Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the nomination of David James Porter, of Pennsylvania, to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit.

Mr. Porter has deep roots in Pennsylvania. It is where he was born and raised by two public school educators who taught him and his siblings the value of hard work and education. Mr. Porter and his wife Valerie settled in western Pennsylvania and have raised their six children there during their 28 years of marriage.

He is widely regarded as one of the preeminent attorneys in western Pennsylvania. Mr. Porter has a wealth of legal experience that will make him an outstanding judge. Currently, he is a shareholder in the Pittsburgh office of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, a leading national law firm. During his 23 years at that firm, he has worked as a litigator on numerous complex commercial, regulatory, and constitutional

matters in both State and Federal courts, including the Third Circuit. He has represented a diverse set of clients, including the New York Times and Pennsylvania's former Democratic Governor Ed Rendell.

Prior to joining Buchanan Ingersoll, Mr. Porter served for 2 years as a law clerk for current Chief Judge D. Brooks Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, while he was serving as a U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In addition to his law firm practice, Mr. Porter has served in numerous professional service and other organizations. For example, he has been a leader in the Allegheny County Bar Association. His peers elected him to serve as the chair of two of that association's preeminent sections: the Federal court section and the civil litigation section. He also served on the Pennsylvania State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

During his distinguished legal career, Mr. Porter has developed an outstanding reputation for professionalism, fairness, and integrity. His nomination is supported by a diverse group of attorneys and organizations, including the Pittsburgh firefighters union--IAFF Local No. 1-- the current president and a past president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and the president of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Mr. Porter has all the essential qualities needed to excel as a Federal judge: experience, intelligence, integrity, and respect for the limited role of the judiciary in our constitutional system. I am pleased to support this highly qualified nominee and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. President, I congratulate the board of directors of the Jewish Community Center, or JCC, in Allentown, PA as they celebrate their 100th anniversary. Community leaders and JCC members will gather on October 4 through 6 to celebrate and honor this remarkable institution in the Lehigh Valley.

For 100 years, the JCC of Allentown has served as the beating heart of the Lehigh Valley Jewish community. Through its early childhood and afterschool programs, sports, wellness, and cultural activities, the JCC enriches the lives of generations of Lehigh Valley families of all backgrounds and heritage.

Many JCC members are first introduced to the JCC community in preschool. Eventually, they are old enough to attend a JCC summer camp, where they may learn to swim, play basketball, cook, or act in theatre. As adults, these members may take their own children to a community Seder, attend the Jewish Film Festival, or practice a healthy lifestyle of weekly gym sessions. Eventually, many members will participate in the Friendship Circle and Silver Sneakers programs at the JCC.

If you take a drive through Allentown's historic downtown area, it is difficult to miss a building called Alliance Hall on the corner of 6th and Chew Streets. Today, the building is occupied by the Allentown Health Bureau. A century ago, however, the 19th century Victorian mansion standing at this location served as the first Allentown JCC.

In 1918, the leaders of the Allentown Jewish community--among them successful local entrepreneurs, high-skilled professionals, and survivors of pogroms overseas--were searching for ways to support younger Jewish immigrants as they integrated into American society and aspired to fulfill the opportunities offered by the American dream. They purchased the Victorian mansion, turning it into a focal point for the Jewish community and especially its youth.

The facility was so popular that, within a decade, it was clear the JCC would need more space. David Levy, Allentown's first Jewish architect, graciously donated his services to design a new, larger building on the same site. That building would be called Alliance Hall, and from 1928 to 1954, it reliably served the JCC's ever-expanding membership. The JCC flourished and inevitably had to relocate, one last time, to where it resides today at 22nd and Tilghman Streets in Allentown's West End neighborhood.

Most importantly, since 1918, the JCC of Allentown has been the place where all community members feel welcomed, engaged, and part of the JCC family. Today it serves over 2,000 members, and I am honored to congratulate them on the 100th anniversary of the JCC's establishment.

Mr. President, I would like to recognize the 75th anniversary of Queen City Airport, located in Allentown, PA.

Dedicated in October 1943, Queen City Airport was originally known as Convair Field and consisted of an airstrip and several production facilities leased from Mack Truck. During the Second World War, Consolidated Vultee, a local aircraft manufacturer, produced the TBY-2 Sea Wolf torpedo bomber for the U.S. Navy at the airport and employed several thousand workers. After the war ended, aircraft production shut down and the leased facilities were returned to Mack Truck.

In 1947, ownership of the airport was transferred from the Federal Government to the city of Allentown, which agreed to maintain the land as an airport and emergency landing field. Shortly thereafter, the Pennsylvania Air National Guard began leasing a facility at the airport for flight training exercises. It was not until 1961 that the airport was renamed Queen City Municipal and the city assumed full ownership and operation of the airport. In addition to general aviation services, the airport began hosting events and exhibitions for members of the Allentown community, including airshows, hot-air balloon events, and fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Today Queen City Airport is owned and operated by the Lehigh- Northampton Airport Authority, LNAA. Nearly 80 individual aircraft are now based at the airport, a majority of which are used for local general aviation. As a result of LNAA's support for general aviation, the Federal Aviation Administration's Eastern Region recognized Queen City Airport as the General Aviation Airport of the Year in 2006.

Again, I wish to congratulate Queen City Airport as it celebrates its 75th anniversary later this year. The airport serves as the home base for many general aviation pilots throughout the Lehigh Valley, and during State work periods, I often start my day at Queen City, using the airport as a home base before flying to various parts of Pennsylvania to meet with constituents and business leaders. I hope the airport will continue to support the Allentown community well into the future.

Mr. President, I want to reflect on some of the data that has been coming in on our economy in response to our tax reform and deregulatory push.

Before I do, I want to commend my colleague from Missouri and thank him for his leadership and work on the incredible crisis of opioids we are dealing with. It is not a uniformly national crisis; it is more concentrated regionally, and my State of Pennsylvania is affected as badly as any place in the country.

I am pleased we have been able to take a number of constructive measures, but we have a lot of work yet to do as we try to deal with this scourge. I want to thank him for that.

Mr. President, I rise in support of the Corker-Toomey- Flake motion that we are going to be voting on soon. Let me be clear. This is a motion that simply would reflect--if it is adopted--the consensus of the Senate that Congress should have a role in determining the use of section 232 to impose tariffs.

Let me give a little bit of context. First of all, I want to be very clear that free trade is enormously constructive, enormously helpful for our economy and our standard of living. The United States has been a leader in promoting free trade around the world for many decades, and that is part of the reason we are the most affluent society on the globe by far, consistently outperforming the rest of the world. What it does is it provides our consumers with many choices and lower costs and therefore a more affordable standard of living, and it provides our workers with foreign markets.

Ninety-five percent of the world's population lives somewhere else. I want to sell to them, and we do that through an environment of free trade. Take NAFTA, for instance. Since NAFTA was enacted in 1994, Pennsylvanians have seen exports to Mexico increase by more than 500 percent. That is what happened because of the reduction in the barriers to trade that existed prior to NAFTA. Of course, it also encourages investment in the United States--new plants, factories, and all the jobs that come with that.

Tariffs and quotas and other obstacles to trade do the exact opposite. They reduce our consumers' choices. They raise costs. They limit our opportunity to sell our products, whether it is agricultural products or manufactured products. They reduce the opportunities to sell these abroad. Of course, inevitably, the imposition of these barriers involves the government's deciding which sectors and which industries will be winners and losers because very seldom are these broadly and uniformly applied. Individual sectors are usually selected.

So where are we today? It has been 16 weeks since the President invoked section 232 of our trade law to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. First and foremost, I have to say this is a misuse of section 232 of our trade law.

Section 232 is supposed to be invoked when there is a specific threat to America's national security. Well, let's consider the case of steel. The United States produces domestically 75 percent of all the steel we consume. Our defense needs consume 3 percent of total steel consumption. How could one possibly make the case that we don't have a plentiful abundance of domestically produced steel to satisfy our defense needs? But it is not only that. Where are the biggest sources for the 25 percent of steel that we consume but we don't produce ourselves? Well, that would be Mexico and Canada. Those are the two countries that provide the most steel. With both of those countries, we have a surplus of trade in steel. The Canadians actually buy more steel from us than we buy from them, and so do the Mexicans.

Where is the security threat to America when my constituents choose to buy some portion of the steel we consume from Canada? We know the answer. There is no security threat from Canada and Mexico, and the fact that they provide a modest percentage of our steel needs does not constitute a national security threat, and we know it doesn't. Yet the administration invoked section 232 to impose this tax on American consumers when we choose to buy steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico and the European Union, by the way, for that matter.

The harmful effects we have feared have already begun. We have increased prices on U.S. consumers and a real threat to workers and businesses. I have heard from many Pennsylvania manufacturers that happen to rely, for some portion of their products, on imported steel, and now their products are no longer competitive because they, alone in the world, are being forced to pay this additional tax when they import this steel.

I have to say this is part of what looks like a pattern to me--and this is one of my concerns--of this administration moving away from support for free trade. First, there was a sugar deal negotiated with Mexico which is designed to artificially inflate the price American consumers have to pay for sugar. It works out very well if you are one of the handful of people who produce sugar in the United States, but it is a terrible deal for everyone else. Then we had tariffs applied to solar panels and washing machines under a

different provision. Now we have an ongoing and apparently escalating trade war with China. This motion has absolutely nothing to do with China; I am just presenting that as a matter of context. And we are hearing that the administration is threatening now to again misuse section 232, in my view, to impose new taxes on Americans who choose to buy automobiles that originate in Europe. That would be terrible for our economy and for our consumers. It would be a bad idea, but we are told that is under active consideration.

My view is that it is about time Congress restores to Congress the constitutional responsibility we have to establish tariffs. The Constitution is completely unambiguous about this. Article I, section 8, clause 1, states that ``the Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.'' Clause 3 says that ``the Congress shall have the power . . . to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.'' We made a mistake in recent decades when we ceded this constitutional responsibility to the executive branch. I think that was a mistake, and I have argued that for a long time. Now we are seeing a price being paid as the administration, I think, is misusing this important tool.

What our motion does is it would simply take a step in the direction of restoring this responsibility the Constitution assigns to us in the first place. This does not tie the President's hands at all. The President is free to negotiate better trade agreements if he can, and I think he should. What it does say, though, is that if he wants to invoke national security as the reason for imposing taxes on Americans when they buy foreign products--when he wants to do that, Congress ought to have a role. That is all it says. That is what this motion to instruct says.

I am very pleased to be working with Senator Corker from Tennessee and Senator Flake from Arizona. I think this is a very modest step. It takes us in a direction that would be very constructive, which is to restore the constitutional responsibility we have been shirking. I am pleased there is bipartisan support for this. I hope this motion to instruct our conferees will be adopted by a wide margin.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, if there is any time remaining, let me just stress that this vote is a vote to move in the direction of restoring to Congress our constitutional authority and, ultimately, if we do that right, to revisiting the misuse of the section 232 provisions of our trade law, which is applying inappropriate tariffs on steel and aluminum from our allies and close friends.

I urge my colleagues to vote yes.

Mr. President, I wish to recognize the Pennsylvania American Legion on its 100th anniversary.

The Pennsylvania American Legion was chartered in 1919 by veterans returning from WWI with the goal of serving local communities, the State, and the Nation. Since then, the Pennsylvania American Legion has been a prominent advocate for the rights and entitlements of veterans. As one of the largest departments in the national organization, Pennsylvania has nearly 200,000 Legion members promoting the awareness of veterans' issues throughout the Commonwealth.

Over the last 100 years, the American Legion has played a leading role in advocating on behalf of veterans in Pennsylvania and across America. The Legion was vital in the decision to expand the Veterans Bureau hospitals, a forerunner to the Department of Veterans Affairs, in 1924. During WWII, the American Legion was instrumental in crafting the GI Bill, which provides mortgage, medical, employment, disability, and educational assistance to returning veterans.

In recent years, the Pennsylvania American Legion has continued to honor its commitment to veterans and the community. It has expanded the Housing for Homeless Veterans program, which aids homeless and drug- dependent veterans across the Commonwealth. The Legion also provides numerous academic, athletic, and scouting programs designed to mentor youth.

The Pennsylvania American Legion is also dedicated to representing men and women in uniform. It continues to build upon its founding principles of a strong national defense, caring for veterans, mentoring youth, and promoting patriotism.

Today I want to recognize the significant contributions the Pennsylvania American Legion has made to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its continued service to the nearly 1 million veterans across the State. I wish the members of the Pennsylvania American Legion all the best as they celebrate a century of service and the enduring commitment to support the veterans and servicemen and servicewomen of Pennsylvania with dignity and honor.

Thank you.

Mr. President, I rise to address an amendment that I worked on with my colleague Senator Corker from Tennessee. It is an amendment that I hope we are going to get a vote on today because I think it is timely, it is important, and it is really a measure that would simply restore to Congress a responsibility that the Constitution assigns to Congress.

So what am I talking about? I am talking about the amendment that we have crafted that would simply require that before a President--this President or any other President--can invoke section 232 of our trade law, which is the provision that grants the President special powers when the national security of America is threatened or is at risk and gives him the power to impose tariffs in that situation, what this amendment would do is that it would say that when a President makes the determination that he wants to impose tariffs because it is essential for the security of our country, he could do so as long as he has the assent from Congress. It would require an expedited process and a simple majority vote. It couldn't be dragged out. It couldn't be filibustered, but it would ultimately be congressional responsibility.

Now, why do I say that this would be restoring to Congress its constitutional power? Well, it is because the Constitution is very unambiguous about this. Article I, section 8, clause 1 states that ``the Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.''

It goes on from there. Duties are tariffs, and I don't think anybody disputes that. So article I, section 8, clause 1 assigns that responsibility to Congress.

Clause 3 goes on further to make it clear that this is Congress's responsibility, by stating that the Congress shall have the power ``To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.'' Well, the imposition of duties clearly is an exercise in regulating commerce with foreign nations.

Now, over time the Congress has ceded authority in this area-- unwisely, in my view--to the Executive, and that has been going on for decades. There is no question about it. The Executive now has a lot of authority under powers that Congress has delegated to the President. Frankly, it is part of a broader trend of congressional powers that are being delegated to the executive branch, to regulators, agencies, and to the Cabinet. I think it is a mistake. I think this is a congressional responsibility. We ought to take that responsibility, and we ought to take it seriously.

Why do I think it is important in this particular case? Because, in my view, this section 232 provision is being misused. It is meant to ensure that our Defense Department can procure defensive materials needed in time of war. That was the real motivation behind creating this power for the President to block foreign trade in the event that our national security depended on it. What do we have instead? We have this provision being invoked as a way to impose tariffs on some of our closest allies, our closest friends, and most important trading partners--in fact, the Canadians, the Mexicans, and the European Union--over very small amounts of steel that we import. In the case of Canada, it is really quite amazing. Do we have a closer ally than our next-door neighbor, Canada, the country that sends troops to fight alongside ours whenever we have a need to do that, a country with whom we have massive amount of trade in both directions, a country with whom we have a balance of trade overall, a country where we actually have a surplus in steel? What we are doing is we are imposing taxes on Americans, taxes on my constituents if they choose to buy steel from Canada, and we are saying that is necessary for national security purposes. Of course, it is not. It has nothing to do with national security, and the Secretary of Commerce admitted as much before our committee last week when he said what it is really about is getting the Canadians to agree to the changes the administration wants to make in NAFTA. Well, I don't agree with those changes in the first place.

So we are misusing a national security element of our law to punish American consumers for products that originate from one of the friendliest countries on the planet with respect to our country, and I think this is a problem. By the way, it is not the first time that we have had really dubious trade policy from the administration. I totally disagreed with the Mexican sugar deal that was negotiated. It is a protectionist bill that treats domestic sugar growers very, very well. They get an artificially high price for their sugar, and all of us who are consumers of sugar pay too high a price. Then we had tariffs imposed on solar panels and washing machines. We now are finding that, first, we had tariffs on Canadians, Mexicans, Europeans, and South Koreans. Then, there was relief. But, then, that expired, and now the tariffs are back.

We have gone too far down the road. This has become very disruptive. This is bad for our economy, it is bad for my constituents, and, fundamentally, it is a responsibility that we have. It is in the Constitution. It says so.

So what this amendment does is that it simply says: Look, the President can invoke 232; the President can invoke national security if he sees fit, but he has to come back to Congress for an expedited up- or-down vote.

Frankly, that is exactly what our responsibility is. This bill is relevant. The ag community is more adversely affected by the retaliation against these ill-conceived tariffs than any other sector of the economy I can think of. This is the bill that addresses ag policy. This is the right moment to have this debate and to decide whether we want to take the responsibility that the Constitution assigns to us or not.

By the way, I get that not everybody agrees with what Senator Corker and I and others are trying to do, but I hope everybody acknowledges that the role of the Senate is to debate and vote on tough issues. That is part of what we are sent here to do--to decide what our policy will be--and that necessarily includes having a debate and having a vote.

So I think my colleague from Tennessee is going to make a request that we be able to consider this amendment and vote on this. I wholeheartedly support this effort. I think it is very, very important.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield?

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Tennessee.

I will put aside how stunned I was to hear that my colleague from Ohio has suggested that maybe we want to emulate the Communist-managed economy of China as a good model for economic development. That is just breathtaking to me. But I really want to stress the point that the Senator from Tennessee made, and that is the fact that this amendment has nothing to do with China.

We can go on all day about how outrageous some Chinese behavior is in the trade space. It is true; there is really bad behavior, and, by the way, we need to address that.

We would be better able to address things like the theft of intellectual property and porous technology transfer if our allies were working with us to address that outrageous behavior. But it is harder to get your allies to work with you when you are hitting them with tariffs and the excuse is national security.

Let me just put a little bit of scale to this. Our colleague suggested how important it is that these industries survive. I completely agree. Domestic producers produce 75 percent of all the steel we consume. We import about 25 percent of it. Do you know how much of that comes from China? About 2 percent of the 25 percent. We don't import steel from China; that is the reality.

We do import a little bit of steel. The No. 1 source is Canada, which buys more steel from us than we buy from them.

So that is our national security threat; that is why we need to hit my constituents with a tax when they choose to buy those kinds of steel the Canadians happen to specialize in and Americans don't. This makes no sense at all.

Finally, my last point is this: We have sincerely held differences of opinions on this. Why can't we vote? Isn't that what the Senate is here for? Let's debate this, let's consider this, and let's have a vote. I didn't think the purpose of the Senate was to avoid votes that people think are tough or challenging or that they even disagree with. I fully accept disagreement. I don't expect unanimous agreement on the outcome, on the policy. But why in the world is this a body that can't have a debate and vote about something as timely, important, and relevant as this?

Mr. President, I appreciate the minority leader's teeing up my comments today and introducing what I am going to be speaking about, which is a topic he addressed briefly, and that is the 6-month period of time since we passed tax reform. It was this week, 6 months ago, that we had a historic vote--the biggest tax reform in over 30 years. We are beginning to get some data that is really worth discussing and analyzing, and I would strongly disagree with the characterization by the minority leader.

I was home in Pennsylvania recently, traveling around the State, as we all do when we are not in this town. On one recent occasion, I was talking to small business owners in Lock Haven, PA, and Bloomsburg, PA. At one of the companies, the small business owner was there, and he was really enthusiastic about how this tax reform is helping his small business. It is actually a very typical story that I am hearing across Pennsylvania. I mention him because, as it happens, his company is in the carpet business, and they happen to make the very carpet that I am standing on right now. They provide the carpeting for the floor of the U.S. Senate.

He talked about the fact that, because our tax reform really totally redid the rules--especially on the business side, but on the individual side as well--it allows him to access new capital and purchase new equipment. The equipment that he needs to expand his business is more affordable under our tax rules now. So that is exactly what he is doing. He is expanding his business, and he is very enthusiastic about it.

This, of course, is not an anomaly and it is not specific to Pennsylvania. It is across the country. Already we have had companies-- over 600 businesses employing over 4 million American workers--announce that they will immediately start paying bonuses, increasing wages, making larger pension contributions, but directly sharing their tax savings with their workers. This started within days of passage of the bill, and it has continued.

By the way, I am only counting the companies that specifically cited tax reform as the reason they are able to do this and only companies that are so big that they are picked up by the press when they make these announcements. There are thousands and thousands of companies that have done the same thing, but we will never hear about it because the Washington Post and the New York Times doesn't report when Sal's Pizza Shop makes a change in its compensation policy but, the fact is that it is happening.

By the way, there is also another not very widely reported benefit that Pennsylvania families are enjoying, and that is, again, directly as a result of our tax reform and the lower tax burden that we now have on our utilities. Electric and gas company rates have declined. There has been a very significant rate reduction. In fact, it is $320 million at an annual pace in Pennsylvania. That means that every family who has to buy electricity as a way to heat their homes is experiencing this savings as well.

Those are kind of anecdotal facts. But what is the big picture result so far? The facts and the data are overwhelming. The economy is on fire. That is what is going on right now. This economy is growing at a tremendous pace, and it is really on fire by any meaningful measure. One of the most important measures is with jobs. That is the whole point of a booming economy--isn't it?--to really create opportunities for individuals and families to earn a living and support themselves and improve their standard of living.

The most recent jobs report that came out in May posted a 3.8-percent unemployment rate. Unemployment is just 3.8 percent. That is the lowest level we have had since April of 2000. It remains a mystery to me how our Democratic colleagues and the Senate minority leader can somehow think it is a bad thing when the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in more than 18 years.

It is not just the overall unemployment rate. The African-American unemployment rate in May was 5.9 percent. That is the lowest rate ever recorded since we started breaking out different ethnic groups in the unemployment numbers. The Hispanic unemployment rate is very close to an all-time low at 4.9 percent. Another amazing statistic that came out in this May's jobs report is that we now have more job openings in America--6.7 million--than all of the unemployed people. I am not sure that this has ever happened before, and certainly not in decades, but there are more job openings, more ``help wanted'' signs, and there are more job possibilities than there are people seeking jobs. That is just a fact of our economy right now.

What does that mean? That means there are a lot of opportunities for people. If you are unemployed right now, there is a chance to go to work today, because that is the amount of demand for workers that is exactly what we said would happen if we would encourage the kind of economic growth that we are seeing.

I must say, I don't know where our colleague from New York, the minority leader, gets his data from. That is completely contrary to what he said. All of the data consistently show that there are increases in hourly earnings and wages. Wages are going up.

We have waited way too long for this to happen, but it is happening now. There was a 2.7-percent increase in hourly earnings in May. This is a wage increase of 2.8 percent for people who are in nonsupervisory work. So wage earners who are working on an hourly basis in a nonsupervisory capacity are seeing an even somewhat faster acceleration in their wage growth. That means workers are going to have a better standard of living. That is what it means.

When we passed our tax reform, we had two big goals. One was to lower the tax burden on individual Americans. How well did we do on that? Well, 93 percent of all the individuals and families filing owe less in taxes this year than they would have if we hadn't reformed the Tax Code--93 percent. For most of the 7 percent who don't have a savings, it is because they are higher income people who live in jurisdictions where they pay high State and local taxes, and we diminished the ability to deduct that. So there are wealthy individuals--a handful-- who are paying a little bit more.

It is also a fact that the wealthier people pay a larger percentage of the tax bill now as a result of our tax reform, because we made sure that the folks at the low and medium end of the wage spectrum would get the biggest percentage benefits, and they have. We also wanted to make sure that we are making business competitive and encouraging investment in the United States instead of somewhere else in the world.

One of the standard measures in how that is working is how our economy is growing overall, what our GDP number looks like. Well, it has been amazing. Year after year, we were happy if we could get to 2 percent growth, and our friends on the other side were suggesting: Well, we may just have to accept the fact that America can't grow very fast any more. The boom years are behind us, and now we just have to accept that we have this secular stagnation.

There was this whole theory about how it was inevitable that America would have slower and meager growth and few opportunities in the future. Some of us said: That is nonsense. The reason we have slow growth is because we don't have the policies that will allow the natural entrepreneurial energy and spirit of Americans who invest in us and encourage excellent growth. That was the debate. We said tax reform will encourage that growth.

What has been happening? We are on track to have over 3 percent growth this year. It will be more than 50 percent above the kind of growth we have been getting. The Atlanta Fed GDP Tracker is projecting that for this quarter, growth could be as high as 4.7 percent, which would be absolutely stunning. The CBO is projecting that for the full year, growth will be 3.3 percent. This is an economy that we were told could never really manage to eke out better than 2 percent. We are proving that wrong. The American people are proving that wrong.

Another aspect of our reform was that we said it didn't make sense to create the dynamic where a company's overseas subsidiary, after they earn a profit and pay taxes on that profit in the local jurisdiction in which they are operating, if they return that money home, pay another tax on it. We said

we have to get away from that system because nobody else in the world punishes multinationals that way, and it discourages investment in the United States. Companies will try to avoid that second layer of taxes by leaving the money overseas. Well, the money sitting and piling up overseas doesn't help to create American jobs. So we made new reforms that we thought we should and, lo and behold, what is happening? The foreign earnings that had been retained abroad are coming home.

It is already happening. There is now more money being shifted from overseas subsidiaries of American-based multinational companies, coming back into this country, than the money they are earning. It is because not only are they shifting back home their profits, but they are taking their past profits and they are sending that back home as well.

Dividends received from abroad, money taken from overseas and invested back in America is $340 billion in the first quarter of this year alone. That is an all-time record--a huge amount of money being invested back into the United States.

Why is this happening? Why are we getting all of this economic growth and this return of money? I would state that I can think of two big categories that are contributing. One is just the overall optimism about the business environment, the economy's strength. Why are businesses making the decision now, today, in 2018 to invest more than they did before, to hire more, to increase wages, and to bring back this money? Well, it is because we lowered the cost of investing, hiring, and bringing back this money. We have created an environment that is just more conducive. There is optimism about our economy and the belief that this is a good time to invest in America and to grow a business. The numbers are off the charts.

In fact, the National Federation of Independent Business, a small business organization across the country representing probably hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of businesses, including really small mom-and-pop operations, but also more substantial businesses, measured the confidence in our economy and our ability to continue to grow and thrive. It is off the charts. The index of overall confidence in May was 107.8. That is the second highest reading in 45 years. That is what we are talking about. That is unprecedented optimism. We have an 18- month streak now of what the NFIB, the National Federation of Independent Business calls ``unprecedented optimism.''

We are at an all-time high of small business owners reporting increasing wages for the people that work for them. There has never been a time when there has been a higher number of small business owners actually raising the wages of their workers.

As to sales trends, the growth in sales for small businesses is at the highest level since 1995, 23 years ago.

The expansion plans--plans to build new factories, to open up new facilities, and to increase the capacity that they have now--are the most robust in the history of the survey. Never before have we seen stronger numbers than this.

The top concern or the top worry that small business owners have used to be the burden of taxes and regulation. It isn't anymore. Now it is whether they will be able to find the workers they need to fill the openings they have in their companies. Fifty-eight percent of firms are actively trying to add workers right now. Right now, they are out looking to employ more people--58 percent. It is really amazing.

By the way, this optimism isn't just from small businesses, it is also consumers. Retail sales in May were up 5.9 percent above 1 year ago. That is almost a 6-percent growth from a year to the next in retail sales. That is consumer confidence. That is all of us going to the store and buying whatever we buy.

The University of Michigan consumer confidence index was the highest it has been in years in May, and March of this year was the only recent time that it was even near this level. That is because workers are seeing an increase in their paychecks. They are seeing less money withheld, and they are seeing wage increases. They are feeling good about their economic future, and that is really important.

So optimism is an important part of it, as well as an attitude that government isn't hostile to business and that the regulatory environment isn't in the ``gotcha'' mode but in a cooperative mode, with a tax code that encourages investment. All of this clearly contributes to optimism.

Let's drill down a little bit into one of the biggest drivers of this economic growth, and that is business investment. When we decided to make the reforms to our Tax Code on the business side, we said one of the things we have to acknowledge is business investment--the investment in new equipment, in capital. That had really dropped off badly. Without new equipment and capital, workers don't become more productive. If workers aren't more productive, they can't get higher wages over time. We felt like that was the heart of what was holding back our economy back in the Obama era and, to some degree, before. We stated that we can lower the cost of investing more in your business, investing more in equipment, and spending and deploying capital. We can lower costs by treating it more rationally from a tax point of view, specifically, by allowing full expensing in the year in which the capital is deployed. Cap-ex spending has responded even better than I actually had hoped. To be honest, I can't express how really thrilling it is to see the kind of growth we are having.

Let's start with the broader measure of this. The broader measure of this is business investment. This is a broader category that includes things like equipment, but it also includes things like structures, like a new building. It is really amazing.

CBO said that the first quarter of this year--they said that for the first quarter of 2018--before tax reform, they said: Maybe you can get to 4 percent. I think their estimate was 4.4 percent. After tax reform, they said: Maybe you can get that up to 5.6 percent. The actual number was 6.8 percent.

What is really amazing is the acceleration we have seen. These were the quarter-over-quarter changes in business investment during the latter part of the Obama years. That last year of the Obama administration, 2016, is negative. That means that every quarter, businesses were actually investing less than they were investing the same quarter the previous year. Our capital pool was shrinking. The amount of investment was going in the absolute wrong direction.

Look what happened. The tax reform wasn't passed in these first two quarters. You might say: Well, why did it improve then? I think that was because of confidence. I think that was because people realized that we had a new government, a new administration, and that we were going to work hard on trying to get tax reform done and that we were going to begin lowering the regulatory burden. Look what happened. We had a total turnaround from a lack of investment, a decline in capital spending, to an increase. Then when we passed tax reform, look how much higher it surged still. These are huge numbers. That is overall business investment.

The second chart--we can drill down into what I think is the subset of business investment, the category of business investment that is probably most responsive to our changes in tax policy, and that is equipment. That is where a small business owner or a big business can really turn the dial. They can decide to buy a new piece of equipment, buy another machine, buy another truck, buy the equipment that they need to grow. That is an easier decision to make than building an entirely new plant.

Let's look at this subset. These are tools, machines, technology, trucks, computers. That is the on-the-ground spending of capital that goes right into the hands of workers so that workers can become more productive. What has happened to this?

Again, look at what was happening. The spending from one year to the next in the latter part of the Obama administration was going down. These are negative numbers because the capital being spent on business equipment was actually declining.

Look at what has happened since. We changed the environment, changed the regulatory environment, changed the mood, and it turned positive. Then when the tax reform kicked in--and it is true that we didn't pass the tax reform until the end of December, but we

wrote in from the beginning and we made it clear that we would make the expensing provisions retroactive to earlier in the quarter. People saw that, and this has taken off.

I think the picture illustrates extremely well the tremendous change, the tremendous acceleration, the growth in equipment investment.

The reason I want to underscore this is because this is a very strong indicator of future growth. This isn't some sugar high--that the economy just got a lot of cash thrown on it, and so there is a little, temporary blip. This is the kind of stuff that allows an economy to continue to grow and create more because what we are doing is we are expanding the productive capacity of our economy. We are building new plants. We are deploying new equipment, new tools, new machines, new software, new computers, new vehicles. All of those things allow us to produce more goods and services. So not only do you get the surge from when you actually build and put those items to work, but those items continue to be used by workers for years. A new piece of equipment at a factory is going to be there for many years to come. A new truck lasts for a number of years before it has to be replaced.

This kind of growth is exactly the growth we were hoping for, and it is really the powerful driver and the reason we can be optimistic. I think this is the reason businesses and consumers are increasingly optimistic about the future. They see a strong economy, and intuitively they understand that this strength is real and that it is likely to be enduring.

The important thing about this--and I can't stress this enough--is that when a business decides to invest more in its business, to buy more modern equipment, to buy new equipment, what happens is the workforce becomes more productive. A company doesn't go out and invest capital to make its workers less productive. That never happens. It invests capital so that its workers can produce more.

It is the more productive workers who get higher wages. The example I like to use is, if you ever go to a construction site and they are digging the foundation for a building, you might very typically see somebody who is operating a backhoe, and you might very typically see a guy with a shovel. He is doing some of the work too. They are both digging a hole in the ground. Who is getting paid more? It is always the guy operating the backhoe because he is much more productive than any human being can ever be swinging a shovel and he has a set of skills that allow him to be productive. So when we are encouraging this kind of investment, we are creating more opportunities for people to earn more.

This is very encouraging news about the first 6 months of this year, the first 6 months after the tax reform. I think it is going to continue to get better.

By the way, there is good news on the Federal revenue side as well. We have numbers through the end of May. June is not finished yet. For the first 5 months of 2018, the tax revenue collected by the Federal Government in the environment of our tax reform was $26 billion more than the same period last year. So we lowered rates, we reformed the Tax Code, and we are collecting more revenue than we were collecting before we did the tax reform.

By the way, April was off the charts. April's numbers came in for the actual tax revenue, and it was $30 to $40 billion more than what CBO was projecting. It was the biggest surplus month in the history of the country.

It is only June. We have to see how the rest of the year plays out. But the fact is, we have wages growing, we have employment growing, we have businesses growing, and that means that all of the above are paying taxes, and they are going to be paying more. This is exactly what we said to our colleagues. We said: If we can create the incentives for stronger economic growth, we are going to have a bigger economy. When there is a bigger economy, you can tax it at slightly lower rates and still get more revenue because of the added size of the economy. This, folks, looks to be exactly what is happening, and this is what is so exciting.

For my constituents, it means that if you are out of work, you have choices. There are more job openings today in America than there are unemployed Americans. There are opportunities. If you have a job, wages are probably moving up. That is what the data shows. Overall, wages are rising at an accelerated pace. Businesses are as confident as they has ever been. That means they are likely to continue to invest and continue to create more opportunities.

I would just say that 6 months into this, our tax reform is working. It is working for our constituents. It is working for our economy. American business is more competitive. American workers are more competitive. The benefits are widely shared. I am very enthusiastic about this, and I am looking forward to the data that is continuing to come in response to the most dramatic tax reform in over 31 years.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize my constituents at the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce on their 150th anniversary and highlight their contributions to making the greater Scranton region a wonderful place to live, work, and raise a family.

Established in 1867 as the Scranton Board of Trade, the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce is the largest business network in northeastern Pennsylvania, with more than 1,500 member companies representing a variety of employers. The chamber is also the parent organization to a number of affiliates that support economic development, provide small business lending services, facilitate leadership development programs, and guide workforce development initiatives. From Scranton's early days as a hub for American heavy industry, the chamber has actively served the region for more than 150 years, always with the mission of attracting, sustaining and growing jobs in the area.

Since its inception, the chamber has been recognized as one of the region's preeminent business and community advocates. It has worked in partnership with numerous stakeholders to address the challenges brought on by an ever-changing regional economy. For their part, as the region transformed over the last century, so too has the chamber. Since 1923, the chamber has evolved and developed a number of affiliates whose missions are to address and respond to the changing regional dynamics through economic, industrial, workforce, and community development. These affiliates have worked to diversify the region's economy and utilize the tools and resources available to them to meet the needs of the community and its business members.

Today, new industries now call northeast Pennsylvania home and have helped the area become a regional leader in fields such as education, medicine, and manufacturing. Most notably, what drives the region today is building upon the greater Scranton area's rich history of industrial and economic prosperity. These are key points the chamber and its partners have seized on to promote the region as an ideal location for businesses of all sizes and specialties. With a history of success and an abundance of talent and expertise, the greater Scranton area is well positioned to attract entrepreneurs and businesses alike.

I wish to recognize the significant contributions that the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce and its members have made to the city of Scranton and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania over the last 150 years and wish them all the best as the chamber celebrates this sesquicentennial anniversary.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to address the body for 1 minute.

Madam President, I make the case that this amendment we are about to vote on is the simple question of whether we think we ought to be accountable, that we ought to take responsibility for the legislative authority we delegate.

Rulemaking is a legislative function. In this bill--the CFIUS reform bill that is in the NDAA--and on many other occasions, we delegate a portion of that authority--we delegate the rulemaking--to the executive branch, which is fine. Yet we have a responsibility to make sure it gets it right, this administration and future administrations.

This amendment has a mechanism that requires a simple up-or-down vote--it can't be filibustered; it can't be delayed; it is a simple majority vote--to affirm that the rulemaking will actually achieve the legislative attempt. A ``no'' vote is really a vote to shirk our own responsibility, our constitutional responsibility, since all legislative authority is vested in the Congress of the United States.

I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, I rise to address the national defense authorization bill that is under consideration and that we will probably be wrapping up this week.

First, I will address an amendment that Senator Corker and I have filed. It is an amendment that is related to the topic at hand, which is our security, because it is an amendment that would restore to Congress the authority to have the final word on the deployment of tariffs--taxes on American consumers--when purchasing goods that originate overseas, tariffs that are implemented, imposed, with the justification that our national security depends upon it. These are often referred to as the ``section 232 tariffs'' because of the section of trade law that authorizes these tariffs.

The short version is that I think we ought to be having a debate and a vote on whether this responsibility that the Constitution clearly gives to Congress should be restored to Congress. It is my view that it should be. Senator Corker and I have sought a vote on this. At this point, it appears that despite bipartisan support for this amendment, we may not be able to have a vote, but I think we should. I also think we should seriously consider continuing debate on the national defense authorization bill until such time as we are able to address this important amendment.

Amendment No. 2700

The other amendment I will discuss is an amendment I have offered which will get a vote. It will get a vote tomorrow, and I urge my colleagues to support this. Let me start by reminding my colleagues of something that I

hope we all learned a long time ago, and that is the very first provision of the U.S. Constitution after the preamble, the very first operative portion of our Constitution.

Article I, section 1 states: ``All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.'' I can't think of a more clear, succinct, straightforward, and unambiguous way to make the point that writing laws is in Congress's domain, is Congress's responsibility.

In the course of writing laws, sometimes we delegate some of that authority. Sometimes we delegate it to our staff members. We ask them to do the drafting. We are still responsible because we are Members of Congress. Sometimes we delegate it to the executive branch, and we call that rulemaking. We authorize the relevant agencies or Cabinets to develop the rules that will implement the legislation, but I would argue strenuously that that is still part of the legislative function. As such, it is a delegation, but it should not be an abdication of our responsibility. Congress should accept the responsibility for this rulemaking, and we should be accountable for it because that is part of our job.

That brings me to the Defense authorization bill, specifically to title XVII. There is a section called the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act. This is a dramatic expansion of the authority given to CFIUS under existing law. CFIUS is an acronym that stands for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. There is this big expansion of authority that CFIUS gets. Part of the way in which this underlying bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, expands CFIUS's authority is by the huge delegation of legislative authority it grants the administration. It grants the administration enormous discretion to develop the rules by which this expansion of power will be implemented.

Let me explain briefly what CFIUS is all about. CFIUS--this Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States--is charged under existing law with reviewing foreign investments in America, foreign-based companies that choose to or wish to invest in an American company. If there is a national security concern involving the investment, if there is a risk that is identified, then CFIUS--this committee--is charged with recommending that the President block the transaction if it is considered to be a threat to our security.

Under existing law, the President has the authority, in fact, to block such a transaction. For instance, if a Russian company were attempting to purchase Lockheed Martin, which is a big defense contractor and a big supplier of very important, sensitive, and advanced military equipment to our armed services, our Armed Forces, in such a case, CFIUS would take, I think, a pretty quick review of that and recommend a no. The President would almost certainly block such a transaction.

We understand there is a sensible need for this committee to exist and to do its work. So let's get back to the underlying legislation before us.

Under existing law, under current law, the range of transactions that CFIUS can review for this purpose of determining whether it is a threat to our national security is pretty narrow. It is fairly narrow. I think there are legitimate concerns that it is too narrow, especially considering aggressive and even hostile acts that are taken under the auspices of the Chinese Government to acquire sensitive American technology. As I say, there is this delegation of authority to broaden that.

I would argue that this rulemaking--the decisions that CFIUS will make as it implements and develops these rules that we are going to empower it to develop--is really going to decide which kinds of transactions will be permitted to go forward and which ones will not. The rulemaking--not so much the legislation itself but the subsequent rulemaking--is going to really set the scope of CFIUS's review and its process.

There are many rulemakings required of the CFIUS committee through this legislation. Here are a couple of examples.

A passive investment by a foreign-based entity--a passive investment in a U.S. company--is meant to be excluded from a CFIUS review. That would be allowed. That would not be subject to a review. Yet, guess what, CFIUS gets to define what constitutes a passive investment. That is a pretty big power.

A second example is that of critical infrastructure and technology companies. Those are the companies that we are concerned about, right? Critical infrastructure and technology companies are the ones that have sensitive technology that we might not want to have fall into hostile hands. That is the category in which there is an automatic trigger for a CFIUS review.

Guess what. CFIUS is going to write the rules to decide what constitutes a critical infrastructure and technology company. I don't know what it is going to conclude. I am pretty sure that if you are the manufacturer of a chip that goes into a very cutting-edge military application--that almost certainly would be a technology company we would want on the list. Yet it says critical infrastructure. What about a power company that produces electricity that feeds into our grid? What about a company that provides a municipal water supply? What about a supplier to one of those companies or a consultant to one of those companies? I think you could ask a lot of interesting questions about what kinds of companies ought to qualify, and we have delegated that. That will be decided by someone else. That will be in the rulemaking process.

Then there is the case of who must submit a form to CFIUS for a transaction, who must go under CFIUS review, and there is some criteria in the legislation.

The final catchall is that CFIUS will have the authority, as it sees fit, to require these reviews for other transactions. What could be more broad and sweeping than that? Basically, CFIUS can itself decide to write the rules in such a way that it will have the power to review any transaction it wants.

This is really remarkable in terms of how much power is being delegated to the executive branch to write these rules.

The rules could be written in a way that they are written too broadly, and if they are too broad, it could have a chilling effect on foreign direct investment in the United States. It is a huge source of jobs and economic growth when foreigners bring their capital to the United States and invest it here because America is one of the most attractive places in the world to invest.

On the other hand, if they write these rules too narrowly, it could be that CFIUS will not have sufficient authority, and transactions that we ought to be blocking will not get blocked because the rules will have been written too narrowly.

There is no Member of the Senate who can know in advance whether the rulemaking is going to strike the right balance. That is what we need here. That is what we want. What we want is the right balance so that we are stopping the transactions from bad actors but permitting the transactions from harmless sources that will help our economy.

Since we can't know in advance whether this rulemaking will be done in the appropriate fashion, why wouldn't we insist on the responsibility of overseeing this and, in fact, on having the final say to make sure that this is done properly, that the right balance is struck? In fact, isn't that our responsibility under the constitutional authority and responsibility given to us?

This is what my amendment is all about. My amendment would simply require Congress to approve the major rules--not every last rule but all of the important, major rules that CFIUS would develop--pursuant to this legislation that we are probably going to pass later this week. Congress would have to approve it before it could go into effect. It would be approved by a simple majority vote, and it would not be subject to a filibuster. There would be a strict time limit so that Congress would have to respond quickly when the rules are finished, and if Congress were to reject one of the rules, CFIUS could modify it so we could get to a conclusion.

My amendment does not give Congress the power to consider individual transactions--that shouldn't be in our domain--and it doesn't authorize Congress to review every rule, as I say, only the major rules, which is to say

those which would have a big impact on our economy.

So what are the practical consequences if my amendment were to be adopted? It would simply ensure that the administration would work with us as they were adopting the rules. Knowing that they needed to pass these rules in the House and the Senate, they would consult with us and say: Hey, this is what we are thinking in terms of how we define critical infrastructure and sensitive technology, and here is what we are thinking about what would constitute a path of investment. In all of the other cases in which they were making big decisions they would run them by us. We would have a dialogue, and we would get to a place where there was an agreement. That is what would happen, and, actually, that is exactly what should happen.

I have heard some concerns expressed about my amendment. Some have said: Well, wait a minute. If you get your amendment passed, Congress will never approve of these rules.

I couldn't disagree more. Congress is about to vote overwhelmingly. We voted in committee unanimously to grant CFIUS this broad new authority. The Members of this body overwhelmingly think that we should broaden the range of transactions subject to CFIUS review. Why wouldn't we support sensible rulemaking that would allow CFIUS to do what we have asked them to do? So I think it is extremely implausible that Congress wouldn't support this.

Others have suggested: Well, you don't really need this because you have the CRA, or the Congressional Review Act, as a mechanism that allows you to repeal a rule if Congress doesn't like it.

The CRA wouldn't work in this case at all because the CRA requires the President to sign a bill repealing a recently passed rule. What President is going to sign a bill repealing a rule or regulation that his administration just passed?

The CRA works when there is a change of administration. When the Trump administration came in, working together with Congress, the President and we repealed a number of regulations from the previous administration. But a President isn't going to sign a law repealing his own regulations.

So I want to appeal to my colleagues, maybe for different reasons, to support this legislation. For my Republican colleagues, 39 of us are cosponsors of the REINS Act. The REINS Act would require congressional review of every regulation throughout the entire government. Every time a major new rule is passed under the REINS Act, Congress would have to vote before it would go into effect.

If the REINS Act that 39 of my Republican Senate colleagues have cosponsored were the law, we wouldn't have this conversation because this legislation would come automatically under the REINS Act and automatically require that major rulemakings would come back for a vote. So I can't for the life of me understand why Republicans who support the REINS Act wouldn't support this, and I hope all of my Republican colleagues will.

I would appeal to my Democratic colleagues, as well, for the simple, fundamental reason that this is our responsibility. We should accept the responsibility that the Constitution assigns to us. That is No. 1, first and foremost. But, also, let's be honest. A big majority of our Democratic colleagues voted against confirming several of the members of CFIUS. A big majority of Democrats voted against confirming the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Mnuchin. They voted against confirming Attorney General Sessions. They voted against confirming Secretary of State Pompeo. Those three individuals are on CFIUS, and the Treasury Secretary is the chairman of it. So if my Democratic colleagues have such serious reservations about the work product that would come from these individuals that they voted against confirming them, one would think they would want the opportunity to have some say on their work product. That is what this is about. So I can't imagine that my Democratic colleagues would take the position that they must not have any say over the Trump administration's rulemaking. They have never suggested so much confidence in this administration that they would want to forego that opportunity. So I would hope that my Democratic colleagues could join me in this as well.

What this comes down to is that I think we should accept responsibility for the work we do and the work we delegate. Let's make sure that this really important and necessary expansion of CFIUS authority is done right. The way we do that is that we make sure that Congress has the final say over the rulemaking.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I hope this is just going to be a speed bump on the way to getting on to the NDAA, because that is very important legislation that I want to get to, but I have an amendment. It happens to be a germane amendment to a very, very important part of this bill--the CFIUS reform legislation recently reported out of the Banking Committee.

I want to continue to work with the chairman and the ranking member and the leader to ensure that I will have an opportunity to offer this amendment. That is all I am looking for--to have a vote on my germane amendment. When we can work that out, I will be happy to grant my consent, but in the meantime, I object.

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

Mr. President, I am looking forward to proceeding to the National Defense Authorization Act soon. Earlier today, I objected to a unanimous consent request to get on the bill because I am very concerned that I get an opportunity to offer an amendment that I have. Based on the efforts of our chairman and his confidence that I will be able to offer this amendment, I am prepared to agree to allow us to get on the bill, and I look forward to doing that.

I want to address two amendments that I am hopeful will be included, mine and one other. One of them has to do with the tariffs, especially on steel and aluminum, that come under section 232 of our trade laws, and the other is an amendment that I intend to offer with respect to the CFIUS reform. Let me start with the section 232 tariffs.

This is a section of trade law that allows the President to restrict imported goods that threaten our national security. It has been the law of the land for some time. The statute gives very wide latitude to the President and the Commerce Department--but really to the President--to determine, first of all, what imports constitute a threat to our national security and, then, secondly, the existing law does not prescribe what the remedy will be. That is also left up to the President. So there is a great deal of discretion that is in the hands of the President.

In March of this year, after a nearly year-long investigation, the President imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum--25 percent on steel, 10 percent on aluminum. Then there was a temporary exclusion. Then there were negotiations to make the temporary exclusions permanent. In some cases that has occurred, as with South Korea and other places, but they were negotiated. The exclusion--the ability of the countries to sell steel to the United States without the American consumers being subject to this tax--had a condition, and the condition was that they would agree to other restrictions on their exports, such as quotas, for instance, on the volume of their exports that would be permitted. Shockingly to some, the President decided to even impose these taxes--taxes on American consumers--when they buy steel that originates in the EU, Canada, and Mexico, which originally had a temporary exclusion but apparently no longer do.

These three allies--allies, mind you--make up about 40 percent of U.S. steel imports by tonnage, and all three seem intent on imposing retaliatory tariffs, which is what typically happens when tariffs are launched.

More recently, the President has announced that the Commerce Department will investigate whether foreign vehicles or automobiles sold to U.S. consumers, like my constituents--cars and trucks-- represent a national security threat, with the possibility that they will impose a 25-percent tax on Americans who buy those imported cars and trucks.

I think this is a very bad idea. This is a bad path to be going on. It is a bad policy. First of all, most directly, it is a direct tax on American consumers. That is just irrefutable. Consumers--our constituents--will have to pay higher prices for the products that are subject to these taxes. The price of a Honda Civic made in Japan or a Volkswagen Jetta made in Germany will increase by about $5,000 for a U.S. consumer--a Pennsylvanian or Coloradan--who wants to buy one of these vehicles. Of course, it is pretty clear to me that these taxes on American consumers will do nothing to safeguard our national security. I fail to see the national security threat when a Pennsylvanian decides to buy a Toyota Corolla. It is not clear to me how that is a threat to our national security.

In fact, there is no real national security threat that these tariffs are a response to. They are an effort to impose a protectionist policy for economic purposes.

In picking steel, it is particularly disturbing that section 232 would be invoked as the justification for taxes on steel imports. Section 232 is explicitly reserved for national security threats, as I mentioned. Let's think about this. Just last year, net steel imports accounted for about 25 percent of America's total steel consumption. In other words, domestically, we produce the large majority, about 75 percent, of all the steel we need to consume. For national security purposes, our military needs about 3 percent of our domestic consumption. We produce 75 percent. How is it even plausible that there is a national security reason why we shouldn't be importing this steel? Well, what about where it is coming from? That is interesting.

The biggest sources of imported steel are Canada and Mexico, where, by the way, we have trade surpluses in steel. Again, using the justification of national security, we have put tariffs--taxes that Americans have to pay--when we buy steel from Canada and Mexico, our close allies and contiguous countries. To suggest that we have a national security need to tax Americans when they buy this small percentage of our total consumption from these close allies and neighbors is not credible. It is not credible.

In fact, for national security purposes, arguably, it undermines our national security because it raises the cost of the steel that we need to build things. We pay more for that steel. How is that good for America?

It is clear to me that the President is using section 232 in a way that was not intended by Congress. It is clear to me, anyway. Prior to this year, section 232 was only invoked five times in all of its

history, but now we have this being invoked on steel and aluminum and maybe automobiles as well.

Here is the thing. It is Congress that has the responsibility for establishing tariffs--taxes--to regulate trade. It is explicit in the Constitution. Article I, section 8, clause 1 reads: ``The Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises. . . .''

Article I, section 8, clause 3, includes Congress having the responsibility to regulate commerce with foreign nations.

Well, obviously this is an explicit instruction that it is Congress's responsibility to determine the level of tariffs and whether there will be tariffs. What Congress has done over the years is passed laws that delegate this authority to the President. First of all, I think it is a bad idea for Congress to take constitutional authority that is enshrined in our founding document and just punt it over to another branch of our government. We should not be doing that. We ought to be abiding by the Constitution, following the Constitution, and accepting the responsibility that the Constitution gives to us.

I have long felt that this is a responsibility that Congress should take back, that the prior legislation giving this to the President was a mistake and it is time to take it back.

It is my understanding that Senator Corker is likely to offer an amendment that would do something that is very simple, and it is an elegant solution to this dilemma with respect to section 232 tariffs; that is, to simply make them subject to congressional assent. It would no longer be allowable, permissible under our law, if this amendment were to be passed and signed into law, for any President to unilaterally invoke section 232 and impose taxes on the American people in response. There would be a period of time during which Congress would review and would have to have an expedited up-or-down vote--not subject to filibuster, not drawn out, but a quick up-or-down vote--to determine whether that would be allowed. I would suggest that this would be completely in keeping with our explicit constitutional responsibility in this very important area.

I am very hopeful and optimistic that Senator Corker will, in fact, offer his amendment and that it will be allowed and that we will debate it, have a vote, and see how that goes.

I intend to offer a separate amendment. My amendment has to do with CFIUS. CFIUS is an acronym that stands for the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. CFIUS is an interagency committee-- multiple agencies within the executive branch--that reviews the national security implications of foreign direct investments. So when a company that is headquartered in another country wishes to make a purchase of an American company, if there is a national security implication or threat to that investment, which there could be, then, under the existing CFIUS framework, this committee makes a recommendation to the President, and the President has the authority to block the transaction--to forbid the purchase of an American company, say, by a foreign company--if there is a perception that this is a threat to national security.

Senator Cornyn has introduced legislation that would update and modernize the authorities. It would dramatically broaden the power and the authority of CFIUS. I am supportive of what Senator Cornyn wants to do. I voted for his legislation in the Banking Committee. This reform of CFIUS has been put into the national defense authorization bill so that if and when we get on that bill, we will also be contemplating this broadening of the powers of CFIUS.

How does the Cornyn legislation broaden CFIUS? Well, first of all, it dramatically expands the transactions that can be reviewed by CFIUS. For instance, under current law, CFIUS has no legal authority to review if a foreign company chooses to buy real estate that is undeveloped--a raw piece of land somewhere. That is not subject to CFIUS review. But what if an unfriendly government has an investment in a company in their country that wants to buy a big tract of land right next to a sensitive military installation of the United States? That might be a convenient place for them to set up listening devices and other ways for them to spy on our military capabilities, for instance. So I think it is a good idea to give CFIUS the authority to look at real estate transactions.

It would also expand CFIUS's authority to look at nonpassive investment in critical technology or infrastructure by any foreign person. It would review any change in foreign investors' rights regarding a U.S. business, and there are many other new categories of transactions.

CFIUS historically, roughly speaking--I think they review something on the order of 200 or 250 transactions per year under existing law. If this new reform is adopted, then the experts believe that CFIUS will likely review something on the order of 2,000 or 2,500 transactions per year. So it is a very, very broad expansion in the power of the government to block foreign direct investment in the United States.

We should be clear about one aspect of this. The reforms to CFIUS are largely a response to very aggressive and in many cases inappropriate behavior by Chinese companies. Companies that are headquartered in China--very often there is some Chinese Government ownership, and there is a long history of the Chinese, through these vehicles, engaging in wholly inappropriate activity, including coerced technology transfer on the part of U.S. companies through a variety of means. This is a real problem, and expanding the authority of CFIUS is an important element, in my view, in dealing with this problem.

So this is the main reason I am in favor of expanding the powers of CFIUS, but it is also very important that we not, in the process, unduly undermine foreign direct investment in the United States that is not a threat to our national security at all--in fact, that is the vast majority of foreign direct investment in the United States. When Toyota decides to build a new manufacturing facility to make cars in Tennessee, that is not a threat to America's national security. If they were to make an investment with a car company in the United States and establish a joint venture and start making cars in Michigan, that would not be a threat to national security. The vast majority of transactions are not at all a threat. In fact, they are a source of important jobs. In my State of Pennsylvania, there are 334,000 Pennsylvanians who work for foreign-based companies that have invested in and operate in and create jobs in Pennsylvania, and 186,000 of those jobs are in manufacturing.

Consider this: In 2015, the total amount of foreign direct investment in the United States--so the total amount of money invested by people and companies that are somewhere other than America but choose to invest in America--the total was almost half a trillion dollars, $465 billion. Do you know how much of that came from China? Less than $6 billion out of almost $500 billion. So it is a very small percentage. In 2016, the numbers were comparable--about $460 billion in total foreign direct investment and about 10 of that from China.

China is not even close to be being in the top 10 countries that are the source of foreign direct investment in the United States. That doesn't mean it is unimportant to consider when Chinese companies are making investments. It is very important. But my point is that the vast majority of the foreign direct investment in our country is good for our economy. It creates jobs and opportunities, and we don't want to disrupt that. If the implementation of this reform to CFIUS goes badly, it could have a chilling effect on foreign direct investment, and that would diminish our economic growth, our economic strength, and cost us who knows how many jobs. That is what I want to make sure we avoid.

In the course of the implementation, the way this is going to happen under the law is that the reformed CFIUS--the legislation that we are going to consider as part of NDAA requires this CFIUS committee to develop the rules that will basically define the terms of their own operations. So, for instance, they will have very broad discretion. If their discretion is too broad--I should say, if they exercise it too broadly, if they end up applying CFIUS restrictions too broadly, we will lose the foreign direct investment that is good for

us. If they define it too narrowly, then there is a chance we won't catch bad actors whom we should catch.

Let me give a few examples of how the rulemaking is going to determine how CFIUS applies. One of the key terms throughout the legislation is ``critical infrastructure and technology companies.'' Those are the companies with technologies that we don't necessarily want to end up in the hands of an adversarial country like China. Well, guess who defines what is a critical infrastructure and technology company? CFIUS does. We don't here in the Senate. Congress doesn't. We empower the committee, CFIUS, to decide what constitutes a critical infrastructure technology company.

We also empower CFIUS to decide when a company is attempting to circumvent the rules. That is an important issue because following the rules strictly so as not to be caught up in this could be deemed to be a circumvention, so that is an important factor.

There are lots of other rulemakings that we require of this committee, and it is the way they make those rules that will determine exactly the extent to which we continue to foster constructive foreign direct investment or we choke it off.

My concern is that Congress should not simply blindly hand this off to the executive branch and hope for the best. That would not be fulfilling our obligation to enact the legislation as it should be enacted. So I intend to file an amendment, and my amendment is very simple. It is just going to provide Congress with the opportunity and the requirement to review the major rulemakings--the big parts, the important parts--defining the terms and circumstances under which CFIUS will operate before they can go into effect. So CFIUS will go ahead, promulgate these rules, and before they become operative, there has to be an up-or-down vote by Congress.

We have written this so that there will be an expedited procedure. It will pass with a simple majority. There has to be a vote. The vote actually has to happen in almost the exact same timeframe as the rule's implementation. In other words, after a rulemaking is finished, there is a 60-day delay before it becomes operative. It is during that window that Congress would have its vote. It cannot be filibustered. It cannot be delayed. But what it would do is it would ensure that we are involved in this process, that we have the oversight we are supposed to exercise to make sure it is done properly, and it ensures that we would work with the administration.

If Congress were to reject one or more of these rules, that wouldn't stop the administration. They would then work with us to address whatever concerns led to the objection and then submit a new rule.

It is modeled somewhat after the REINS Act that is very broadly supported on this side of the aisle. I should point out that it is much more limited because this congressional review of the rulemaking under my amendment applies only to the rules made by CFIUS under this legislation. So it is a very narrow application. There were 39 Republican cosponsors of the REINS Act. If that were the law of the land, if that had been adopted, we wouldn't be having this discussion because it would automatically apply to the rulemaking of CFIUS. So it is hard to see why anyone who supports the REINS Act would oppose this.

I am certainly hoping that my Democratic colleagues will support this as well. Let's be honest--they have not been big fans of the Trump administration. Many of them have voted against the Cabinet and agency leaders whom President Trump has nominated who will be responsible for carrying out these rules. For them to vote no on this amendment would be for them to insist that they not have the opportunity to review the work of the Trump administration. Given their obvious and vocal skepticism about the Trump administration, why in the world would they refuse the opportunity to have veto power over very important rulemaking? I can't imagine why they would. So I hope they will support this, and I hope my Republican colleagues will as well.

Another important point, just to reiterate, the congressional approval applies only to the rulemaking of CFIUS when it is done. It certainly does not apply to the individual transactions that would subsequently be reviewed by CFIUS under these rules; it applies just to the rules themselves. And it certainly would not result in killing CFIUS reform. Congress has demonstrated a very broad, bipartisan consensus that we need to broaden the authority of CFIUS, so I am quite confident that when these rules are done, if they are done in a sensible fashion, Congress is going to agree to them because Congress wants CFIUS to have this new authority. I will point out, it would almost certainly have the effect of encouraging the administration to work closely with Congress to make sure they are in fact developing rules that are consistent with congressional intent. That is exactly the way it should work.

If this amendment passes, I foresee greater collaboration between the administration and Congress on the implementation of this CFIUS reform. I think that will likely lead to a better product, one that ensures we will catch the bad actors who are trying to make investments in the United States for the purpose of acquiring technology we don't want them to have and allow for the good, constructive, helpful foreign direct investment we all benefit from.

My hope is, we will get on this Defense authorization bill soon, that these and many other amendments will be debated and voted on, and we will be able to pass this with a very strong affirmative vote.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about two related topics. The first is to recognize and honor the men and women of law enforcement across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and across our country. This week is National Police Week, and it is really an important opportunity for us to let the folks in law enforcement know how grateful we are to them for the service they provide and for the sacrifices they make every single day to keep us safe.

It is also an important occasion to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. This week, the names of 129 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2017 alone were added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Among the fallen were two Pennsylvania officers: Patrolman Brian Shaw of the New Kensington Police Department and Trooper Michael Paul Stewart III of the Pennsylvania State Police.

Given the clear and obvious dangers that our police officers face, it seems to me that we have an obligation to make sure they have the tools they need to protect themselves and the public, so I want to mention two efforts to do exactly that and urge my colleagues to support these efforts.

The first is a Bureau of Prisons gun locker bill. This is legislation that I have introduced with Senator Manchin. We call it the Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Correctional Officer Self-Protection Act. What it would do is allow Federal prison guards to protect themselves on their commutes to and from work.

Why is this a problem? Because in many cases, the prisons where the prison guards work do not have a secure place to secure firearms, so the guards cannot bring their firearms to work with them nor would they have them to go home. They often are unarmed going to and from work.

Sadly, the fact is, Federal prison guards can often be targets of criminals when they are off duty. Let's be honest here. Some of the prisoners they are guarding get released and are still pretty bad guys.

Unfortunately, the Department of Justice policy essentially makes it impossible for guards to protect themselves when they are going to and from work. Sadly, Lieutenant Albarati, of Puerto Rico, paid for the price for this policy. In 2013, he was driving home from work. He was unarmed. He was shot and killed. Three inmates from the prison where he worked had hired the killer.

What our bill does is very simple. It requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide officers with an onsite storage locker for their personal firearms so that when they get to work, they can secure them in a safe place or allow these prison guards to store their personal firearms in a lockbox that is in their cars. It is pretty simple. It is pretty straightforward.

Yesterday, the House voted on a companion bill, and it passed 378 to 0--378 to 0. Now is the opportunity for the Senate to act. We should act quickly. We should pass this. We should do it through our hotline and get this done. I am sure the President will sign this into law, and we will be providing a tool to enhance the safety of the prison guards who protect our security.

There is another piece of legislation, which is the Lifesaving Gear for Police Act. I have introduced this legislation. What this would do is allow local law enforcement to continue obtaining the surplus defensive Federal gear they need to protect themselves and the public. It is based on a simple principle. The idea is that the police ought to at least have sufficient equipment. They should at least be as well- equipped as criminals and terrorists who attack them and are a threat to

all of us. We should make every effort we can to make sure that law enforcement officers have the chance to go home safely to their families at the end of their shifts.

It was longstanding policy that surplus, leftover, military gear that was defensive in nature, when it was not wanted or in use by the military, would be made available to law enforcement. Unfortunately, in 2015, the Obama administration severely restricted the ability of State and local law enforcement to obtain this surplus, leftover, in-storage gear.

The restrictions by the Obama administration were rationalized on the completely false narrative that the police were a source of unrest and violence, as opposed to the truth that we all know, that they are brave men and women who defend us against unrest and violence. I think the American people know better. They know that the vast, overwhelming majority of people in law enforcement are good, honest, decent, hard- working people who are motivated by their desire to do a good job and protect the public.

Fortunately, President Trump reversed the Obama administration's flawed policy of denying our local police forces this equipment. But that only has the power of an Executive order, and the safety of our law enforcement officers and the public should not be subject to political whims. A new administration will arrive at some point, and when they do, they could reverse this unless we codify it in law. That is what our bill would do. It would ensure that State and local law enforcement can continue to obtain this lifesaving Federal gear, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office or Congress.

So as we mark National Police Week, we should never forget the courage our law enforcement officers exhibit every day in keeping us safe. I would like to say to our country's law enforcement officers, including the more than 25,000 in Pennsylvania, we thank you for your service and your sacrifice.

Mr. President, the second topic I wish to touch on today is a subject that is apparently misunderstood, and it is certainly wildly mischaracterized. It is the subject of rescissions. It has become a topic of conversation since the President--the administration--has proposed a rescission. A rescission relates to our budget process. It is when money originally authorized by Congress to be spent on a program but actually is not spent--that authorization is revoked, it is rescinded, but it is with respect to money that was never spent.

Now, specifically, I want to discuss how this relates to the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is often referred to by the acronym CHIP--the CHIP program. So if you follow recent media reports and comments by some of our colleagues, and even some industry stakeholders, boy, it sure seems like there is a lot of confusion.

Let me state an unequivocal fact. Since 2011, there have been rescissions from CHIP every single year. This is not new. It has happened every single year since 2011.

Now, is that because Congress decides during the course of each year that they don't really like the CHIP program or they don't like children or they don't want kids to get health insurance? No, that is not why it happens. The reason it happens each and every year is because Congress systematically, intentionally, and willfully authorizes far more money for the CHIP program than it is ever going to actually spend.

We have a chart that illustrates this. We can see the vertical columns. The red bars show how much money Congress has authorized in the years to the left of the dotted line. Those are historical years. To the right of the dotted line is the projected future years. So the red bars are how much money Congress has authorized for the CHIP program. The green line shows how much of that money actually gets spent on the program. We can see that in each and every year the red bar is way above the green line. It has been going on back to 2009; it is every single year, and if we continue on our current path, that will continue to be the case as far as we can see going into the future.

Now, take a particular year; for example, this year, 2018. We expect the Federal Government is going to spend $16 billion on the program. Now, because of the nature of the way this program works and certain features, it is possible we will spend $16.1 billion. It is possible it will end up being $15.99 billion, but we know $16 billion is enough to provide the Federal share of funding for the children enrolled by their States, but, as I say, we don't know it with precise precision right to the last dollar.

So knowing it is going to be about $16 billion, how much money do we think Congress authorized for this program that is going to cost $16 billion? The answer is $25 billion. So $25 billion, when we know for a fact--everybody, including our Democratic colleagues, knows we are not going to spend anything close to that amount of money. As I say, this overfunding is not unique to 2018; it happens each and every year, and it will continue well into the future.

Now, within that $25 billion, I should point out a subset. There is something called the Child Enrollment Contingency Fund. In 2018, $4.3 billion of the $25 billion is designated for this Child Enrollment Contingency Fund. The word ``contingency'' is there because it is meant, theoretically, to be a backstop in case the demand--the utilization--for this program is so great that the allocated money isn't enough, so there will be this contingency fund. That raises a question: Is that a sensible number, $4.3 billion?

Well, let's look at this. Since 2009, there has been a total of $11.4 billion made available in this very category, this contingency fund. That is represented by the blue circle on the chart. How much has actually been needed? The answer is $100 million--one-tenth of $1 billion. Nine-tenths of 1 percent of the amount of money that has been made available has actually been used for this purpose, and $11.4 billion was authorized in the decades since this contingency fund was invented.

During that period of time, all 50 States and the District of Columbia, if they ever needed it, would have been able to access this. That 50, plus 1, over the course of 9 years, is 460 opportunities for a State or the District to come to the Federal Government and say: We need some of that money from the contingency fund--460 times. How many times has it actually occurred over the course of those 9 years? The answer is three, and the amount of money is less than 1 percent of what has been authorized: $108 million used out of $11 billion that has been authorized.

Well, next year, according to State law, despite the fact that no State is even close to consuming the full amount of the main fund, we are going to allow another $4.5 billion to be deposited in this account, when the sum total of all the States' usage for the last 9 years was $100 million, one-tenth of $1 billion.

Look at it another way. If you look at all the CHIP-related accounts--all the Federal money that has been designated for this children's health program since 2009--Congress has willfully and systematically authorized so much in excess of what is needed that actually only 58 percent of the money has gone to the CHIP program because that is all the demand there was for this program.

So this, obviously, raises a question: Why is it that year after year after year, including this year, Congress intentionally authorizes so much more funding than we are ever going to spend on this category, on this program, on the children's health program? I will tell my colleagues why. It is a big budget gimmick. It creates a big opportunity for Congress to lie to the American people and spend more money on other programs under the guise of putting it toward the children's health program.

How does this work? Every year, as I mentioned at the beginning of my comments, after knowingly authorizing way more money than is needed, Congress comes back and says: Oh, you know what, let's do a rescission, but we will take this money out of CHIP, and we will spend it on something else. It could be spent on anything else, whatever the politically favorite cause is of the moment, but buried somewhere in a 1,000-page appropriations bill every

year there has been a rescission, and the money has been shifted to something else. Basically, it becomes a slush fund to be used in the appropriations process and to allow the appropriations to exceed the cap on spending that we all agreed upon.

So that is what happens. Congress willfully creates a number way above what we are going to spend, comes back a little later and says: Oh, my goodness, look at all this leftover money. Well, let's just take it and spend it somewhere else.

It is completely dishonest. It completely misrepresents the CHIP program. It completely misrepresents--in fact, it blatantly violates the spending caps we have established, and it is not trivial. It is not a trivial amount of money. Over the last 8 years, the amount of these rescissions, so it can be spent elsewhere, has added up to 45 billion taxpayer dollars--entirely a gimmick, a device that just allows Congress to lie to the American people about what they are spending.

So that brings us up to last week. The administration comes along and says they have a suggestion for Congress. First of all, let's fully fund the CHIP program. Let's make sure the CHIP program is fully funded. There will be no shortage whatsoever, but let's stop the lying. Let's remove the deception. Let's provide a reasonable amount of excess funding, because I acknowledge at the beginning we don't know right down to the last dollar exactly how much we are going to spend, but let's take aside all of this wild excess.

Let's be honest. Let's rescind now most of the excess funding, which has been going on each and every year separately; let's leave more than enough in the contingency fund. Even though it is extremely unlikely that any of it will be tapped, the administration has proposed $500 million to be left in the contingency fund. Remember, that is the fund that has been used to the tune of $108 million over the last 9 years, but they are saying let's leave $500 million--five times as much as has been spent cumulatively over the last 9 years--and basically send all of this huge, excessive amount back to the Treasury so it is not just spent willy-nilly and irresponsibly.

Now, for some reason, despite the fact that not a single dollar that would have actually been spent on the CHIP program will be spent differently, will not be spent; despite the fact that the CHIP program will not lose a single dollar of actual funding; despite the fact that Congress has been doing this every single year since 2011, as long as it can spend it on something else; despite the fact that 65 Senators, including 40 of my Democratic colleagues, voted to rescind $6.8 billion from CHIP--how long ago? In March of this year, a few weeks ago, including $3.1 billion from the contingency fund. So the vast majority of my Democratic colleagues voted to rescind money from CHIP just earlier this year. Despite that, now we have people up in high dudgeon, wailing and gnashing of the teeth, about how what we are doing would tear CHIP apart--even after what they did in March, by the way--that it is somehow a betrayal, immoral, appalling; it hurts low- and middle- class families.

It would be too generous to suggest this is merely a lapse of memory. Everybody knows what is going on. This is ridiculous.

So I fully support the President's proposal that we fully fund CHIP but stop with the dishonesty in our budgeting. Stop throwing a bunch of money under this category, knowing we are going to go back later and spend it somewhere else. This program shouldn't be pillaged this way to spend money on unrelated things that just allow us to bust the budget cap.

I would go a step further. What the administration has proposed, to their credit, fixes this terrible flaw this year. I would like us to permanently fix it. I have suggested to my colleagues, rather than specifying a dollar amount, since we don't know the precise dollar amount, I would be OK with a provision that says: such sums as will be needed. That would guarantee it would be fully funded, but it would not create this big excess that gets wasted on who knows what.

If the only concern people have is to ensure that the CHIP program will be fully and properly funded, how can they object to that? It would specify, codified in language, that would be exactly what would happen. It would be fully funded, but we have gotten this resistance to that. How could that possibly be? Unless it is that people want to continue this gimmickry, this deception that has been going on for all of these years.

Well, I hope we will be able to work out a long-term solution. I hope we will bring an end to this. I understand my colleagues on the other side want to spend more money. Let's just admit it--admit it, and let's debate it. We have agreed-upon spending caps. I think they are too high, but that is what we agreed upon. We shouldn't be lying to the American people and going through this gimmick yet again.

So I want to state my unequivocal support for the administration's proposal for a rescission package. I would prefer if there were actual spending being cut. This is indirectly going to help reduce excessive spending because it is going after these unobligated funds, it is going after these excessive accounts. It happens in other accounts, but CHIP is the most noteworthy. To me, this is a modest step in the direction of honest budgeting and protecting the taxpayers.

I hope we will be able to have a permanent solution to this soon, but in the meantime, I hope my colleagues will support the administration's rescission package.

I yield the floor.