Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Yes, that is my understanding. My amendment should not be construed to affect in any way any existing authorities governing the use of military force. It only clarifies that the McConnell amendment is not an authorization for the use of military force or a declaration of war.

Mr. President, the Senate just invoked cloture on the majority leader's amendment, and I now rise to urge support for my second-degree amendment, the one where the colloquy included in the Record between the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and me leads to the conclusion of his support. I believe the amendment will also have the support of the majority leader and the rest of the body. The inclusion of my amendment will be essential for my vote in support in terms of moving forward.

As I have stated over the past month, I continue to be seriously concerned that precipitously withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan will deeply harm American interests and security. With that in mind, I am generally supportive of Senator McConnell's amendment to S. 1, which echoes what I have been saying for much of the past 2 years, calling on the administration to develop a real strategy for securing our interests in the Middle East, including combating terrorist groups and effectively confronting Iranian and Russian aggression, and calling on the administration to more effectively engage with the legislative branch.

I share in the belief that the way in which the President announced his Syria withdrawal--with no plan, without consultation with Congress or our allies or consideration of the implication for our partners--is not in our interest. American troops on the ground are on the frontline, fighting for our interests and also providing leverage to achieve diplomatic success.

At the same time, it is imperative that this body, which has the responsibility to authorize the use of military force, emphasize that such force alone will not protect our interests; that military force alone cannot defeat ISIS, al-Qaida, or other nonstate actors; and that military force alone will not provide enduring, sustainable peace and security against our adversaries.

More importantly, when we do send our sons and daughters into combat, we should do so only after careful consideration and consultation and with clear objectives and strategy--a strategy that requires investments into diplomatic efforts in coordination with our allies and partners.

I want to make it crystal clear that the McConnell amendment cautioning against a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops in no way constitutes Senate support for their permanent presence for an undefined mission. As a legal matter, my amendment makes clear one critical point: Nothing in the McConnell amendment can be construed as an authorization for the use of military force. Authorizing military force is simply not part of the debate on either the McConnell amendment or S. 1.

At the end of the day, I would like to see all of our troops back home and off the battlefield. I believe we must continue to have comprehensive strategies to achieve that outcome.

So, in conclusion, I believe the majority leader's amendment sends an important message to the President--that while he is the Commander in Chief, the legislative branch will continue to exercise the due diligence and oversight of his actions regarding our security and interests abroad. It also sends a message that the United States will not abandon our allies and our partners.

I particularly worry about the Kurds in this regard, who have been some of the most significant fighters on the ground in Syria and who are also in pursuit of our interests there. We cannot send a global message that once we have finished using you for our purposes, we will leave you to die on the battlefield. That sends a message across the globe: Don't fight, and don't join the United States because when it finishes with you, it will leave you to die on the battlefield.

I want to make it clear to the American people, however, that we are not in the business of authorizing open-ended conflicts or of keeping our troops on the battlefield forever. Our safety

and security depend on holistic, comprehensive strategies, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure that we are effectively using our powers to make sure the President is effectively using his.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise to give voice to the more than 5,000 Federal employees across New Jersey who aren't getting paid due to President Trump's pointless government shutdown. Make no mistake. This shutdown is the result of a Presidential temper tantrum.

Democrats have voted for border security funding, for new technology to scan vehicles for drugs, for more port-of-entry infrastructure personnel, and for new drones to detect unauthorized crossings. Yet President Trump is holding 800,000 Federal workers hostage all because he wants $5.7 billion for a border wall that he promised Mexico would pay for.

We have long known that something is broken inside this President that makes him incapable of caring about anyone other than himself. Clearly, he does not see Federal workers as real people with real bills to pay--people like Emily Nering of Basking Ridge, NJ.

Emily has worked at the EPA's Edison field office for 8 years. She coordinates water quality research and is in the midst of a major survey of the New Jersey-New York Harbor, and she assisted in emergency efforts to deliver clean drinking water to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands after Hurricane Maria. She said:

I took an oath of office too. I want to get back to doing

the important work that the EPA conducts and to continue to

serve this great nation. I saved up to contribute to an IRA

this year and to start saving for a down payment on a home,

but those funds will now be used to help me pay rent and

other bills, pushing my financial and life goals further out

of reach. . . . I urge the President and Congress to put us

back to work so we can continue to serve the American people!

In recent days, I have heard from Coast Guard members, TSA agents, IRS workers--patriots who have built their careers on serving their fellow Americans. Their work is important, and they deserve to be paid. If President Trump wants to discuss issues like border security and comprehensive immigration reform, then he should end the shutdown, reopen all of those elements of the government that have nothing to do with his desired border wall, release his hostages, and reopen the government, but if he continues to bury his head in the sand, then it is time for the Senate to act.

We could likely pass legislation to reopen the government with a veto-proof majority if only the majority leader would hold a vote. Let's do the right thing for Federal employees like Emily. Let's vote and end this shutdown now.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor today in support of S.J. Res. 2, expressing disapproval of the Trump administration's desire to remove sanctions from companies owned by Oleg Deripaska. In accordance with specific provisions in a law I helped write, Countering America's Adversaries through Sanctions Act, the Senate has until Thursday to block this delisting; hence the urgency of this vote. If we wait, then under the law, we lose this important opportunity.

Mr. Deripaska is a notorious Kremlin crony who may have played a role in the Russian Government's attacks during the 2016 Presidential election cycle. At this point, we simply do not know enough about his potential involvement in the cyber attacks and malign influence campaigns carried out by the Kremlin on the American people, and we will not find out until we see the full report of Robert Mueller's completed investigation. Until then, I am not comfortable with any measure that diminishes sanctions pressure on a powerful Russian oligarch with deep ties to Vladimir Putin, including this recent deal agreed to by the Treasury Department.

I am a strong believer in the power of sanctions to incentivize behavioral change in support of our foreign policy priorities. I also deeply respect the skill, expertise, and dedication of the career officials at the Treasury Department who administer many of our sanctions against Russia.

Nonetheless, the deal before us is seriously flawed. First, we must be clear that it is not the American people but, rather, Oleg Deripaska who would benefit handsomely from this arrangement. After his partial divestment in En+, which is the holding company for aluminum giant RUSAL, the Treasury Department would allow Deripaska to use a portion of his shares to pay a very sizable debt to a Russian bank called VTB. So with the deal, Deripaska's overall balance sheet significantly improves. This massive benefit to Deripaska alone is enough to question the merits of this deal.

Moreover, VTB, the Russian bank, is already on a U.S. sectoral sanctions list, related to the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. By allowing VTB, the Russian bank, to participate in this agreement, the Treasury Department is undermining our overall sanctions regime. In effect, the administration is signaling to every entity and individual that has had U.S. sanctions imposed in response to Russia's aggression against Ukraine that they can continue to undermine a sovereign nation without consequence.

Finally, this deal allows Deripaska to maintain a 44.9-percent ownership of En+. While this falls below the Treasury Department's automatic 50 percent threshold for ownership, it is still too high. Yes, perhaps Deripaska has given up control in a legal sense, a technical sense, but make no mistake--he will be the largest shareholder in En+. He will have the ability to appoint one-third of its board members, and he will continue to leverage his network of cronies to influence the conduct of this company. He also has family members who independently will have shares. At the end of the day, he will direct this company's future. I find that unacceptable. We should all find it unacceptable.

No one can deny that we debate this resolution in an increasingly dire context. On top of the indictments and pleas piling up in relation to the Trump campaign's interactions with Russian officials or efforts to cover up those interactions, court filings recently revealed that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik during the 2016 Presidential election cycle.

For years, we have known that Mr. Kilimnik has served as a key go- between for Manafort and Oleg Deripaska. He, too, has suspected ties to Russian intelligence.

These latest revelations remind us again that we have more questions than answers about the relationships between the President's associates and the Kremlin.

If that news was not disturbing enough, this past weekend, the New York Times reported that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into the President, in part after he fired the FBI Director because of ``this Russia thing.'' Let that sink in. Senior

officials at the FBI--Americans deeply committed to the hierarchy of law enforcement--saw enough evidence to suspect that Donald Trump, the sitting President of the United States, could be an agent of the Russian Government. That is stunning. It is absolutely stunning.

Likewise, over the weekend, the press reported that President Trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal the contents of his conversations with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and elsewhere, even going as far as tearing up the notes of his interpreter. His own staff reportedly sought to learn the contents of the conversation, only to be told that the interpreter could not share the details because the President told him not to.

As the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I raised serious questions about what happened in Helsinki. I think the whole Nation was stunned by seeing the President's performance there. We wanted to bring the interpreter forward or to get access to those notes, and now we know those notes were destroyed.

Throughout this Presidency, my colleagues and I have demanded accountability from this administration. I have been dismayed at the lack of clarity and transparency from the President when it comes to his dealings with foreign leaders, particularly Vladimir Putin.

I should note that President Trump has had numerous conversations with President Xi of China, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and leaders and other heads of state across the world. We are not aware of the same standard of secrecy being applied to those exchanges. The President seems to only keep secret his conversations with Putin. And that begs the question, why? Perhaps because Trump and his 2016 campaign staff have repeatedly lied about the extent of their interactions with Russians. Perhaps because the Trump-Putin discussions extended to Russian financing for the Trump Organization's real estate deals throughout the 1990s and 2000s or the Moscow tower project we now know the Trump Organization was still pursuing well into 2017--not advocating on behalf of the American people. Perhaps because the President inappropriately shared classified information with Putin, much like he did when Foreign Minister Lavrov met him for a meeting in the Oval Office. We just don't know, and we have a right to find out.

I ask that my entire comments be printed in the Record, ending by asking my colleagues to vote in favor of moving forward so that this can come to light

I yield the floor.

I thank my distinguished colleague from Georgia--a member of the committee--for doing so. I appreciate his courtesy.

As I said, we don't know, and we have a right to find out. Our own FBI was worried he might actually be a foreign agent.

Presidents certainly have a right to confidential conversations with world leaders. Never before in our history have we had a President under investigation by the FBI for being a foreign agent--an agent of the Russian Federation. With that in mind, I think we have the right, the responsibility, and the obligation to ensure that we know what happened in all of these conversations between President Trump and Putin and to understand the full extent of this relationship.

I sent a letter to the President today, with the ranking members of the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, demanding the preservation of all records associated with these meetings and the opportunity to interview the interpreters. This is a matter of U.S. national security.

This Trump-Russia connection gets more confounding by the day. We have to protect the integrity of all oversight efforts, including the objective, sober investigation still being conducted by Robert Mueller. We must take all measures necessary to protect this investigation, including a rock-solid commitment by the President's nominee for Attorney General to not interfere in any way with Mr. Mueller's work. The American people deserve to know who they elected to be their President and what is going on in this regard.

Again, it is time to move to legislation on DASKA, which Senator Graham and I have introduced, along with others. We hope to reintroduce it again.

I think if this body is serious about protecting our institutions, our democracy, and about standing up to an increasingly emboldened Kremlin, if we are serious about our oaths to support and defend the Constitution, then, No. 1, we will agree to move forward on this RUSAL question and move forward to find out the rest of the information.

I appreciate the distinguished gentleman yielding time.

Mr. President, today I wish to call attention to President Trump's recent decisions to withdraw or threaten U.S. withdrawal from four treaties: the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, INF Treaty; the Universal Postal Union, UPU, treaty; the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, ``VCDR Option Protocol''; and the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights between the United States and Iran, ``Treaty of Amity''. The President made these decisions without notice or meaningful consultation with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the congressional committee charged with responsibility and jurisdiction over treaties.

As the ranking member of that committee, I am compelled to strenuously object to the manner in which the President has acted, but all Senators should protest, regardless of their views on the substance of the respective agreements. The President's actions erode the constitutional powers of this body and our institutional prerogatives.

Article 2 of the Constitution endows the President and the Senate with shared power over treaties. The President, it states, ``shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.''

While the Constitution does not expressly dictate a procedure for terminating treaty relationships, Senators have long asserted that the shared treaty power extends to withdrawal and therefore also requires Senate advice and consent. Even though the executive branch may not agree with this position, what is unacceptable is that Senators are first learning about these withdrawals online or in the newspaper instead of through proactive outreach by and meaningful dialogue with the executive branch.

President Trump has regrettably shown exceedingly little respect for the Constitution and for the institutional prerogatives of this body. I stand today to highlight one area in which he has actively undermined the Senate's constitutional role and authority. I plan to do everything in my power to protect the Senate's role and responsibilities over treaties and urge all of my colleagues to join in this effort.

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

Mr. President, yesterday, Christmas came early to the Kremlin. First, we have President Trump's announcement to pull our troops out of Syria. Second, the administration wants to delist three companies controlled by Oleg Deripaska, though, I am not sure he has adequately relinquished control of those companies. Third, the administration has done nothing to respond to Russian aggression in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. This is a trifecta for Vladimir Putin and sends a global message that creates real concerns. Christmas has indeed come early to Moscow.

The Trump administration's withdrawal from Syria lacks any strategy, is foolhardy, and it puts U.S. security in the Middle East--including our ally, the State of Israel--at great peril. This is not simply an error. It is dangerous. It is dangerous.

Let me be clear. Withdrawal from Syria without success is failure. American credibility will take a horrible hit

if the President moves forward with this decision.

As a country, we have said that Assad, who has butchered his people, cannot stay in power. Assad is likely to stay in power into the foreseeable future. Second, we have said we cannot leave Syria because we have strategic interests. By leaving, and doing so precipitously, the President is willing to leave these strategic interests in the hands of Iran and Russia, and Moscow will be given a solid foothold in the Middle East--something it has aspired to for some time, and now it will happen. It will have developed bases there, and it will have unfettered determination as to what to do.

Third, this move will strengthen Iran's ability to attack Israel.

We are entering a very dangerous time, as it is increasingly clear to all--including many of my Senate Republican colleagues and especially our international allies and adversaries--that this President is completely incapable of addressing our security challenges. Only in Donald Trump's parallel alternate universe has ISIS been defeated. There is no one who would suggest that is reality at this point. We have made gains, and we have had successes, but they have not been defeated.

His erratic decision making indeed poses a great threat to our security interests.

Trump tweeted that Russia is ``not happy'' about his decision to withdraw our forces from Syria. Well, I guess he missed President Putin's end-of-the-year press conference where, in his own words, he showed this morning that Russia is indeed thrilled with this abdication of U.S. leadership.

I worry that we are sending the wrong global message, as well, if this plan is executed. The Kurds have been the most significant fighting force on our behalf and in our interest in Syria. They have been our partners. By pulling out, we are abandoning them. Turkey will come in and seek to destroy them. They will be hit not only by Turkey, they will be hit by Assad, and they will be hit by others.

Imagine the message that sends to other potential partners around the world. For those to whom we say ``Fight with us, fight for us, instead of sending our sons and daughters,'' the message is ``Once the United States is done using you, we will abandon you.''

We can't afford that message. In any other place in the world where we want people to fight with us or for us and carry the burden of being on the frontlines so that our sons and daughters are not in harm's way, they are going to look at this moment and say: No way. They will say: The United States will abandon us. They will say: The United States will leave us on the battlefield to die.

As someone who has voted against the deployment of U.S. troops elsewhere, I don't take these issues lightly. I want our sons and daughters to come home as soon as possible. But by withdrawing these forces now with no strategy, the United States is placing our security and that of our allies at grave risk, and the sacrifices that have been made by our troops will be lost.

Russia has entered into this war in Syria with an unholy marriage with Iran--yes, to prop up Assad, but also, for Iran, it was to gain a tactical vantage point on Israel's northern border. Our withdrawal leaves a vacuum that Iran will fill, putting Israel at even greater risk.

To believe that we can outsource our allies' interest to Russia and that Russia will tell Iran to leave now, in Syria, is ridiculous. Iran is not a simple agent of Russia in this regard. Iran has shed its own blood and national treasure in pursuit of its interests, both to prop up Assad and to have a vantage point on the northern border with Israel--another place to strike at Israel. It is not going to give that up simply because Putin says to leave. Anyone who believes that has a clear misunderstanding of the realities of this relationship.

Completely withdrawing the United States from Syria at this moment with no strategy in place signals to the region and to the world that we are willing to cede our interests to Putin, to Iran, and to others who will exploit this leadership vacuum.

In addition, President Trump has been silent in the face of egregious behavior from Saudi Arabia, a behavior that this Chamber spoke to in a unanimous way.

He has no strategy for securing our interests around the Middle East or the world. It is all too clear who is winning.

The Kremlin attacked Ukranian ships and captured Ukranian sailors nearly a month ago. Those vessels and sailors remain in Russian hands. They are hostages--hostages--who were taken at the high sea in international waters in violation of international law. And what has the administration done--canceled a meeting with President Putin?

It canceled a meeting; that is it. It hasn't rolled out new sanctions on those responsible for the attack. It has not increased U.S. and NATO presence in the Black Sea in order to preserve international maritime passage for all. It has not announced new security assistance for the Ukrainians.

One month has passed, and President Putin has felt zero pressure-- zero pressure--on any of these actions or to release these sailors. There is zero pressure to ease the tensions in the Kerch Strait and zero pressure to negotiate an end to the war in the Donbass or to return Crimea to the Ukraine.

In fact, Putin seems quite at ease. His yearly press conference earlier today was a victory lap. He is already prodding President Trump, welcoming the evacuation from Syria, and calling for President Trump to stand by his campaign commitment to also withdraw from Afghanistan. He is doing it purposely to see if he can elicit the same reaction he has elicited in Syria.

This retreat has left Vladimir Putin with a glow of victory. He is winning in Syria; he is winning in Turkey; he is winning in the Ukraine; and Trump wants to take our players off the field. And this misguided withdrawal from Syria drives that point home.

Putin's control of Trump came into sharp focus yesterday, and I urge our Republican colleagues to see this for what it is. The small price that Putin paid to interfere in our national elections has paid off in Syria; it has paid off in Ukraine; and the American people are paying the ultimate price.

This is a dangerous time, and our security lies in the hands of a President who, I will respectfully say, is clearly not up to the task.

I have called on this administration and the last to develop and present and execute a clear and comprehensive strategy to promote our interests in Syria. This means a comprehensive strategy to counter Iran and its proxy networks, which, from Hezbollah to the Houthis, have grown only stronger as this administration continues to bungle its way through one foreign policy crisis to the next.

The President has the opportunity to reverse course and avoid a spectacular failure. He should listen to his military and national security advisers, none of which--none of which--ultimately recommended this course of action. He should listen to our allies, none of which have recommended this course of action.

He should invest in alliances and international institutions that multilateralize and strengthen our reach across the globe.

He should listen to this bipartisan chorus from Congress. There have been voices on both sides of the aisle here who have said: Change course. This is a grave mistake. He has an opportunity to avoid a grave mistake.

I will repeat what I said earlier today at a press conference with Senator Graham and Senator Reed: Withdrawal from Syria without success is failure. Simply withdrawing is not a success. Withdrawing without honoring the sacrifices that have been made by our troops there, without honoring the sacrifices that have been made by our allies there, like the Kurds, without recognizing the enormous civilian casualties that will take place in the aftermath, without recognizing that we will leave a void for other particularly nefarious entities to ultimately fill that void, without recognizing that we create a risk for our ally, the State of Israel and its northern border, without recognizing that at the end of the day, our strategic interests will be totally lost in this regard, is indeed a great failure.

I hope the President takes this opportunity to change course, to listen to his national security and military advisers and to the chorus of bipartisan

voices in the Senate, including those of us who are engaged in national security questions, whether it is I, as the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or Senator Reed, as the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, or Senator Graham, who sits on Armed Services and is the chair of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations of the Appropriations Committee. These are bipartisan voices, among others, who are making it very clear that this is a grave mistake. We have a chance not to make that grave mistake and the consequences that flow from it.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I am going to be shortly joined by my distinguished colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, for an exchange we will have, but in order to preserve the time on the floor, I will start.

I come to the floor today to once again join the Senator from Rhode Island in calling attention to the crisis that is climate change. I want to thank my friend Senator Whitehouse for his passion, his persistence, and his refusal to let the Senate be silent in the face of one of the greatest threats to ever confront our Nation and the world.

Some say we can't afford to invest in clean, renewable, American-made energy. I say we cannot afford not to. The fact is, every year that goes by without a comprehensive strategy to reduce the

carbon pollution responsible for warming our planet is another year in which the Federal Government of the United States fails to protect future generations from the immense environmental, economic, and human costs inflicted by climate change.

I yearn for the day that this body summons the courage to stand up to the special interests and boldly confront this challenge, for the longer we wait, the more expensive and the less effective we will be. And if you don't believe me, just look at our National Flood Insurance Program, which is already in dire need of comprehensive, forward- thinking reform.

I have spent the better part of the past 2 years bringing Democrats and Republicans together in support of such a plan. Yet the majority has stubbornly refused to debate our legislation, forcing us to pass short-term reauthorizations that preserve a broken status quo. Like the totality of the climate threat, when it comes to flood insurance, every time we kick the can down the road, the can only gets heavier.

For our coastal and inlet communities, climate change isn't some far- out problem; it is here. We are already feeling the effects and bearing the costs in the form of rising sea levels and increasingly powerful storms. Even if the President of the United States suddenly reversed course and put America on a path to slow our changing climate, we would still need to address how we manage a heightened risk for flooding. From fishing, to tourism, to trade and so much more, the fact is, America's coastal communities are vital to our long-term economic competitiveness, and to give up on them in the face of rising sea levels would be to give up on our country.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, sea level rise will put an estimated 325,000 homes and businesses, worth more than $135 billion, at risk of chronic flooding in the next 30 years. With increased risks for flooding comes a whole host of challenges. Falling property values will further strain local budgets, leading to downgraded government credit ratings. As communities lose out on approximately $1.5 billion in property taxes per year, hard-working taxpayers will feel the pain. It will cut away at middle-class families' most valuable asset, the foundation of their financial nest egg, which is their home.

According to a paper published by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, ``As sea level rise manifests along the coasts--reducing property value--impacts on revenue will present new challenges in servicing debt . . . and present a greater probability of default by local government.''

We cannot simply keep spending money to preserve the status quo. We need a system for managing flood risk that pushes our country toward resiliency and treats our people and the communities they live in fairly. But, unfortunately, we have remained at an impasse for over a year now, unable to fix a program that we all know is badly broken.

We in New Jersey witnessed firsthand the pervasive problems plaguing the National Flood Insurance Program--or what we call NFIP--after Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012. It was bad enough that so many New Jerseyans had to grapple with the heartbreaking loss of their homes in the wrath of Sandy, so it made my blood boil to see the suffering compounded by a badly broken flood insurance program. We found ourselves lost in a system that put the policyholder last and that looked for every reason to deny legitimate claims and made up some when they didn't exist. We had homeowners who found the foundations of their homes had washed away into the ocean, only to have their claim denied because their insurance company claimed it wasn't floodwaters but moving soil that caused the damage. The insurance adjuster didn't stop to consider that maybe it was the 5-foot storm surge that moved the soil in the first place.

This is a photograph of Doug Quinn, who served honorably in the U.S. Marines. He is a constituent whom I have gotten to know very well and who got snagged by this very loophole. As you can see from this picture, the storm surge from Sandy inundated his home, and it ripped apart his foundation, leaving a large hole in his living room. But despite paying his flood insurance premiums for years and despite serving our Nation honorably as a U.S. marine, Doug's claim was denied. Supposedly it was Earth movement, but the Earth never moved until the 5-foot storm surge came along.

We saw mitigation programs that were so cumbersome and delayed that many homeowners simply gave up. We had new flood maps come online that were 80 percent inaccurate in some counties. We had FEMA using taxpayer dollars to drag homeowners through expensive litigation until they gave up on their flood claims.

The struggles of everyday New Jerseyans revealed to me the dramatic shortcomings in our Flood Insurance Program and left me determined to fix them, so I began working on flood insurance reform that took the lessons we learned after Sandy and turned them into action.

In the summer of 2017, I introduced the Sustainable, Affordable, Fair, and Efficient--or SAFE--NFIP Act, which is a comprehensive flood insurance reform bill cosponsored by four Democrats and three Republicans here in the Senate. I know this town already has too many acronyms, but this one clearly spells out the first major goals we have in this bill. We want the NFIP--the National Flood Insurance Program--to be sustainable, we want it to be affordable, we want it to be fair, we and want it to be efficient.

Let's start with sustainability. We have to put the NFIP on the path to solvency.

Since Katrina in 2005, the NFIP has been in the red, borrowing from the Treasury Department to pay claims. Some say that we should just jack up the premiums on homeowners and keep charging more to get at this imbalance; that if we ask homeowners to pay more and more and more, eventually the NFIP will have enough money to pay all of the claims without borrowing. But higher premiums alone are not the answer. Of course we want everybody to pay their fair share, but the undeniable reality is that the more we raise the premiums, the more homeowners leave the National Flood Insurance Program altogether, and that guarantees the program's failure.

Instead of looking simply to raise prices, I want to focus on reducing costs. I believe the best way out of this hole is to make proactive investments in resiliency and mitigation to reduce the damage in the first place. In other words, we must build coastal communities that are resilient and strong, so the damage inflicted by the storms of the future is less expensive to recover. That is why the SAFE NFIP Act includes $1 billion-per-year in mitigation funding and more than triples the maximum increased cost of compliance--or the ICC--grant from $30,000 to $100,000.

We also require that this funding be spent more wisely, allowing homeowners to use ICC grants before their house is destroyed. I have never understood why we require homeowners to sit in harm's way and wait for the next storm to come before we help them reduce their flood risk. It makes no sense. Our bill would fix that. By giving Americans the tools to reduce their risks, we can save the NFIP and the taxpayer billions of dollars.

Our legislation also goes after wasteful private insurance company fees, which consume about 30 cents of every premium dollar, despite taking on none of the risk. That is good business if you can get it. Don't get me wrong--that is good business if you can get it, and I have no problem with private companies making a profit, but every dollar they make comes from the pockets of policyholders.

The NFIP also currently pays about $400 million in interest every year. That is 10 percent of its annual premiums--money that could be going toward flood prevention and mitigation. That is why our bill freezes interest payments on the NFIP debt and redirects that funding toward mitigation. Rather than paying interest to ourselves and forcing the NFIP to borrow even more, let's use that money to reduce future damages, save taxpayer dollars, and build safe communities.

We cannot have a solvent and sustainable flood insurance program if it isn't affordable to the people who depend on it. The NFIP's debt and major hurricanes have put upward pressure on premiums, making it more and more expensive to get coverage. So it is no surprise that a lot of people have been forced to drop their flood insurance.

Indeed, in the face of rising premiums, the NFIP has lost more than 650,000 policies--or over 10 percent of its total business--just since 2009. Has the risk of flooding decreased since 2009? Absolutely not. Are there fewer homes in floodplains now? No, of course not. By way of example, when you consider the floods that struck Louisiana and Texas and New Jersey in recent years, the answer is an unequivocal no. What is happening is that the premiums have just gotten too expensive for middle-class families to afford. At the end of the day, this also hurts the solvency of the NFIP because, just like every other insurance model, a small pool means a more risky, more expensive pool.

Our bill creates a first-of-its-kind, means-tested affordability program that helps middle-class and working families afford flood insurance. Pricing families out of coverage and leaving them without a way to protect their homes does nothing to address the underlying risk. On the contrary, it will be taxpayers who ultimately assume the risk when they are asked to fund uninsured disaster assistance.

It is our responsibility to taxpayers to make the NFIP as fair and as efficient as possible. I have no doubt that hundreds, if not thousands, of New Jerseyans dropped their flood insurance after Sandy because of how they were treated. They faithfully paid their premiums for years, often decades, without filing a single claim. Then, when Sandy struck and they tried to collect what they were entitled to, they had to suffer another disaster. This time it was a manmade one--the storm after the storm. After losing everything they had worked for their entire lives, they had to fight against an insurance company and a daunting Federal bureaucracy. Some appealed, some sued, and some just gave up.

I pledged to them I would never let this happen again. Our legislation makes good on that promise by putting the customer--in this case, the policyholder--first.

We close notorious loopholes that allow insurers to deny claims, such as the infamous earth-movement exclusion when we know floodwaters caused the damage.

We fix the appeals process, enforcing FEMA's own deadline to respond to homeowners and giving people who just went through a disaster more time to file their appeal.

We require engineer studies to be conducted by--imagine this--actual, licensed engineers in the State where they are operating.

We require insurance companies to provide policyholders with all of the documents used to process their claims so that homeowners aren't left in the dark.

We end the practice of private insurance companies spending hundreds of millions of policyholder premium dollars on private attorneys whose main goal is to bill as many hours as possible to ultimately deny the policyholder any resource.

Taken together, these reforms will not only give policyholders a fair shake, they will also save the NFIP resources that can be better directed to mitigation, to mapping, and to other cost-saving investments.

We have to recognize that the NFIP and its 5 million policyholders can't solve all of our Nation's flooding problems on their own. We need to invest tens of billions of dollars elevating and buying out flood- prone properties that get hit year after year, those particularly repetitively lost properties. We need to incentivize homeowners who ultimately will get out of those flood-prone properties so that they are not subject to the consequences of constantly getting flooded and we collectively are not subject to the incredible costs that are a result of that.

There simply aren't enough resources in the NFIP to even put a dent in this problem. So instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on disaster grants each time a storm strikes, why not spend a fraction of that on the front end that will yield real dividends in the future? When a disaster strikes, our immediate priority should always be to save lives and get survivors back to a sense of normalcy as quickly as possible.

While recovery funding is absolutely vital, it shouldn't be at the expense of rebuilding stronger, more resilient communities more capable of weathering the next storm.

We have a problem in Congress of short-termism: living in the present and not looking ahead. We are afraid of making tough political decisions in the present, even when the future is on the line. We see it with flood insurance, and we see it with climate change.

The American people desperately need Congress to overcome this shortsighted short-termism. We must start thinking beyond the storm that just hit or even the one that is on the horizon. We must begin thinking about the risk over the next several decades because flood risk is a climate risk we cannot afford to ignore. We must think about what kind of future, what kind of environment, what kind of economy we want to leave to our children and our grandchildren.

It should not matter who controls the House, who controls the Senate, or who sits in the White House. The Americans of tomorrow are depending on us, the leaders of today, to be bold, unafraid, and willing to think big. That is why I hope Republicans and Democrats alike will continue to work with me on the issue of flood insurance and flood prevention when we return in 2019.

I thank, as I said at the beginning of my comments, my distinguished colleague from Rhode Island who has really been the conscience of the Senate on this issue of climate change that affects not only those of us now here but future generations of Americans. I have taken one slice of that in talking about the National Flood Insurance Program and how we can mitigate our way and look to a set of circumstances in which we can save enormous consequences for New Jersey families and families across our country and save the taxpayers' money. But the ultimate savings in this is beyond a new flood insurance program. It is making sure that we don't continue to see the climate change that has taken place, which creates the storms that my State endured--Superstorm Sandy--and other major superstorms across the Nation that put us at risk as a people, that put our economies at risk, that really threaten the very essence of our existence as we know it.

I appreciate the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island leading us in this regard.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise in support of the FIRST STEP Act. This legislation, as the title says, is an important first step toward desperately needed criminal justice reform.

I thank Senators Durbin, Grassley, and Lee, as well as my good friend and colleague, Senator Cory Booker, for advancing this bipartisan compromise. I want to particularly recognize the junior Senator from New Jersey, who has been relentless in his efforts to bring moral urgency to this issue, and I think we can thank Senator Booker for his passion and his devotion to justice.

The need for criminal justice reform was an issue constituents consistently and frequently raised with me as I crisscrossed New Jersey over the past year. From Woodbury to Paterson, to Newark, and everywhere in between, I heard from faith leaders calling for solutions to a mass incarceration crisis that has disproportionately torn apart communities of color. Indeed, the NAACP found that, nationally, African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32 percent of the U.S. population, but they represented 56 percent of all incarcerated people in 2015.

I also heard from young people pushing for drug policy reform so fewer students charged with marijuana offenses lose access to Federal financial aid.

I met with leaders like former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, whose work with New Jersey Reentry Corporation helps formerly incarcerated individuals--especially those struggling with addiction-- find jobs and avoid ending up back in prison.

I met with African-American law enforcement organizations, like the Bronze Shields, about their efforts to build positive relationships in their communities and address challenges like racial profiling and uneven enforcement.

The FIRST STEP Act will not solve all of these problems--far from it. I certainly would have liked to see more concrete reforms to Federal minimum mandatory sentences. However, I am pleased to support a bill that reverses some of the most detrimental effects of Federal mandatory minimum sentences.

As a longtime proponent of the Second Chance Act, I am also glad to see provisions reauthorized under this bill that will give nonviolent, low-risk offenders and their families greater hope for a brighter future. Under the FIRST STEP Act, more Americans in the Federal prison system will finally get their second chance.

While most offenders are incarcerated at the State level, we know Federal mandatory minimums for drug offenses are among the harshest in the Nation. According to The Sentencing Project, half of the U.S. Federal prison population is serving time for a drug offense, the vast majority of them nonviolent.

Under this legislation, low-risk offenders will be able to earn credit by completing anti-recidivism programs that help better prepare them for life after prison. Inmates can then apply these credits for early placement in a halfway house, home confinement, or other types of early release. We know that when prisoners are equipped with the right tools and resources, they are better able to reintegrate into society and avoid old behaviors that could result in them winding up back behind bars. That is not only good for them, it is good for their families and good for their communities.

These provisions are important back-end reforms, but I will not stop calling for greater reforms on the front end--the enforcement side of the equation. This is a serious problem in New Jersey. In July 2017, The Sentencing Project reported that racial disparities in New Jersey's marijuana arrests were at an alltime high. In 2013, African Americans were arrested for marijuana possession three times as often as their White counterparts, despite marijuana use being similar among racial groups.

The disparities extend far beyond arrest rates. Recently, a 6-month investigation by NJ Advance Media found ``hard evidence of racial disparities in police use of force across New Jersey.'' The data revealed African Americans are three times likelier to face some type of police force compared to Whites. Even more troubling, African- American children faced a disproportionate amount of force. From 2012 through 2016, of the more than 4,600 uses of force against people under the age of 18, slightly more than half were African American. Yet African-American children account for only 14.5 percent of New Jersey's child population.

I don't highlight these statistics to denigrate our police force because the men and women who serve in law enforcement put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities, and their bravery will always have my respect, support, and admiration. I do highlight these statistics because they reveal a larger need for greater front- end criminal justice, sentencing, and police reforms that ultimately share our goal of building safe and thriving communities.

Passing the FIRST STEP Act is just that--a first step. It cannot be the only step. We have so much more work to do to fix a broken criminal justice system that leaves too many Americans behind.

The FIRST STEP Act does not address structural racism and racial disparities in our criminal justice system, nor does it completely alleviate some of the draconian sentences still in place for drug offenses.

What this legislation will do is to make a positive difference in the lives of thousands of Federal inmates working to turn their lives around and earn a second chance. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I have always believed that the Federal policies we set can have a ripple effect across the Nation. May the passage of the FIRST STEP Act by Congress spur States across America to take additional steps forward--steps that, together, may advance our Nation's long march for equality and justice under the law.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship in the broader context of America's interests in the Middle East.

I want to begin by responding to an op-ed Secretary of State Pompeo published in the Wall Street Journal in which he called the U.S.-Saudi Arabia partnership ``vital.'' That statement reflects a distorted view of the U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship that has permeated the Trump administration in which the United States is somehow dependent on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for regional stability and security cooperation. It is a view perhaps best articulated by the President's own unhinged pre-Thanksgiving statement in which he suggested that selling weapons to the Saudis was more important than America's enduring commitment to human rights, democratic values, and international norms, or the President and Secretary Pompeo's continued, incredulous insistence that we still don't know whether the Crown Prince is directly responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Desperate to justify this myopic view, Trump officials whimper that Saudi Arabia's military operations in Yemen are the only means to ``root out'' Iranian influence and defend the status quo of U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition.

To put it another way, these morally blindered and blinded individuals believe that to advance America's interests in the region, there is no other option than dependence on Riyadh and no other way than business as usual. So the United States should just stay the course, resign to accept, with a so-called ``vital'' partner, a government that lures a Washington Post columnist--an American resident with U.S. citizen children--to its consulate in a third country with the express intent of eliminating his dissenting views from public discourse in the most gruesome way possible.

I, for one, reject Secretary Pompeo's false choice. We can be tough on Iranian aggression, and we can continue our efforts to eliminate al- Qaida and ISIS. At the same time, we can have a reality-based debate on the strategic utility of the U.S.-Saudi partnership. Our security interests and our values demand such a debate.

I believe that we can pursue an effective strategy to counter terrorism and Iranian aggression while also demanding better from the U.S.-Saudi Arabia partnership. That means standing up for transparency, accountability, and truth when our partners flagrantly violate American values, disregard international norms, and take actions that undermine our broader strategic interests and run counter to regional security.

The Trump administration has cynically framed this vote as a binary, zero-sum choice: You are either for Iran, or you are for Saudi Arabia.

Well, my answer to that is, I am for the United States of America. I am for America's security interests. I am for American values. And I am for partnerships and alliances deeply rooted in both.

I can't imagine that any one of my colleagues on either side of the aisle would put me in the pro-Iran camp. I take a backseat to no one in the Senate in taking the lead to end Iran's pathway to a nuclear weapon and to end its nefarious promotion of terrorism across the world.

To be clear, the vote on S.J. Res. 54 is not about the totality of the U.S.-Saudi relationship; it is a vote about whether U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition's actions in Yemen are in our national interests.

We do indeed have important security interests with the Saudis. Both of our nations benefit from cooperation in confronting threatening forces. Yet we cannot sweep under the rug the callous disregard for human life and the flagrant violations of international norms the Saudis have shown. That is why, as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I continue to look for the opportunity to continue to examine components of the U.S.-Saudi relationship and determine whether that relationship requires a course correction.

Beyond Saudi Arabia, I do not want any of our security partners to interpret our relationship as a blank check. Unfortunately, whether due to the President's possibly unconstitutional financial entanglements or his family's overly cozy relationship with the Crown Prince, this administration is putting the Saudi Government on a pedestal that stands above America's values. They continue to extend a blank check to certain players within the Saudi Government, no matter how brazen their actions, rather than meaningfully seeking to influence Riyadh or ensure that U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia is properly balanced and in line with our strategic interests, not directed by the personal and financial motives of select individuals in our government.

This refusal to stand up for American values, to assert true leadership, is part of the Trump administration's willful adherence to a misguided understanding of the most effective ways to bring stability to the Middle East. It is an outgrowth of the President's reckless, morally bankrupt approach to foreign policy and a love affair with authoritarian strongmen.

Mr. President, I hope today to frame some critical questions about the U.S.-

Saudi relationship in the context of America's long-term interests in the region. Let's start with taking stock of actions taken by Saudi Arabia over the last 2 years--the 2 years that, according to Secretary Pompeo, the Trump administration has been ``rebuilding'' the U.S.-Saudi partnership while we here in the ``salons of Washington'' were caterwauling about human rights.

In June of 2017, a quartet of Arab countries announced a full blockade of a fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member, Qatar. The Saudi- led bloc justified this blockade by accusing Qatar of transgressions that, while seriously concerning, are not unique to Qatar or even to some members of the Saudi-led bloc, such as financial support for terror.

This blockade tosses out decades of investment by Republicans and Democratic U.S. administrations to partner with the entire Gulf Cooperation Council--Qatar included--on security challenges ranging from Iran, al-Qaida, missile defense, maritime security, and cyber threats.

Put another way, the Saudi-Qatar dispute has translated into a lot more work for our military professionals and diplomats for the past year as the gulf Arabs have fought amongst each other and have interrupted critical priorities like defeating ISIS and countering Iranian aggression. It has also complicated the coordination with our Arab partners on U.S. foreign policy priorities, like stabilizing Libya and Syria, and, potentially, deeply undermined U.S. objectives, like stability in the Horn of Africa.

Who is the winner of this rift that has been constructed by our Saudi-led partners? Iran.

Mr. President, in turning to Yemen, the Saudis and their partners have continued their brutal air campaign in Yemen, often indiscriminately. Tens of thousands of innocent Yemenis have died, and millions more are on the brink of starvation. Meanwhile, Iran's influence has increased within the country, and al-Qaida has taken advantage of the chaos to expand its reach and control of Yemeni territory.

The winners of this fruitless war? Iran and al-Qaida.

Then, in November 2017, Mr. President, the Prime Minister of Lebanon traveled to Saudi Arabia for what he reportedly believed was to be a friendly visit with the Saudi Crown Prince.

Instead, the Crown Prince detained Prime Minister Saad Hariri and, on TV, forced him to resign from his position. Let that sink in for a moment. A newly minted Crown Prince effectively hoodwinked and intimidated a sitting Prime Minister into publicly resigning his position. This entire stunt was reportedly intended to push back on Iran's expanding influence in the region.

After days of high drama and uncertainty, including a refusal by Lebanon's President to accept the Prime Minister's resignation, Hariri left Saudi Arabia via Paris and returned to a Lebanon where Iran's proxy Hezbollah remains not only a part of the Lebanese Government but, arguably, in a stronger position for rallying public support behind Hariri.

The winner of this foolish plunder? Iran.

Mr. President, that very same month of November 2017, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman directed the detention of hundreds of Saudi princes and executives at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh. While this effort was spun as a crackdown on corruption, it was clearly a crackdown on the Crown Prince's political competitors. Reports from this dark period in the gilded prison of the Ritz indicate that Saudi Government-directed forces tortured detainees and coerced them into transferring money to the government or giving up real estate and shares in companies.

Now, I don't know how they obtained those resources, and I am, in no way, condoning any graft and exploitation in the Kingdom, but this opaque process--outside any semblance of the rule of law and driven purely by the will of the Crown Prince--is not actually a sustainable approach to promoting transparency and accountability. In fact, it should and did send chills down the spines of investors and American companies that seek to expand commercial and economic ties in the Kingdom. A strong respect for the rule of law is an essential condition for doing business.

So when Trump points to the value of business ties with Saudi Arabia as a reason for not imposing consequences for Khashoggi's murder, let's remember that in the hands of the Crown Prince, anyone can be shaken down, locked up, or tortured at a five-star hotel in Muhammad bin Salman's Saudi Arabia. Let's also continue asking who exactly is benefiting from potential business ties.

Mr. President, Secretary Pompeo mentioned in his op-ed last week that the Crown Prince has ``moved the country in a reformist direction, from allowing women to drive and attend sporting events, to curbing the religious police and calling for a return to moderate Islam.''

What the Secretary did not mention, however, are the deeply disturbing reports that, at the same time MBS was granting Saudi women the right to drive, he also detained many female activists who were themselves calling for the rights of women, including their right to drive. Now we are hearing reports that these women are being tortured and sexually harassed, bound to iron beds, electrocuted, and beaten.

Is this the kind of reform that Secretary Pompeo believes the United States should endorse?

As for calling for a return to moderate Islam, the Anti-Defamation League reports that Saudi state television hosted several hour-long programs this Ramadan that featured a preacher who called for God to destroy the Christians, Shiites, Alawites, and Jews. Other analyses published by the Anti-Defamation League this November found that Saudi Government-published textbooks for the 2018-2019 academic year promote incitement to hatred or violence against Jews, Christians, women, and homosexual men.

As ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said:

The United States must hold its ally Saudi Arabia to a

higher standard. The U.S. cannot look the other way while

Saudi Arabia features anti-Semitic hate speech year after

year in the educational material it gives its children.

Mr. President, let's take stock of Saudi Arabia's contributions to regional stability. It seems a fitting time to ask if an approach that involves bullying another U.S. regional partner, holding the Prime Minister of Lebanon hostage, torturing female activists, business executives, and other princes, and carrying out a military campaign in Yemen that will result in the death of millions more civilians by year's end is an approach that is in line with U.S. values or priorities.

Has Iran been weakened by these actions? Is the focus still on al- Qaida and defeating ISIS? I don't think so.

Mr. President, the President has made it clear that no U.S. foreign policy objective, especially human rights, is as important to him as securing tens of billions of imaginary dollars to create million fantasy jobs through weapons sales to the Saudis.

Congress has long and well established the overseeing of the sale of weapons as part of U.S. foreign policy. We have learned throughout our history that selling weapons is a complex matter and that without close attention to the human rights practices of foreign buyers, the United States can easily find itself in the situation that we are now in with Saudi Arabia.

U.S. arms, today, are being used irresponsibly, tragically, and in possible violation of international law in the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including of helpless children. The United States must elevate human rights concerns in all aspects of its foreign security assistance, including arms sales. Otherwise, the abuses that result will do more to foment the conditions of unrest and despair that are the breeding ground of conflict, war, and terrorism.

Secretary Pompeo also suggested that if the United States in any way reassesses its relationship with Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom will rush into Russian arms.

I would suggest, Mr. Secretary, that most countries in the Middle East are already hedging against perceptions that the United States is not invested in the region and that those assessments are based on the President himself--how else to explain Putin's high five with the Crown Prince at the G20 in Argentina? Is it from the parade of gulf rulers in Russia who are doing deals on the margins of the World Cup

earlier this year or by the announcements by several U.S. partners of talks to purchase the Russian S-400 system, despite the prospect of congressional sanctions under the CAATSA law?

Given not just the war in Yemen but also the murder of Khashoggi and the blockage of Qatar, I believe we need to take steps to recalibrate the future of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

That is why I am disappointed that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did not take up the Saudi Arabia Accountability and Yemen Act of 2018, which is legislation that I am leading, along with Senators Young, Reed, Graham, Shaheen, Collins, and others. We will continue to work on this legislation next year. It does not seek to tear down the entire Saudi-U.S. relationship. Instead, it is carefully calibrated to force a rebalancing in priorities.

The United States should no longer be selling weapons to the Kingdom that will be used to kill women and children in Yemen. We should, however, continue to support Saudi Arabia's legitimate defensive needs, like intercepting Houthi missiles coming from Yemen.

The United States should no longer refuel Saudi coalition aircraft for operations in Yemen, which is clearly correlated with a rise in civilian casualties.

The United States must now take a stand against all stakeholders in this conflict that are blocking humanitarian access, preventing forward movement under the U.N. peace process, or receiving weapons from Iran.

Our bill also ensures that Congress right-sizes its oversight over this relationship. The Trump administration must follow the letter of the Global Magnitsky Act, and it must take a firm stand in support of human rights when it comes to Saudi Arabia.

This is not caterwauling or the media piling on. This is Congress doing what the American people elected us to do--ensure that the U.S. Government conducts foreign policy in a manner that protects the United States and the American people. We are not doing our job if foreign governments believe they can murder journalists and dissidents with impunity and disregard international norms without damaging their relationships with the United States.

Saudi Arabia has joined a sinister clique, along with North Korea, Russia, and Iran, in its assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. A few more weapons purchases cannot buy our silence, and they should not buy our silence. If the President will not act, Congress must.

I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, I do not intend to object. I just want to say that on this resolution, there is a central reason why I am not going to object.

I don't agree with some of the language that speaks about the economic interests we have with Saudi Arabia. I think their behavior is more than concerning, but what the distinguished

chairman on the Foreign Relations Committee is trying to do here at the core of it is the critical element.

I am going to be supportive because of this one singular statement under the resolved clause by the Senate and the House of Representatives that the Senate ``believes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.''

Regardless of all of my other concerns about language, that is the central essence of what the chairman is going to do. I think it is incredibly important for the Senate to speak on that issue and, hopefully, speak with one voice.

With that, I withdraw my objection.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss S.J. Res. 54, a pointed statement from the U.S. Senate that the status quo in Yemen is not tenable, that we will not stand idly by as the President lends our country's name to the calamitous military forays of another nation, and that our security partners across the world do not have a blank check.

To my knowledge, this is the first time the Senate has considered a joint

resolution under this provision, which is directly derived from the Wars Powers Resolution. This is an important step to reasserting Congress's role in authorizing the use of force. I was proud to see a strong show of support for the procedural vote to move this resolution forward, and I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle continue to embrace that moral fortitude.

I am also pleased to support Senator Young's amendment to this resolution, which I understand Senator Sanders also supports. This language would clarify that refueling operations definitively constitute U.S. support for hostilities in this context, and I know he has been very focused on this issue of Yemen and a critical voice in the Senate on this crisis.

Some may have been holding out hope that the administration would show a good-faith effort to hold the Saudi coalition accountable for its actions in Yemen or to hold the Saudi Government and the Crown Prince accountable for all of their actions. Well, we haven't seen that leadership. On the contrary, I believe that, in spite of concrete evidence, the Trump administration is intent on doing nothing to hold the Saudi Government or the Crown Prince responsible for their actions.

As we debate a path forward to address the tragic humanitarian crisis in Yemen and to hold the Saudi coalition and the Houthi combatants accountable for their actions, children in Yemen continue to starve, people continue to die, and more reports about gruesome torture of detainees continue to emerge. Sadly, we don't actually know the extent of the devastation. Some humanitarian organizations on the ground estimate that as many as 50,000 people have died, with more than 14 million on the brink of starvation. Save the Children recently posited that as many as 130 children are dying each and every day.

We may not know the exact numbers, but we know enough to know that the conflict in Yemen has produced the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The Saudi coalition must take responsibility for its actions, and, likewise, the Houthis and their Iranian backers also bear the burden of this tragedy.

The United States can take concerted and strategic diplomatic steps to ensure that our involvement--any involvement--promotes a net positive outcome for regional stability, for our own security interests, and for the Yemeni people. We can invest in the U.N.-led talks in Sweden. We can wholeheartedly promote diplomacy as a path forward to solve this conflict, which our own defense and diplomatic leaders concede has no military solution.

But let's be clear. This resolution is very important, and I wholeheartedly support it. I have worked so that it can be preserved with only germane amendments. But the resolution itself will not stop the war in Yemen, nor will it somehow stop the immense human suffering, nor put an end to human rights violations.

What this resolution does do, however, is send a strong message to the Saudis about U.S. global leadership. It is a message that says the United States will not stand by as countries--even those with which we have important security relationships--flagrantly violate international norms.

The United States must assert moral leadership on the global stage. We must proudly embrace the immutable fact that our strongest relationships are those rooted in shared values, such as respect for human life, respect for basic democratic freedoms, respect for international institutions and norms that we have shaped to promote a safer and more prosperous future.

When we fail to call out egregious offenses--the slaughter of innocent civilians, the murder of American resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the effective kidnapping of heads of state, just to name a few--we contribute to the steady erosion of fundamental freedoms and values that have driven us to a position of global strength.

This resolution is a clear message that if the President of the United States will not stand up in defense of our values, we in the U.S. Senate will. When this President selectively condemns some violations one day and then inexplicably ignores them and condones them another day, the Congress will act as an effective check and balance. As a coequal branch of government, we will defend American values, and we will work to promote our long-term security interests.

At the end of the day, the Saudi Government must take responsibility for its actions, for this ugly war does not serve Saudi Arabia's own long-term interests.

Achieving a path toward stability and prosperity demands that the Saudi Government hold itself to a higher standard. It must treat its citizens with dignity and respect. It must engage its partners in the region in responsible efforts to protect its borders from ever-growing Iranian threats. Shortsighted, capricious actions will not serve Saudi Arabia's long-term interests.

Yes, the United States has an important relationship with Saudi Arabia. But we must also be true to our own long-term interests, and that means we cannot sit idly by, waiting for the Crown Prince and the Saudi Government to act. It should be clear to everyone in this body that the resolution we are considering today is just one part of this effort.

I am proud to have worked across party lines with Senators Young, Reed, Graham, and others in introducing the comprehensive Saudi Arabia Accountability and Yemen Act. This bill calls for a limited suspension of offensive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, prohibits U.S. refueling of Saudi coalition aircraft engaged in Yemen, sanctions persons blocking humanitarian access in Yemen, sanctions persons supporting the Houthis in Yemen, mandates Global Magnitsky sanctions on persons responsible for the death of American resident Jamal Khashoggi.

Unfortunately, we have not been able to get to this legislation in the timeframe that we have, but let me be clear. We will continue to work at it, and we do not want to see a weak substitute that degrades the intent of tangible action from the Senate.

I hope, after we get through this important vote on this resolution, at the end of the day--whether it be in this Congress or the next--that the only thing we do with reference to Jamal Khashoggi is not simply an expression of our outrage. We need to do something far more than that if we are going to send a global message. The time for waiting and posturing is over.

This administration has made abundantly and disappointingly clear that it will not act unless we force it to. President Trump has made clear over and over again that the only way he takes the high road is if he is dragged up to it, kicking and screaming. Taking their cue, the Saudis at this moment see no incentive to change their behavior. It is time for the Senate to act. It is time to stand up for the very values that define us as a nation.

The passage of the Sanders-Lee resolution should signal to the world that the U.S. Senate should hold Saudi Arabia accountable--including the royal family. We will continue to demand that we consider additional measures to make clear what we stand for as a nation.

I yield the floor.

If my friend the distinguished chairman of the committee will yield for a moment, let me just say first that I appreciate his good intentions and commitment to having a process in which the Sanders-Lee resolution could move forward. To keep it within a germane sphere, I know that was one of the things the Senator said very early on, which I embrace, and I am glad for his leadership in that regard. I think passing this will be important, and I urge all of our colleagues to vote for it.

I look forward to when he presents the resolution he has talked about with reference to the Crown Prince. I do think that if he brings that forward, it is likely something I will support because I think it is important to make it very clear that you cannot kill with impunity just because you are our ally and that human rights and democracy are still values that we--at least in the U.S. Senate--believe are an integral part of our foreign policy. Countries that observe human rights and democracy and share our deepest values at the end of the day are our most reliable allies and are less likely to drag us into conflicts in other places. So I look forward to that debate and discussion when the distinguished Senator offers that.

But I will reiterate--and I appreciate the Senator's somewhat endorsement with some reservations. It is critical--I know Senator Young is standing; I will cease in a moment--that we need to do more-- even though I will probably embrace what the Senator is doing--than just say we are outraged that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is complicit in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

There is a long list of things the Crown Prince has already done beyond that, some of which I mentioned in my remarks. But at the end of the day, if all we do is express our outrage, then anybody in the world, any leader in the world, any country we have a relationship with could say: Well, they will publicly slap us on the wrist, but that will be the total consequence.

If that is the total consequence, then at the end of the day, people will act with impunity. When they do that, we go down a dangerous path, not just for those who live in those countries and may be subjected to those types of indiscriminate executions and other gross violations of human rights; we send a global message that is a downward spiral. That is what I and some of my colleagues I am going to join briefly to talk about--we intend to pursue this in the next Congress--want to see happen. I appreciate that the Senator supports that sentiment, and I look forward to continuing to work with him until the very end of this session.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss--and I appreciate the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island and the work he has done on this critical question of climate change. I am pleased to join him today on the floor in pursuit of what he has been doing.

I rise today to discuss the negotiations taking place in Katowice, Poland, to finalize the rule book on implementing the Paris climate change agreement. There is an immediate urgency for global action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution as emissions continue to increase. The longer it takes for us to fully accept and acknowledge the problem, the more aggressive the world will have to be to avoid the worst effects of climate change from becoming a reality.

For decades, the science has yielded increasing causes for concern. Today, the connection between manmade greenhouse gas emissions-- primarily fossil fuel combustion--and climate change is undeniable. Three major reports on the growing climate crisis have been published in the last 30 days alone. That includes reports from the world's top climate scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.N. Environment Programme. That includes the National Climate Assessment, which was assembled by 13 Federal agencies and 300 government experts--our Federal agencies and our government experts.

What the scientists are telling us is that robust and immediate action is necessary to prevent catastrophic changes in the Earth's climate--changes that have already begun to affect every single American.

There is a tendency to dismiss scientific reports as abstract, as hard to understand. The President seems to simply not believe them. So let me speak plainly: The consequences of climate change are anything but abstract--regional food and water shortages, inundation of island nations and coastal communities that are home to billions of people around the world, mass migration, and refugee crises.

Our own National Climate Assessment makes clear that the United States--with all our wealth and good fortune--is far from immune from the effects of climate change. If we fail to confront this challenge, the United States will experience effects that will cost American lives and billions in losses to our national economy.

While we shouldn't point to any single event as evidence, the changes in trends depicting climate change's harsh reality are undeniable. It is a fact that the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8 degrees Celsius--1.4 degrees Fahrenheit--since 1880, and two- thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975. It is a fact that the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events in many regions of the United States are increasing, including conditions that heighten wildfire risks. It is a fact that sea level has been rising over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In 2017, global mean sea level was 3 inches above the 1993 average--the highest annual average in the satellite record. None of these facts are new. None of these fact are deniable. The science predicted these climate change effects 20, even 30 years ago.

To echo a common sentiment among climate change leaders on the urgency of the situation, ``We are the first generations to experience the effects of climate change and the last that can act to prevent the worst.''

This urgency is fueling the negotiations in Poland this week. Deliberations on the various elements of these rules began shortly after the Paris Agreement's entry into force in November 2016, and the agreement requires that the rules be completed this year, making the COP in Katowice the most consequential conference of parties since COP21 in Paris.

The Paris Agreement establishes firm, albeit nonbinding, global emissions reduction goals--reductions sufficient to prevent a 2 degrees Celsius increase in global average temperatures. The Paris Agreement also clearly outlined robust and transparent reporting so that parties can hold each other accountable via diplomatic engagement as opposed to binding legal punishment.

Of course, success comes down to execution. That is what makes the development of the implementation rule book so consequential and President Trump's decision to abandon the Paris Agreement so antithetical to our own interests.

The current administration's wholesale rejection of meaningful engagement with the global community is disturbingly naive and is bound to result in repeating past mistakes with detrimental outcomes.

China is emboldened by President Trump's plan to abandon the Paris Agreement. China effectively slowed progress at COP23 and will continue its efforts. In the leadership vacuum that President Trump has created, China is stepping in to write the rules.

It is completely absurd to assume that the United States, by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, is somehow immune to the global economic implications of climate change.

The President couched his decision to abdicate American leadership regarding the Paris Agreement as putting ``America first'' in a June 2017 announcement riddled with inaccurate characterizations of the Paris Agreement and alternative facts on climate change.

There is no truthful, factual, or reality-based argument to justify how allowing every country in the world except the United States to build the clean energy economy of the future and confront our most pressing global challenge puts America first.

Continued U.S. leadership and climate diplomacy can only yield economic benefits for U.S. workers. More than 900 U.S. businesses support keeping the United States in the Paris Agreement, including more than 20 Fortune 500 companies.

Acting to prevent the worst effects of climate change holds tremendous economic and job-growth opportunities for New Jersey and our Nation. I am proud to say that New Jersey is a national leader in deploying clean energy technologies, creating clean energy jobs, and planning and investing in climate change resilience.

New Jersey is home to 417 solar energy manufacturing and installation companies employing more than 7,000 workers.

New Jersey is also competing hard to become the first Mid-Atlantic State to produce offshore wind energy, supported by the recent enactment of legislation establishing a 3,500-megawatt production goal for offshore wind energy.

New Jersey has also recently increased its renewable energy standards to 50 percent by 2030 and set a new State carbon emissions reduction goal of 80 percent by 2050.

New Jersey's leadership among the States working to combat climate change is rooted in our vulnerability to the effects of climate change. The fact is, if we continue on our current emissions trajectory, the world could see global average temperature increase by 3 degrees Celsius. This would devastate New Jersey, risking $800 billion in coastal property value, along with the health, security, and livelihood of millions of residents. The potential losses from sea level rise and increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather associated with climate change would cost my State's economy billions in economic losses.

Just yesterday, the Star-Ledger--a statewide paper--published a column by Robert Kopp, the director of the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, highlighting many of these consequences, as outlined by the recent National Climate Assessment.

Our winters have been warming faster than our summers. Pests like pine beetle and ash borer are no longer kept in check by winter freezes. Perhaps even more alarming, we have seen our crops begin to bud earlier and earlier, only to see them decimated by cold snaps later in the season. In the Garden State--famous for our tomatoes, cranberry bogs, blueberries, and other specialty crops--that is a big deal.

As temperatures rise, we also expect to see a surge in heat-related deaths and illnesses due to allergies and asthma, while disease- carrying bugs like mosquitos and ticks thrive in increased seasonal moisture.

Our fisheries--the life blood of so many of our coastal communities-- have already begun to see how changing water temperatures are changing migrations, making it harder for us to manage historic fisheries and harder for our fishermen to earn a living.

Of course, perhaps the clearest threat to New Jersey from climate change comes in the form of coastal flooding from sea level rise and extreme weather events. We saw it with Superstorm Sandy, and we understand the devastating consequences it can have for our families, our communities, and our infrastructure.

There is no convincing me that ignoring climate change and walking away from the world's only mechanism for holding countries like India, China, and Russia accountable for their emissions puts New Jersey first.

The Trump administration's failure to recognize this potential and its refusal to recognize the growing market demand for clean energy is a stunning example of the transactional relationship this President has with the fossil fuel industry. He is putting wealthy, politically connected corporations ahead of the best interests of the American people. Proof of the administration's political favoritism for fossil fuels is exemplified by the only U.S. Government-sponsored event at COP24 in Poland, titled ``The Future of Coal.''

Never mind how insulting and tone-deaf it is to sponsor an event to promote dirty, coal-powered energy at a climate change conference while countries like the Marshall Islands, the Maldives, Mongolia, and Mozambique, which face existential crises from climate change, look on--even more than that, this public forum flaunts the administration's wholesale sellout to the industries the government is tasked with regulating. It also shows us this administration's contempt for the booming renewable energy sector in the United States, which, according to Trump's own Department of Energy, employs more Americans than the U.S. fossil fuel industries by a 5-to-1 reality. All told, nearly 1 million Americans work in the energy efficiency, solar, wind, and alternative vehicles sectors. That equals nearly five times the number of workers employed in the fossil fuel electric industry, which includes coal, gas, and oil workers.

As the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I believe that climate diplomacy must be a priority for U.S. foreign policy. Climate change poses an imminent and long-term threat not just to U.S. national security but also to the long-term prosperity of this country and of our world. Addressing the crisis requires collective action and cooperation by local and national representatives, small and large businesses, and every one of us.

If the United States is to maintain our status as the world's superpower, it is in our best interest to lead the global cooperative effort to address the serious challenges posed by climate change and to promote stability and resilience by helping developing countries reduce their vulnerability to the effects of climate change. If we stand alone on the sidelines as these changes and international economics take shape, we will ultimately be the loser.

I urge my colleagues to join me in calling on the administration to advance continuing U.S. climate diplomacy and reconsider the decision to withdraw. It is essential to U.S. national security interests, as defined by our own Department of Defense, and growing U.S. economic opportunity.

Congressional Review Act

Mr. President, I want to take one moment to speak to a different topic, which is to support the Tester-Wyden Congressional Review Act.

This is an administration cloaked in secrecy and deception. It is an administration that doesn't want the American people to know what it is doing. So it is no surprise that in July, the Treasury Department issued their dark money rule. They don't want the American people to know that behind every bill, amendment, and Executive order is a big- money special interest. They want to make it easier for big corporations, billionaires, and even illegal foreign money to influence our elections. These special interests know that so long as the money keeps flowing, there will be someone in Congress to do their bidding.

At a time when Americans want transparency from their government, this rule would allow special interests to hide their donors from the

Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a true giant for human rights in Russia and around the world. Ms. Alexeyeva passed away over the weekend in Moscow and left behind children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but that was just her immediate family. Lyudmila's leadership and fearlessness inspired a generation of human rights and democracy activists in Russia; she was the grandmother of human rights in the country, and her stalwart leadership in the face of repression will truly be missed. Today is International Human Rights Day, a fitting moment to pay tribute this incredible leader.

In thinking about Lyudmila's legacy, three words come to mind: vision, tenacity, and courage.

Starting from her days drafting a Samizdat journal called the Chronicle of Current Events that scrutinized the Khrushchev regime, Lyudmila had the vision of a Soviet Union in which all of its citizens played a role in ensuring accountable governance and democratic principles. She saw the opportunity to fulfill this vision in the 1975 Helsinki Accords, especially those tenets which enshrined the critical notion that signatory countries' respect for human rights inside their borders was integral to security in the transatlantic region. The Brezhnev government at the time had no intention of honoring those elements of Helsinki, but Lyudmila worked together with her compatriots to set up the Moscow Helsinki Group to monitor implementation of the Accords. The Moscow Helsinki Group inspired the proliferation of sister organizations in other countries whose governments had committed to Helsinki principles, including here in Congress with the Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This platform inside of the Soviet Union and across the transatlantic space was critically important to build those bonds of international solidarity among so many likeminded democrats and human rights defenders. She was indeed a true visionary for open, democratic societies, and the bonds she built with and among activists who shared that vision stand strong to this day.

Second, tenacity--Lyudmila faced so many obstacles during the Soviet period and the Putin era. After starting Moscow Helsinki, the pressure from the Soviet regime grew so great that she had to seek exile in the United States for 16 years. During that time, she became an American citizen, a proud moment for us here in this country. While in exile, she remained committed to

her vision. She advocated for international support for the plight of dissidents and human rights activists suffering repression in the Soviet Bloc. In the tradition of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lyudmila wrote extensively on her country, publishing two important works: ``The Thaw Generation. Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era'' and ``Soviet Dissent.'' She also worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty during this period.

Once she was able to return to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, Lyudmila dove right back into her work, scrutinizing the human rights record of Boris Yeltsin and resisting the sharp turn away from democracy under Vladimir Putin. As the space for civil society voices contracted inside Russia, Lyudmila was a clear and dogged advocate for freedom, a voice for the universal declaration of human rights and a voice for a better Russia. Despite this closing space, she expended enormous energy on mentoring and organizing a new generation of Russian human rights defenders to carry the torch. During this period, she would travel to Washington and was a true force of nature. She always had a few young activists in tow to make sure they were connected with key policymakers in DC. By doing so, she made clear to us in Washington that not all was lost inside Russia, that a tenacious new generation of activists was willing to take this baton of freedom and run the next leg of the race, and that they deserved our respect, attention, and support.

Finally, courage--Lyudmila did not have to do this work. This calling subjected her and her family to pressure and repression by different regimes over the years. It subjected her to 16 years in exile from her homeland. After so much hard work during the Soviet era, she could have settled into retirement, leaving the toils of civil society development and human rights defense to a new generation, but as repression grew under Putin, Lyudmila would continue the work undaunted. Well into her 70s and 80s, she would continue to organize. She would continue to travel to foreign capitals, only to face increased scrutiny at home. She would attend rallies in Moscow, sometimes in the dead of winter, under great physical threat. She would be arrested. She faced these challenges with remarkable composure and grace. Those images of Lyudmila during a Moscow street protest one New Years' Eve, dressed as a Russian holiday character, the Snow Maiden, in a powder blue coat as she stood up to thuggish Russian Government security forces, was a sight to behold. Her undaunted courage during this later period of her life was a true inspiration to so many of us around the world.

It is tragic that Lyudmila did not live to see her vision for Russia realized. It is tragic that the Russian people have been robbed of the opportunity to live in a democratic country. It is tragic that the Putin regime continues to impose corruption and repression on a people who deserve so much better. Lyudmila understood what that ``better'' looks like and had a vision for her country: a governing system with true checks and balances; a country with a responsive government, held accountable to the people; a country where a strong civil society understood that it had a very important role and stake in the country's well-being. In her own way, Lyudmila symbolized that check and balance. She symbolized what a vibrant civil society in Russia could be if only taken to scale. She symbolized a place where Russia lived up to international human rights commitments, not as an answer to a foreign power, but because she saw fulfillment of these commitments as good for the citizenry and the country.

Our world is better because Lyudmila was here. Our world is better due to her vision, courage, and tenacity. We all have an obligation to carry on her work, not only in support for human rights in Russia, but in all those dark corners of the world where people are repressed by their governments. In the coming days, tributes like this will be heard around the world, extolling Lyudmila's many efforts and accomplishments in defense of liberty and human rights.

Lyudmila was a shining example to us all. Let us take this charge and be the embodiment of her life's work.

Rest in peace, Lyudmila.

Would the Senator from Tennessee, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, yield for a question? As the sponsor of this legislation, would you explain how our bill relates to international exchange programs run by the Department of State that collect program fees to fund program operations?

I thank the Senator from Tennessee. I appreciate your explanation, which also reflects my understanding, about the difference between international exchange program fees and placement and recruitment fees covered by the bill. Let me conclude by saying that I agree with you about the importance of our International Exchange Programs administered by the Department of State, and I know that Congress has long supported these programs.

Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the nomination of Thomas Farr to the Eastern District of North Carolina. Those who sit on the Federal bench are bound to uphold the Constitution for all Americans, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or political leaning, but Mr. Farr cannot be trusted to defend equal justice under the law.

Working to disenfranchise voters with a particular hostility toward African-American voters has been his lifelong passion. Consider his work for Jesse Helms' 1990 Senate campaign. We all know Helms' record on race.

When the Justice Department brought a lawsuit against the Helms campaign for sending over 100,000 postcards to mostly African-American voters, falsely warning them that they were ineligible to vote and could be prosecuted for casting a ballot, it was Mr. Farr who defended the scheme. Yet, despite having served as the Helms' campaign attorney, Farr denied having any involvement with the postcards in his Senate questionnaire.

Mr. Farr claimed he did not ``participate in any meetings in which the postcards were discussed before they were sent,'' but according to the former head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Gerald Hebert, ``the answers in [Farr's] questionnaire are contrary to the facts.''

Mr. Hebert took contemporaneous notes while investigating the Helms campaign--notes that place Mr. Farr at

a meeting on the postcard scheme just 3 weeks before they were sent.

Years later, Farr led a 3-year legal battle to defend North Carolina law that disgracefully shortened early voting, instituted onerous government ID requirements, and eliminated same-day voter registration and out-of-precinct voting, all of which are known to disproportionately suppress minority, elderly, and disabled voters.

Federal courts ruled the law unconstitutional for targeting African- American voters ``with almost surgical precision''--purposeful, surgical precision--calling it the most restrictive law since the era of Jim Crow.

I know Republicans want to confirm as many judges as possible, but why this judge when there are so many other qualified jurists to choose from? I think it is because they know the GOP agenda of enriching big corporations at the expense of everyday working families is incredibly unpopular with the American people.

Consider that while the Republicans held onto the Senate this year, they lost by 16 million votes nationwide. Democracy is supposed to be a battle of ideas, but when it comes to healthcare or student loan debt or climate change, they don't have any. When you can't win a fair fight, what do you do? You tilt the playing field in your favor.

Republicans want to stack the court with judges who will do their bidding--grossly out of step with the American people on everything from voting rights and redistricting to healthcare and climate change, to the constitutionality of Whitaker's appointment to lead the Justice Department. That is what Leader McConnell meant about nominations being Republicans' best chance of having a long-term impact on the Nation's future. It is their best chance at denying minorities from voting and forcing their bad ideas on the American people.

The Republicans are so intent on confirming judges with shameful records on voter suppression that they have shredded the blue-slip process here in the Senate, which allows the Senators to green-light or to prevent hearings on nominees from their home States. It is a process--Senator Hatch once called the blue-slip process the last remaining check on the President's judicial appointment power.

Ironically, back in 2013, when President Obama nominated an African- American assistant U.S. attorney named Jennifer May-Parker to this very seat, the Democrats respected Senator Burr's decision not to return a blue slip, and then-Chairman Pat Leahy chose not to hold a Judiciary Committee hearing. Then, in 2016, President Obama nominated Patricia Timmons-Goodson, the first African-American woman on the North Carolina Supreme Court, to this same seat. If confirmed, either of these trailblazing women would have become the first African American to serve in the Eastern District of North Carolina--a district that is 27- percent African American. Yet neither Senator Burr nor Senator Tillis returned a blue slip for Ms. Timmons-Goodson; thus, Chairman Grassley did not act on her nomination.

Yet, today, President Trump's nominees are being confirmed despite objections from home State Senators. Paul Matey, a nominee from New Jersey, will likely become another example. Neither I nor Senator Booker were meaningfully consulted by the White House regarding New Jersey's open seat on the Third Circuit. For several reasons, we haven't returned blue slips for Paul Matey; yet they moved ahead with the hearing for him. So it has been eviscerated--totally, totally.

It has gone little by little. First, if one of the two Senators turned in a blue slip, that was enough. Now it doesn't matter that neither Senator turns in a blue slip; they go ahead with the hearing and probably with a vote. So the precious check and balance that Senator Hatch talked about as the last vestige of a check and balance on judicial nominations has largely been lost.

The Republicans claim to be the party of conservatism. Yet I see nothing conservative in their willingness to sweep aside century-old procedures for policy gain. They put their party before their country and show no fidelity to the institutions that have truly made this country great. Something is wrong with any political party that makes the suppression of voters its chief electoral strategy. Mr. Farr is just one more card in their deliberate effort to stack the deck against our democracy, to disenfranchise voters and force their unpopular, bad ideas on our country.

For the sake of our democracy, I urge my colleagues, in this case particularly, to do the decent thing, to do the right thing--to stand up for the voting rights of all Americans and reject this nominee.

I yield the floor.