not appreciate that I am saying that, but I appreciate his comments because a lot of what he said I completely agree with.

I know it has become fashionable to tear down rather than work to improve the democratic institutions which generations of Americans have built. This place didn't get here by accident. It is not a fluke. The Founding Fathers would be shocked--shocked--to know this Republic still exists. They would be proud. I think they would be proud of the progress we have made, but they would be shocked, at the time they were compromising with one another--slave owners and abolitionists, compromising to create this Republic that had never existed in an expanse as big as the Thirteen Colonies geographically or with as many people in the Thirteen Colonies geographically--for them to see this about 240 years later from coast to coast, 330 million people, the strongest military on the planet, the strongest economy on the planet, a place where people want to come--just as my mother and her parents came--to build opportunity for the next generation. That is incredibly special in the history of humankind. As I think my colleague from Florida was saying last night, we need to treat it with a little more care.

I am not just talking about the Senate. I am talking about our responsibility to provide oversight for this administration. I am talking about the importance for us to set an example for the children I saw last Friday at the naturalization ceremony, just as they are setting an example for us.

None of us is going to be here forever. We have a lot of work to do. There are a lot of people here and around the world who are counting on us to pull ourselves together and start making this place work.

I will finish by saying that I think in this world of social media, it is also critically important for us to remember the importance of edited content and the work that journalists do. There is not a class of school kids whom I don't impose at least that thought on, as they think about the research they are doing for their papers and the work we need to do as Senators.

I thank my colleagues for their indulgence. Thank you for allowing me to speak on this floor. It is a great privilege to be here, but it is a privilege we need to exercise in a way that actually reflects the values of this country and the expectations that the American people have for us to address their priorities.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.