Floor Statements

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I rise today to emphasize the importance of keeping our technology industry in the forefront of our global economy. America has made extraordinary strides in innovation. For decades we have been the world's leader in developing new technologies and advancing the Internet age, but we are not the only nation in this hunt.

Across the globe, and particularly in China and other parts of Asia, our international competitors are working furiously to catch up. If the United States is to enjoy continued success in the technology arena, the policymakers must ensure that we have a legal and regulatory landscape that will enable our innovators to thrive.

As chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, I have been working with colleagues and stakeholders to develop an innovation agenda for the coming Congress. Today I would like to highlight several bipartisan initiatives that we should prioritize early next year to help ensure the continued success of our high-tech economy.

First, Congress must act to protect America's innovation and inventiveness. An essential part of fostering innovation is protecting legitimate intellectual property rights. In particular, we must enact legislation to combat abusive patent litigation.

Patent trolls--which are often shell companies that do not make or sell anything--are crippling innovation and growth across all sectors of our economy. It is estimated that abuse of patent litigation costs our economy over $60 billion every year. With so much on the line, how can we afford not to act? Yet the current Senate did exactly that and ignored the very real opportunity we had, to follow the House of Representatives and pass bipartisan legislation that would be supported by the White House.

Why would anyone walk away from the opportunity to enact pro- innovation policies that would do so much good for our economy?

It is no secret that trial lawyers and others told the current majority leader not to bring patent troll reform up for a vote. We all know when the trial lawyers say ``jump,'' the only answer for some of my Democratic colleagues is ``how high.''

While I am disappointed the Senate failed to act during this Congress, I intend to help ensure we pass legislation next year. Fortunately, combating patent trolls is a priority for incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

I look forward to working with them and others who are committed to making long overdue reforms to our patent laws--including mandatory fee shifting, heightened pleading and discovery standards, demand letter reforms, and a mechanism to enable recovery of fees against shell companies or those who are behind them.

In addition, we must improve the quality of patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Low-quality patents are essential to a patent troll's business model. I am optimistic we can reach agreement on how best to improve our patent process.

We also need a high-functioning and well-funded USPTO. A fully funded patent office would, at the very least, mean more and better trained patent examiners, more complete libraries of prior art, and greater access to modern information technologies to address the Agency's growing needs. All of these improvements would lead to higher quality patents that are granted more quickly. The good news is we can make these changes at no cost to taxpayers since the USPTO is a fee- generating agency.

Now, there are some who argue here that patent troll legislation is not necessary in light of the Supreme Court's decisions in the Octane Fitness and Highmark cases. Ms. Charlene Morrow and Mr. Brian Lahti, however, writing in the BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal confirm that ``nothing in these cases addresses the proposed reforms to make the real parties in interest who are managing patent assertion entities responsible for fees and costs.'' This is something I worked on for quite a few months. As these experienced practitioners acknowledge such legislation is essential to address fee-collection concerns faced by defendants in present patent litigation. One of the legislative approaches Ms. Morrow and Mr. Lahti proposed is to make bonding more readily available at an early stage of litigation. I could not agree more.

We must ensure that those who defend against abusive patent litigation

and are awarded fees will actually get paid. Even when a patent troll structured as a shell company has no assets, there are other parties with an interest in the litigation. These parties are often intentionally beyond the jurisdiction of the courts. They stand to benefit if their plaintiff shell company forces a settlement and are protected from any liability if they lose.

It is a win-win situation for them and a lose-lose situation for America's innovators. Since we cannot force parties outside of a court's jurisdiction to join in a case, we must incentivize those interested parties to do the right thing.

That is the whole purpose behind my recovery-of-award provision. Under this provision, those who are deemed interested parties may either voluntarily submit to the court's jurisdiction and become liable for any unsatisfied fees awarded in the case or they may opt out by renouncing any meaningful interest in the litigation. If interested parties stand aside and do nothing, the original plaintiff must post a bond to ensure that any shifted fees are paid.

Bottom line: Without such bonding measures, all defendants have is a toothless joinder provision that can be easily circumvented by bad actors with no intention of paying the court-awarded fees for their abusive lawsuits.

I have said this before but it bears repeating. Fee shifting without such a recovery provision is like writing a check on an empty account. You are purporting to convey something that isn't there. Only fee shifting coupled with this recovery provision will stop patent trolls from litigating-and-dashing.

The House has already demonstrated that Members from both sides of the aisle can come together to craft and pass commonsense legislation to combat abusive patent lawsuits. President Obama supports such efforts. It is past time the Senate does its part. We ought to get rid of this phony attitude of obeisance to the personal injury lawyers and trial lawyers in this country.

I am determined to make such patent reform a priority early next year and to make sure we send the President a bill that he can sign into law for the good of all American innovation.

In addition to patent troll legislation, there is strong bipartisan, bicameral support for creating a harmonized, uniform Federal standard for protecting trade secrets.

Here in the Senate, Senator Chris Coons and I introduced the Defend Trade Secret Act on April 29, 2014. In the House of Representatives, Representative George Holding introduced the Trade Secrets Protection Act on July 29, 2014. Through our collective efforts we have shed light on an often overlooked form of intellectual property.

Trade secrets, such as customer lists, formulas, and manufacturing processes are an essential form of intellectual property. Yet trade secrets are the only form of U.S. intellectual property where misuse does not provide its owner with a Federal private right of action. Currently trade secret owners must rely on State courts or Federal prosecutors to protect their rights.

The multi-State procedural and jurisdictional issues that arise in such cases are costly and complicated, and the Department of Justice lacks the resources to prosecute many such cases. These systemic issues put companies at a great disadvantage, since the victims of trade secret theft need to recover information quickly before it crosses State lines or leaves the country.

Unfortunately, in today's global information age, there are endless examples of how easy and rewarding it can be to steal trade secrets. While the maximum penalty for trade secrets theft is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, few of these thefts actually result in Federal prosecutions. While $250,000 may sound like a steep penalty, most stolen trade secrets amount to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in lost profits and sales. Even when thefts are prosecuted, victim companies rarely recover the full extent of their losses.

We have made some progress in moving forward trade secret legislation. Earlier this year, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism held a hearing on the importance of creating a private right of action for trade secret theft. The House Judiciary Committee reported its bill--by voice vote--on September 17. Although we did not get the bill across the finish line this Congress, we are well positioned to move the trade secret legislation early next year.

It is past time to enable U.S. companies to protect their trade secrets in Federal court.

Another bipartisan initiative ready for congressional action relates to our privacy laws. I speak about the need to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or ECPA to require a warrant for all email content within the United States and to safeguard data stored abroad from improper government access.

Enacted in 1986, ECPA prohibits communication service providers from intercepting or disclosing email, telephone conversations or data stored electronically, unless such disclosure is authorized. Virtually everyone agrees that Americans should enjoy the same privacy protections in their online communications that they do in their offline communications.

But Congress has not adequately updated the law since its enactment, and technological developments have resulted in disparate treatment. As currently written, ECPA requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant for emails that are less than 6 months old but only a subpoena to access older electronic communications.

Think about your own email account. You may have hundreds of emails that you have received over many years. Additionally, ECPA has allowed law enforcement to access emails that have been opened with just a subpoena, even though a search warrant would be required for a printout of the same communication sitting on your desk.

Those conflicting standards should cause great concern to everyone who values personal privacy. Now to make matters more complicated, ECPA is silent on the privacy standard for accessing data stored abroad. Storing digital information around the world, a practice that did not exist when ECPA became law, is now routine. Moreover, the Federal Government has taken advantage of this statutory silence to apply its own standard, requiring access to data abroad if the company storing it has a presence in the United States.

For that reason alone, Congress should amend the law. That is why, together with Senators Chris Coons and Dean Heller, I introduced the Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act. The LEADS Act would require a warrant when the government demands customer communications from third-party service providers. Such a warrant would only apply to data stored in the United States, unless the data is owned by a U.S. corporation, citizen or lawful permanent resident.

To provide additional protections, the bill requires courts to modify or vacate such warrants if they would require the service provider to violate the laws of a foreign country. The practice of extending warrants extraterritorially presents unique challenges for a number of industries which increasingly face a conflict between American law and the laws of the countries where the electronic data is stored.

Additionally, if the United States expects to extend its warrants extraterritorially, we should not be surprised if other countries, including China and Russia, seek to do the same for the emails of Americans and others stored in this country.

Congress must ensure that law enforcement has the tools to execute search warrants where necessary so long as officials comply with the laws of the foreign country where the electronic data is stored.

The LEADS Act also provides needed improvements to the mutual legal assistance treaty process, which are formal agreements for sharing evidence between the United States and foreign countries in international investigations. Currently, the MLAT process is slow and unreliable, sometimes taking several months to access data held by foreign jurisdictions.

The Department of Justice not only needs additional funds to hire more people to handle MLAT requests, but reforms to the underlying program are needed to improve transparency and efficiency. The legislation recognizes, through a sense of Congress, that data

providers should not be subject to data localization requirements. Such requirements are incompatible with the borderless nature of the Internet----

I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to finish my remarks.

Such requirements are incompatible with the borderless nature of the Internet. They are an impediment to online innovation and they are unnecessary to meet the needs of law enforcement. It is time to act to update our electronic communications privacy laws.

Finally, there is widespread consensus and real opportunity for bipartisan bicameral reform of our outdated visa system for economically essential high-skilled immigrants. For too long our country has been unable to meet the ever-increasing demand for workers trained in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics or STEM fields.

As a result, some of our Nation's top technology markets are in desperate need for qualified STEM workers. We face a high-skilled worker shortage that has become a national crisis. In April, for the second year in a row, the Federal Government reached its current H-1B quota just 5 days after it began accepting applications.

Employers submitted 172,500 petitions for just 85,000 available visas, meaning American companies were unable to hire nearly 90,000 high-skilled workers essential to help grow their domestic businesses, develop innovative technologies at home rather than abroad, and compete internationally. This is one of the principal reasons why I, together with Senators Amy Klobuchar, Marco Rubio, and Chris Coons, introduced the bipartisan Immigration Innovation or I-Squared Act.

To date the legislation has 26 bipartisan cosponsors. Among other things, the I-Squared Act provides a thoughtful, lasting legislative framework that would increase the number of H-1 visas based on annual market demand to attract highly skilled workers and innovators. The bill also reforms fees on H-1B visas and employment-based green cards for funding a grant-based State program to promote STEM education and worker retraining.

The I-Squared Act addresses the immediate short-term needs to provide American employees with greater access to high-skilled workers, while also addressing long-term needs to invest in America's STEM education. I am confident this two-step approach will enable our country to thrive and help us compete in today's global economy. No doubt, a concrete legislative victory, when there is already considerable consensus, would help build trust and good will among those who disagree sharply over other areas of immigration policy. It would mark a critical first step along the path to broader reform.

I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues in introducing I- Squared early next year. As Senators can see, there is a lot we can agree on and much we can and must accomplish. Looking ahead to the next Congress, I intend to do everything in my power to enact protechnology, pro-innovation policies that will ensure the continued success of our high-tech economy.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to Mark Prater, deputy staff director and chief tax counsel for the minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee.

Later this week, the Tax Foundation will award Mark their Exemplar of Excellence in Public Service Award for his many years of service on the Finance Committee. He will be only the second congressional staffer to be honored by the Tax Foundation in their 77-year history. And, I can say without

any reservation that no staffer is more worthy of such an honor.

After several years in private law practice in his native Oregon, Mark came to work for the Finance Committee in January 1990. At that time, Mark thought he would stay for just 2 years and return home. Fortunately for all of us, Mark has been on the Finance Committee staff for nearly 25 years now.

Over these years, he has served with great distinction and has come to be one of the most trusted and respected staffers on Capitol Hill. Indeed, it seems that everyone in Washington knows Mark Prater and seeks him out for advice on tax policy.

Perhaps most importantly, Mark is a kind person who treats everyone with respect. Honestly, he would be the last person to seek out this type of honor, usually opting to share credit for his successes with those he works with.

Mark has worked for a number of prominent chairmen and ranking members on the Finance Committee, including Bob Packwood, William Roth, and Chuck Grassley. But, while he is always worked for Republican Members, Senators on both sides of the aisle have come to rely on Mark's experience and expertise. This was never more evident than in 2011 when Mark was tapped to serve as the staff director for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

For the past 4 years, I have had the privilege of having Mark on my Finance Committee staff and I have been a direct beneficiary of his knowledge and understanding of not only the Tax Code but of how things can and should work in the Senate. You see, Mark is one of the few staffers who have been around long enough to remember a time when things used to get done around here. In fact, Tax Notes recently published the results of their survey about congressional tax staffers in which Mark was named the best dealmaker and the top Republican tax staffer. I have no doubt that, in the future, his work will be instrumental to helping restore the traditions and productivity of this Chamber.

I want to congratulate Mark for this tremendous honor from the Tax Foundation, along with his wonderful family--his wife Lori and his son James--who should enjoy this honor along with him.

Selfishly, I hope that Mark has many more years of honorable service here in the United States Senate.

I yield back time on our side.

Madam President, thank you for the opportunity today to pay tribute to a timeless feature of Utah's beautiful geography: Canyonlands National Park. This week, citizens of Utah and friends around the United States join together in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Canyonlands National Park. As one of the ``Mighty Five'' national parks in Utah, the Canyonlands celebrate a landmark anniversary, and are a source of great pride for Utahns and the outdoors community nationwide.

Canyonlands National Park is located in the southeast of our State where the otherworldly cliffs, recesses, and red rock attract climbing, mountain biking, and rafting enthusiasts from across the globe. Anyone who walks down Main Street in Moab can hear languages from German to Japanese to English, as well as accents from all over America. People plan and save for years to visit Utah to behold the invulnerable landscapes of the Canyonlands. As one stands on the edge of a 1,000- foot cliff, while seeing hundreds of miles in all directions, nature somehow puts life in perspective.

This perspective gained should not be underestimated. There is a story in common between those who visit the park and the land they experience. It is a story told in rock layers that echo ancient seas, coastal mud flats, braided streambeds, and wind-blown dunes hundreds of feet thick. It is the story of time and change, to which all of God's creation is subject. Clues to this past lie preserved in stone, along the walls of deep gorges where great rivers once roared. The three main regions of Canyonlands: the Island in the Sky, Needles, and the Maze, were once an environment quite different and more luscious. In what is now desert, shallow seas once ebbed and flowed. In many ways the story of Canyonlands is a story of transformation, and this is something to which we can all relate. We are reminded of the hunter-gatherer peoples who once flourished in Canyonlands by the Native American rock art, in the ``Great Gallery'' region, that dates back as early as 2000 BC. When I consider those painted figures together with the mosaic of colors, shapes, and pinnacles of Canyonlands, I, like many others, recall the enduring relationship between man and nature. It is this continuing legacy that we call our attention to today.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the people, both elected officials and citizens, who possessed the foresight to recognize the value of Canyonlands and created the park 50 years ago. These efforts did not come without controversy and today much controversy remains. The area around the park holds diverse importance to the local community and a variety of stakeholders. Many spend their free time exploring over 2,500 miles of roads around the park in four-wheel drive vehicles while others find a special peace in the solitude of the Canyonlands desert. These interests may seem in conflict, but the vast lands of Utah amply accommodate the equally vast spectrum of pursuits.

For several years now, the Utah congressional delegation has been developing a public lands bill that will bring certainty and balance to the areas around Canyonlands and other landscapes in Utah. The land surrounding the national park would be protected with designations to ensure that our grandchildren can stand on the same red rock cliffs to look at the glorious sunsets that our pioneer ancestors saw and view vistas people from around the world come to see today. The bill will benefit our children by exchanging State lands in areas that do not produce revenues, with Federal lands that can be developed responsibly. The revenues derived, as a result of the thoughtful development enabled by these exchanges, will benefit school children in Utah. Only Congress can make these changes to the way our public lands are managed. At a time of congressional dysfunction, this is one area of positive happenings.

What better way to celebrate the anniversary of Canyonlands National Park than by bringing certainty to a region that has been denied stability for one-half century? I am proud to be a part of this ongoing process to protect the land surrounding Canyonlands National Park.

Madam President, more than 40 years ago, in New York Times v. Sullivan, Justice William Brennan described ``a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.'' The measure now before the Senate shows that this commitment is in serious jeopardy.

Next week marks the 227th anniversary of the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Those who participated in that process agreed that individual liberty requires limits on government power, but they differed on how explicit and extensive those limits should be. Many thought the simple act of delegating enumerated powers to the Federal Government and reserving the rest to the States would be enough. Others were more skeptical of government power and insisted that the Constitution needed a bill of rights. Those skeptics, however, were not skeptical enough. The measure before us today, S.J. Res. 19, would allow the government to control and even prohibit what Americans say and do in the political process.

Yesterday a member of the majority leadership said this measure is ``narrowly tailored.'' It is possible to believe that only if you have never read S.J. Res. 19 and know nothing about either the Supreme Court's precedents or past proposals of this kind. This is not the first attempt at empowering the government to suppress political speech, but it is the most extreme.

Four elements of this proposal are particularly troubling.

First, its purpose is to advance what it calls ``political equality.'' None of the constitutional amendments previously proposed to control political speech has made such a claim. The irony is astounding. At the very time in our history when technology is naturally leveling the political playing

field, this proposal would give the power to define political equality to government. If simply suggesting that the government should have the power to enforce its own version of political equality is not enough to oppose this proposal, then our liberties are in even greater danger than I thought.

In addition to its stated purpose, this proposal is also troubling because of the power it would give to government. Past proposals of this kind were very specific about what government could or should regulate. One measure, for example, covered expenditures made ``to expressly advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate for Federal office.'' More recently, proposed amendments covered expenditures made ``in support of, or opposition to, a candidate.'' The proposal before us today, however, says that government may regulate ``the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.'' That is all it says. It would allow government to control the raising and spending of money by anyone doing anything at any time to influence elections. No proposal of this kind has ever been drafted more broadly.

The same Democratic Senator who yesterday claimed this proposal is narrowly tailored referred to big-money campaign donors, high rollers, and for-profit corporations with unlimited budgets. I urge not only my colleagues but everyone listening to this debate to read S.J. Res. 19. Just read it. My liberal friends may want to paint certain billionaires or for-profit corporations as the big bad wolf, but this proposal goes far beyond that. It would allow government to regulate the raising and spending of money not only by billionaires or corporations but by what it simply labels ``others.'' That means everyone everywhere. It means individuals as well as groups, rich as well as poor, for-profits, nonprofits. Under this proposal, government could control them all.

It takes no imagination whatsoever to realize that virtually everything can influence elections. Voter registration drives, get-out- the-vote efforts, nonpartisan voter information, discussion about issues, town meetings--all of these activities and many more influence elections.

Once again, I urge everyone to read the proposal before us. It would give government the power to regulate anything done by anyone at any time to influence elections.

The third troubling element of this proposal is that it would suppress the First Amendment freedom of speech for individual citizens but protect the First Amendment freedom of the press for Big Media. Supporters of this amendment want to manipulate and control how individual citizens influence elections but are perfectly happy with how Big Media influences elections. This proposal would allow government to prohibit nonprofit organizations from raising or spending a single dollar to influence elections but leaves multibillion-dollar media corporations free to influence elections as much as they choose. That set of priorities represents a twisted sense of political equality that I cannot believe most Americans share.

Finally, this proposal would allow government to distinguish between what it calls natural persons and ``corporations or other artificial entities created by law.'' Unlike other provisions of the Bill of Rights, such as the Fourth or Fifth Amendment, the First Amendment does not use the word ``person;'' it simply protects the freedom of speech-- a freedom that obviously can be exercised not only individually but also collectively.

Yesterday a Democratic Senator dismissed the notion that corporations can be treated as persons under the law because corporations never get married, raise kids, or care for sick relatives.

Is he kidding? A corporation cannot care for sick relatives, but it certainly can speak, and that is what this debate is all about. As the Supreme Court observed more than a century ago, corporations are ``merely associations of individuals.''

Perhaps I need to remind my colleagues that the first section of the first title of the United States Code is the Dictionary Act. It defines the word ``person'' to include ``corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.''

Many of what this proposal labels ``artificial entities''--such as nonprofit organizations, associations, or societies--exist to magnify the voices of individuals. The Supreme Court case that sparked this debate, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, was brought not by a for-profit corporation but by a nonprofit organization. S.J. Res. 19 would allow government not only to regulate but to prohibit the raising or spending of money by these nonprofits, associations, and societies to influence elections. They could be banned from speaking on behalf of what my Democratic colleagues like to refer to as ordinary, average Americans. Suppressing the speech of organizations that speak for individuals would leave millions of those Americans with no voice at all.

We should eliminate rather than create barriers to participation in the political process. We should encourage rather than discourage activities by our fellow citizens to influence the election of their leaders. We should prohibit rather than empower government to control how Americans participate in the political process. We should, to return to Justice Brennan's words, strengthen rather than dismantle our national commitment to uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate on public issues. Making S.J. Res. 19 part of the Constitution would instead make that debate inhibited, weak, and closed.

As the Supreme Court has recognized, the First Amendment is premised on a mistrust of government power. Neither the nature of government power nor its impact on individual liberty has changed. S.J. Res. 19, therefore, proves three things. It proves that the government's temptation to control what Americans say and do in the political process is as strong as ever. It proves that the majority believes it can retain power only by suppressing the liberties of our fellow Americans. It proves that the profound national consensus Justice Brennan described may no longer exist.

Another irony is that the majority in what we often call the world's greatest deliberative body is trying to stifle the free speech of citizens with whom they disagree. This is nothing more than election- year misdirection, an attempt to distract attention from the majority's complete failure to address the real problems facing our Nation.

We should heed the advice of our late colleague from Massachusetts, my friend Senator Ted Kennedy. We were often called ``the odd couple'' because we worked so well together but came from disparate or different political areas. In March 1997 this body was debating another proposed constitutional amendment to control political speech. That measure, I want my colleagues to know, was more narrowly drawn than the one before us today. It was limited to expenditures supporting or opposing candidates and did not exempt Big Media. Yet Senator Kennedy rose to oppose it and said:

In the entire history of the Constitution, we have never

amended the Bill of Rights, and now is no time to start. It

would be wrong to carve an exception in the First Amendment.

Campaign finance reform is a serious problem, but it does not

require that we twist the meaning of the Constitution.

That was said by Senator Kennedy, and he was right. The Senate voted 38 to 61 against that proposal. And Senator Kennedy's words apply with even more force today, there is no question about it.

The real purpose of S.J. Res. 19 is exactly what America's Founders ratified the First Amendment to prevent. Supporters of this radical proposal apparently believe that freedom itself is the problem. That view is contrary to the most fundamental principles of this Republic and incompatible with a free society. Freedom is not the problem; it is the solution.

I am really amazed that my colleagues on the other side would attempt to pull this stunt at this time in our country's history, when almost anybody who looks at it knows it is done just for publicity and political reasons. At the same time, what an awful amendment it is. It makes one wonder if people in the Congress today are really as serious about our country as they were back at the beginning of this country. Those people didn't have nearly the knowledge from books of learning and capacities we have today,

but for some reason they were inspired. They were well educated. They were strong people. They knew what was right, they stood up for what was right, and they did it in very carefully selected words, which would be surely diminished by what the Democrats are trying to do here today.

I sometimes wonder, is politics more important than the Constitution? They know they are not going to pass this resolution. We are not going to let them pass it. It is crazy. It is wrong. It is out of whack. It is against almost everything the Founding Fathers stood for. It is against Supreme Court precedent. It basically would limit the rights of far too many people.

I know my colleagues are going to ultimately vote this down. This will never get 67 votes and never should. It never should have seen the light of day and never should have seen a minute on the floor of this august body. It diminishes this body, that this type of amendment is being brought to the floor of the Senate.

Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on three nominees to positions on the Social Security Advisory Board. Two of these nominees--Alan Cohen and Lanhee Chen--are well suited for these positions, and that being the case I totally support their nominations.

However, I plan to vote against the remaining nominee, Dr. Henry Aaron, whom the President ultimately intends to serve as chairman of the board. I wish to take a few minutes today to explain why I have reached this decision.

Over the past decade or so, Dr. Aaron has spent most of his time and efforts focusing on health care issues and advocacy. Indeed, the vast majority of writings he offered in support of his nomination dealt with health care, not Social Security.

When the Finance Committee considered his nomination, I specifically asked Dr. Aaron if he had performed any Social Security analysis over the past decade. He could not produce anything substantive along these lines.

There is nothing wrong with focusing one's energies on health care instead of analyzing Social Security policy. However, given the specific focus of the Social Security Advisory Board, I am concerned about the extent to which Dr. Aaron has considered Social Security issues and analytical advances in the field over the past decade or more. It appears to me that Dr. Aaron's interests and skill set make him better suited for a position in the health care arena rather than advising on the current state of Social Security.

Dr. Aaron has written about Social Security more extensively in the past, but his conclusions were predominantly normative. His most recent Social Security writings too often imply that anyone disagreeing with his conclusions is dead wrong and likely has adverse motives.

In fact, this is a trend that pervades all of Dr. Aaron's writings. Far too often, in addition to reaching conclusions and making recommendations, Dr. Aaron finds it necessary to condemn potential critics, usually along partisan lines. Of course, I am not one to vote against a nominee simply because I disagree with their policy prescriptions or their analytical techniques. I generally believe in giving reasonable deference to the President on nominations, particularly those involving positions designed to provide advice to the President and his administration.

The Social Security Advisory Board, however, is set up to provide bipartisan advice on Social Security issues to Congress and the Social Security Commissioner, as well as the President. Given all of the challenges facing Social Security, this type of advice is crucial. The board chair must be able to work toward gathering bipartisan consensus and avoid turning the Social Security Advisory Board into another platform for political division and partisan rhetoric. Therefore, it is necessary to consider Dr. Aaron's nomination from the perspective of bipartisanship.

As I said, a nominee for board chair must demonstrate an ability to promote and garner bipartisan consensus. Unfortunately, the evidence does not convince me that Dr. Aaron would be able to set aside his partisan views and manage the board in a bipartisan fashion that aims at consensus in both analysis and conclusions.

Throughout much of his writings, Dr. Aaron has, far more often than not, opted for partisanship over sound policy. This not only makes me question his ability to be bipartisan, it also leads me to question his judgment on policy issues.

For example, he has recently advocated that the President disregard the Constitution and ignore the statutory limit on Federal debt. He has praised the President for ignoring the law by unilaterally deciding not to enforce provisions of the Affordable Care Act, identifying the administration's failure to enforce the law written by Congress and signed by the President himself as an act that, to quote Dr. Aaron, ``adroitly performs political jiu jitsu on ObamaCare opponents.''

He has written that the Independent Payment Advisory Board--the IPAB--an agency with virtually unchecked power to ration Medicare spending, should be given even broader authority.

He has scolded States that have, fully within their rights, decided against expanding Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act rollout. Dr. Aaron used particularly vitriolic words to describe State officials who opted not to expand Medicaid, saying: ``Officials in many states have adopted a stance reminiscent of massive resistance, the South's futile effort to block implementation of the Supreme Court's decision banning school segregation.''

When I asked Dr. Aaron a question at his confirmation hearing about the caustic nature of some of his comments, he alluded to writings for newspapers and op-eds as avenues in which inclusion of politically charged rhetoric is the ``coin of the realm.''

That may very well be the case, but that doesn't mean there is a place for it on the Social Security Advisory Board. I have serious concern about Dr. Aaron's ability to keep such rhetoric in check as he chairs the board that is by statute intended to exhibit impartiality.

Once again, our Social Security system faces a number of fiscal and structural changes and challenges. If we are going to address these challenges, we need serious discussions that will lead to serious solutions, not more partisanship.

Dr. Aaron has not convinced me that he is the one to help lead these types of discussions. For these reasons I intend to vote against this confirmation.

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

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I see two of my colleagues who are here, and I want to ask unanimous consent that Senator Barrasso be given 10 minutes, then Senator Sessions be given 3 minutes, and then the remainder of the time be turned over to me.

Did the Chair rule?

Madam President----

I was supposed to speak here at 2:15 p.m.

Madam President, I understand there will be 3 minutes for the Senator from Alabama and then I will be able to deliver my full remarks.

Madam President, in recent days I have twice spoken here on the floor--not about a particular issue, bill, or nomination pending before the Senate, but about the Senate itself.

While issues, bills, nominations, and even partisan majorities come and go, the Senate as an institution must remain--and remain not only in some tattered form, some distorted shadow of its former self, but, rather, the Senate must remain as it was designed to be. The political winds may blow, but the institution must stand strong.

Unfortunately, in my 38 years of service in this body I have never seen it weaker than it is today. There once was a consensus here not only about the need to keep this institution strong but also about how to do it. That consensus evolved from how the Framers designed this body so that it could play its unique role in the system of government they inspirationally crafted.

James Madison, for example, remarked at the 1787 Constitutional Convention that the Senate's proceedings could have more coolness, more system, and more wisdom than the House of Representatives. He was not talking about coolness in the way our teenagers talk about it today. The House is designed for more or less direct expression of the popular will and operates by simple majority. By contrast, the Senate is designed for deliberation. For more than two centuries it has operated by a supermajority and even unanimous consent. This fundamental difference between the House and the Senate is by express design and not historical accident. It is the conjunction of the two that makes the legislative branch work in the manner the Framers intended. This basic principle of bicameralism is above politics and above party.

This longstanding consensus about the importance of the Senate's unique design and how it must operate to fulfill its constitutional role has all but fallen apart over the last few years. I began addressing this problem in earnest last week and will continue to do so in the weeks ahead and, I might add, in the months to come, urging my colleagues to heed history's wisdom and change course.

I am not alone in this endeavor. My friend the senior Senator from Tennessee has also spoken with great passion on this issue and developed a thoughtful assessment of the Senate's institutional decay. Two longtime colleagues in this body--one Democrat and one Republican-- offered similar critiques when leaving the Senate in the last few years.

For 30 years I served in this body with my friend from Connecticut, Senator Christopher Dodd. In his final speech on the Senate floor on November 30, 2010, he observed that the Senate was established as a place where every Member's voice could be heard and where a deliberation and even dissent would be valued and respected. Senator Dodd explained that ``our Founders were concerned not only with what was legislated, but, just as importantly, with how we legislated.'' He urged Senators to resist the temptation to abandon the Senate's longstanding traditions to make it ``more like the House of Representatives, where the majority can essentially bend the minority to its will.''

Two years later Senator Olympia Snowe concluded her three terms in the Senate representing the State of Maine in this body with a reflection on the state of the Senate. She observed that a commitment to the rights of the minority helped ensure that the Senate would be a body where all voices are heard. Senator Snowe concluded, however, that ``the Senate is not living up to what the Founding Fathers envisioned,'' in large part by ignoring the minority's rights.

Senator Dodd concluded his Senate service in the majority while Senator Snowe concluded hers in the minority, but their assessment was the same--a leading Democrat and a leading Republican. That is what a consensus looks like. They shared an understanding of the unique role the Senate was designed to play in our system of government, and they knew from experience that the Senate is not operating by that design today.

Diagnosing our current institutional ills and prescribing a path back to health must begin by recognizing the primacy of the Senate's purpose, design, and place in our system of government. Without the anchor of these principles, which have throughout the Senate's history been shared throughout this body, across all partisan and ideological lines, the gamesmanship of politics and the quest for power will decimate our deliberate contribution to the legislative process. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening today.

In my previous remarks, I noted that many of the sage students of the Senate--from Vice President Adlai Stevenson in the 19th century to Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia in our time--all identified the same two features as critical to the Senate's proper functioning: the right of amendment and the right to debate. It is not difficult to see how they serve the critical function of setting the Senate apart from the House. These rights temper majority rule. They emphasize individuals over parties and factions. They ensure that all voices can be heard. They encourage deliberation and, yes, even beneficial compromise. These rights secure a substantive role for all Senators--even those in the minority--in how the Senate legislates, a feature that does not exist in how the House operates.

During my service throughout the past four decades, the Senate has often lived up to these ideals. For example, I worked with the junior Senator from Iowa on the Americans with Disabilities Act, which the Senate in 1989 passed by a vote of 76 to 8. At that time Democrats held 55 Senate seats, just as they do today. This body addressed

amendments on the floor offered by both Democrats and Republicans on issues ranging from tax credits for small businesses to accessibility of buses. On a single day in September of 1989, the Senate adopted nearly twice as many minority amendments to this single bill than the Senate today has adopted in more than a year.

Today the majority leader uses his right to priority recognition to eliminate virtually all opportunities for amendments unless he agrees to them, and even then he generally stops amendments. He has used this procedural maneuver--called filling the amendment tree--more than twice as often as the previous six majority leaders combined.

There is a time when you can fill the amendment tree, and that is after there has been a full and fair debate on all the reasonable amendments Members have brought to the floor and it is when a reasonable time has been given to a bill and there have been a number of votes.

Yet, when he was in the minority, even he condemned this tactic as ``a very bad practice.'' He explained that ``it runs against the basic nature of the Senate.'' He was right then, but he is wrong now. Perhaps the majority leader has reconsidered what he believes to be the basic nature of the Senate. Perhaps he now believes that denying the minority's right to offer amendments is a very good rather than a very bad practice. If he does, then I think he, of all people, owes the Senate an explanation. I don't think he believes that; otherwise, such an about-face is nothing more than a desire to rig the rules so he can win all the games, and in the process he is destroying the Senate itself. When I say games, I don't really mean games. It is so he can win all the votes. He can put the Senate on any motion he wants to without any real rights for the minority, and in the process he is destroying the Senate itself, destroying the institutional characteristics the Founders thought critical to our government's design, and destroying precisely those practices and traditions that have enabled the Senate to serve the common good throughout our Nation's history.

The other defining feature of this body--the right to unlimited debate--is also under attack. By empowering the minority, that right has always annoyed the majority whether we have been in the minority or whether we have been in the majority and vice versa. But a little history can provide a lot of perspective for us today.

For more than a century, ending debate on anything required unanimous consent. A single Senator could prevent a final vote on a matter by preventing an end to debate. The Senate adopted a rule in 1917 that lowered the threshold to two-thirds. Not until 1975 was the threshold lowered to three-fifths, where it stands today.

It is easier to end debate today than ever before in the Senate's history, but that is not enough for the current majority. Urged on by many of the 34 Senators who have not yet ever served in the minority, the majority apparently does not want any obstacle whatsoever to stand in its way--not even full and fair debate.

Last November the majority leader used a parliamentary maneuver to lower the threshold for any debate on most nominations from a supermajority to a simple majority. It took him only a few short minutes to end more than 200 years of Senate practice and effectively eliminate the minority's role in the confirmation process.

As I have detailed here on the Senate floor and in print, the minority leader's reasons for this revolution amounted to filibuster fraud. At the time he invoked the so-called nuclear option, the Senate had confirmed 98 percent of President Obama's nominations, and filibusters, of course, were on the decline. But 98 percent was not good enough for the majority.

I noted the current majority leader's about-face regarding the right to offer amendments. He defended that right when in the minority and actively suppressed it when in the majority. Similarly, when he was in the minority, he voted more than two dozen times for filibusters of Republican judicial nominees. The Democrats were the ones who started that. Then, last November, once in the majority, he abolished the right to debate nominations.

While the majority leader effectively neutralized the Senate cloture rule to stop the minority from debating nominations, he has also used that rule to stop the minority from debating legislation. He again uses his right of priority recognition to bring up a bill and, at the very same time, file a motion to end debate. But it makes no sense to speak of ending debate--ending what he wrongly characterizes as a Republican filibuster--when such debate had no chance to begin with. The majority leader uses this cloture rule not to end debate but to prevent it altogether.

Just like the practice of filling the amendment tree, the majority leader is using his position to prevent debate far more often than any of his predecessors. Unlike the current majority leader, most Senators on the other side of the aisle have never served in the minority. Most Senators in both parties--56, to be exact--have served here only under the current leadership. Unfortunately, this means that most Senators serving today have only witnessed leadership that prefers power to principle and is rapidly dismantling the longstanding practices and traditions of an institution that took centuries to build. The only leadership that most Senators serving today have experienced uses parliamentary maneuvers to deny senatorial rights so that the partisan ends justify the procedural means.

The current Senate leadership is wrong. The road we are on today leads only to one destination. Just as maintaining the integrity and foundation of the Senate's design and operation is essential to its proper role in our system of government, attacking that integrity and dismantling that foundation can only destroy that proper role. Since the Senate's proper role is essential for protecting the liberties of the American people, destroying those longstanding practices and traditions puts our liberties at risk.

The minority leader spoke here in January about the state of the Senate and noted that what many call partisanship today is nothing new. But what I have been addressing in recent days is not the result of that ideological competition but how that competition is conducted.

At the beginning of my first term, there were only 38 Republican Senators--not even enough to end debate under Senate rules. Democrats have not been in such a small minority in nearly 60 years.

According to the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute, 42 percent of all rollcall votes during my first 2 years here were so-called party unity votes, in which a majority of each party sticks together and votes in opposite ways. That means a majority of votes involve Senators reaching across the aisle.

In the last several years under the current leadership, however, even though the margin between the parties is narrower, the percentage of such party unity votes has risen to 62 percent. This trend of retreating to partisan corners is yet another indication that this body is becoming like the House and, therefore, abandoning the tradition of unlimited debate and amendment at the core of the Senate's identity.

The way Senator Snowe described it, the great challenge is to create and maintain a system ``that gives our elected officials reasons to look past their differences and find common ground if their initial party positions fail to garner sufficient support.'' The Senate's design provided those reasons and those incentives, and undermining that design destroys them.

Building is much harder and takes much longer than destroying. The current leadership's recklessness in choosing power over principle is dismantling what took centuries to establish.

That does not, however, mean it cannot be changed. Senator Dodd suggested a formula for a better course when he distinguished what we legislate from how we legislate. Restoring the Senate as the world's greatest deliberative body requires recommitting ourselves to the principles of how we legislate so that we can properly discuss and debate what we should legislate.

We must first restore the longstanding consensus about the rules, procedures, and traditions governing how the Senate is run. Only on that firm footing can we discuss, deliberate, and legislate in a constructive manner.

In addition to restoring many of this body's fundamental rights for amendment and debate, the minority leader spoke in January about restoring a vigorous and meaningful committee process. These elements of our legislative process are related and they are complementary.

Increasingly, bills are drafted in the leader's office and taken directly to the full Senate for consideration where the majority leader will immediately fill the amendment tree and file a motion to end debate. In my 38 years in this body, I have never seen a consolidation of so much power in so few hands.

America's Founders were right in the principles of government they laid out and in the institutional design they built on those principles. But they did so at the beginning of this journey, creating the blueprint before anything had been built. I fear that returning to the right path may be even harder than embarking on it.

The majority today has engaged in a hostile takeover of the Senate for one simple reason: aggrandizing power. But remember the axiom that power tends to corrupt. It makes principle harder to see, fainter to hear, and tougher to grasp, and it makes principle very difficult to restore. Restoration will require believing in something greater than power, something more important than the bill or nomination on the calendar, something more significant than the latest polling numbers. It will require holding fast to a system that can provide power today but take that power away tomorrow.

Winston Churchill famously said, ``Democracy is the worst form of government except for those other forms that have been tried from time to time.'' There is certainly wisdom in that, but consider when Churchill said it. He was speaking on the floor of the British House of Commons on November 11, 1947, 2 years after his party lost half its seats in Parliament and the Labor Party led its first majority government. Churchill expressed his faith in the very form of government that had turned his party into a small minority.

We continue on the path the current Senate leadership has charted at our peril, not just the peril of this institution but the peril of our system of government and the liberties it makes possible for the American people. This may sound like a grand statement, but remember what Senator Byrd repeatedly told us--remember what he said: ``So long as the Senate's defining features such as the rights of amendments and debate remain intact, the liberties of the people are secure.''

There is perhaps no greater statement of principle regarding this Nation than our Declaration of Independence, which asserts that the government exists to secure the inalienable rights of the people. That is why we are here, and that should be our reason to change course--not simply partisan advantage or ideological superiority but liberty. The liberty we enjoy in America did not occur by chance. It will not survive by neglect, and it cannot thrive by preferring power over principle.

My staff and I recently visited the National Archives and saw the words engraved beneath in one of the statues at the entrance: ``Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.''

I hope we can turn this around. I hope the leadership of the majority will wake up and realize that some day they may be in the minority. I don't know when, but some day they will be. If they were treated as we are being treated, I can just hear the fulminations up and down in the Senate. All I can say is that these principles are more important than either party. They are more important than either party, and whether Democrats or Republicans like them or not, the fact is, this is the greatest deliberative body in the world that is no longer the greatest deliberative body in the world, and that is because of what is going on. I hope we can end that and begin anew.

I think everybody enjoyed the debate over the highway bill. For once, we were able to have at least four amendments--on both sides, by the way. And I have to say it was kind of a thrill to vote again on amendments. It was kind of a thrill to pass a piece of legislation the right way. Whether a person likes or doesn't like the legislation, it was thrilling to be here. I would like to see more of that happening so that everybody here will feel that not only are they a part of the Senate but they are helping to keep the Senate the vibrant place it always has been up until now.

I yield the floor.

I thank my dear friend for his kind remarks, and I understand how much zeal he has for the things he does here on the floor. He is a fine man, and I really appreciate it.

Madam President, earlier today--just a little while ago, in fact--the House of Representatives once again passed legislation extending funding for the Federal highway trust fund. This is the latest step in the process for which the final outcome has been known for some time. The bill the House passed today is virtually identical to the one they passed last week. It is basically the very same bill.

Earlier this week the Senate passed its own version of the highway bill and sent it to the House. Of course, we did so knowing full well the House would not accept the Senate bill. I don't think there was ever any real doubt in this Chamber as to what was going to happen, but in my view it is good that the Senate acted.

I was particularly pleased to see that the version of the highway bill reported by the Senate Finance Committee received such strong bipartisan support when it came up for a vote. Senator Wyden and I worked hard on that bill. The effort was bipartisan from the outset, and in the end we produced a product that both parties could support. Of course, I was a little less pleased that the Senate on the very next vote opted to strike the Finance Committee's language and replace it with what is, in my view, a less viable vehicle for funding the highway trust fund, but in the end that is the direction a majority of the Senators decided to go, and I accepted it and am proud of everybody who participated.

As I said, it is good that the Senate acted. But now the House has acted again. It is good that the Senate had some amendments for a change, and I think we all felt good about that. I felt a renewed spirit in the Senate because of this since it had been a year without having real amendments in a real process. Of course there were only four of them, but compared to what we have had over the last year, that still was an amazing occurrence. But now the House has acted again, and although there are likely to be a number of Senators who do not like the House bill, there doesn't appear to be enough time for the Senate to try once again to go in a different direction.

As we all know, we are on the verge of a crisis with regard to funding for the highway trust fund. Congress needs to act immediately to prevent a shortfall in the trust fund and to ensure that the States can continue to plan and implement their highway projects. Thousands of jobs are at stake. If Congress doesn't pass a bill and get it to the President before we leave for recess, we will be doing a great disservice to a lot of people. We all know this. It is not a secret. It is not a surprise.

As far as I can see, the only viable solution before the Senate today is to take up the House bill and pass it as is. Once again, we have all known this was the most likely outcome for some time now. It is time we accept it and move on. That is not to say that I am disappointed that we have to pass the House bill. As I said a number of times, if you compare the House bill with the one reported by the Senate Finance Committee--which, once again, received broad bipartisan support when it was voted on in the Senate earlier this week--you will see that the bills are not all that far apart in terms of policy. The core funding mechanisms are the same.

The principal difference is that the Senate bill raises some revenue through some tax compliance provisions that are not in the House bill. The House bill goes a little further on pension smoothing than the Finance Committee bill does, and this has brought heartburn to a number of us in both bodies.

These are not fundamental differences. Any Senator who supported the Finance Committee's bill should be able to support the House bill, which is a good thing, because as I said we don't have many other options if we want to get this done before the recess.

I plan to support the House-passed highway bill. I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to do the same.

Finally, I wish to take a moment to address a major setback we encountered with regard to the temporary highway extension that passed in the Senate earlier this week. As we learned yesterday, the Senate- passed bill has a shortfall of about $2.4 billion due to a drafting error. Some have suggested that this error originated in the Finance Committee's version of the legislation. However, anyone who takes the time to compare our language with that of the subsequently passed substitute amendment will find this is not the case.

I am not here to point fingers or try to embarrass anyone, but I will say these are the types of mistakes that happen when tax policy is written outside of the tax-writing committee, and we should all be careful of that.

The Finance Committee has an open and transparent process that allows for all of our numbers to be scrutinized well in advance. The committee has all the necessary expertise at its disposal to prevent these types of mishaps.

I am well aware that mistakes happen. I would just like to suggest that fewer of these types of mistakes will happen in the future if the Finance Committee is allowed to do its work when it comes to writing tax policy. That is all I have to say on that matter.

Once again, we are at a critical juncture. We need to get a temporary highway bill over the finish line. As far as I can see, the only way to do that is for us to take up and pass the House bill. As I stated earlier, this should not be a difficult lift. I think we can get this done in short order.

It was a lot of fun to be on the floor--for the first time in about a year--where anybody who wanted to at least had a shot at being able to bring up an amendment for a vote. Four of our colleagues did get amendments up, and they were thrilled. Isn't it amazing we were thrilled about something the Senate ought to be doing every time we bring up a bill? We can get both sides together on a limited number of amendments, but we should not have either side demanding to approve or disapprove the amendments in advance, and that has been happening all too often in the Senate with the way it is being run.

I love all of my colleagues. I love my friends on the other side. There is no use trying to kid about it, I care for everybody in this body, and I cared for everybody I have served with. I admit that occasionally there have been Members whom I cared a little less for than most of the others, but the fact is this is a great body. We have had some great people on both sides of the aisle over the 38 years I have been in the Senate.

We need to allow our committees to work. Let's allow our individual Senators to work too. Let's understand that we don't all come from the same State or the same jurisdiction. Each of us has a desire to represent his or her jurisdiction in the best possible manner. Frankly, we need to get this Senate back to where it is the greatest deliberative body in the world rather than just something that is run for the benefit of the majority. I don't want it to run for the benefit of the minority either.

We can get together--just as we did on this bill--and do much better around here than we have been doing. I hope that as we go into the future, everybody in this body will want to work better together and quit playing politics with everything.

We understand this is a political body, and we understand there will be politics played from time to time. It is kind of fun sometimes but not on everything, and especially not when it prevents what the Senate is truly all about, which is wide-open debates and wide-open amendments, and we certainly need to find a bipartisan way of working together.

I particularly enjoyed working with Senator Wyden. He has made a distinguished effort to try to make things as bipartisan as he can, and that is hard to do around here anymore in both the House and Senate. The House is supposed to be a body that fights over everything, I guess, because it is a majoritarian body. But even then the House has had many Democratic amendments they could have stopped. While they have had many amendments, we have basically been stopped from being able to act as the Senate should act, which is to allow people the right to bring up their amendments and try to make points that maybe all of us would do well to consider from time to time.

I am grateful I am a Member of this body, and I am grateful for the people I have served with all these years on both sides of the aisle. In all the time I have been here, there were only two people whom I thought had no redeeming value. I should not have said that, I guess, but there were two people whom I thought truly didn't have the Senate at heart and truly didn't do what I thought they should do. I have loved all the rest and appreciated them very much.

I appreciate the leadership on both sides, but I just hope we can get past all of this bickering and start running the Senate as it has always been run. A lot of it started when you break the rules to change the rules, and this is what happens. It was a real mistake on the part of the majority to do that. They might not think so because they are packing the Federal courts with judges--most of whom would have gotten through. About 98 percent of the President's nominees were getting through and very few were even contested. The fact is that some have gotten through and others should never have gotten through to the Federal bench, and it is because of breaking the rules to change the rules. It is not right for either side to do that, but it has been done. Let's overcome it, and let's be the most deliberative body in the world today, and I think we can do it.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

I was told 6 p.m.

How long will the Senator from Rhode Island take?

I thank my gracious colleague. He is one of the better people here, and I have a great friendship with him as well. I appreciate it.

Patent Trolls

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the importance of our patent system and how it continues to be abused by patent trolls.

Most Members in this body are fully aware of the crippling effect patent trolls are having on innovation and growth upon all areas of our economy--ranging from Main Street businesses to America's largest technology companies. Through abusive and meritless litigation, patent trolls--often shell companies that do not make or sell anything--extort settlements from innovators throughout the country.

How do they do it? Take, for example, the small coffee shop down the street that provides Wi-Fi service to its customers. The shop owners are using a technology exactly as it is intended to be used, but thousands of miles away a patent troll purchases broad patents previously issued to someone else. Next, the patent troll sends vague and hostile demand letters to the coffee shop, and thousands of similar businesses, accusing them, often improperly, of infringing their questionable patents.

Many trolls target small businesses that they hope will agree to settle even though they have done nothing wrong simply because they do not have the resources to defend themselves in court. These settlements divert capital that could otherwise be used for research and development or to create jobs. In many cases, it costs around $2 million to fight one of these cases. So they are forced into settling with whatever they can pay rather than doing what they would hope to do; that is, prove that there was an unmeritorious claim.

The sad reality is that many businesses often have little choice other than to settle rather than to expend the far greater resources required to fight them in court. Those who do fight back are forced to spend millions in litigation costs, often with no chance of enforcing a court-ordered award against a judgment-proof plaintiff.

How big of a problem is this? Mr. James Bessen, writing in the Harvard Business Review, confirms that ``the economic burden of today's patent lawsuits is, in fact, historically unprecedented. Research shows that patent trolls cost defendant firms $29 billion per year in direct out-of-pocket costs; in aggregate, patent litigation destroys over $60 billion in firm wealth each year.''

Mr. Bessen further cites three studies on patent lawsuits currently in the works by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rutgers, Harvard, and the University of Texas. Based upon preliminary findings, Mr. Bessen states:

A consistent picture is emerging about the effects of

patent litigation: it costs innovators money; many innovators

and venture capitalists report that it significantly impacts

their businesses; innovators respond by investing less in

R&D; and venture capitalists respond by investing less in

startups.

I agree with Mr. Bessen. The evidence from these studies cannot be ignored. Patent trolls do hurt innovation, and it is past time for Congress to do something about it.

For the better part of a year, Congress worked toward a legislative solution to combat patent trolls. In December we overcame the first legislative hurdle when the House of Representatives passed the Innovation Act by a vote of 325 to 91. The White House endorsed the bipartisan legislation by stating: ``The bill would improve incentives for future innovation while protecting the overall integrity of the patent system.''

Here in the Senate, I worked closely with a bipartisan group of Senators to craft a compromise bill that could pass the Senate. Countless hours of negotiation yielded encouraging results on key litigation reform provisions, including fee shifting, heightened pleading and discovery standards, and a mechanism to ensure that recovery of fees will be possible against shell companies.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, my Republican colleagues and I were willing--albeit very reluctantly--to lower the bar on fee shifting if we maintained strong litigation reforms elsewhere. I continue to believe mandatory fee shifting is the best way to discourage patent litigation in cases where a plaintiff's or defendant's case is so weak it should never have been brought or defended in the first instance. That is why I included mandatory fee shifting in the Hatch-Leahy Patent Reform Act of 2006 and why I will insist on its inclusion in future legislation.

Fee shifting alone gives a prevailing party little relief against patent trolls who litigate in the name of shell companies while their financial backers or interested parties purposefully remain beyond the court's jurisdiction.

Thus, there must be a mechanism to ensure that recovery of fees will be possible even against judgment-proof shell companies. The recovery of award provision I drafted is intended to ensure that shell companies primarily in the business of asserting and enforcing patents and litigation cannot escape potential liability for attorneys fees if they are found to have pursued an unreasonable case. Those deemed interested parties may either voluntarily submit to the court's jurisdiction and become liable for any unsatisfied fees awarded in the case or opt out by renouncing sufficient interest related to the litigation or do nothing.

In my view fee shifting without such a recovery provision is akin to writing a check on an empty account. You are purporting to convey something that is not there. Fee shifting, coupled with this recovery provision, would stop patent trolls from litigating and dashing-- dashing away, I might say.

There is no question that America's ingenuity fuels our economy. We must ensure that our patent system is as strong and vibrant as possible, not only to protect our country's premier position as a world leader in innovation but also to secure our own economic future. Patents encourage technological advancement by providing incentives to invent, invest in, and of course develop new technology.

It bears repeating that the governance of patents and copyrights is one of the essential, specifically enumerated powers given to the Federal Government and our Nation's founding. In my view it is one of the most visionary, forward-looking provisions in the entire U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, at least in the 113th Congress, it is unlikely that this body will act to end the abuses by patent trolls.

It is shameful that even intellectual property bills are now among the latest casualties of our current partisan gridlock.

As Senators prepare to return to their home States for the August recess, I hope they will hear from people who represent the hotel, restaurant, retail, real estate, financial services, and high-tech industries--just to mention a few--about the urgent need to pass patent troll legislation.

I hope Senators will be reminded about the opportunity the Senate abandoned to pass important bipartisan, bicameral legislation that was supported by the White House but pulled from the Senate's agenda by the majority leader.

I hope Senators will recognize we must end the multibillion-dollar assault on American businesses and workers--because that is what it is.

Through commonsense reforms to our patent laws, we can ensure that American resources are used to innovate and create jobs and not wasted to settle or litigate frivolous claims.

I am disappointed that during the 113th Congress the Senate has failed to act to address this critical challenge. Legislation to combat abusive patent litigation will be among my top priorities in the next Congress. I intend to do everything in my power to get such legislation passed for the good of the economy and the good of this country.

Israel

Mr. President, I rise to speak out in strong support of Israel's right to self-defense. This is not a partisan issue. Whether Republican or Democrat, we should all stand behind America's loyal ally as it faces Hamas's cowardly terrorism. In this time of frequent domestic political division, it is encouraging to witness the remarkable degree of unanimity among my colleagues on this issue.

The wide support for Israel's self-defense here in Congress reflects the unique bond between the United States and Israel. It is an interest we share for many reasons, including our kinship with Israel as a free society and a democracy, our close economic and cultural ties, especially for those of us who consider support for Israel a deeply spiritual matter, our respect for the many virtues of the Israeli society--from its industriousness to its tolerance--our appreciation for Israel's unique stability in an unstable region full of failed and stressed states, and our recognition that Israel wants nothing more than to live in peace with its neighbors.

When Hamas fires constant rocket barrages indiscriminately at Israel's cities and seeks to infiltrate Israel with teams of murderers and kidnappers, Israel has every right to defend itself against this terrorist threat.

In the realities of urban warfare against a guerrilla opponent, some civilian casualties are unavoidable. But in its military actions, Israel has acted with admirable and unprecedented concern for Palestinian civilians--making phone calls, sending text messages, dropping leaflets to warn of impending attacks against military targets, aborting critical airstrips to avoid civilian casualties, and undertaking numerous other measures to protect Palestinian civilians, even at the expense of Israeli military objectives.

While the Israeli Defense Forces act with great courage not only to protect Israeli civilians but also to avoid harming Palestinian civilians, what does Hamas do?

Similar to all terrorists, they hide behind civilians--building bunkers and tunnels to protect its fighters but refusing to shelter civilians; using civilian buildings, including schools, hospitals, and places of worship, to launch rockets and hide other weapons; and even ordering civilians to ignore Israeli warnings and instead turning them into human shields.

In the face of this barbarism, Israel deserves our strongest support as it seeks to root out the infrastructure of terror Hamas has built in and around Gaza. The Israeli people have a right to live free from fear of constant rocket attack. While we should applaud the success of the Iron Dome system in protecting Israeli citizens from the Hamas rocket threat, Israel is acting responsibly by seeking to eliminate the means by which Hamas perpetuates that threat.

Above all else, we must recognize that supporting Israel is truly about supporting peace in the Middle East. Israel wants peace--not peace at any price but a just, secure, and enduring peace. As long as Hamas terrorists hate Israel more than they love their own children--to paraphrase Golda Meir--Israel must occasionally resort to force

of arms in self-defense. In this endeavor our ally deserves our strongest support.

I thank my dear colleague from Rhode Island for allowing me to proceed on these two short but very important sets of remarks. I appreciate that and wish him well in every way.

I yield the floor.

I wish to thank my colleague for those comments.

Global Warming

I would be happy to allow Senator Boxer to go first.

Mr. President, I appreciate the comments of my distinguished colleague, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Today the Senate will vote on a short-term extension of funding for the highway trust fund.

While it remains to be seen what shape that extension will take, Congress appears to be poised to pass legislation that will ensure that the trust fund will not face a shortfall and that States will be able to continue to plan and implement their transportation projects. This is important. As many have noted, passing this extension will preserve thousands of jobs and prevent disruption of a number of different highway projects that are currently in existence.

It has taken a lot of work to get to this point. It has required the collective good will of Members of both parties and it has meant compromise on both sides.

In the Senate Finance Committee, both Chairman Wyden and I worked together for weeks on a bipartisan Federal highway funding extension. At the outset of these negotiations, I stated that I hoped any agreement to extend the solvency of the highway trust fund would contain spending cuts and reforms to go along with any revenues. I fought hard on that point, but in the end that particular goal of mine, with one exception, had to be set aside in order for an agreement to be reached. Of course that is how we pass legislation. If everyone got everything they wanted out of a deal, it would not be a compromise. While I maintain that a deal to extend funding for the highway bill should include reductions in spending, I am willing to continue that particular fight on another day.

After weeks of negotiations--some of which were very hard fought--we were able to come to an agreement on a funding bill that I believe both parties can support. That, in my view, is more important than any individual demand I may have had going into the discussions.

I wish to take a few minutes to speak about the specifics of our proposal. Overall, our bill would provide nearly $11 billion in funding for the highway trust fund, which is enough to extend its life until the middle of next year. Of that total, $2.7 billion would be provided by pension smoothing. I do have to say I am not a fan of using pension smoothing as a pay-for on the highway bill or in any other context for that matter. We stated as much on the record numerous times. However, we do face a funding emergency with regard to the highway trust fund. That being the case, I was willing to compromise on that point.

Next, the bill provides an additional $2.9 billion by extending Customs user fees. Once again, in other contexts, I have been skeptical of using this tactic as a pay-for, mostly because it diverts necessary funding away from national trade priorities. However, we drafted the bill to ensure that enough money was left in future extensions to pay for things such as the Generalized System of Preferences, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, and the miscellaneous tariff bill, all of which are important to our Nation's trade agenda.

Our compromise bill also transfers $1 billion from the leaking underground storage tank trust fund--called LUST--to the highway trust fund. The remaining funds would be raised through a variety of tax compliance measures, all designed not to raise taxes but to realize revenues already owed to the Treasury.

The Finance Committee bill does include a provision designed to claw back orphan earmarks. The provision deals with earmarks included in previous highway bills. I wish to thank Senator Coburn for the idea that was the basis of this provision, though in the end we didn't go as far as he or I would have liked.

As I said, all told, our bill will provide nearly $11 billion in funding for the highway trust fund and prevent the funding crisis that is on the horizon if Congress does not act. Once again, this legislation represents a bipartisan agreement between Chairman Wyden and myself. It was reported out of the Finance Committee by a voice vote, so it is an agreement by both sides.

I wish to thank Chairman Wyden for his willingness to reach across the aisle in this effort. He has been a particularly good partner with whom to work. The Finance Committee has a long tradition of working on a bipartisan basis to provide funding for the highway trust fund, and I am glad we have been able to continue that tradition with this legislation.

My only regret is that we were not able to reach an agreement with Chairman Camp of the House Ways and Means Committee, whom both the chairman and I highly respect. He has a tough job over there, and we have nothing but great respect for him.

The two committees met over the July 4 recess, and I believe both Chairman Camp and Chairman Wyden acted in good faith to try to reach an agreement, but in the end, it did not end up happening. In my view, this is unfortunate. Had we been able to reach a bipartisan, bicameral solution on this issue at the outset, it would have helped to speed this process along. Still, if we take a look at the bill the House passed earlier this month, we will find it is similar in many respects to the legislation Chairman Wyden and I have put together. They provide virtually the same level of funding, so there is not a substantive difference in the amount of time they would extend the trust fund. The major funding pieces--pension smoothing, Customs user fees, and the LUST transfer--are all the same. The primary difference is that the House bill does not include the tax compliance provisions.

Neither the House bill nor our bill is perfect, in my opinion, but they both accomplish the same goal and they do so in a way that under the circumstances I think both Democrats and Republicans can and should support.

So while some would say we failed to reach an agreement on the highway bill, I think it is pretty clear there is a lot of agreement on these matters and that one way or another we are going to get a solution soon.

In the end Chairman Camp produced what I think is a good bill. I think Chairman Wyden and I have done the same. I would vote for either approach because, as I said, they aren't all that different from one another. I reiterate that the funding levels in the House bill and the Finance Committee bill--and therefore the length of the two extensions--are virtually the same. That point is important, as there is an effort, as evidenced by another amendment we will be voting on today, to put an artificial deadline on the extension. I gather from the statements made by proponents of this approach that they hope this amendment will somehow force Congress to reach an agreement on a long- term extension before the end of this year. This effort is, in my view, misguided, and I would hope, given the fact that both the House of Representatives and the Senate Finance Committee have reached virtually the same conclusion on the length of the extension, Senators will think twice before voting to shorten it.

Ultimately, we all want to get to a long-term deal when it comes to the highway trust fund. That desire is shared across both Chambers and both parties. I think we can get there. I don't think we need to impose an artificial timeline or deadline--one that would create a similar crisis to the one we are facing now just a few months down the road--in order to do it.

There are other efforts out there that would seriously alter the trajectory of this bill. I wish to stress that what we are working on is a short-term extension. Once the highway trust fund has been funded by this bill, we will need to start working on a long-term bill that will give the transportation community stability and predictability, and I believe both the chairman of the committee and myself truly mean we will do so. We will need to be thoughtful in our approach and must consider every option to ensure that our Nation's infrastructure will be safe, efficient, and reliable well into the future. But before we discuss any fundamental changes to the structure of the highway trust fund, we need to get this step out of the way first.

As I conclude, I wish to take a moment to once again commend our chairman, Chairman Wyden, for his efforts on this legislation. From the outset he was willing to reach across the

aisle on this bill and as a result the Finance Committee produced a viable, bipartisan product. His leadership in getting us to this point has been essential.

We are very close to solving this problem and avoiding a crisis. We just need to get a bill over the finish line, and I hope we can do that in short order. I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise to speak about a subject that troubles me greatly: the state of affairs in this body, the U.S. Senate.

I spoke on the floor last week about how the Senate has historically lived up to its unique and essential role in our constitutional order. Today, I am compelled to offer an account of this institution as it operates today. I believe this message is important both for the American people, whom we all serve, and for my colleagues in this body.

When I spoke on the floor last week, I noted the widespread perception that the Senate has fallen into dysfunction. The pervasiveness of this view is striking among the public, in the media, and even among current and former Senators of all political and ideological stripes. And it is true. The Senate is in worse shape now than ever before in my 38 years of service here.

We must properly locate the source of the problem if we are to have any hope of correcting it. Political discourse about the state of the Senate is so often dominated by those who call for the Senate to be more productive, more efficient. To these critics, the Senate's rules are anachronisms, historical accidents, relics of a bygone era that must be swept away for the Senate to race through more legislation and nominations, not the least of which we just heard Senator Grassley speak about.

As I laid out on the floor last week, the purpose of the Senate is not to duplicate the work of the majoritarian House of Representatives. Our work is of a different sort. The Senate was designed to refine the unbridled passions of popular will, to apply considered judgment to produce thoughtful legislation aimed at the common good.

Structuring a body of such a unique character occupied much of the Framers' time during that hot summer in Philadelphia in 1787. Beyond the Senate's constitutional architecture, the body's rules, traditions, and precedents have developed over more than two centuries, not as flukes but as means of reinforcing and facilitating its purpose.

During the past 227 years, the right to debate and the right to amend have become the twin pillars that upheld the Senate's lofty purpose as a body of considered judgment. As Senator Robert C. Byrd wisely observed, ``As long as the Senate retains the power to amend and the power of unlimited debate, the liberties of the people will remain secure.''

Many of the greatest legislative achievements of this body during my 38 years as a Senator were only possible because of our open methods of deliberation and amendment. I think of my many partnerships with the late Ted

Kennedy, and others--Senator Harkin, Senator Dodd, Henry Waxman. I can name quite a few. Senator Kennedy and I fought like brothers but became the best of friends. This unique environment of the Senate allowed us to find areas of mutual interest and ultimate agreement for the public good. Last week I named just a few of these landmark accomplishments: the 1981 budget, the blueprint of how we turned the economy around in the Reagan years; the 1997 budget deal in which we cut taxes, balanced the budget for the first time in decades, and created the State Children's Health Insurance Program; the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a vital criminal law that curtailed the abuse of our courts; and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a landmark piece of legislation sadly attacked by many of my Democratic colleagues to gin up a phantom war on women to save their lagging electoral fortunes, but in reality a bipartisan agreement that Teddy Kennedy and I championed and that passed almost unanimously. These are just a handful of our legislative achievements throughout the past four decades.

Like so many others, the roots of these successes lay in the Senate's characteristic deliberation, including unlimited debate and an open amendment process. Guaranteeing each individual Senator the full right of participation enhanced the quality of the final product and crowdsourcing good ideas rather than limiting input to a small gathering in backroom Capitol offices.

Giving each Senator the opportunity to have his ideas discussed and debated gave us all confidence that the final product represented the best, most considered judgment of the whole body, encouraging Senators to support sometimes imperfect but decisively beneficial legislation. Allowing modifications to the initial iteration of a bill--while often frustrating for partisans and purists--often created a broad base of support for lasting reforms. Emphasizing an open and inclusive process encouraged partnerships even among ideological opposites, such as Ted Kennedy and myself, to find areas of mutual agreement and reach broad consensus. And respecting the limits of the majority party's power established confidence that when the positions of the parties switched, the rights of the minority would remain protected.

The atmosphere facilitated by our longstanding rules and traditions represents the Senate at its best. The Senate, functioning as it should, and so often has over much of my time here, demonstrates that these procedures and traditions are not flukes of history meant to be swept away as soon as they are politically inconvenient or frustrate a majority party. Rather, they are vital to the Senate's ability to serve the American people.

This is why the first Adlai Stevenson in his farewell address to the Senate as Vice President warned:

It must not be forgotten that the rules governing this body

are founded deep in human experience; that they are the

result of centuries of tireless effort in legislative halls,

to conserve, to render stable and secure, the rights and

liberties which have been achieved by conflict. By its rules

the Senate wisely fixes the limits to its own power. Of those

who clamor against the Senate, and its methods of procedure,

it may be truly said: They know not what they do.

Sadly, these critical and defining practices are under attack. Some who once defended the right to amend when in the minority have acted consistently to deny that right now that they are in the majority.

On February 28, 2006, the senior Senator from Nevada, then serving as minority leader, condemned a procedural maneuver that denied the minority the opportunity to offer amendments. He stated unequivocally: This is a very bad practice. It runs against the basic nature of the Senate.

That maneuver, referred to as filling the amendment tree, allows the majority leader to use his right to be recognized before any other Members as a means to block any and all other amendments by filling all amendment slots with his own amendments and thus prohibiting anybody else from having any rights of amendment.

Less than a year after condemning the maneuver of filling the amendment tree as a very bad practice, inconsistent with the very nature of the Senate, the senior Senator from Nevada became the majority leader. Rather than take his own wise counsel from months before, he instead began a consistent pattern of procedural abuse by using that very same destructive practice. The majority leader employed that tactic 21 times during the 110th Congress and 23 times during the 111th Congress. As the 112th Congress opened, the majority leader pledged to use this tactic only ``infrequently,'' but went on to employ it a record 26 times in the following 2 years.

The Congressional Research Service confirms that the current majority leader has used his position to deny amendments to the minority more than twice as often as the previous six majority leaders combined. He has used his position to deny amendments to the minority more than twice as often as the previous six majority leaders combined.

Six Senators led this body as majority leader between the 99th and 109th Congresses, three Republicans and three Democrats. I served here under all of them. Together they denied amendments to the minority 40 times in those 22 years. No individual leader used this tactic more than 15 times. As of this month, in less than 8 years, the current majority leader has denied amendments to the minority a staggering 87 times.

The right to amend is indeed a part of the basic nature of the Senate, a defining feature of this body that allows us to conduct legislative business differently than in the majoritarian House. The right to amend allows different voices to be heard, different issues to be raised, and different decisions to be made. Denying that right changes the basic nature of the Senate and prefers power over liberty.

Hardly a day goes by without the current majority confirming my point. Earlier this month the majority leader discussed the possibility of allowing amendments to a bill. The minority, he said, want amendments ``because they want to kill the bill.'' But he pledged to consider amendments that, in his view, would ``lead to passage of the bill.''

In other words, the minority has only those opportunities to participate in the legislative process that the majority leader says they do. He was right back in 2006: This is a very bad practice, and he is only making it worse.

Consider another way of looking at this problem. Recently, almost a year went by during which the majority leader allowed votes on only 11 Republican amendments. Think about that--only 11 amendments in nearly a year. All 45 Republican Senators together got fewer votes on amendments than, for example, one House Democrat, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Indeed, the Republican House majority allowed votes on 174 Democratic amendments during the same period that the majority leader here allowed votes on only 11 Republican amendments. There are Senators who have been here 6 years and have never had an amendment of theirs voted upon--that is pathetic--on both sides.

The other defining feature of the Senate, the right to debate, is also fast becoming a thing of the past. This practice has been a central characteristic of the Senate for more than 200 years and, like the right to amend, allows voices to be part of the legislative process who would otherwise be shut out.

When I was first elected, this body included only 38 of us Republicans, even fewer than the threshold in our Senate rules to prevent cutting off debate. I know from long experience that the right to debate can often annoy the majority by empowering the minority. But fulsome debate and thorough deliberation far more than expediency or efficiency is essential to the nature of the Senate. Both sides have been annoyed from time to time, but nothing like this.

Senate practice and rules have, for more than two centuries, required a supermajority of Senators to end debate before the Senate can vote on a pending legislative matter or a nomination. The current majority leader has compromised the minority's ability to debate in both areas.

Under the rule adopted in 1917, ending debate begins with a motion to invoke cloture to end debate. The current majority leader often files a cloture motion on a bill at the very same time he brings it up for consideration. He has used this tactic far more often

than previous majority leaders, and its effect is not to end debate on legislation but to prevent it altogether. Whenever those of us in the minority have resisted his demand that we end debate as soon as we begin consideration, the majority leader wrongly labels it a filibuster.

Last November the majority leader claimed there had been 168 filibusters on executive and judicial nominations. The majority leader used this supposedly unprecedented level of confirmation obstruction to take the drastic step of abolishing extended debate altogether using the so-called nuclear option. But the majority leader was counting cloture motions, not filibusters. A cloture motion is simply a request to end debate. A filibuster occurs when the debate cannot be ended because the cloture vote fails. In fact, most of those were not filibusters; they were falsely called that. There have been only 14 filibusters of President Obama's nominees, and that practice was on a decline. The Senate, in fact, confirmed 98 percent of President Obama's nominees. There was never a problem there.

The majority leader's current opposition to filibustering Democratic nominees is simply impossible to reconcile with the 26 times he voted to filibuster Republican nominees.

But even as destructive as the nuclear option has been, some of the less visible changes to the management of this Chamber have proven just as damaging to the functioning of the Senate. Take the committee process--the primary forum for both deliberation and amendment. The majority leader has set a record for completely bypassing the committee process, bringing most of the bills we have considered lately up in essentially final form, shielding them from deliberation and amendment on both the floor and in committee. In each Congress since he became majority leader, the senior Senator from Nevada has set a record for bypassing the committee process. In fact, with 6 months remaining in this Congress, he has already used this tactic more in one Congress than any other majority leader.

What are these matters the majority leader brings to the floor? An unschooled observer might imagine that after the negotiation of the Ryan-Murray budget agreement--an imperfect bargain but a breakthrough for cooperation nonetheless--we would join the House in pursuing the appropriations process through the regular order; that we would use the opportunity to exert our influence as legislators on how our constituents' hard-earned dollars are spent. Instead, the majority leader brings up bills that have no chance of becoming law in order to score political points to reinforce disingenuous narratives about a supposed war on women or so-called economic patriotism.

The current majority leader's abuse of the Senate amounts to a national travesty. He has broken down so much of what makes this institution serve the Nation's interests in order to advance his own party's temporary political gain. Such a betrayal of trust is nothing short of tragic.

To my 56 colleagues who have never served in the Senate when this body lived up to its potential greatness, we can indeed restore the Senate's rightful place in our constitutional order. This body can again be a source of great legislative achievement borne out of thoughtful deliberation and inclusive consideration. But this majority leader's slash-and-burn tactics are not the path to achieve these worthy ends. They are a dead end, leading only to the destruction of this institution that has served our Nation so well for so long. Instead, restoring the Senate will require us all--Republicans and Democrats alike--to stand for the institution's rules, traditions, precedents, and for our individual prerogatives as Senators.

The majority leader is my friend, but I have to say these criticisms are valid, they are honorable, and it is about time that people on both sides of the floor start to realize we can't keep going this way and still call this the greatest deliberative body in the world. It is pathetic. I think people on both sides know it is pathetic, and it is time for it to stop.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am saddened to report to my Senate colleagues the passing of a true American hero and defender of our great Nation, Lt. Gen. Marc C. Reynolds, Retired, who passed away with his family by his side on Monday, July 21, 2014.

Marc was born in Chamberlain, a small town in south central South Dakota, to the late Morris and Ione Reynolds, in 1928, and graduated from Chamberlain High School in 1946. After high school, he moved on to Colorado where he worked at Estes Park, Montgomery Wards, and attended the University of Denver before entering the Air Force as an aviation cadet in January 1951. He was commissioned upon graduation from pilot training in February 1952.

Marc flew F-94B, F-94C, and F-101B air defense assignments between 1952 and 1961 that included rotations to Air Force bases in California, Washington, Okinawa, and Massachusetts. He transitioned to reconnaissance missions in 1961 with an assignment to the Royal Air Force Station in Bruntingthorpe, England, flying RB-66s. After completing Air Command and Staff College in 1966, Marc moved to the 460th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Republic of Vietnam, and flew 230 combat missions in RF-4C's over North Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam.

Following his Southeast Asia tour of duty, Marc continued with air reconnaissance assignments in Japan and South Carolina. He graduated from the Naval War College in August 1973 and transitioned out of flying assignments and into logistics, where he was assigned to the Ogden Air Logistics Center, UT, initially as the director of distribution and later as director of maintenance.

In July 1976, he transferred to McClellan Air Force Base, CA, as the director of materiel management, Sacramento Air Logistics Center. In March 1978, he became the center's vice commander. Marc moved to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH, in May 1980 as vice commander of the Air Force Acquisition Logistics Division and took command of the division in October 1981. In July 1983, he was appointed commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center, UT.

In Marc's last assignment, he served as the vice commander, Air Force Logistics Command, with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH. In this assignment, he provided worldwide technical logistics support to all Air Force active and reserve force activities, military assistance program countries and designated U.S. government agencies.

Marc was a command pilot with more than 5,200 flying hours, including 475 combat hours. His military decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Meritorious Service Medal with oak leaf cluster, the Air Medal with 15 oak leaf clusters and the Air Force Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters.

Marc's passion for aviation continued after his Air Force retirement when he accepted a position on the Utah Aerospace Heritage Foundation board, which helped fund projects for the Hill Aerospace Museum located near Hill Air Force Base. He eventually became its chairman and served a total of 26 years on the board. Marc worked tirelessly in the community to raise funds and searched around the world to obtain aircraft displays to enhance Utah's great Air Force museum. Through Marc's efforts, the museum added two additional hangars and it continued as one of Utah's top visitor attractions. Marc was also a regular fixture at the local Ogden Airport where he kept his airplanes and loved swapping flying stories with his fellow ``airport bums.'' He enjoyed flying friends and family around the local area and never missed the annual flight back to Oshkosh, WI for the aviation celebration at Oshkosh.

Marc was the consummate gentleman and servant/leader who was loved by everyone who knew and worked with him. His gift was his extraordinary generosity and natural ability to make people feel important.

Marc is survived by his loving wife of 30 years, Ellie, six children: Pam Chatelain, Barbara Reynolds, Scott Reynolds, Lisa Oelke, Kristan Ingebretsen, and Karine Kucej, 15 grandchildren, and 12 great grandchildren. The family wishes to pass on a hearty thanks to the caregivers at Gentiva Hospice Health Care, McKay-Dee Hospital, and the George E. Wahlen Ogden Veterans Home, who took very good care of Marc in his time of need.

I wanted to personally highlight this great man's achievements, his service to our country and our freedoms, and his devotion to his family and his community.

It was my honor to have known Marc and to make tribute to yet another remarkable patriot that we are so proud of.