Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded

Mr. President, Mr. Trump's poorly drawn and implemented Executive order blocking refugees from the United States sacrifices fundamental American values and does not make us safer.

For the first time in memory, the order imposes a ban on all refugees entering our country, many of whom are fleeing war or who risk persecution for their religious or political beliefs. The order affects many thousands of children, women, and men whom our government has vetted for years and cleared for rescue.

President Trump's action--taken in the first days of his new administration, for political reasons, without regard for real world consequences and without the expertise of our national security professionals or even some of those appointed by the President himself--represents a rare, but shameful, departure from a constitutional heritage that has made America strong and a beacon to oppressed people throughout the world.

For generations, immigrants and refugees have come to our country to flee religious persecution and to seek a better life. Indeed, these are the very people who founded our original colonies. Although, as now, we have occasionally failed to live up to our ideals, over generations the United States has accepted millions of refugees from around the world.

My own family is part of this story, as so many people's families in this Chamber are. My mom was born in Poland in 1938 while Nazi tanks massed at the border. She and her parents miraculously survived the Holocaust--one of the worst human events in history.

After the war, after arriving in Sweden and then Mexico City, they were able to come to New York City in 1950. They wanted to come to the United States because it was the only country in the world where they believed they could rebuild their shattered lives. And they did.

This weekend, my mom joined hundreds of thousands of Americans to call on the President to change course, knowing that our family's struggles in Europe require us to recognize the danger and persecution facing families throughout the Middle East today.

Out of a population of 22 million, almost 5 million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries--some to Europe--and have registered as refugees. More than half of those displaced are children.

According to the United Nations, more than half of the remaining Syrian population--6 million of them children--require assistance such as food, water, and health care. Nearly one in four people in Lebanon today--tonight--is a Syrian refugee, and the fourth largest city in Jordan is now a refugee camp.

In the wake of President Trump's refugee ban, it seems useful to ask--and I am sure the American people are asking--why are so many millions of people fleeing their homes, their countries, and their history?

They are doing it to save their lives--and, in many cases, their children's lives--from ISIS's medieval barbarism and Assad's unrelenting brutality. They seek to escape the murder, rape, detention, and torture they suffer because of their religion or their ethnicity or both.

Assad is their enemy. ISIS is their enemy. Today's refugees are fleeing the violence and extremism that threatens our own national security. Their enemies are our enemies. The same is true of the refugees from Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan.

Does this mean we have an obligation simply to open our borders to them? Of course not. We have a national security imperative to ensure that no terrorist tries to sneak into the United States as part of the refugee program.

I have long said that the burden of proof is not on the United States to accept a refugee. Rather, the refugee has the burden to demonstrate that they are not a threat to the United States. We have no obligation, nor should we, to take anything on faith. It is for this reason that refugees are more thoroughly vetted than anyone else entering the United States. They must pass stringent screening standards to ensure that they pose no threat, a process that can take up to 2 years.

First, the United Nations screens them and collects biometric data. Only those who pass that test are then referred to the United States. And, by the way, no refugee knows at that stage of the process to which country they will be referred--to the United States or to any other country that is accepting refugees. After that, multiple agencies-- including the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the State Department, and our intelligence agencies--conduct rigorous screenings. This process includes repeated biometric checks, several layers of biographical and background screening, health checks, and interviews. Syrian refugees, in particular, receive enhanced scrutiny through an additional security risk review by specially trained officers.

Out of the nearly 60,000 people referred to the United States, only about 12,000 have been accepted. Of those Syrian refugees accepted by the United States, three-quarters are women and children and half were under 13 in 2016.

We are the leader of the free world, a republic founded on the premise of religious freedom and a society that for generations has called out to the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to be free. That is who we are. Yet, in the name of fighting terrorism in his first week as President, Mr. Trump has sacrificed what has made us exceptional and has banned these children and their mothers from our shores.

These children are no different than Omran Daqneesh, whose distant stare from the back of an ambulance in Aleppo bore witness to the senseless violence he suffered; or Alan Kurdi, whose lifeless body on a Turkish beach condemned the worst savagery of humankind.

Once he learns the details--if he chooses to study them--if President Trump wishes to make our vetting even more extreme than it already is, I guess he may do so. But banning refugees and prioritizing immigration by religion or ethnicity simultaneously abandons our principles and weakens our counterterrorism efforts. It sends the wrong message to our Muslim partners who fight with us in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, including civilians in those countries who have risked their lives alongside our troops. It also hands ISIS a recruiting tool by fueling their narrative that the Western and Muslim worlds cannot coexist in peace.

If the President really wants to secure our borders and ensure extremists stay out of the country, there are far better alternatives, and they are alternatives that are not at war with who we are as Americans. We should work together to close security gaps in our Visa Waiver Program and partner with European countries to better track the flow of foreign fighters throughout Europe and the Middle East. We should also do more to counter the ability of terrorists to radicalize and recruit, both here at home and abroad. We should do more to equip our agencies with tools and capabilities to degrade the ability of terrorist organizations--in particular, ISIS--to persuade and inspire using social media. Congress should enact ideas passed by the Senate in 2013 to strengthen border security, double the number of border agents, and address visa overstays.

By tackling real vulnerabilities and investing in smart security solutions, we can secure not only our borders but also our values, and we will not repeat the darkest moments of our history when America turned away from those fleeing persecution around the world.

A year ago, I came to the Senate floor to share a note sent to me by my grandparents on my first birthday. It is a message that bears repeating tonight. The year was 1965--15 years after my mother and grandparents came to this country after surviving the horrors of the Holocaust in Poland. This is what they wrote:

The ancient Greeks gave the world the high ideals of

democracy, in search of which your dear mother and we came to

the hospitable shores of beautiful America in 1950. We have

been happy here ever since, beyond our greatest dreams and

expectations, with democracy, freedom, and love, and

humanity's greatest treasure. We hope that when you grow up,

you will help develop in other parts of the world a greater

understanding of these American values.

Like so many immigrants, my grandparents knew how special these American values are and how rare they are. We cannot take them for granted or subvert them for a political moment. These values make us who we are.

Edmund Burke once wrote: ``In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.''

This is a time when we can learn from the past errors and infirmities of humankind. We cannot turn our backs on women, children, and families who risk persecution, starvation, or death.

The President should rescind this Executive order. If not, the Senate should end the ban immediately and start a serious conversation on how to make our country safe again in a manner that is consistent with our fundamental values.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, how am I recorded?

Thank you, Mr. President. I vote no on behalf of the children--

--of Colorado.

Mr. President, I would like to welcome the Presiding Officer to the Senate and just say thank you very much for your willingness to sit here this evening. To my colleagues, thank you for being here. The hour is getting late so I am not going to take up a lot of time with my own words, but I did want to come to the floor and read the words of people who have written my office, Coloradans who took the trouble to tell me what their concerns were with this suggested repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Given the fact that they took the time to write, I wanted to have the opportunity to be here tonight to read their words into the Record. It matters to a lot of people in my State because more than 600,000 people are now insured in Colorado who were not insured before the Affordable Care Act. We have had one of the largest drops of the uninsured rate in the country. We have dropped from 14 percent to 7 percent, really importantly from the point of view of saving money. The amount of uncompensated care has gone down by 30 percent. So those are at the hospital. Those are statistics, but the letters tell the human dimension, the human story that so often is lost in the Chambers of this Capitol.

A letter from Kathryn from Denver who wrote:

The Affordable Care Act has been crucial to my family the

last several years. . . . My sister, a Type 1 diabetic since

age 10, is now a Colorado business owner.

The Affordable Care Act allowed her to pursue business

ownership because--for the first time in her life--she could

get individual health insurance coverage without being denied

due to her preexisting condition. ACA allowed her to leave

her full-time job and start a part-time business and get

benefits through ACA.

I truly believe so much good has begun to come from this

legislation and repealing it will have catastrophic

consequences for my family and for so many others.

Terry from Denver writes:

I am writing concerning the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In

2010, I left my conventional job and took a risk, forming a

company to perform engineering consulting services. Since

that time, I have helped multiple organizations improve the

safety and reliability of their products and consider my

efforts to be quite successful.

However, I would not have taken the chance to go off on my

own if it had not been for the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The ACA gave me options in health insurance that I would

not have had prior to its passage. There are millions of

people like me who count on the security of the ACA. These

people are entrepreneurs, freelancers, the self-employed,

early retirees, and the like who would not have health

insurance if not for the ACA.

Therefore, I am asking you to continue your support for the

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, it is a privilege to be here with my colleague from Colorado.

I rise to talk about our schools and really to talk about our values and our morality--what we stand for as a country--and to ask whether we are able to look forward and create a better future for our children.

To set the record straight, let me be clear. When it comes to our children, I have fallen short, you have fallen short, and this body has fallen short. Let me explain why.

We have learned in the last couple of weeks that over half of the public school children in this country are now poor enough that they qualify for free or reduced lunches at school--children who, through no fault of their own, are reaping the whirlwind of 15 years of stagnant middle-class family income and the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

By many measures, as the Presiding Officer knows, Colorado's economy leads the Nation. But even in our home State, we see more children living in poverty. In fact, the number of children in poverty is growing faster in Colorado than in most of the other 50 States.

As a country and as a State, we are making a lot of progress in a number of dimensions, but we are headed in the wrong direction when it comes to our kids. That is a bad sign for any country but particularly for a democracy that aspires to be the land of opportunity.

A girl in poverty in the United States is five times more likely to be a young single mother than a child from a middle-class family, and a boy in poverty is twice as likely to be incarcerated as his middle- class peers. Children from low-income families in this country are about three times less likely to graduate from high school. Someone from a family in poverty stands only a 9-in-100 chance of earning a college degree. Think about that. There are 100 seats in this Chamber. There are 100 desks in this Chamber. If they represented children living in poverty in the United States, that desk, that desk, that desk, those three desks, and three of those desks would represent college graduates. The entire rest of this Chamber would be people that would never earn a college degree or its equivalent and who would be constrained to the margins of our economy and our democracy as a result after that.

Interestingly enough, the equivalent number for children in the top quarter of income earners is almost 80 out of 100. So 80 of these desks from a more affluent family--80 of these desks would represent a person who graduated with a college degree or its equivalent, and 20 would represent people that had fallen short, but nine poor children would have a college degree. In other words, in a way that is profoundly at war with our founding ideals, poverty breeds deeper poverty, lack of educational achievement reaps deeper academic failure, and broken families are the surest predictor of more broken families in the next generation and the generations beyond that. This is a sentence of unequal opportunity for all poor Americans, no matter the color of their skin. It is a generational sentence for 7 out of 10 children who will remain at the bottom of the income scale their entire lives.

Are there people who defy these odds? Of course there are. As superintendent of the Denver public schools and in this job, I have met scores of children who have overcome the odds--sometimes alone--but often also with the help of a parent who wouldn't quit, a teacher who wouldn't take ``no'' for an answer, a former gang member whose sworn duty is to keep young people out of gangs, a philanthropist who insisted that Denver's kids would go to college. In these exceptional children I have seen the indomitable nature of the human spirit persevere against all odds and have recognized how little I and most of us have achieved by comparison.

I have met kids who take three buses both ways to school leaving as early as 5:30 in the morning just to have the benefit of a better school all the way on the other side of town, kids who can't get up in the morning because they have to work until 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock at night in a fast food restaurant to help pay the rent, kids who pour their heart and soul out into their studies and communities only to learn that college is not for them because of an immigration status they did not even know that they had.

I met kids who were the primary caregivers of younger brothers and sisters who are taking care of ailing parents and grandparents, who have made it to college for the first time in their family's history who are that 9 in 100, who represent the best of our human spirit. They are our heroes.

As one of our Denver public school students, Chaunsea Dyson from South High School, recently told a radio reporter, ``When you are growing up in poverty, when you are 15 or 16 that means you are grown.''

That means you are grown.

As the father of three girls who are 15, 14, and 10, I would say that is an awful lot to expect of a 16-year-old, especially one coming from circumstances few in this Chamber could overcome. My point is that while there are many heroic people in our schools--kids, teachers, principals--succeeding in our school system today, heroism is not a standard we tend to count on for the success of human enterprise. We simply can't scale heroism. I wish we could--but we can't--to address the scope of our achievement gap. It is too much to ask, and it is not fair to our kids who have no control over the circumstances of their birth.

I don't think there is one Member in this Chamber who could come and say that is not true, that a child could control somehow the circumstances of his or her birth, because one of the enduring truths of being a human being is that we don't get to choose our parents. We don't choose to be born into a home of wealth or poverty, a home that values books or learning or a home which for whatever reason does not. That is a matter of good and bad luck. Yet those circumstances beyond our children's control--absolutely beyond their control--today almost always determine educational outcomes in the United States of America.

So the question is, What is our obligation? What is our obligation as a nation to remedy the burden of bad luck for millions of American children?

I believe at a minimum it means we have a moral duty to assure that our less lucky children have educational opportunities that let them make the most of their God-given potential. That is certainly what I would want for my own daughters. If we are honest, then by any reckoning we are failing to meet this moral duty and I would say failing very badly. If we ask ourselves why we are failing to do our duty--how can this be--in my mind it comes down to a sad and simple reality: We are treating America's children as if they were someone else's children rather than our own.

To demonstrate this let's consider what conditions we have allowed to exist for a child born, through no fault of her own, into poverty in the United States of America in the year 2015. We know that by the age of 4 she will have heard 30 million fewer words than her more affluent peers--30 million. Ask any elementary schoolteacher in the country whether that will make a difference in how prepared she is for kindergarten. Fewer than half of poor children start school with the skills they need to be ready to succeed in kindergarten. Every elementary schoolteacher in America knows that. What are the odds her neighborhood school will meet her needs? How about a school 1 mile away? How about a school 5 miles away? It is not likely in many American cities and rural communities.

When she reaches the fourth grade her odds are no better. She is 9 years old and there are 30 children in her classroom. On average, 24 of her classmates cannot read at grade level--24 out of 30. Her chances of being a proficient reader--20 percent--one in five.

One in five poor children cannot read at grade level in the fourth grade in the United States of America this week, today, this year. Would any of us accept those odds or outcomes for our own children? Would any one person in this Chamber accept that? Would any of us still be in Washington engaged in the Potemkin debates we are having if our child couldn't read by the fourth grade? Of course not--of course we wouldn't. But we act as if it is not our children who are the casualties, and so we smile and we stroke our chins on the cable TV and pretend this is all somehow out of our hands, too hard to solve, someone else's problem.

Here is where it ends. In this knowledge-based global economy, this unforgiving global economy, only 9 out of 100 kids, as I said in poverty, will graduate with a college degree or its equivalent and 91 will not. These are the results we have produced for our children in this unforgiving global economy.

But for once let's put aside the finger-pointing and the blame-- although we should take our fair share of responsibility--and let's ask the questions our children might reasonably ask to judge their Nation's leaders.

For example, they might ask: Why do we trail behind 35 other developed countries in our math scores? Why does the United States rank 20th in increasing educational attainment from one generation to the next--20th; the least likely country to produce more educated people coming after us than there were before us.

Why are American children much more likely to be stuck in the economic class into which they are born than children in at least 12 other countries, including Canada, Japan, Germany, Australia, and Denmark?

These seem like reasonable questions. You wouldn't know they were on anybody's mind around here with what concerns us on this floor, but I can tell you it is of concern to people at home.

Why are we consigning, they might ask, our children and ourselves to a social economic framework that is increasing, not decreasing, inequality in this country, when other countries in the world are headed in the opposite direction?

Why are we putting up with a set of circumstances in which income and equality in America has grown significantly much faster than other industrialized countries in the world? If I were a child living in poverty in this country, those are the questions I would want to know, in addition to the fact that I can't find a school, not just down the street, not just in my neighborhood but in my city or even in the region of my State to go to. To put it another way, I can't find a school in my community that any Member of the Senate would be proud to send their child to.

Why can't I find that school?

I didn't pick my parents. That was a question of good luck or bad luck. In my case it was bad luck.

I know there are profound disagreements about whether the Federal, State or local government should serve our kids and how. I am even sympathetic, believe me, as a former school superintendent, to many arguments about how poorly Washington is often situated to help. But surely as a nation, one way or another, we have a moral obligation. That is our legacy as Americans ``in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . . . ''

Imagine how less powerful the Preamble to the Constitution would have been if it stopped with ourselves, period--but it didn't. It resolves the question in favor of our posterity--our posterity, not someone else's--our children, not someone else's. What would this debate sound like if we were serious about this moral obligation?

Without deciding today who would deliver and pay for these important social goods, something we should debate and understand, consult with our States and our school districts, our parents and our communities; but, without making those decisions today, if we just were treating the country's children as our own children, what would this debate sound like? What would we do?

We surely would provide every parent and her child with the choice to access early childhood education from birth to age 5 in order to attack that 30 million word deficit. Surely we would do that.

I am not saying we should do it. I don't think we should do that from here, but as a nation we should do that. Surely we would ensure that every child, without exception and regardless of where they live, has the choice to attend a high-performing school from kindergarten to 12th grade. Surely we would do that.

We would enable every young person, consistent with most of our postwar history, the chance to attain a college degree or other advanced technical training without bankrupting their family. I saw some data this weekend about this that showed that in 1975--and admittedly it was the high-water mark--the Pell grants covered roughly 76 percent of what it cost to go to college, the average cost of college. Do you know what that number is now? It is 22 percent, mostly because the cost of college has increased so much.

Bankruptcy is a real issue. These goals--early childhood education, a great K-12 school, affordable college--might seem obvious and even unimaginative to many of us in this Chamber, but that might be because we take them for granted for our own children. Of course we want high- quality early childhood education, of course we want a high-quality K- 12 school, of course we want our young people to have access to college without bankrupting our family, and that is the experience of a lot of people in this Chamber. The terrible reality for most poor children in America in 2015 is that these simple goals are as out of reach as flying to the Moon, all over this country.

Some say we can't afford to change, and I say we can't afford not to change. The costs of failure, as we know, are simply too high. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have had the greatest economy the world has ever known, and if we are to remain so in the 21st century, we must educate our people. We have no other choice. They are our greatest asset. We can do it.

I am not proposing today a new Federal program of any kind. However, I will say if it were left up to me, we would have a standing committee in the Senate focused exclusively on our children and their future. Such a committee would, for example, examine every funding stream in the Federal budget related to kids and ask what is working and what is not working. What redundancies exist? How are we going to align every single taxpayer dollar or tax credit to help support the health, education, and well-being of our children?

I suspect that in addition to increasing efficiency, we would decide to spend more of our resources in and around schools. That is where our kids are, after all, and that is where the people who have served them in our communities need to be instead of tied up in the redtape of compliance and outdated and unimaginative Federal rules and regulations.

In addition to that, we need to explore more efficient ways to finance social welfare programs, promote more creative ways to weave our social safety net in this country, and reform our criminal justice system. A good start would be to graduate children from high school, since around 80 percent of our prison inmates are high-school dropouts. That would help a lot. We need to better engage with the private and nonprofit sectors when the government isn't working well enough. This is all part of a broader but essential conversation, one this body continues to avoid while it wanders from one phony conflict to the next, and one that becomes more difficult and more expensive the longer we wait.

Our kids are waiting for us to have this conversation. We are wasting their time. It is one thing for us to waste our own time--although the capacity for doing that around here is beyond belief--but we ought to stop wasting our kids' time. As I said, it is only going to become more difficult and more expensive the longer we wait.

In the meantime, we have before us the potential to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary School Act. Fixing so-called No Child Left Behind is only one piece of the puzzle. Given where we are, this is all pretty modest stuff. There are some very encouraging signs, although the law has plenty of flaws. In fact, I said many times that if we had a rally out in front of the Capitol to keep No Child Left Behind the

same--if that is what the rally was for--not a single person in America would show up for that rally.

Incidentally, while we have this reauthorization in front of us, it is a reauthorization that should have happened 7 years ago. It expired 7 years ago. We are running education policy in this country by waivers from the Department of Education because this Congress cannot do its job. Almost 40 of 50 States have waivers from the law as it exists today. Let's change the law. Let's write it properly. Let's do our work around here instead of spending our time on things the American people don't want us to spend our time on.

Although everybody loves to hate No Child Left Behind, and I put myself in that category, it has some good things. It required us to face the facts about how our kids in poverty are doing in our schools. It shed light for the first time on the achievement gap--the brutal achievement gap--we have in this country, and some school districts stepped up. Denver Public Schools is one such district.

Over the last decade, Denver Public Schools has implemented a number of changes and has seen real results. My schoolboard and my principals and my teachers and our kids and I would be the first to say we have not yet gotten to a place where you can say the ZIP Code you were born into doesn't determine the education you are going to get, but we are a lot closer in Denver. We are a lot closer there than we are in a lot of other cities in this country. We have seen some real results.

Almost 30 percent more students graduated and went to college last year than in 2005. That is not enough. We are not satisfied with that. But if you could say that about every single city in this country, that we were graduating and sending 30 percent more students to college than we were in 2005, that might give us some hope for the future. That might suggest that some outcomes other than the ones we have been seeing with the result of 9 out of 100 poor kids getting a college degree is not where we have to end up, is not where we have to land.

I am here to tell you, not as a U.S. Senator, but as someone who was a superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, this is possible. It is possible to change these outcomes in urban districts and in rural districts for children who are unlucky enough to be born into poverty in the greatest Nation on the planet--unlucky enough to be born poor and not born rich.

Denver has recognized the importance of providing access to high- quality, early childhood education, and now an estimated 70 percent of Denver's 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool. That was not true in 2005.

As the Presiding Officer knows, we live in a State that doesn't require or pay for 5-year-olds to go to kindergarten. That is a shame. But because of the changes we made in Denver, our 5-year-olds go to kindergarten--a full day if they want it, which most of them do--and 70 percent of the fourth graders in Denver have early childhood education, and it is not only delivered by the Denver Public Schools, but by other providers as well and the Denver public schools.

This seems to be having an effect as kids who attend the Denver preschool program track higher in school readiness. They know more about the alphabet, words, and books. They have a higher vocabulary and are able to comprehend basic math. And in kindergarten, first, and second grade, they showed better literacy and math skills than their peers.

The dropout rate in Denver has decreased since 2005 by 60 percent. Incidentally, the teen pregnancy rate has also fallen by 60 percent. Denver Public Schools has gone from being the district with the lowest rate of academic growth among major districts in the State to the highest for 3 straight years. I am not taking responsibility for that. I am here, not there.

Last year DPS students from low-income families had stronger growth in math and writing than nonfree- and reduced-lunch students Statewide. And Denver's nonfree- and reduced-lunch students showed more growth than their State counterparts in math by nine points.

This was once labeled the failing school district in our State, but because of the data that we have as a result of No Child Left Behind, we can actually see what is happening--which kids are growing and which kids are not, which schools are driving growth among kids and which schools are not.

You can look at a map of our city and find a school that looks just like your low-performing school with the same percentage of free- and reduced-lunch kids where kids are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. Then what parents can do is say: I want that school, not this school, for my kid. Because we have a robust system of choice in Denver, parents are able to take advantage of that data, and we simply would not have had the proliferation of high-performing charter schools if it had not been for No Child Left Behind. In addition, Denver has gone beyond that.

We have 33 innovation schools where teachers and administrators have the flexibility to modernize their teaching practices and have more autonomy to make decisions at the school level to better meet the needs of individual students. And it is not just Denver. We have seen progress all across the country--not remotely enough, but we have seen progress, and we cannot go backward.

In the 3 decades prior to No Child Left Behind being passed--30 years--the average 9-year-old's reading score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress increased only 4 points--4 points in 30 years. Is that acceptable? Contrast that to the gains from 1990 to 2012, which is roughly the life of No Child Left Behind. During that span, 9-year-olds gained 9 points in reading, about 7 times as much annual progress. We have seen similar progress in math--9-year-olds only increased 2 points from 1990 to 1999, but from 1999 to 2012, they gained 12 points. In that same span, African-American students improved by 15 points and Latino students improved by 21 points.

The achievement gap shrunk as well. In reading, the gap between White and African-American 9-year-old students dropped from 35 to 23 points. It is still too big, but it is moving in the right direction. This represents progress, but as I have said, in the face of stiff competition worldwide, it is nowhere near enough.

Since the year 2000, we have dropped from second to twelfth in the world in the production of college graduates. We need to write a bill that builds on our successes and turns us away from the failed practices of the past, and we cannot do it if we are constrained by the typical politics--the small politics of Washington. We cannot afford to have the same tired fights. We won't always agree on everything, but I know we can find a way to pass a bill that helps our schools and school districts to make the decisions they think are best for the kids they are educating.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 7 more minutes.

I appreciate the indulgence of my colleague from Louisiana.

In a significant demonstration of leadership around here, Chairman Alexander and Senator Murray have told us they intend to write a bipartisan bill. Their process has the potential to be a rare exception to the gridlock that has gripped this Senate, along with our bipartisan work on the farm bill and immigration.

Senators Alexander and Murray have both expressed a willingness to work together because they appreciate the importance of this task. They understand the consequences of failure. They know enough about this issue, and they care enough about it.

In January of 1941, during one of the Nation's most difficult times-- the height of the Great Depression and on the eve of our entry into the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt declared that there were four universal freedoms that all persons possessed--freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Today, in the 21st century, some of these freedoms may be obtainable, but an honest assessment tells us it would be impossible to achieve all of them without something additional, and that is freedom from ignorance. In the end, freedom from ignorance is the surest relief from the shackles of poverty.

Where does this leave us as we begin this important but long overdue national conversation on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act?

First, for all the reasons I have mentioned, America's children would benefit if we treated our work less as legislators than as parents and grandparents with a real stake in the outcome of what we decide.

Second, we must be clear-eyed about the Federal Government's proper role in American education and what is not. As a superintendent, I learned there are many things the Federal Government cannot and should not do when it comes to educating our children. And above all else, Washington cannot and should not micromanage our schools or our school districts or cultivate systems driven by compliance rather than creativity.

I believe the evidence of our failures and our successes over the last 15 years suggest three primary Federal responsibilities: equity, accountability, and innovation. After all, the deep and intractable inequities that persisted along lines of race and class and geography in America of the 1960s drove Lyndon Johnson to pass the first Elementary and Secondary Schools Act. They drove the creation of title I, specific funds targeted to the kids who needed the greatest support.

Sadly, for all the reasons I said, half a century later the data reveals these profound inequities persist and our students need our help now more than ever. But there is also reason for hope in this data, and maybe that is the most important message I can bring. We now have evidence that sustains support to make the difference in closing the pernicious gaps that remain for low-income kids around the country. Our deep commitment to equity, therefore, is as important today as it was in 1963.

This means not just committing title I resources, but continuing to expand efforts to open the best schools and attract the best teachers and principals to our communities in the greatest need. In particular, we must help teachers who are saying they want better preparation, they want an excellent principal in their school, they want a better compensation system and opportunities for leadership that allow them to continue working with students.

At DPS we have made some strides. We created the Denver Teacher Residency Program and introduced differentiated pay. We used Federal innovation dollars to help us improve and expand early on. We are creating leadership roles for teachers who demonstrate results with their students. We survey our teachers every year, and their satisfaction rates are higher than the national average. But there is still much more for us to do.

Second, those of us working in the field know we must have a clear, shared system of accountability, a system that allows us to monitor, understand, and improve outcomes for students. This requires annual assessments that monitor progress and growth across all our cities and States. It requires breaking down data to show how and if we are closing the gaps for all students in our school districts. It means requiring States to take courageous action to turn around those schools that consistently fail our children.

That is not just about paying attention to how we are serving our low-income students in Detroit or Denver. It means examining how well we serve our historically disadvantaged students even when they live in some of the most advantaged neighborhoods. As we do this, we need to work to reduce the amount of testing in our schools. As the father of three daughters in the Denver public schools, I am concerned about how much they are tested. But as their father, I also want to know every year how they are doing against a set of rigorous standards and compared to kids in Denver, across Colorado, and around the world. Will they be ready for college? Do they have the skills they need to succeed in this global economy?

Third, we have learned over the last decade there is a vital Federal role when it comes to innovation in our schools. We can help provide the preconditions for success by providing incentives for educators on the ground to apply their own creative thinking to address our most persistent education problems.

I say to my colleague from Louisiana, through the Chair, I am coming to the end. I owe him 10 minutes whenever he would like it. I thank him for his indulgence.

We will never solve the challenges our teachers and students face in Washington, period. We will not do it from here. We can help local leaders break free from a status quo that will never succeed for enough of America's children.

We should help identify the challenges, provide resources to local educators to overcome them in the context that works best for their communities and their students, and we should continue to be the clearinghouse that gathers these stories of successful innovation and provide the resources to invest in scaling what works and sharing these practices across communities and States.

Equity, accountability, innovation--that is our charge and the commitment we must keep if we are to build an America where we treat every child as if she were our own.

As a parent myself, I am well aware the first responsibility any parent has is the education of her child. I am also aware that many people believe a bad education is just one more outcome produced by corrosive poverty in this country. Fix poverty, and you will fix education. Maybe so, but that is cold comfort for millions of children in our schools today.

In the end, we have a duty as a nation to ensure that education liberates our children, rather than reinforces the circumstances into which they were born. In that sense, America's children are our children, our responsibility, not someone else's. Can you really accept an America in which your little girl has just a 1-in-5 chance of being able to read well or a 9-in-100 chance to graduate from college? Can you really demand heroism as a precondition for success? If this were your child, would you still be in the Senate, or would you go home and solve the problem?

It has been said the future has no lobby in Washington, DC. Are we really content to have that depressing observation be the ultimate verdict on our leadership? I doubt we are. I would raise this as a bipartisan challenge as I close.

I know the Senator from Louisiana knows a lot about what I came to talk about today, and I look forward to working with him on the health committee.

Here is my bipartisan challenge. Let's forge a lobby for the future. Let's agree that the obligation we owe the Founders is to create more opportunity, not less, for the children coming after us. Let's pledge that every child in America is our child, and our future rests with her, as it most assuredly does.

I yield the floor.

I thank my friend from North Carolina for his efforts, and I wish to echo a lot of the points he already made so well, especially about how we stand here today having this fair, reasonable, unanimous consent request that the Senator from North

Carolina has asked for, as we stand here today when essentially what we are talking about is a promise that has been broken by this Congress to the American people for 50 years.

I thank, through the Chair, my colleague from North Carolina for trying to rectify that.

I am disappointed that our unanimous consent request was objected to, but I know this measure has plenty of support. As he mentioned, we led an amendment on the floor last week with the exact same text of the bill that we are discussing today. When the dust settled, that amendment received 59 votes, but I have a hunch that it would comfortably clear the 60-vote threshold were it to be considered again. And it should be considered again.

The measure is simple. As Senator Burr said, it simply reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund and ensures that a dedicated portion of LWCF funds go to provide new access for our Nation's sports men and women.

As most in this body know, LWCF is one of the country's best conservation programs. It provides $900 million annually to preserve our public lands and increase access to them. Not only do we need to pass this bill to reauthorize the program, but we need to ensure that we dedicate full and mandatory funding to the initiative, as Congress intended when we created the program in 1964.

Historically, LWCF resources have been used for all types of projects, ranging from building city parks to purchasing small parcels of isolated land from willing sellers and all the way to preserving our Nation's historic battlefields.

In Colorado, we have used LWCF for a wide variety of projects beyond traditional conservation. For example, LWCF was of critical importance to our State following a major natural disaster in 1976. That year an intense rainstorm caused massive flooding around Colorado's Big Thompson River. The flood claimed the lives of 145 Coloradans and caused more than $35 million in damages.

Once the horrible tragedy passed, the community had to rebuild. Rather than constructing houses back in the flood plain, Larimer County turned to LWCF to acquire the affected land and compensated the families whose homes were destroyed.

Those flood plains are now home to four new county parks--popular destinations for birdwatchers, anglers, and family picnics--instead of vulnerable structures. When another huge flood hit in the fall of 2013, the rivers ran black and eventually surged over their banks, as we can see from this photo I have in the Chamber.

Luckily, the flood plains, protected by LWCF and the creativity of our local folks, saw much less damage this time. The floodwaters inundated the open, undeveloped spaces instead of destroying homes and businesses, and Larimer County avoided about $16 million in estimated property damages.

It is incredible to think that an LWCF investment of just over $1 million in 1976 saved us more than 15 times that amount in 2013.

Beyond the example from Larimer County, communities all across Colorado have used LWCF to preserve sensitive landscapes and to help their local economies. This past summer, we completed a huge LWCF project in the San Juan National Forest near the town of Ophir. I spoke briefly about this project last week, and I will mention it again today because the work of the town of Ophir and the people of Ophir, along with their partners, the Trust for Public Land, were truly remarkable.

If memory serves, it is a project that took 12 years from start to finish. It had to be done in phases. LWCF funds were used to acquire several old mining claims above town, preserving the scenic beauty and ensuring that the area will remain undeveloped forever.

In this picture, if you ignore the center with these people in front of me, we can see how beautiful it is. This is a picture of the newly preserved landscape in Ophir. A group of us gathered to celebrate the accomplishment this past summer.

Most of these mountain communities get huge portions of their revenue and business from recreation and tourism. It is for some of these reasons that the town felt the Land and Water Conservation Fund literally helped secure their economic future.

This is a small, rural community in my home State. It is far away from this floor. LWCF has made a huge difference for Ophir.

These are two stories from Colorado, but I know they have been replicated thousands of times across the country and in all 50 States. Those stories and accomplishments alone make this bill worth supporting.

As I mentioned earlier, Congress wrote and passed LWCF in 1964, and it is beyond time to reauthorize it. Senator Burr has shown great leadership in crafting a bill to do just that.

Conservation policies--from LWCF to farm bill easement programs, from wilderness to national parks--are important to the American people. The American people support this work. Protecting our land and water is part of our everyday lives in Colorado, and I know our State is not the only one.

Conserved lands and wide-open spaces are a huge economic driver across the country, a huge part of our culture. They are who we are in the West. We should do right by the American people and reauthorize this program as soon as possible. Then we ought to work together to ensure that LWCF gets the full and mandatory funding going forward that was promised 50 years ago by Congress.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Laura Sherman, a fellow in my office, be given floor privileges for the remainder of this session.

Mr. President, I rise to oppose the Daines amendment. While I respect the perspective of my colleague from Montana, this amendment does nothing to support the Land and Water Conservation Fund. If you really want to support LWCF, you ought to support the bipartisan Burr amendment which we will consider in a few minutes. Instead of actually solving the problem, the Daines measure creates more delay for delay's sake and says LWCF should be a priority but undermines the very notion by suggesting there is something wrong with the program.

For once we have a program where there actually is nothing wrong with it. It has been one of our Nation's most successful conservation programs for 50 years, funding projects in every State and literally every single county in the United States. These are projects that range from creating new parks for inner city kids, to providing new access to sportsmen, to protecting the Nation's historic battlefields. We don't need to overhaul LWCF, we just need to reauthorize it and let the program's proven track record of success continue.

I would urge my colleagues to vote no on the Daines amendment before us now, but vote yes on the bipartisan Burr amendment to follow.

I yield the floor.

I congratulate the Presiding Officer, and I also congratulate Chairman Hatch for the unanimous vote he got in today's markup in the Finance Committee. It was a great bipartisan start to our work, as he said. I hope we will continue to have these discussions in that manner.

Amendment No. 92, as Modified

Mr. President, I wish to speak today about the Burr- Bennet amendment No. 92, which we are slated to vote on later today. I will be brief because it is pretty straightforward.

The amendment simply reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund and ensures that a dedicated portion of LWCF funds go to provide new access for our Nation's sports men and women.

As many in this body know, the Land and Water Conservation Fund is one of the country's best and most important conservation programs. It is authorized to provide $900 million annually for efforts to preserve and increase access to our public lands and waterways. These resources historically have been used for projects that range from building city parks, to purchasing small parcels of isolated land from willing sellers, all the way to preserving the Nation's historic battlefields.

This past summer in Colorado, we completed a huge LWCF project that retired several old mining claims on the San Juan National Forest near the town of Ophir.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, the town invited me and my family to join them in a celebration of the accomplishment, and we took them up on that offer without a moment's hesitation.

Ophir sits at 9,600 feet above sea level. It is the kind of place that has a sign on its main road--clearly painted by the kids who live in the town--indicating that their population totals 163 people, including, according to the sign, 55 kids, 30 dogs, and 15 cats. When we pulled in on the morning of the celebration, it seemed to me that the entire town was there. Over the course of that day--which included a hike, a picnic, and a formal program--it was amazing to hear from the community about the importance of this LWCF project and how many years so many people in the town devoted themselves to getting it done.

Many of our mountain communities get huge portions of their revenue and business through recreation and tourism, and it is for some of these reasons that the town felt LWCF literally helped cement its economic future.

I was an LWCF supporter before that visit, but that day really drove home the value of the program to me. That is only one of countless stories from Colorado. I know it can be replicated thousands of times across the country in all 50 States. Those stories and accomplishments alone make this amendment worth supporting.

Let's also remember that when we are talking about LWCF, we are not talking about taxpayer dollars. When Congress crafted the measure back in 1965, they had a very innovative solution for how to pay for their concept. Instead of using taxpayer dollars from the Treasury, they decided to dedicate a portion of the revenue the government collects from offshore oil drilling to fund LWCF. This argument was very simple and elegant.

As we deplete our natural resources--offshore reserves of oil and gas in this case--we ought to support the conservation of another natural resource: our lands and waterways. As I mentioned, Congress passed a law in 1965, and now it is time to reauthorize it. I thank Senator Burr, who has shown great leadership in crafting the amendment to do just that.

This amendment is thoroughly bipartisan and enjoys cosponsors such as Senator Ayotte, Senator Alexander, and Senator Tillis, just to name a few. In fact, I am told there are 246 amendments that have been filed on this bill, and not one amendment has the number of cosponsors that this amendment does. This amendment has more cosponsors than any of the remaining 245 amendments.

Before I close and urge my colleagues to vote yes, I want to paraphrase something I said on the floor last week about another amendment. Conservation policies such as LWCF are important to the American people. Protecting our land and water is mom-and-apple-pie stuff in Colorado, and I know our State is not the only one. Conserved lands and wide-open spaces are a huge economic driver across our country, and it is part of who we are in the West.

We are not only talking about backcountry parcels, such as the one I visited in Ophir, we are talking about building new parks in inner cities and providing new access to hunters and anglers. The LWCF does all of these things and more.

I say to my colleagues, if you are for city kids getting a new playground or making sure we protect gold medal trout streams or any number of benefits in between, then you need to be for amendment No. 92 from Senator Burr. I urge all of my colleagues to support the measure when it comes time for a vote later this evening. I think we would make a very meaningful statement about where the Senate is headed if we could supply the votes necessary to actually adopt this amendment.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

I congratulate the Presiding Officer for sitting in that chair.

Amendment No. 18

I wish to speak about the Fischer amendment which is slated to be voted on at some point. While I respect where my neighbor from Nebraska is coming from with this effort, the proposal unfortunately misses the mark by a mile.

The amendment would set up a new and unprecedented process for protective land designations. It says the Secretary of the Interior or Agriculture has to publish in the Federal Register two findings before any congressional protections on public lands would go into effect. First, the Secretary has to find that new, protected land would not adversely affect our efforts to administer existing protected land. Second, the Department has to have ``sufficient resources''--whatever that is--to implement plans for existing protected land. While perhaps innocuous sounding, these would be huge changes in how we do business around here.

Coming from a State that is over a third Federal land, I prefer that drastic reform proposals such as this at least have the benefit of a committee hearing before we vote on them on the floor. That way, we can hear expert testimony as to whether this is a good idea or consider ways we might be able to improve the measure. But as far as I know, this language hasn't had a hearing in this Congress, or any other Congress, for that matter.

Proponents of this amendment are going to argue it simply ensures that our land agencies can afford to keep up with the maintenance of new protected lands. Listen, I am the first--and I have been on this floor year after year after year talking about the fiscal condition of this country--to believe we need more fiscal discipline around

here, but this is not the way we should get it. I am also a huge believer that we shouldn't be overburdening these agencies, and we shouldn't be overregulating through them, either.

Unfortunately, this amendment takes a hatchet when the absolute most that is needed, if anything, is a surgical fix. In fact, under the amendment, the opponents of protected lands could reduce funding for our land agencies through the appropriations process and then turn around and say the Secretary got a veto of the new proposals because sufficient resources aren't available. As one of my friends from Colorado said in the paper this morning: ``This amendment would be a one-two punch--first starve conservation agencies of needed funding and then block any new protections.''

This amendment is drafted in a way that it leaves huge discretion to a future Secretary to approve or veto protections that Congress has seen fit to create. If the amendment passed, nothing would stop a future Secretary from finding that every single conservation bill this Congress has passed should not take effect, all because he or she failed to publish the vague set of findings laid out in this proposal.

Historically, we don't give a member of the executive branch any discretion as to whether they implement the laws that Congress passes and that the President has signed. Yet, this measure would do just that.

I think keeping that historical precedent--where the legislative branch makes the laws and the executive branch implements them--is important. We have heard a lot about that on this floor recently, particularly in a case such as this where we are talking about our national heritage.

Coloradans, and all Americans, love their public lands and want to see more done to protect them. Instead, this amendment creates new layers of redtape and makes enacting protective designations even more difficult than it has been.

Once again, I wish to say on this floor that I appreciate the effort of the Senator from Nebraska and I would be happy to work with her to address some of her concerns. But I would argue that the investments we make in our public lands are worthwhile ones, and I would invite anyone in this Chamber to come to Colorado and see what I am speaking about.

Protected lands and wide-open spaces are a huge driver of economic growth all across our country. They help sustain a $600 billion outdoor recreation economy, and a lot of those businesses, for obvious reasons, are headquartered in Colorado. On top of the economic benefits, wilderness areas, national monuments, and national parks are a fundamental part of the fabric of our country and of our country's history. It is important to preserve these lands for our kids and our grandkids, just as our grandparents preserved them for us. It is worth investing some money to do that so the next generation and the one after that can experience the greatness that all Americans feel when they first visit the Grand Canyon or Rocky Mountain National Park, or Chimney Rock National Monument, or the Everglades, or wherever we find the next beautiful or historically significant area that Congress or the President decides to protect.

This discussion is actually a timely one because just this past December we passed a large package of conservation measures into law on a bipartisan basis. That package included a bill that we worked on in Colorado called the Hermosa Creek Watershed Protection Act. Let me say at the outset that our office may have introduced that bill in Congress, but it was really the people I represent in southwest Colorado who wrote that bill. This legislation grew from the grassroots up from day one--Republicans, Democrats, Independents working together to cement a long-term plan for their community's future. Not only was it bipartisan at the local level, but also in Congress. My friend Scott Tipton championed the bill on the House side.

The Hermosa Creek Watershed deserved to be protected. That is why the community came together to keep it just as it is. That was the plan in the community, and that is what our bill finally accomplished at the end of the last Congress. However, if we were to pass the amendment in front of us today, all the hard work that went into passing the Hermosa bill could be undone by the Secretary of the Interior. Every single meeting that took place in southwest Colorado, every single conversation that led to the improvement of this legislation--all of that could be gone in an instant, not because the Congress undoes the law but because some administrator, using their fiat, is able to undo the law. It is unlikely--I can't say this for sure, but it is unlikely that person is going to have any idea what is in the Hermosa Creek bill or any of the other bills we have worked on in the past. That is just simply not how we do business around here, and there is a good reason for that.

I am compelled, therefore, to urge other Senators in this body to please oppose the Fischer amendment so we can avoid such a scenario. Rejecting the amendment will preserve our conservation legacy--a legacy that goes straight back to President Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, who signed the Antiquities Act into law in 1906. It includes the formal establishment of the national park system almost 100 years ago.

This is an extraordinarily beautiful country that we all have the privilege to represent. We ought to encourage conservation efforts, not make them harder to achieve. We ought to build on the legacy of generations of Americans and generations in this body of Republicans and Democrats working together to preserve our natural heritage.

I will, therefore, oppose the Fischer amendment when it comes up for a vote, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

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

Mr. President, I am delighted to be on the floor today with, among others, Senator Alexander, who has worked so hard on the bill we are talking about today. Through the Chair, I want to wish him well in his new role as chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on which I serve. He is quite right to have said this bill came to us as a result of testimony in front of that committee by a variety of witnesses but all of whom agreed that the current system is completely unwieldy. I would also like to thank the other cosponsors--Senators Burr, Booker, Isakson, and King--for joining the efforts and for being here today as well.

I first became aware of this problem when I was superintendent of the Denver public schools. We had a couple who very generously donated $50 million for scholarships for kids who were graduating from the Denver public schools and who had applied to college. One of the things we learned in that process was how terrible the process was for filling out the financial aid forms for the Federal Government. That was a requirement we had for people to be able to be eligible for this scholarship. We literally had to put new rooms in our schools, in our high schools, and staff them with people in order to fill out these forms.

Every year tens of thousands of students and parents in Colorado and millions more across the country fill out the FAFSA as part of the college application process. It is the gateway to financial aid. By some estimates, over 2 million people who are eligible for financial aid and Pell grants do not get it simply because of the complexity of the form.

I ask unanimous consent to show some demonstrative evidence.

Here is this year's form. It is a different color than the one we had last year. This is the form a student has to fill out-- 108 questions. This is the instruction manual that goes with the form, which is something in the neighborhood of 66 pages long. It is very tiny print.

To be honest, the ridiculousness of this form would be funny if it were not for the lost time, money, and energy our country spends on it. Here are some of the examples of the questions families have to put up with on this form. Several times there are questions about income. We have been told by the witnesses we had that we only need two questions. There are a number of questions about income, investments, and assets. Each requires notes and instructions which are contained in here.

Question 36: What was your and your spouse's adjusted gross income for 2014?

Question 37: Enter your and your spouse's income tax for 2014.

Question 39: How much did you earn from working in 2014?

Question 40: How much did your spouse earn from working in 2014?

It is ridiculous.

The questions become even more complicated.

Question 42: As of today, what is the net worth of your and your spouse's investments, including real estate but don't including the home you live in?

That is the kind of reaction we get all over the country when we talk about this at home.

The instruction form here says, for question No. 43, the net worth of businesses and/or investments.

Business or farm value includes the current market value of

land, buildings, machinery, equipment, inventory, et cetera.

Do not include your primary farm. Do not include the net

worth of a family-owned and controlled small business with

more than 100 full-time or full-time equivalent employees.

Just to make it really clear, in dark print, bolded print, it says: business/farm value minus business/farm debt equals net worth of business. This is as complicated as any tax form.

At a time when the demands of the global economy require us to have more college access, not less, it is a shame that this bureaucratic piling up of questions is making it harder and harder for people to go to college.

So I think this is going to be great for our students, to get it down to a postcard that has two questions. The estimate is that the time saved by moving away from this existing form is the equivalent of 50,000 jobs that could be spent actually providing college guidance to young people who will now have the benefit of knowing, as Senator Alexander said so eloquently, what financial aid they will be eligible for in their junior year before they apply to college rather than waiting until their senior year, until they have already been admitted to college. That makes no sense to the people we represent, and there is a reason for it--it is because it makes no sense.

My hope is that this is a bill we will be able to move this year. Again, I thank Senator Alexander for his tremendous leadership.

Mr. President, I again say thank you to the chairman of the HELP Committee for all his leadership and his work dealing with this form. We have been after this for about 1 year.

This might be a quiet bill, as Senator King said earlier, but in my travels around the State I can't find anybody who is unhappy with this legislation except for the people who have already filled out the form, who are asking: Where were you 5 years ago when I was having to do this for my students or where were you when I was having to fill this out for my college education?

It makes absolutely no sense. I am sure many of these questions are well intentioned, but what we have learned in the hearings we have had, in the testimony, is they are not necessary. If

they are not necessary, we shouldn't be asking them. Our students would be a lot better off spending their time figuring out what college they want to attend, figuring out what course of study they want to undertake than spending their time with this bureaucratic nightmare.

I am enormously optimistic that we are going to get this passed with the chairman's leadership, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on that. I would like to thank the Senator from New Jersey again for signing on as one of the original cosponsors.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am delighted to be on the floor today with, among others, Senator Alexander, who has worked so hard on the bill we are talking about today. Through the Chair, I want to wish him well in his new role as chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on which I serve. He is quite right to have said this bill came to us as a result of testimony in front of that committee by a variety of witnesses but all of whom agreed that the current system is completely unwieldy. I would also like to thank the other cosponsors--Senators Burr, Booker, Isakson, and King--for joining the efforts and for being here today as well.

I first became aware of this problem when I was superintendent of the Denver public schools. We had a couple who very generously donated $50 million for scholarships for kids who were graduating from the Denver public schools and who had applied to college. One of the things we learned in that process was how terrible the process was for filling out the financial aid forms for the Federal Government. That was a requirement we had for people to be able to be eligible for this scholarship. We literally had to put new rooms in our schools, in our high schools, and staff them with people in order to fill out these forms.

Every year tens of thousands of students and parents in Colorado and millions more across the country fill out the FAFSA as part of the college application process. It is the gateway to financial aid. By some estimates, over 2 million people who are eligible for financial aid and Pell grants do not get it simply because of the complexity of the form.

I ask unanimous consent to show some demonstrative evidence.

Here is this year's form. It is a different color than the one we had last year. This is the form a student has to fill out-- 108 questions. This is the instruction manual that goes with the form, which is something in the neighborhood of 66 pages long. It is very tiny print.

To be honest, the ridiculousness of this form would be funny if it were not for the lost time, money, and energy our country spends on it. Here are some of the examples of the questions families have to put up with on this form. Several times there are questions about income. We have been told by the witnesses we had that we only need two questions. There are a number of questions about income, investments, and assets. Each requires notes and instructions which are contained in here.

Question 36: What was your and your spouse's adjusted gross income for 2014?

Question 37: Enter your and your spouse's income tax for 2014.

Question 39: How much did you earn from working in 2014?

Question 40: How much did your spouse earn from working in 2014?

It is ridiculous.

The questions become even more complicated.

Question 42: As of today, what is the net worth of your and your spouse's investments, including real estate but don't including the home you live in?

That is the kind of reaction we get all over the country when we talk about this at home.

The instruction form here says, for question No. 43, the net worth of businesses and/or investments.

Business or farm value includes the current market value of

land, buildings, machinery, equipment, inventory, et cetera.

Do not include your primary farm. Do not include the net

worth of a family-owned and controlled small business with

more than 100 full-time or full-time equivalent employees.

Just to make it really clear, in dark print, bolded print, it says: business/farm value minus business/farm debt equals net worth of business. This is as complicated as any tax form.

At a time when the demands of the global economy require us to have more college access, not less, it is a shame that this bureaucratic piling up of questions is making it harder and harder for people to go to college.

So I think this is going to be great for our students, to get it down to a postcard that has two questions. The estimate is that the time saved by moving away from this existing form is the equivalent of 50,000 jobs that could be spent actually providing college guidance to young people who will now have the benefit of knowing, as Senator Alexander said so eloquently, what financial aid they will be eligible for in their junior year before they apply to college rather than waiting until their senior year, until they have already been admitted to college. That makes no sense to the people we represent, and there is a reason for it--it is because it makes no sense.

My hope is that this is a bill we will be able to move this year. Again, I thank Senator Alexander for his tremendous leadership.

Mr. President, I again say thank you to the chairman of the HELP Committee for all his leadership and his work dealing with this form. We have been after this for about 1 year.

This might be a quiet bill, as Senator King said earlier, but in my travels around the State I can't find anybody who is unhappy with this legislation except for the people who have already filled out the form, who are asking: Where were you 5 years ago when I was having to do this for my students or where were you when I was having to fill this out for my college education?

It makes absolutely no sense. I am sure many of these questions are well intentioned, but what we have learned in the hearings we have had, in the testimony, is they are not necessary. If

they are not necessary, we shouldn't be asking them. Our students would be a lot better off spending their time figuring out what college they want to attend, figuring out what course of study they want to undertake than spending their time with this bureaucratic nightmare.

I am enormously optimistic that we are going to get this passed with the chairman's leadership, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on that. I would like to thank the Senator from New Jersey again for signing on as one of the original cosponsors.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my colleagues.

Madam President, I rise to discuss an amendment regarding natural gas that was adopted earlier this year by the Senate Finance Committee and was included in the Senate-passed highway bill. I wish it were included in one of the year-end measures this body is passing in the next few days. This is a bipartisan proposal that passed the Senate overwhelmingly and deserves to be enacted before we conclude this Congress.

The measure--a bill we worked on with Senator Burr from North Carolina--would equalize the tax treatment of liquefied natural gas, LNG, and diesel fuel. The federal highway excise tax on both diesel and LNG is set at 24.3 cents per gallon. However, because LNG contains less energy per gallon than diesel fuel, on an energy equivalent basis, LNG effectively pays 170 percent of the diesel tax rate. The current highway excise tax treatment of LNG is a disincentive to investment in new LNG trucks and fueling stations, and should be corrected to encourage capital investments and help diversify transportation fuel choices.

LNG is a transportation fuel used for large trucks and some marine and rail vessels. The fuel has attracted the attention of fleet operators due to its low cost at the pump and reduced environmental impact. LNG produces significantly lower levels of toxic emissions than diesel fuel, including lower levels of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. Using LNG instead of

diesel fuel also reduces pollution from so-called ``black carbon,'' also known as soot. Black carbon is a major contributor to climate change, second only to carbon dioxide in the amount of heat it traps in the atmosphere once emitted.

This amendment would change the highway excise tax and the Inland Waterways Financing rate on LNG so that the tax is imposed on the energy content of a diesel gallon, known as a diesel gallon equivalent, rather than strictly on a per-gallon basis. LNG has huge potential as a cheaper, cleaner, domestic energy source and we need to ensure our tax system is not putting it at a disadvantage.

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

Madam President, I wish to take a moment today to speak about my friend Mark Udall, who is

soon going to be finishing his term. Mark's sister Doty describes him as an OK politician but an extraordinary public servant. I think it is fair to say that Mark could never reduce his role as a representative of the people of Colorado to just politics. It is not in his DNA.

It is with a very heavy heart that I see him leave the Senate, because he is my friend. But it is especially sad at a time when Mark's kind of leadership and constructive engagement is exactly what this place needs.

``Udall'' is a name that is synonymous with the West, and Mark and the collective service of the Udall family have come to represent the very best of our western way of life. They have embodied that pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit dating back to the days when Americans were building entirely new lives on the frontier. They have a historic love for the beauty and majesty of the West. They have spent lifetimes protecting it.

Mo and Stu Udall, Mark's uncle and father, both served our country during World War II. Stu was elected to serve the Second District of Arizona. When President Kennedy asked Stu to serve as the Secretary of Interior, Mo won Stu's seat in Congress.

Unlike his son Mark, Mo never ran for the Senate. He explained why. He said:

I told the Arizona Press Club with [Barry] Goldwater

present that there were three reasons I was not running for

the Senate: 1. I love the House. 2. My wife and family are

against it. And 3, I have taken a poll and you are going to

beat the hell out of me.

Although, he did run for President. The New Republic reported on that:

The Arizona Congressman, Morris Udall liked to tell a story

about a response he got at a barber shop in Maine: He looked

in at the door and, meaning to introduce himself, said ``Mo

Udall, running for president.'' ``Yeah,'' the barber said,

``we were just laughing about it this morning.''

It is not hard to know where Mark acquired his self-deprecating approach to the world, just as it not hard to know where he inherited his commitment to civil rights, to conservation, and to good government.

Mark has said it was during this time that his political views were formed. He himself went on to seek office.

In 2008, when Mark was elected to represent Colorado in the Senate, his cousin Tom--Stu's son--was elected to serve the State of New Mexico and is one of our colleagues today.

Mark Udall's connection to the West and to public service comes from both sides of his family. Mo Udall, a man of many talents, met Patricia Emory, Mark's mother, while playing baseball in Colorado. Patricia or ``Sam'' Udall was a sharpshooter, pilot, Peace Corps volunteer at the age of 56. She was a native Coloradan and the person Mark credits most for his passion for the outdoors, for backpacking and climbing.

Today in the 21st century we face a profound set of challenges and a dramatic test of our democratic institution. Can what Mark Udall often calls this glorious experiment in self-government continue to thrive into the next century and beyond?

Mark has carried the tradition of his family by serving as a moral forward-pointing compass. Throughout his career he has defended personal freedom and liberty, and he has built a legacy of conservation and preservation. As a member of the Colorado General Assembly representing Longmont and parts of Boulder County, Mark toughened the laws against poaching big game as trophy animals. As a Member of the House of Representatives, he worked across the aisle to establish the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge, cleaning up the former nuclear site and preserving 4,000 acres of wild land near Denver. He established the James Peak Wilderness Area, protecting 14,000 acres of some of our most scenic land in Gilpin and Grand Counties. He passed the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness Act to designate nearly 250,000 acres within the park as wilderness, including Longs Peak, which is actually a 14er that I have climbed. Mark Udall has climbed all of them in Colorado, every single 14er we have, because they are included in the tallest 100 mountains that we have, each one of which has been summited by Mark Udall. These are lands that will be protected long after any of our political careers are over and long after they remember who it was who protected those lands to begin with. But if anybody cares to check, they are going to know that it was Mark Udall.

Mark has been vocal, active, and effective in his fight against climate change and in his promotion of renewable energy. He was the statewide cochair of the successful 2004 campaign to pass Colorado's amendment 37. This measure required Colorado's power companies to generate most of their electricity from renewable sources. Colorado was the first State in the Union to take the issue to the voters. Amendment 37 passed. Mark Udall was the driving force behind that effort. After his victory in the State, Mark took this issue to the House of Representatives. The House has twice passed the national renewable electricity standard championed by Mark.

During his time in the Senate, he has continued to push for a national policy, and his doggedness in standing up for Colorado's wind energy production saved thousands of good-paying jobs across the State and ensured that we will continue to lead the Nation in developing our clean energy economy.

The same is true for our ski areas, which have expanded recreation activities and summertime job opportunities thanks to a law Mark passed in this Senate.

Colorado's aerospace industry is thriving in part thanks to Mark Udall. His work on space policy also dates back to his time in the House of Representatives as ranking member on the Space Subcommittee. Mark helped revitalize aeronautics and aviation research and development at NASA and ensure that the Hubble space telescope received service and funding.

In the Senate, Mark helped lead the Colorado delegation opposition to a proposal that would have canceled the Orion Program, costing the State 1,000 jobs. The administration backed off. Last week, with a shuttle and rocket--both built by companies based in Colorado--NASA launched a successful test flight of the Orion vehicle. We will again carry astronauts into space, traveling deeper than ever before and eventually maybe even visit Mars.

As everybody in this Chamber knows, Mark has been a staunch defender of the rights and freedoms we cherish as westerners. As a member of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, Mark fought every single day he was here to protect the security of the American people and the Bill of Rights. He has taken on NSA and CIA when they violated our constitutional values.

In 2011 he worked on a classified level to pressure intelligence officials to dismantle a massive email collection program that affected American privacy. Administration officials were unable to provide evidence that the program was effective. It was shut down. It only became public information when the New York Times reported on it in July of 2013.

Well before Edward Snowden made headlines in 2013, Mark warned of the NSA's overreach. In 2012, on this Senate floor, he warned the American people that they would be shocked to learn about what the NSA was doing in secret. He introduced landmark, bipartisan surveillance reform legislation with Senators Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal, and Rand Paul. It became the basis for the USA FREEDOM Act, which received 58 votes just a few weeks ago. There was a time, before the relentless use of the filibuster, when a majority of votes in the Senate would have been enough to ensure passage of that bill.

Earlier this week the Intelligence Committee released the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's study of the CIA's detention and interrogation program. Nobody in this place fought harder than Mark Udall to shed light on these tactics. His goal from day one has been holding the CIA accountable, shedding light on this dark chapter of our history, and ensuring that the neither the CIA nor any other agency or future administration would make the grievous mistakes that were made here. He accomplished his goals with respect to the process without leaking classified information but by applying pressure both politically and privately until the report was finally released. He has been effective because he has stood on consistent principle on every issue we have faced.

He voted against the PATRIOT Act. He opposed the war in Iraq. He helped

lead the fight to end don't ask, don't tell.

Mark truly is the very best of what it means to be a public servant: independent, responsible, tough, focused on the future, and possessing an abiding can-do spirit. His calm presence, his unassuming nature, and his ability to see pure good in those around him are exactly what we so desperately need in our process today.

Simply put, Mark Udall has fought for Colorado families in the most constructive way possible--by pushing thoughtful commonsense solutions--but has never ever fought to achieve a partisan political fleece.

When Colorado was struck with a series of natural disasters, from wildfires to floods, Mark was at his very best, standing up for our State and our families to lead the efforts to ensure that our communities had the support they needed to recover and better prepare for the threats we faced next. He has strengthened the way we respond to the growing threat of wildfire by emphasizing preservation efforts that will save lives, property, and tax dollars. We would expect nothing else from a man who has dedicated himself and his career to standing up for Colorado families, the middle class, and the values of the American West.

As a Senator, a Representative, a State legislator, director of the Colorado Outward Bound school, Mark has been a model public servant. He has lived up to and exceeded the high standards his family has set for more than a century. Throughout all of his work, Mark has always fought against the dysfunction that persists in Washington.

It is true, however, that Mark cannot take full credit for the work. His wife and partner Maggie Fox shares his commitment to leaving more opportunity for the next generation. She has worked as a teacher and community organizer on the Navajo and Hopi reservations of Arizona, New Mexico, and for the Colorado, North Carolina, and Northwest Outward Bound schools. She has become a leading voice in many efforts to protect our land, our air, and our water. Their partnership is a genuine one. It has made Mark's work possible.

Mark's staff has been among the finest, most professional, and most effective in the Senate. It has been a pleasure for me and for my staff to work alongside them on behalf of the people of Colorado.

Over the past few years I have learned that really there are two broad categories of people in Washington: There are those who embrace and add to the dysfunction because it serves their ideological convictions or gives them an opportunity to star on the cable news or both. Then there are the people who are actually trying to save the place. They are looking for areas of compromise to break the gridlock and to move us forward.

Mark is one of the good ones, and I have no doubt he will continue to make profound contributions to Colorado and to our Nation in a variety of ways, but we are diminished by his loss. Every one of us, for the sake of this institution, would do well to live up to the example Mark Udall has set.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I have come down to the floor today to talk about the package of public lands measures included in the House- passed Defense bill. I am told we are likely to vote on that bill as early as tomorrow in the Senate.

Within the lands package is a measure we worked on called the Hermosa Creek Watershed Protection Act.

The watershed, which is pictured here, is a beautiful parcel of national forest land up the road from Durango in the southwest corner of Colorado.

I will say at the outset that our office may have introduced the bill in the Senate, but it was really the people I represent in southwest Colorado who wrote every bit of this piece of legislation.

Over 6 years ago, a diverse group of local citizens, mountain bikers, anglers, outfitters, local officials, and many others all got together to talk about the future of the land. Everyone involved liked to visit the area for recreation or to do business there. Their discussion was to developing a plan to manage the area so everyone could enjoy it and benefit from the multiple uses well into the future.

Over the Memorial Day weekend in 2011, the Hermosa workgroup invited my family and me for a hike through the watershed and to join the discussion, and we took them up on that offer.

We loaded up the van, drove to Durango, and met the working group at the Hermosa Creek trailhead.

My youngest daughter Anne, who was then probably about 8, made a hiking stick out of a nearby fallen branch, and we started up the trail with 40 or so others from the local community.

The Presiding Officer knows this area well. As we climbed higher and higher, we were overcome by the beauty around us and the forests and valleys and crystal-clear streams and unspoiled views in almost every direction.

After about an hour, the group pulled off the forest service trail into a meadow, and as Anne, Halina, and Caroline Bennet, my three daughters, made me a dandelion necklace out of the dandelions that were there, we started a discussion about what this area meant to the people who were on this trip.

The sportsmen came to fish for native Colorado cutthroat trout and for back-country elk hunting. The mountain bikers came to enjoy single- track riding trails known throughout the country and throughout the world. The local water districts love Hermosa because it provides clean water for the city of Durango, and workers in the timber and mining industry stress that some of the watershed could contribute to extractive development in the future.

The upshot of the discussion we had in the meadow that afternoon was an agreement to work together on a bill, a balanced bill that managed the watershed so it would contribute to the local economy long into the future. More than just working on this bill, I think

the people in that meadow set out to prove that people in this country can still work together and set an example for the U.S. Congress.

After nearly 3\1/2\ years of negotiations since that hike, we are on the verge of passing that bill and sending it to the President for his signature. The Hermosa Creek Watershed Protection Act governs the entire watershed. It includes provisions to allow for multiple uses, such as timber harvesting for forest health, continued access for Colorado's snowmobilers--a critical provision to allow Silverton's winter economy to continue to prosper.

The bill enhances opportunities for back-country fishing made possible by the great work of Trout Unlimited and Colorado Parks and Wildlife to reintroduce native cutthroat trout to the watershed.

The bill also adds--importantly--nearly 40,000 acres to the National Wilderness Preservation System, lands that provide unique and important opportunities for solitude and reflection, lands that will remain undeveloped forever so that they will always have clear streams to fish and lush forests for local outfitters to take clients into the forest on horseback.

I am proud to report that the bill has the unanimous bipartisan backing of the two county commissions involved, the San Juan County Commission and the La Plata County Commission. I thank those commissioners for their leadership, collaboration, and their vision, and the two local towns, Durango and Silverton. It has the support of the Hermosa Creek Workgroup, ranging from hardrock miners to environmental groups. These are the people we say can never get along and can never get anything done because everybody has to get only their position and disregard the position that the other has, and we have proven that is not true, as I said, ranging from hardrock miners to environmental groups such as the San Juan Citizens Alliance, Conservation Colorado, and The Wilderness Society.

It has the support of sportsmen, Trout Unlimited, and the back- country hunters and anglers.

The Hermosa bill is also supported by the local water district, the Southwestern Water Conservation District.

The outdoor recreation community--including the Colorado Snowmobile Association, Colorado Off-Highway Vehicle Coalition, and the Trails 2000 mountain bike group--supports the measure. And support for Hermosa is especially strong from the local business community. Companies as diverse as fly shops, car dealerships, the Durango Chamber, and Mercury Payment Systems, one of the area's largest employers, all agree that protected public lands add to the region's quality of life and help them attract topnotch talent to the region.

This bill grew from the grassroots up. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents worked together to cement a long-term plan for their community's future.

I thank Senator Udall, a long-time champion for Colorado's public lands and wilderness, for joining me as a cosponsor of the bill.

I also wish to thank Congressman Scott Tipton, our partner in the House, for supporting this bill and demonstrating that bipartisanship still exists in some corners of the Capitol. He has been outstanding to work with, as has his staff, and I look forward to collaborating on other conservation measures in the future.

To close and bring this back to the beginning--I see my colleague is here--I don't have to convince most people that Colorado is a special place. Many people from all over the United States have been to our State to ski our mountains, run our rivers, or climb a 14er.

The Hermosa Creek watershed represents some of the best Colorado has to offer. It deserves to be protected, and that is what this bill does.

However, in some respects, I wish Hermosa didn't have to pass this way. This lands package is a great achievement. It came through a robust bipartisan and bicameral process, and that work is something truly to be commended.

At the same time, I think the Hermosa Creek bill could have passed by unanimous consent years ago as a stand-alone bill, or as part of another smaller, bipartisan, bicameral package that didn't have to wait almost 6 years while local communities all across the country have been left in limbo. People there don't work on the same time that people here work, and their expectations are that we are going to move things along. No one should object to bipartisan, commonsense measures that are widely supported. But instead of regular order, we are left voting on large packages of lands bills every number of years.

In fact, save one wilderness bill that passed earlier this session, Congress has not passed a wilderness bill since 2009. Congress has not passed one wilderness bill since 2009--I suppose we passed one.

Last Congress was the first time a session of Congress hadn't passed a wilderness bill in the 50-year history of the Wilderness Act. That had never happened before, whether the Senate was Democratic or the Senate was Republican, whether the House was Democratic or Republican, or whether the President was a Democrat or a Republican. It never happened before. This Congress--provided the vote goes well tomorrow-- will have waited until the eleventh hour.

The 2009 bill, which was one of the very first ones I voted on as a Senator, created 2 million acres of new wilderness.

The package we will vote on tomorrow contains several hundred thousand acres more, including nearly 40,000 new wilderness acres, as I mentioned in the Hermosa bill. While that is great progress, and it truly is, I wish we were doing more.

Despite dozens of other widely supported conservation proposals that have been introduced this session, there are only four other wilderness bills included in this package. Once again, I am strongly supportive of the package, and I urge my colleagues to vote yes. But in the new Congress we ought to hit the reset button and truly honor the intent of the Wilderness Act--which President Johnson signed into law 50 years ago--by passing more wilderness bills. I can't think of a better anniversary present for the landmark law than for the 114th Congress to return and pass more of these bills.

Let's defy expectations about what the change in the majority means here. Let's lift up the bipartisan work that is happening around here and pass more of these bills.

Historically conservation has been a bipartisan issue going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt, and I hope we might return to the cooperation we have seen in the decades since then and get some more wilderness and conservation done for the American people.

This is a glorious and beautiful country that we all represent. We ought to save some of it for our kids and grandkids by passing this package and coming together on some others.

I urge yes on the bill.

I thank the Presiding Officer for all of his work to make sure we could bring this lands bill together with the NDAA bill.

I urge a ``yes'' vote.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I thank my colleague from Alaska for allowing me to go ahead with my remarks.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to thank the Senator from Alaska for her tireless efforts on the lands bill and the NDAA bill and the bipartisan spirit she brought to all of these negotiations over a long period of time. She is to be commended for it. I don't think we would be anywhere close to where we are without her work. I thank her for that.

I am here to speak briefly about the Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's interrogation methods. I support the committee's decision to release the report. As a country, it shows we have the courage to face the truth no matter how ugly that truth may be. Coloradans need to know the truth. The American people deserve to know the truth. Our willingness to face this difficult truth reminds us that we live and we are lucky to live in the most open and transparent democracy the world has ever known. Unlike the acts brought to light by the Intelligence Committee report, the willingness for self-examination is something to be celebrated about America.

The report will be the subject of significant debate over the coming weeks and months and maybe even years, as it should be. Nobody should be cavalier about the risks that are associated with the release of this information, but this is a discussion our country needs to have.

Although I am still reviewing the report, a couple of things are pretty clear at the outset.

First, the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques failed to secure accurate information or cooperation from detainees. The very first finding of the report says:

While being subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and afterwards, multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence. Detainees provided fabricated information on critical intelligence issues, including the terrorist threats which the CIA identified as its highest priorities.

Not only has torture not made the country safer, it may have made us less safe--at least according to this report.

Second, the report reveals that the CIA withheld information from the FBI, the State Department, and the Director of the Office of National Intelligence. It denied access to detainees and provided inaccurate information about the interrogation tactics. Information was withheld from former Secretary of State Colin Powell out of concern he would ``blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what's been going on.'' The CIA repeatedly misled Congress and impeded oversight by its own inspector general.

The report rebuts any notion that these brutal tactics led to actionable intelligence that made our country safer. It highlights the lengths to which people systematically misled other agencies, the Congress, and for years the American people. But most significantly, this report--and I thank the Presiding Officer for his service on the Intelligence Committee. It is a committee that by definition people can't learn very much about, and I know it takes a lot of time and an awful lot of work that can go underappreciated. But this week we are learning why the work on that committee is so important.

Most significantly, as I was saying, this report has reminded us that the use of torture is completely at war with who we are as a country and the ideals we hold. Throughout our country's history, our American values--the notion that all people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable, sustainable rights--have sustained us through our most difficult times. They helped us triumph in World War II and eventually led to the fall of communism during the Cold War. They have attracted millions of immigrants to our shores. They inspired generations of Americans to rectify the inequality that exists in their own time to create a more perfect union. In fact, the values of democracy and human dignity are what brought my mother and her family to the United States after surviving the horrors of the Holocaust in Poland. It was a place that they called beautiful America, as much an idea as it was a place to them. Torture is repugnant to these fundamental American ideals.

It is often said that the strength of our democratic institutions is tested during times of crisis. Understanding what happened and ensuring we won't use torture again will help our democratic institutions persevere in the future and serve future generations as well as the generations that were here before. It will demonstrate that we are better and we are stronger than our enemies. It will ensure that our uniquely American values will continue to inspire people like my mother and her parents all across the globe.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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