Floor Statements

Mr. President, today Senator Crapo of Idaho and I are introducing the Forest Management for Rural Stability Act. This legislation replaces the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self- Determination Act (SRS) to provide revenue sharing with and compensation to over 700 rural forested counties in the over 40 States that host America's treasured, public forested lands and wildlife refuges.

In 2000, then-Senator Larry Craig, also of Idaho, and I, had signed into law SRS: a 6-year long safety-net program to stabilize county budgets following years of depleted revenue sharing payments from the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Oregon and California Grant Lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Over its lifetime, SRS has been a success, providing more than $6.8 billion nationwide for rural roads, schools, and healthy forest projects. SRS also provided the basis for the beginning of, and the now growing propensity for, the USFS and the BLM to collaborate with local people and interests on the management of these public lands, and for local folks and counties to collaborate together and with the USFS and BLM, in return.

Despite its many successes, the continuation of SRS is in jeopardy. The program expired in fiscal year 2016. Congress passed a two-year extension of the program, but after its expiration. And this was not the first time nor the last time Congress allowed it to expire--SRS is expired right now, though Senator Crapo and I are attempting, in these last moments of the 115th Congress, to reauthorize it again for at least a year, perhaps two.

This stop and start existence of this program hits at the heart of any attempts at collaboration. And it certainly undermines any attempts for a county to budget. Our rural counties should not continue to suffer neither this uncertainty, nor the market based uncertainty that comes with simply relying on revenue sharing and forest management for support.

That is why Senator Crapo and I propose an SRS modernization, funding certainty while supporting active forest management. The Forest Management for Rural Stability Act establishes a permanent endowment fund, the Natural Resources Permanent Fund, to provide stable, reliable, increasing payments to counties, in perpetuity, removing them from the vagaries of Congress or the market.

Under this legislation, Congress charters a fiduciary corporation, the Forest and Refuge County Foundation, to manage the endowed fund. The corporation will be independent from any instrumentality of the U.S. government, including Congress, to ensure the principle balance is held in perpetuity and is separate from annual appropriations. The corporation will be overseen by a board of directors responsible for a transparent governance structure. The principle of the fund will be invested to earn interest. To grow the fund, in addition to the investment income, the USFS, BLM, and the Fish and Wildlife Service will deposit their annual revenue sharing receipts into the fund. The interest the fund generates will constitute the payments to the counties, distributed annually using the existing SRS formula. Initial payments to counties will be equal what counties received for Fiscal Year 2017 SRS payments.

The Forest Management for Rural Stability Act continues Congress's commitment to fostering economic growth in rural counties by continuing Forest Service Resource Advisory Committees. In addition, the bill gives county governments greater flexibility in how these funds are spent for economic development and rural jobs.

Passing the the Forest Management for Rural Stability Act will update SRS for 2018 and beyond--looking forward for our forested counties, rather than backward to last century efforts. This bill updates an already successful program that deserves action. I urge my colleagues to support this important bill.

Mr. President, today Senator Crapo of Idaho and I are introducing the Forest Management for Rural Stability Act. This legislation replaces the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self- Determination Act (SRS) to provide revenue sharing with and compensation to over 700 rural forested counties in the over 40 States that host America's treasured, public forested lands and wildlife refuges.

In 2000, then-Senator Larry Craig, also of Idaho, and I, had signed into law SRS: a 6-year long safety-net program to stabilize county budgets following years of depleted revenue sharing payments from the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Oregon and California Grant Lands managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Over its lifetime, SRS has been a success, providing more than $6.8 billion nationwide for rural roads, schools, and healthy forest projects. SRS also provided the basis for the beginning of, and the now growing propensity for, the USFS and the BLM to collaborate with local people and interests on the management of these public lands, and for local folks and counties to collaborate together and with the USFS and BLM, in return.

Despite its many successes, the continuation of SRS is in jeopardy. The program expired in fiscal year 2016. Congress passed a two-year extension of the program, but after its expiration. And this was not the first time nor the last time Congress allowed it to expire--SRS is expired right now, though Senator Crapo and I are attempting, in these last moments of the 115th Congress, to reauthorize it again for at least a year, perhaps two.

This stop and start existence of this program hits at the heart of any attempts at collaboration. And it certainly undermines any attempts for a county to budget. Our rural counties should not continue to suffer neither this uncertainty, nor the market based uncertainty that comes with simply relying on revenue sharing and forest management for support.

That is why Senator Crapo and I propose an SRS modernization, funding certainty while supporting active forest management. The Forest Management for Rural Stability Act establishes a permanent endowment fund, the Natural Resources Permanent Fund, to provide stable, reliable, increasing payments to counties, in perpetuity, removing them from the vagaries of Congress or the market.

Under this legislation, Congress charters a fiduciary corporation, the Forest and Refuge County Foundation, to manage the endowed fund. The corporation will be independent from any instrumentality of the U.S. government, including Congress, to ensure the principle balance is held in perpetuity and is separate from annual appropriations. The corporation will be overseen by a board of directors responsible for a transparent governance structure. The principle of the fund will be invested to earn interest. To grow the fund, in addition to the investment income, the USFS, BLM, and the Fish and Wildlife Service will deposit their annual revenue sharing receipts into the fund. The interest the fund generates will constitute the payments to the counties, distributed annually using the existing SRS formula. Initial payments to counties will be equal what counties received for Fiscal Year 2017 SRS payments.

The Forest Management for Rural Stability Act continues Congress's commitment to fostering economic growth in rural counties by continuing Forest Service Resource Advisory Committees. In addition, the bill gives county governments greater flexibility in how these funds are spent for economic development and rural jobs.

Passing the the Forest Management for Rural Stability Act will update SRS for 2018 and beyond--looking forward for our forested counties, rather than backward to last century efforts. This bill updates an already successful program that deserves action. I urge my colleagues to support this important bill.

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

Mr. President, the Senate is now opening the crucial debate on our proposal to throw out the Trump pro-dark money campaign rule under the Congressional Review Act.

At the outset, I thank my colleague Senator Tester for his leadership on the issue of bringing sunshine to American elections.

The fact is the State of Montana is the poster child of campaign finance reform--a textbook case of the sort of transparency and accountability that American elections need to all be about, and no Senator embodies that tradition more than Montana's own Jon Tester.

If you know anything about the history of the State and the Montana Copper Kings, you know why Montanans and Jon Tester always lead this fight. That is why I am so glad, as the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, to be able to partner with him on this critical issue. The Trump administration's dark money rule makes it easier for foreigners and special interests to corrupt and interfere in our elections. Senator Tester and I have filed this Congressional Review Act proposal because we want to make it harder.

I believe deeply that when you are facing down secret money that is shifting between shadowy groups that want to buy our elections, sunlight is the best disinfectant. If you are concerned about foreign actors who are hostile to our country and who are illegally funding candidates who will do their bidding, sunlight is the best disinfectant. If you are worried about anonymous political insiders who have deep pockets that are tightening their grips on Washington, DC, sunlight is the best disinfectant. I hope, today, we will prove that sunlight should not be a partisan proposition.

Yet the rule change the Trump administration pushed through this summer is not about sunlight; it is all about darkness. It is about secrecy. It is about giving the well-connected even more of a say in how American Government works. You can see that pretty clearly just by going back to the day the rule was announced. That alone shows how out of whack these policies are, how wrongheaded they are.

On July 16, 2018, a Monday morning, the American people woke up to the news of the arrest of an accused Russian spy in Washington, named Maria Butina. She had come to our country years earlier and had set out to infiltrate conservative organizations, especially the NRA. She cultivated relationships with political insiders. She worked to organize back channel lines of communication for the benefit of the Russian Federation, and she set up a shell company in North Dakota with a very prominent NRA political operative. For months, her lawyer claimed she was nothing more than a typical college kid who was enjoying life in the Nation's Capital.

It has been a few years since I have been in college, but I don't know of many students at Portland State or Southern Oregon who cross State lines to set up shell companies and organize lines of communication with the Kremlin. Most college kids in Oregon are too busy being college kids to infiltrate conservative political circles on behalf of a hostile foreign power.

Hours after the vast majority of the American public heard Maria Butina's name for the first time, the Trump administration dropped its dark money bombshell. It announced a new policy that is going to let even more untraceable dark money from foreigners and special interests find its way into--infiltrate--our elections. For those like Maria Butina who want to secretly, furtively, invade and twist and corrupt our democracy, the Trump administration, just this summer, made it a lot easier.

Shadowy political spending groups used to be required under tax law to disclose the identities of their major donors. After this rule was adopted, they didn't have to disclose their donors at all. Federal investigators are going to be blind to bad actors who use dark money groups to do their bidding. Even if the Internal Revenue Service and State tax authorities suspect a particular spending group is guilty of wrongdoing, they will not know who provided the cash.

Since this is a tax policy change, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee, where we do a lot of work on issues that deal with tax exemptions. Let's make one thing clear. There was no debate on this issue in the Finance Committee, and it received no debate on the Senate floor. The American people had no opportunity to comment on the rule change, which would be typical if you are talking about a major change in a regulation. So we are going to unpack that this morning.

I am going to start by just spending a minute or 2 on some of the arguments I have heard from some who might not be inclined to support it.

First, there has been an argument that disclosing these major donors is a violation of privacy. The Presiding Officer and I serve together on the Select Committee on Intelligence, and I think anybody who has followed that work knows that I am a real privacy hawk and don't take a backseat to anybody in terms of privacy rights. Yet allowing foreigners and megawealthy corporations to buy elections in secret is not a matter of privacy policy; it is a proposition that is anti-democratic. Furthermore, I will point out that the group that is making the case for the privacy argument online is, in fact, a dark money group.

Second, since the announcement, the Trump administration has tried to downplay the significance of the new rule. The Deputy Secretary of Treasury told the Finance Committee that cutting off disclosure was all about working to ``further efficient tax administration.'' That sounds, to me, like dry Washington lingo for ``enforcing the pro-sunshine law is a pain, so why would anybody bother?'' Others, simply, claim it will have no real consequence.

I have two responses to that one.

First, if the dark money rule change is not any big deal, then why did the Trump administration work so hard to block Congress from challenging it? It kept the rule change off the official books for as long as it could because it was hoping to run out the clock on our oversight. This is real gamesmanship in order to make sure the American people don't find out about how there would be less sunlight with respect to big political donations.

Second, the argument that cutting off disclosure will not have harmful consequences is another one that has been trotted out in opposition to our reform.

If the existing rule requiring disclosure of major dark money donors to the IRS wasn't casting enough sunshine, that is not a reason to bring on total secrecy. That is not a reason for bringing on darkness. It is a reason to say you want to be on the side of more sunshine.

A number of our colleagues on the Finance Committee--Senator McCaskill and Senator Whitehouse, who is a champion of disclosure--are all in favor of more sunshine. To me, this argument, as well, just doesn't stand up. We think that making as much public information public ought to be the policy of our land.

One thing that is clear to me from my conversations this election season is that voters do not want more secret spending for more anonymous wealthy donors and foreigners leading to more political ads.

It is not possible to escape all of these ads on television. Short of pitching a tent and camping out in the woods until the second week of November, you can't get away from it. People hear all of these charged- up political ads, but much of the time they have no way of determining who is behind them. You get to the end of the ad, and a voice says that it was paid for by an oddly named group that you have probably never heard of, something like ``Americans United for Patriotic Priorities'' or ``Grandparents for This and That.'' Maybe the group is called ``Families for Stuff.'' That is the kind of nonsense that is offered up in terms of disclosure that I, Senator Tester, Senator Whitehouse, and others who have been in this fight think is ridiculous.

By the way, there are real-life examples that actually demonstrate my point. Some will remember Don Blankenship, whose mining company broke safety laws and lost 29 employees in the worst mine explosion in decades. A couple of years ago, he wanted, more or less, to buy a seat on the West Virginia Supreme Court. So he set up a political spending group called ``And For The Sake Of The Kids.'' Then he dropped a mountain of cash on the election, and his preferred candidate won. Let me repeat that in case anybody didn't get the essence of what he was up to. An energy baron, a leader in the fight for more dirty energy started a political spending group to protect his dirty energy interests, and he actually named it ``And For The Sake Of The Kids.''

The dark money rule change--what the Trump administration worked so hard to get, what they worked so hard to hide from oversight--feeds right into what I have shown is a system of malignant, secretive politics that our people have had a belly full of. It gets to the heart of a larger problem. Across the country, our right to vote, our elections, and our democracy are under assault.

Here are a few examples of what that means. Since the Citizens United decision, the amount of outside money spent by shadowy groups on our elections has gone into the stratosphere. Congressional districts are gerrymandered to such an extreme that millions of Democratic voters are, in effect, denied equal representation. In Wisconsin, Democrats got 54 percent of the vote, but only 37 percent of the seats in the legislature.

Republicans ignore the advice of Trump intelligence experts ringing the alarm bells over election security, and they ignore the cyber security experts who have clearly stated that paper ballots and risk limiting audits are the key--the best way--to defend attacks on our voting system.

Tens of millions of Americans cast their votes on insecure, hackable machines produced by companies that buy off election officials and evade oversight by the Congress. The Trump administration and his allies have invented a fake crisis of voter fraud out of thin air, and they have used it as a pretext to purge millions of voters from the rolls and discourage Americans from casting a ballot.

State officials have targeted communities of people of color, shutting down polling places where they live and restricting opportunities to vote early or as an absentee.

In the last few days, Americans have learned more and more about what happened in one district in North Carolina, where Republican Party operatives schemed to confiscate and destroy mail-in ballots, likely belonging to Democratic voters, if you read the press reports that are coming out daily.

In some States where Democrats have won elections--look at Wisconsin and North Carolina--outgoing Republican lawmakers have sabotaged the powers of incoming Governors, in defiance of the voters who elected them.

Trump's dark money policy--the idea that it is OK to have more dark, secret money in politics--reinforces the corruption that I have just described. It

concentrates power in the hands of special interests that can afford to cut a big check and buy the election results they want. It takes power away from individuals, away from moms and dads who vote to give their kids a brighter future, away from seniors who vote to protect Medicare and Social Security, and away from young people who are saying it is long past time to fight the devastation of climate change and the rising cost of education.

Having more disclosure and more sunshine in elections traditionally has been bipartisan, and I hope the resolution Senator Tester and I are offering will also be bipartisan. All we have to do is have an outbreak of the legacy of the late John McCain.

A few years ago, I introduced a bipartisan disclosure bill with my friend and colleague Senator Murkowski. Big bipartisan majorities passed campaign finance legislation in the 1970s. That is what Senator Tester and I believe the Congress ought to get back to. Throwing out the Trump dark money rule seems to us to be a good first step.

This is an opportunity, today, to vote for sunshine in our elections, to say that sunshine is, again, the best disinfectant. There is none other like it for corruption in our elections. I am hopeful that, once again, this idea of transparency, disclosure, and accountability will be bipartisan in the Senate when we vote a little bit after noon today.

I will close by way of saying that I come from a State where citizens have insisted on open government. I have had more than 900 open-to-all townhall meetings, and the reason why people want them is because they see that as a path to accountability, and they don't want politics driven by just campaign donations and big money. They certainly don't want it to be dark money.

We are going to know a little bit more about Maria Butina here in the next day or so, but, again, when you have college students setting up shell companies thousands of miles away from going to college, that ought to be a wake-up call that the Trump dark money rule makes it more likely and that we will have more of those shell companies in the days ahead.

When we vote at 12:15, I urge my colleagues to support Senator Tester's and my resolution, with the support of many colleagues, like Senator Whitehouse, who has been a champion on these disclosure issues. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to remember that these issues have always been about bipartisanship and to join us in voting for our proposal that we will vote on shortly after noon.

I yield the floor to Senator Whitehouse and thank him for all his work on these issues over the years.

Mr. President and colleagues, we have so many waiting to speak about our friend Chairman Hatch that I am going to be very brief.

If you are to talk about the Chairman's record over the last 42 years, we would be here for months and months on end.

I wish to say, if you had told this body or the country in the winter of 2017 that you would pass in this Congress a bipartisan 10-year reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program--we have plenty of Finance members here--you would have been charged with hallucinating. People would have said: No way; it couldn't possibly happen.

If you had said in the winter of 2017 that you were going to pass a major set of reforms on foster care--reforms that Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund has been dreaming about for decades-- they would simply have said: That is impossible. It couldn't possibly happen. You are hallucinating.

Colleagues, listen to this. If you had said in the winter of 2017 that you were going to start a transformation of Medicare with over 50 million seniors--a transformation from a program that traditionally used to be about acute illness and now is largely about chronic illness: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke--if you had said in 2017 that you were going to transform Medicare to update the Medicare guarantee to help seniors, once again, they would have said: Impossible.

Colleagues, that has happened in this Congress because Chairman Hatch was willing to reach across the aisle, and now millions of kids, millions of seniors, and families from sea to shining sea for whom the foster care system didn't work are now going to be able to have a better path.

I am going to close my remarks--I know so many colleagues want to speak--by quoting Senator Kennedy. As you know, Senator Kennedy had a long friendship with Orrin Hatch. In 1981, Chairman Hatch took the gavel of what was called the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. And I am telling you--the chairman remembers this--Senator Kennedy and Orrin Hatch got down right away to duking it out. They were duking it out over labor law and all kinds of things, but they began to develop a mutual respect. I am going to close by reading what Senator Kennedy said about Orrin Hatch.

Senator Kennedy said: We are beyond the point where we let our differences get in the way of opportunities for progress. We have just learned it is a lot easier to work together than it is to fight each other.

Senator Kennedy said:

We have differences in terms of perhaps how we achieve the

objectives, but I don't really feel that I have a difference

with Orrin in terms of what the objectives ought to be. If

you build upon that kind of understanding and respect, you

get a lot of things done.

Colleagues, I am telling you, if you look at 2017 and 2018, for the millions of kids who will benefit from the 10-year Children's Health Insurance Program, the scores of families who are going to benefit from the foster care dreams Marian Wright Edelman has been dreaming about, and the millions of seniors who will benefit from updating the Medicare guarantee, that came about because Chairman Hatch looked at Senator Kennedy's words, and he has continued that tradition in the Finance Committee today. I just want him to know how much we appreciate that work.

It is going to matter, Mr. Chairman, for millions of people from sea to shining sea, and I thank you for the opportunity to pursue those opportunities with you.

I yield the floor, and I look forward to hearing from my colleagues.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, the Social Security Administration needs to get out of the death data business. Unfortunately, S. 2374, the Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act, moves the issue in the wrong direction. Under current law, the Social Security Administration receives death data from the States. SSA shares the State data with other Federal benefit paying agencies. This bill would expand the distribution of the State data and burden the Social Security Administration with responsibilities unrelated to running the Social Security program. Similar to a musician receiving compensation each time their song plays on Spotify or Apple Music, the States own the data, want to control the distribution of the data, and deserve adequate compensation. Proceeds from the use of State death data helps maintain State vital records offices. Because the bill would increase sharing of personal data by the Federal Government at the expense of States, I will object to any unanimous consent request to proceed to or pass this bill. I hope the sponsors of this bill will work with the Finance Committee on this important issue in the future.

Madam President, the Senate will soon cast the first procedural vote on the nomination of Justin Muzinich to serve as the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. I am going to oppose this nomination, and I would like to lay out exactly why, beginning with a basic rule that I intend to maintain going forward.

If a Treasury nominee says the Trump tax handouts will pay for themselves, I intend to oppose them. The reason why is that by sticking with this debunked claim, you are basically laying out the economic policy version of being a flat-earther. You are either peddling an idea you know is untrue, or you can't do math. Either way, you shouldn't have a pivotal, powerful job at the Treasury Department.

When Mr. Muzinich came before the Finance Committee for his nomination hearing, it was a titanic battle just to try to get him to offer any kind of substantive answer on pretty much anything. One question he finally answered straight up was whether he agreed that the Trump tax handouts would ``pay for themselves and reduce our deficits.'' There he gave a one-word response, which was ``yes.''

Some call this trickle-down economics. Others call it voodoo economics. I call it, plain and simple, rainbow and unicorn math. No matter what you call it, it just isn't connected to reality. The Trump tax handout will not pay for itself, and even after independent, nonpartisan economic analyses demonstrated that was the case and even after months of data were released showing that the Trump tax law has failed to live up to the administration's fantasy land promises, Mr. Muzinich continues to cling to this false claim.

I will give him credit. He has what my relatives call--what Jewish people call--chutzpah, but that sure isn't going to win him my support.

In my judgment, it also raises a fundamental question of honesty. Before his nomination hearing, newspaper reports ran glowing quotes about him from several key officials at the Treasury Department. They praised Mr. Muzinich's financial expertise, and they talked about the expansive role he would play in a whole host of areas at the Treasury Department--not just tax policy but debt management. Republican committee members talked all about the work he had put into the development of the Trump tax law.

I was pretty interested in Mr. Muzinich's substantive views on these big questions because I had read these glowing tributes from his colleagues, and I thought, well, if we are going to have someone promoted to this important position, we really ought to get a sense of what he believes on the really important, substantive economic issues. So I began to ask the nominee about these questions, and he, as I indicated, just put any response sort of in the ``well, I couldn't possibly get into that'' category.

I wanted to know why because, eventually, we got around to his saying that he really wasn't going to get into these issues because he said if he was confirmed, he would just be, in his words, a ``building manager.''

A building manager is somebody who doesn't get praised by his colleagues as being an expert on debt management and tax policy. Building managers have important responsibilities. They are involved in things like acoustics and ventilation. They have responsibilities. That is what building managers do. They certainly don't have duties like those described by Mr. Muzinich's colleagues.

I had some real difficulty reconciling the way his own colleagues described him in these important publications and what he told me about his responsibilities as the building manager. I think he really is not reflecting what his job is all about, and the fact that he would misrepresent that to me in our discussions prior to his nomination--he misrepresented to the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee in charge of the nomination--is, in my view, very troubling.

I also have had very serious questions about the way Mr. Muzinich responded to my questions about the Trump administration's new policy-- really, just a couple of months old--that would open the floodgates to more foreign dark money in American elections. We all know from this last election about what dark money means.

We had our airwaves and TV sets, from sea to shining sea, dominated by television commercials that had a tag line on it--something akin to ``Americans for high school football'' or ``Americans who believe in our flag,'' or various other things that none of us would possibly disagree with but that would in no way reflect who actually paid for that commercial that found its way to our TV sets.

There were increased floods of dark money commercials through the past November election, and right before that, the Trump administration adopted a rule that would make it even easier for foreign dark money to make its way into our elections.

We will be talking about that rule later this week. There is going to be an effort with Senator Tester and me to overturn that flawed policy, but the fact is that this is something that an individual who was nominated for the important position Mr. Muzinich seeks would have some views about and particularly because the rule change--the rule change made by the Trump administration to allow more dark money in American elections--was announced just hours after the American people learned about the illicit activities that an accused Russian spy Maria Butina had used to infiltrate conservative groups and undermine our democracy.

So if that were a coincidence, that the Trump administration announced this new rule to make it easier for foreign dark money to make its way into our elections--announced just a few hours after the American people learned about Maria Butina--I have to tell you that it is a coincidence for the ages.

The Trump administration and other officials, of course, say that Maria Butina was just an innocent college student attending American University. I don't know of many college students who go to South Dakota with an NRA political operative to set up a shell company. That is not common behavior for an American college student. Yet, given the fact that the Trump administration had made it easier to get foreign dark money into our elections--and a common vehicle for doing that would be one's using a shell company--it certainly, again, raises very troubling signs that a nominee for this key position will take no position whatsoever on something so important as that of protecting our elections.

The fact is, with this new policy, the President is essentially blinding law enforcement and telling foreigners and dark money groups that it is open season for election cash to flow.

I asked Mr. Muzinich about this. I asked: What do you think about this

problem in terms of preventing foreign influence and enforcing election law? I couldn't get a straight answer. Finally, he told me: ``The intent was to further efficient tax administration.''

I can tell you something. I don't think Maria Butina was interested in anything that had to do with efficient tax administration. I don't think she was interested in anything close to that when she went to South Dakota with an NRA operative to set up a shell company. Maybe this was just Mr. Muzinich's way of dodging the question. If not, then he is basically suggesting that it is just fine with him for special interests and foreign actors to buy American elections because they may be able to sell the American people on the proposition that makes tax reporting easier.

I have said before that I don't agree with every Treasury nominee on every issue from the Trump administration. I realize that. Then there have been individuals on key economic questions whose nominations I have supported. I thought Jerome Powell, who was Donald Trump's nominee, was a very wise choice to head the Federal Reserve. I have supported the President on important economic positions, and I voted for plenty of Republican nominees to the Treasury Department before. Yet I do expect nominees to be straight with me and with the committee. After all of the bobbing and weaving on issue after issue, this is a nominee who doesn't come close to passing that bar. In my view, he has not met the commonsense, basic test of giving some sense of where he stands on the important issues.

I see my good friend and seatmate on the Finance Committee who is here, and we talk often about these issues.

I will just say to my colleagues that the proposition that Mr. Muzinich is going to be the building manager for the Department of the Treasury is just a little bit much to swallow when you look at what his colleagues said he had talked about in the past with respect to tax management and tax reform and other important questions.

Finally, in Mr. Muzinich's claiming that the Trump tax handouts will pay for themselves, he has failed on that issue by $1.5 trillion. I am not going to support a nominee for this position who is going to bring unicorn and rainbow fantasies to tax policy and to these key questions that are so important to the American people. I urge my colleagues to oppose the nomination of Mr. Muzinich.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the Senate is going to soon vote on the nomination of Bernard McNamee to be a Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

If Mr. McNamee takes a seat on the Commission, it will mean that Christmas is coming early for the executive who wants big, dirty energy bailouts.

Mr. McNamee has had for some time a plan to bail out some of the oldest, dirtiest plants in America, and he wants typical Americans to pay for it with higher utility rates. That is right--a bailout for some of the dirtiest, oldest facilities--and a pretty small number of them at that--and then a big spike in rates for working families and seniors across the country. We shouldn't sugarcoat the McNamee plan. It is a rip-off, plain and simple.

All of this doesn't come out of thin air. Mr. McNamee, in fact, was directly responsible for this miserable proposal while he was at the Trump Energy Department. The plan was to interfere with utility companies' private business decisions, to force them to actually prevent utility companies from shutting down those dirty, old powerplants--some of them coal plants--even when the utilities wanted to move to cleaner, newer plants. So much for the free market. The utilities actually wanted to move to cleaner plants. Yet this would have prevented them from shutting down dirty, outdated plants to go to the more efficient, newer ones. So much for the free market. So much for protecting consumers.

This proposal was so flawed that every member of the Commission joined in a vote to reject it. Let me repeat that. Every member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that Mr. McNamee is so eager to join voted against his plan to stick it to all the consumers with a rate spike.

For a period, I chaired the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and we always saw that, traditionally, if a flawed proposal gets met with enormous rejection, the typical person in a rational way says: Hey, we had better get back to the drawing board and take a different tack. That is not so with the Trump administration.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission wouldn't green-light Mr. McNamee's rate-hiking plan to prop up the executives at these dirty facilities. So the President wants to put Mr. McNamee on the inside and give him a seat on the FERC. I have to say that I haven't seen anything like this sort of deliberate effort to hijack sound market-oriented principles that would naturally take you to cleaner power rather than to dirty old coal facilities. But what we have here is, in effect, an individual who has shown a track record of wanting to do the bidding of special interests.

FERC is supposed to be an independent, apolitical energy regulator.

As I said during the committee's hearing on this nomination, this is not a question of the fox guarding the henhouse. This is a question of putting the fox inside the henhouse. That is what this will do if the Senate makes a flawed judgment to approve this nomination. Several of us at the Energy Committee hearing--myself and other colleagues--asked Mr. McNamee if he would recuse himself from matters that he worked on that relate to this flawed bailout for dirty, outdated plants. He refused to commit to that.

Since the hearing, new evidence of his energy policy biases has come to light in the form of video footage where he candidly expresses that he is just plain, old biased against renewable power. The video reveals Mr. McNamee speaking frankly about his skepticism of wind and solar power. He basically says: You shouldn't regulate carbon dioxide as a real pollutant. His comments, joined with his recent actions, which I have described as the ``Trump Energy Department,'' make it clear to me that he is not going to bring the judicious, objective approach, if he is confirmed as FERC Commissioner, to these critical issues. He certainly is not in this to protect the American

consumer, because his policies would pick their pocket with higher rates.

Finally, the nomination comes at a particularly troubling time, just after the scientists for the Federal Government released the ``National Climate Assessment.'' The report warned that without substantial and sustained measures to reduce emissions, climate change and worsening climate change would wreak havoc on our economy. Yet juxtapose or put right next to what the Federal scientists said about climate change worsening and then say: Here is going to be a Trump nominee who, if chosen for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is going to say: Let's double down on support for the dirty, outdated facilities for generating electricity.

It doesn't sound very viable to me in terms of our economic future. On the entire matter of confronting the imminent threat of climate change, I think we have to recognize that this administration is defying the will of the American people. We are no longer talking about far-off theories.

In Oregon and across the country, we have seen Americans watch fires getting bigger and hotter. They are ripping through populated areas. They are not your grandfather's fires. In our part of the world, we saw a fire leap over the Columbia River. We have seen hurricanes making landfall with Biblical, unprecedented winds. Each year almost sets a new high mark for the hottest year on record.

The policies that this nominee is advancing are misguided. They would accelerate the problems that the scientists for the Federal Government cited last week.

I will close by way of saying that what the scientists said last week is that dealing with cleaner, more efficient energy and promoting it is urgent business right now because there is no time for going backward. What the McNamee nomination is all about, in one concept, is this: It is going backward--backward to bailouts and backward to supporting dirty, outdated plants.

We ought to be going forward.

Mr. President and colleagues, I urge that this nominee be rejected.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I ask the Senate to join me in recognizing Arlington High School in Oregon and its remarkable career and technical education program. Thanks to the leadership of district staff and the support of the community, students at Arlington High are better prepared for their post high school careers.

Career and technical education provides students of all ages with the academic and technical skills, knowledge, and training necessary to succeed in future careers. Students participating in career and technical education programs graduate high school at higher rates than average and are better prepared to get good-paying jobs beyond the classroom.

The HonkerTech Center at Arlington High School offers many disciplines to its students, based on interests and career choices. These include metal fabrication, digital design and production, and mechanics. Students learn business concepts and skills, like developing a project budget and writing a proposal and using accounting software. Students are accountable and responsible for designing their projects. They also have an opportunity to gain practical, real-world experience working with regional and international customers on custom products. The impact of this program extends beyond the classroom, making sure that students have the skills they need to become lifelong learners, even after they graduate.

I am proud to recognize the career and technical education program at Arlington High School and the good work being done to prepare Oregon students for success after graduation. This is what I call doing things the Oregon way.

I thank the chairman for his willingness to work with me on this important matter. I know we believe that further oversight needs to be done; however, at this point, the Treasury Department has been sufficiently cooperative. Accordingly, I am lifting my hold on Treasury Department nominees.

Mr. President, today I am lifting my holds on the nominations of Justin Muzinich, to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and Michael Faulkender to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, both of which were reported favorably from the Finance Committee. I had placed holds on these nominations until the Treasury Department agreed to provide the Senate Finance Committee with certain information I had requested in connection with the committee's oversight of the Treasury Department.

Working with Chairman Hatch, I reached an agreement under which the Treasury Department has cooperated with the Finance Committee on a number of my requests.

For these reasons, I will no longer object to any unanimous consent request concerning the nominations of Mr. Muzinich and Mr. Faulkender.

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to require the Director of National Intelligence to provide the Congress and the public an assessment of who carried out, participated in, ordered, or was otherwise complicit in, or responsible for, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

This question is of enormous importance to the Congress and the American people. Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist. He wrote for the Washington Post, and he resided in the United States. He visited the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, only because he was seeking documents to get married. But he never came out. The Saudis killed him, and they covered it up.

Naturally, the American people want to know what happened and who ordered this assassination. In an interview on November 18, Donald Trump was asked whether the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman, lied to him when he denied knowing about Khashoggi's murder. But Trump's response was simply ``Will anybody really know?''

Those kinds of judgments are what we have an Intelligence Community for. So I called for CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to come forward and provide a public assessment of who was responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and Donald Trump only doubled down. Last Tuesday, he put out a sickening statement in which he made it clear that he did not care who may have ordered the murder. In a display of cowardice and weakness, Donald Trump let it be known that his blind devotion to the Saudis will lead him to abandon American values, as well as our moral standing in the world.

The reasons behind Donald Trump's embrace of the Saudi dictators at the expense of American interests, like his affection for President Putin, are not fully known. In both cases, there are financial entanglements that demand aggressive and thorough investigation.

And, in both cases, Donald Trump has attempted to muddy the waters by casting doubts on U.S. intelligence. That is why, in his statement last Tuesday, he continued to insist that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was an unsolvable mystery. This is what he said: ``Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event--maybe he did and maybe he didn't!''

Donald Trump no doubt hopes that will be the last word. But Congress can make sure that it isn't. My legislation requires the Intelligence Community to provide an unclassified, public assessment about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. That assessment, not the predictable obfuscations of Donald Trump, will then provide the basis on which the Congress and the American people can move forward after this atrocity.

This intelligence assessment is critical to the debate currently going on in the Congress about U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom's human rights abuses go well beyond the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. A report last week about the torture of women's rights activists is just the latest of many years of accounts of abuses carried out by this autocratic and brutal regime. Many Members of Congress, including myself, are also deeply concerned about Saudi Arabia's role in the war in Yemen, which has created almost unimaginable suffering.

The importance of a public Intelligence Community assessment about the Khashoggi murder extends beyond Saudi Arabia. If the world's dictators know that they can kill journalists and American residents, and Donald Trump will stand in the way of a public accounting, the door may be open to future murders. Congress must not allow this to happen. Congress must draw the line. That start with letting the Intelligence Community speak for itself and allowing the Nation, and the world, to know what the Intelligence Community assesses actually happened.

Finally, Mr. President, let me address the argument that the assessments of the Intelligence Community must remain secret. In many cases, I agree. But, as I've just explained, the questions about this brutal murder are far too important for Congress and the American people to accept the cloud of Donald Trump's willful ignorance. In addition, it is simply unacceptable for Donald Trump to purport to speak about intelligence matters and for the leaders of the Intelligence Community to just hide under their desks. The American taxpayer pays the Intelligence Community over $80 billion a year to uncover the truth and arrive at objective assessments. If all the American people get is Donald Trump telling them that everything is unknowable, then what is the point? This problem has come up in other contexts, especially with regard to election interference. Unfortunately, it is not going away. So it is the job of Congress to insist that the Intelligence Community tell us what they really think. And, if they won't, then Congress must require it.

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to require the Director of National Intelligence to provide the Congress and the public an assessment of who carried out, participated in, ordered, or was otherwise complicit in, or responsible for, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

This question is of enormous importance to the Congress and the American people. Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist. He wrote for the Washington Post, and he resided in the United States. He visited the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, only because he was seeking documents to get married. But he never came out. The Saudis killed him, and they covered it up.

Naturally, the American people want to know what happened and who ordered this assassination. In an interview on November 18, Donald Trump was asked whether the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman, lied to him when he denied knowing about Khashoggi's murder. But Trump's response was simply ``Will anybody really know?''

Those kinds of judgments are what we have an Intelligence Community for. So I called for CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to come forward and provide a public assessment of who was responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and Donald Trump only doubled down. Last Tuesday, he put out a sickening statement in which he made it clear that he did not care who may have ordered the murder. In a display of cowardice and weakness, Donald Trump let it be known that his blind devotion to the Saudis will lead him to abandon American values, as well as our moral standing in the world.

The reasons behind Donald Trump's embrace of the Saudi dictators at the expense of American interests, like his affection for President Putin, are not fully known. In both cases, there are financial entanglements that demand aggressive and thorough investigation.

And, in both cases, Donald Trump has attempted to muddy the waters by casting doubts on U.S. intelligence. That is why, in his statement last Tuesday, he continued to insist that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was an unsolvable mystery. This is what he said: ``Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event--maybe he did and maybe he didn't!''

Donald Trump no doubt hopes that will be the last word. But Congress can make sure that it isn't. My legislation requires the Intelligence Community to provide an unclassified, public assessment about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. That assessment, not the predictable obfuscations of Donald Trump, will then provide the basis on which the Congress and the American people can move forward after this atrocity.

This intelligence assessment is critical to the debate currently going on in the Congress about U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom's human rights abuses go well beyond the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. A report last week about the torture of women's rights activists is just the latest of many years of accounts of abuses carried out by this autocratic and brutal regime. Many Members of Congress, including myself, are also deeply concerned about Saudi Arabia's role in the war in Yemen, which has created almost unimaginable suffering.

The importance of a public Intelligence Community assessment about the Khashoggi murder extends beyond Saudi Arabia. If the world's dictators know that they can kill journalists and American residents, and Donald Trump will stand in the way of a public accounting, the door may be open to future murders. Congress must not allow this to happen. Congress must draw the line. That start with letting the Intelligence Community speak for itself and allowing the Nation, and the world, to know what the Intelligence Community assesses actually happened.

Finally, Mr. President, let me address the argument that the assessments of the Intelligence Community must remain secret. In many cases, I agree. But, as I've just explained, the questions about this brutal murder are far too important for Congress and the American people to accept the cloud of Donald Trump's willful ignorance. In addition, it is simply unacceptable for Donald Trump to purport to speak about intelligence matters and for the leaders of the Intelligence Community to just hide under their desks. The American taxpayer pays the Intelligence Community over $80 billion a year to uncover the truth and arrive at objective assessments. If all the American people get is Donald Trump telling them that everything is unknowable, then what is the point? This problem has come up in other contexts, especially with regard to election interference. Unfortunately, it is not going away. So it is the job of Congress to insist that the Intelligence Community tell us what they really think. And, if they won't, then Congress must require it.

Mr. President, today I have introduced the Encouraging Americans to Save Act (EASA). This legislation makes common sense reforms to the saver's tax credit by making the credit refundable and restructuring it as a government matching contribution that is directly deposited into a worker's retirement savings account. This bill would offer matching contributions for the first time to millions of middle and lower income individuals not covered by an employer-sponsored retirement plan, including those who save through an IRA under a State or local government savings program--such as OregonSaves. The government match is also available to middle and lower income savers who participate in an employer-sponsored plan. The government match provided by the bill would both encourage saving and help middle and low income earners build assets by providing an immediate, meaningful return on their personal contributions. The legislation would also require the Treasury Department to reestablish the Obama administration's MyRA program, as IRAs established under that program would serve as the default account to hold government matching contributions in case a saver's retirement plan or IRA is unable to accept the government

matching contribution. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the Local School Foods Expansion Act to establish a permanent program that will provide schools with locally-grown, unprocessed fruits and vegetables.

Hunger is a huge problem in Oregon, and this pain has a huge impact in schools. In Oregon, one in four children experience food insecurity and they face a great challenge keeping up with learning on empty stomachs. I have supported Federal school lunch programs for many years, and I strongly believe that the best programs rely on local producers and make an effort to ensure lunches are healthy and nutritious.

The Local School Foods Expansion Act is a common sense approach to child nutrition that empowers children while strengthening the local economy and contributing to vibrant communities. The bill amends the National School Lunch Program to make permanent a program that increases opportunities for lunch programs to procure locally-grown, unprocessed fruits and vegetables. The bill directs the Secretary of Agriculture to expand the very successful pilot procurement programs to at least 15 States, and contains a mandatory appropriation of nine million dollars in each fiscal year from 2019 to 2023.

No child should be hungry in school, and it's critical that their meals contain nutritious fruits and vegetables. At the same time, we must work to maintain domestic production of fruits and vegetables by ensuring that hardworking farmers have a fair and reliable market for their produce. The Local School Foods Expansion Act tackles both objectives by providing hungry kids with local, unprocessed fruits and vegetables.

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

Mr. President, today I have introduced the Encouraging Americans to Save Act (EASA). This legislation makes common sense reforms to the saver's tax credit by making the credit refundable and restructuring it as a government matching contribution that is directly deposited into a worker's retirement savings account. This bill would offer matching contributions for the first time to millions of middle and lower income individuals not covered by an employer-sponsored retirement plan, including those who save through an IRA under a State or local government savings program--such as OregonSaves. The government match is also available to middle and lower income savers who participate in an employer-sponsored plan. The government match provided by the bill would both encourage saving and help middle and low income earners build assets by providing an immediate, meaningful return on their personal contributions. The legislation would also require the Treasury Department to reestablish the Obama administration's MyRA program, as IRAs established under that program would serve as the default account to hold government matching contributions in case a saver's retirement plan or IRA is unable to accept the government

matching contribution. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the Local School Foods Expansion Act to establish a permanent program that will provide schools with locally-grown, unprocessed fruits and vegetables.

Hunger is a huge problem in Oregon, and this pain has a huge impact in schools. In Oregon, one in four children experience food insecurity and they face a great challenge keeping up with learning on empty stomachs. I have supported Federal school lunch programs for many years, and I strongly believe that the best programs rely on local producers and make an effort to ensure lunches are healthy and nutritious.

The Local School Foods Expansion Act is a common sense approach to child nutrition that empowers children while strengthening the local economy and contributing to vibrant communities. The bill amends the National School Lunch Program to make permanent a program that increases opportunities for lunch programs to procure locally-grown, unprocessed fruits and vegetables. The bill directs the Secretary of Agriculture to expand the very successful pilot procurement programs to at least 15 States, and contains a mandatory appropriation of nine million dollars in each fiscal year from 2019 to 2023.

No child should be hungry in school, and it's critical that their meals contain nutritious fruits and vegetables. At the same time, we must work to maintain domestic production of fruits and vegetables by ensuring that hardworking farmers have a fair and reliable market for their produce. The Local School Foods Expansion Act tackles both objectives by providing hungry kids with local, unprocessed fruits and vegetables.

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