Floor Statements

Mr. President, Mr. Russell Vought is nominated to be the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget. My view is, he has radically misguided budget priorities. He has long opposed bipartisan compromise. I am especially concerned about his well- documented history of inflammatory rhetoric. If confirmed, he would be the point person in charge of the President's budget. He is on record supporting an extreme fiscal strategy--one that would really threaten the full faith and credit of the country by engaging in debt ceiling brinkmanship, but I also oppose Mr. Vought's nomination because of his extreme vote on the budget and refusal to reach across party lines.

So we have an obligation to look at his extreme views, especially his vitriolic comments he has made, and to consider them among the recent examples of individuals who made similar comments and were deemed unfit for service.

Carl Higbie, a Trump surrogate during the 2016 campaign, was appointed as chief of external affairs at the Corporation for National and Community Service. He resigned from his taxpayer-funded post in shame after his history of hateful, bigoted rhetoric was brought to light. That history included saying he didn't like Muslims because he hated their religious ideology and even flatly admitted he was proud to be a racist if it meant being against Muslims.

Rev. Jamie Johnson was appointed last April to lead the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He, too, resigned in disgrace after media reports drew scrutiny to his use of racist rhetoric. During a 2008 interview, he said that African Americans had ``turned America's major cities into slums because of laziness, drug use, and sexual promiscuity.'' He also said extremist terrorist groups were representative of all people of the Muslim faith.

For a person taking a job intended to promote partnerships, it was certainly important to call his job performance into question.

William Bradford was appointed to lead the Energy Department's Office of Indian Energy in 2017. He resigned after the media drew attention to comments

he made calling for the military to target Muslim women and children and equating American colleges to ``Jihadi training camps.''

None of these individuals resigned because of their religion. In the United States--and I feel this so deeply--every person is free to practice the religion of their choosing and hold any and all beliefs. The reason these three individuals resigned from their positions was because their intolerant comments cast serious doubt on whether they were capable of working on behalf of all Americans.

That brings me to Mr. Vought's nomination. He has a long history of using inflammatory rhetoric to demonize his political opponents, and he just seems to abhor compromise. He has said that if Republicans fail ``to beat back the forces of the left,'' then ``we will lose our country to tyranny.'' Addressing a group of conservative activists in 2014, he said: ``The left increasingly elects ideological storm troopers to Congress.'' After he was nominated, the American Civil Liberties Union criticized his nomination because he had previously claimed that Muslims had a ``deficient theology'' and flatly stated that all Muslims ``stand condemned.''

When I met with Mr. Vought, I asked him to clarify his inflammatory rhetoric. I always think it is important to give somebody a chance to break from the past, and I hoped to hear a softer approach. He chose to stand by what he said. In fact, he doubled down.

So I will close with this. In my view, nothing should have changed in the time since Mr. Higby, Reverend Johnson, and Mr. Bradford resigned in shame. This incendiary, vitriolic rhetoric is disqualifying.

One of the first requirements of nominees for public office is to respect Americans from all walks of life. This is true when you are talking about a position like the OMB Deputy Director which holds enormous influence over the Federal budget. Mr. Vought has a clear, documented record of disrespecting and demonizing those who think differently than he does, and I consider that disqualifying.

This administration may tolerate those who spew vile rhetoric, and maybe they believe it is right to reward them with powerful roles in government, but the Senate does not have an obligation to let the standards of decency and tolerance degrade in this manner.

For this reason, I oppose the Vought nomination.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor the extraordinary life and work of one of Oregon's finest, Ursula K. Le Guin, who, after a long life, passed away in my hometown of Portland on January 22 at the age of 88.

You would have a tough time overstating Mrs. Le Guin's impact on American literature, particularly on the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She didn't invent science fiction or fantasy literature, but what she did, in true Oregon fashion, is redefine them.

Millions of school children in Oregon and around the world know her best as the author of the unforgettable Earthsea series. She also wrote essays, poetry, and short stories throughout her life. To the end, she fiercely resisted the constant attempts to pigeonhole her as a sci-fi author.

Over five decades, she upended conventions, shattered ceilings, and inspired generations of readers and authors. She is going to be missed, even as her legacy lives on.

Ursula Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber on October 21, 1921, in Berkeley, CA. Her parents were both successful anthropologists who encouraged their kids to think and to question. Exposed to mythology and science fiction at an early age, she soon grew tired of what she would later describe as White men and soldiers going forth and conquering the universe.

A shy young woman, she escaped the anxieties of adolescence by reading authors like Austen, Shelley, and Tolstoy in her local public library. She went on to Radcliffe College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1951. She earned a master's degree from Columbia University the following year and won a prestigious Fulbright scholarship to continue her studies in Paris.

She met fellow Fulbright scholar Charles Le Guin on her way there, and they were married shortly thereafter.

The pair returned to the United States and ultimately settled in Oregon in the late 1950s, when her husband took a job at Portland State University. She focused on the couple's three children and on her writing, returning to science fiction with ``Rocannon's World'' in 1966. Two years later, she published ``A Wizard of Earthsea,'' the first in a series of highly acclaimed fantasy novels that have remained in print to the delight of millions.

I can't imagine it is an easy feat for any author to create an entire universe that sticks in the minds of readers for generations. In building Earthsea, Mrs. Le Guin joined that elite group of fiction writers, like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who have done just that.

More impressively, she used her writing to push back against social injustices and social constraints. She wrote about environmental destruction, about feminism and gender inequality, about racism, about war and peace. She wrote about women protagonists and about non-White heroes when they were even less commonly highlighted than they are today. She wrote about multidimensional characters and others who sought to better themselves and their societies rather than bend others to their will.

The more Mrs. Le Guin wrote, the more people would read, and the more the awards started to pile up. She racked up awards in the course of her career like few authors have--multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards, a National Book Award, a Newbery Medal, and a Pushcart Prize. In 1977, she was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.

She twice won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in the same year, for 1969's ``The Left Hand of Darkness'' and in 1974 for ``The Dispossessed.''

I would be here until next week if I tried to list all of her achievements, but because we have a rule in the Wyden household against filibustering friends, let me just say that in 2000, the Library of Congress made official what all of Oregon had long known. It declared that Ursula Le Guin was a ``Living Legend'' for her contributions to American literature.

The fact is, we love our bookstores, and I very often kid Michael Powell and my wife Nancy that they are the LeBron James and Damian Lillard of bookstores. The fact is, Mrs. Le Guin has been in demand in bookstores and libraries for decades, and she has always been sharing that wisdom in her books with visitors near and far. Thanks to her example and her influence, generations of women writers have blazed new trails and defied old dogmas.

As a dad who knows full well the importance of reading in a child's life, this is really a special honor today to be able to stand before this distinguished body and remember Ursula K. Le Guin, her life and her legacy. Her pioneering writing is going to continue to make readers challenge their conceptions and contemplate their role in this enormously vast universe for decades to come. Her long career's worth of great works will be treasured far into the future. I especially appreciate the opportunity to recognize the extraordinary work of a woman who did so much to promote writing and attract young readers at home in Oregon and the chance to have been able to recognize Ursula Le Guin today before the U.S. Senate.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, right now it is estimated that 700,000 Dreamers face the very real threat that they may be ripped from the only life and the only country they have ever known. These are young people who have grown up in America. They go to school here. They work hard here. Often, they work at multiple jobs. They get terrific grades. They give back to their communities. They have done everything right.

I have met with them at home. My colleague Senator Merkley and I have met with many of them at joint meetings. A number of them say point blank: We like to serve America. We believe in America.

That is all they have known. They serve in the military. They want to do police work. They want to be first responders.

In fact, to earn their DACA status, they had to come forward, give their information to our government, and then submit to a background check. Now they are living under this cloud of

uncertainty because the President, on his own, stamped an expiration date on the DACA Program.

What I wish to do for a few minutes is to talk about these terrific young people--these special young people, the Dreamers--and what they contribute to our country.

I was very pleased recently to have Esli Becerra join me at this year's State of the Union speech because in my view he and his younger brother Kevin embody the very best about our country. Esli came to Oregon when he was 8 months old. He got his first job before he was 10 in order to support his family. I am going to talk a little bit about these two terrific young people because, literally, for years now, each of them would take turns working to support the other, so that between them they were always saying: We want to do it the American way. We want to do it by dint of hard work and thrift and in the spirit we have in this country, where if you work hard, there aren't any limits to what you can achieve. They are two very, very special young men.

Esli wanted to get a higher education. So his younger brother put in the sweat equity to make it happen. Kevin, who is a U.S. citizen, worked more than 80 hours a week after he graduated from high school to help pay for Esli to go to Lane Community College in Eugene.

Let me repeat that. Kevin, a U.S. citizen, who worked in our office, as well, worked more than 80 hours a week after he got out of high school because he said: I want to help my brother get ahead.

Esli has now built a real professional career. He is a visual effects artist in Portland. So he has turned around, and he is stepping up to help pay for Kevin's college education. We have these two remarkable brothers who, year after year, were either working or going to school in order to help each other get ahead in the way that we hope young people will do by dint of hard work and discipline and supporting each other. They are brothers, and they have been in each other's corner and supportive of their families their whole lives. We need more people in America like the Becerra brothers.

They are not alone. Another of Oregon's estimated 11,000 Dreamers is a young man named Daniel Kim. He immigrated legally to Beaverton, OR, from South Korea, but he learned that his immigration lawyer never filed the paperwork needed to get permanent legal status. So without this information, he found out very abruptly that he was considered undocumented.

Thanks to DACA and a special military recruitment program, Daniel had the opportunity to serve our country. He seized the opportunity and joined the U.S. Army the first chance he got.

I will state that I just find it painful to hear the disparaging talk about immigrants. Unfortunately, the President uses that kind of language too often. Maybe it is easy for people in Washington, DC, to forget that these debates are about real people. They are not just about acronyms and numbers. Daniel and Esli are the types of young people this debate is about--a soldier on the frontlines defending our country, a young man working hard at home in Oregon and supporting his family. These are the young people whose lives have been turned upside down by a Presidential decision, and they are just pawns in this raging political battle.

Young people like Esli and Daniel signed up for DACA so they could work and give back to the country. Dreamers are integral parts of their communities. They pitch in and help those communities grow. If all DACA recipients lost their protections, it would be a massive economic hit to our country--$280 billion lost. Even going beyond the humanitarian impact of breaking up families, that is what DACA recipients mean from a dollars-and-cents standpoint.

The crisis Dreamers are facing began last year when the President made the decision to terminate the program. Senators from both parties have now been working to fix it. Time after time, Senators have brought bipartisan ideas forward, and I would like to note at this point that Senator Schumer went to the President and put the border wall on the table for discussion, making it clear that this was something that he didn't support but that he would put it out there just to try to generate some goodwill and to try to find a way to get folks working together. Throughout this discussion, sometimes it seems the President just will not take yes for an answer.

So Senators from both sides keep working in the best tradition of this body. On the healthcare front, we sure showed here recently what could be done when there is bipartisanship and Senators are working together. He sits right over there--Chairman Hatch of the Finance Committee. He and I worked together. I am the ranking Democrat on the committee. We now have a 10-year authorization to the Children's Health Insurance Program. Nobody would have ever imagined that a year and a half ago. We have made a transformative set of changes in Medicare to update the Medicare guarantee to cover chronic illness, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke--where most of the healthcare spending is. We got that done, as well as the biggest change in child welfare policy in the Families First Program, an approach that Democrats and Republicans had been dreaming about for 30 years. I bring it up only by way of saying that bipartisanship can break out here in the Senate.

Right now, as I am on the floor, I know we still have a big group of Democrats and Republicans who are saying that this is too important to just have another political food fight. They are working on a compromise plan--Democrats and Republicans--that would bring this DACA crisis to a close, invest in border security, make some changes to our legal immigration system, and particularly do justice to the Dreamers, like young Esli Becerra.

The reality is that when we are doing something like that, it is pretty obvious that nobody gets the bill they would have written. Nobody gets the bill they would have written for themselves if they were to go back to their office and take out a sheet of paper and write down from A to Z, but that is pretty much what we have to recognize if we are going to find some common ground. That is how the bipartisan process is supposed to work.

Colleagues, bipartisanship is not about taking each other's dumb ideas. Anybody can do that. Bipartisanship is about taking each other's good ideas. That is where we have a big group of Senators--Democrats and Republicans--working together on this issue.

Unfortunately, it seems that recent reports indicate that the President and his team are working to derail this bipartisan solution. They are insisting on some kind of approach that will make radical changes to the legal immigration system, for example.

I wish to note for a second that this is very important in the Wyden household. My parents fled the Nazis in the 1930s. Not all got out. My dad basically talked his way into the Army. They weren't all that interested in my dad. He was overweight, and he had health problems. But my dad convinced them that he was a German kid, and he could write propaganda pamphlets that we could drop on the Nazis, telling them that they were going to die and they were going to freeze. My dad was the most patriotic person I ever met. We are better because of legal immigration in this country. Yet in order to get this compromise, we have now seen proposals to radically change the legal immigration system.

I see my colleague, an outstanding member of the Finance Committee, who knows so much about these immigration issues on the floor, and I look forward to his remarks.

The fact is, the President is demanding an approach that goes way beyond DACA and border security, which are two natural bookends for bipartisanship, and it is where this debate begins. Unfortunately, what the President is really pushing breaks up families and severely cuts back legal immigration, and I just noted that I have seen why legal immigration makes our country better and stronger. What the President is talking about would, on top of this, do enormous economic harm to this country and is certainly not going to get the votes here in the Senate to proceed with 60 votes. The bipartisan solution on which both sides have worked hard together is the best opportunity that the Chamber has to end the DACA crisis.

The Senate really cannot come up with sustainable solutions when we

just play to those who take the most extreme view. We can't get a sustainable solution. By the way, that is how debates in the Senate are supposed to work--two parties, hand in hand, bringing their ideas forward and finding solutions both sides can agree on. That is why I mentioned Chairman Hatch and our finally getting the major health reforms recently that people never dreamed were possible.

On this debate at hand, the question of justice for the Dreamers and reasonable border security--two bookends that I happen to think could fit and produce principled bipartisanship through this group of Senators who are working together--this is our opportunity. Millions of families across the country are following this debate, and they are hoping to get some good news on this issue where there has been gridlock for so long.

Passing the bipartisan proposal is our opportunity to give it to them. This is the time for the Congress to come up with a permanent solution for Dreamers. This is not something to be deferred any longer. It is time to act now. I urge my colleagues in the strongest way possible to support the bipartisan proposal--Democrats and Republicans coming together--when there is an opportunity to vote on it, which I believe will be shortly.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, in a truly dubious distinction, this week marks the 7th year since tens of thousands of Bahraini citizens took to the streets of Manama in protest.

These brave men and women put themselves at great risk to demand greater access to their political system and more accountability from their government.

Rather than engage these protestors in meaningful dialogue, the regime responded with violence, tear gas, and rubber bullets.

After much international attention, Bahrain's King agreed to set up the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, or BICI, and to fully implement its recommended reforms.

I say to the Senate today, on the seventh anniversary of the demonstrations, that the regime has not upheld this fundamental commitment.

In fact, the situation has only grown worse over the past 12 months as the regime has actually taken a number of huge steps back.

In January of 2017, the regime restored arrest and detainment powers to Bahrain's National Security Agency, despite that agency's past involvement in torture and coercion of political prisoners.

Later in the year, the King approved a constitutional amendment allowing military courts to try Bahraini citizens, a move Amnesty International called ``disastrous'' and warned would be used to crack down on political opposition.

These policies are fundamentally at odds with the BICI recommendations and make clear what folks in international human rights community have long said, that the regime has no intention of upholding its commitment.

The State Department last certified in 2013 that the regime had fully implemented a mere handful of the BICI recommendations. The last State Department update, in 2016, failed to identify any further progress taken.

Last year a panel of UN human rights experts noted a ``sharp deterioration of the human rights situation in the country . . . aimed at muzzling any discordant voice and suppressing dissent.''

The State Department's most recent Human Rights Report details the Bahraini regime's willingness to revoke citizenship as a punishment, often without providing a concrete justification and without an opportunity for basic due process.

A Washington Post story from last year indicated the regime revoked citizenship from more than 100 Bahrainis

in the first half of 2017, and reports indicate the regime issued deportation orders to eight Bahrainis just last month after stripping them of citizenship.

A number of organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain, have echoed these observations.

Regrettably, the Trump administration has done almost nothing to push Bahrain's leaders to fulfill their commitments and do better by their own citizens.

Why would they when the Embassy of Bahrain is throwing lavish parties at the Trump Hotel right here in DC?

As I try to make clear every year, these observations, which have become a sad tradition of mine, are not an attempt to undermine Bahrain's government.

Bahrain has been a longtime U.S. ally and a partner in a region where partnership can be difficult to come by, but precisely because of our close ties, I feel compelled to speak out when I see such blatant repression of basic human rights.

Oregonians--indeed, Americans--expect their elected officials to hold our international partners to a higher standard. And that is what I am doing here today.

I renew my call on the Bahrain's monarchy to halt its deliberate campaign of silencing peaceful opposition, to stop the indefensible revocation of citizenships, and to release political prisoners like Nabeel Rajab and Abdulhadi al-Khawaja.

I fear that only then will Bahrain be able to move forward together in peace and prosperity, and I look forward to that day.

Mr. President, I thank both of my colleagues, and I thank my colleague from Florida for his courtesy. I am going to be brief.

My views on this issue can be summed up in a tweet that I sent on Saturday. I was home having town meetings. I go to every county every year, and I had just wrapped up in Astoria, and I was on my way to Tillamook.

We stopped at Rockaway Beach, on the spectacular Oregon coast, and I decided that I would send a tweet and start it off with a question: Drilling on the Oregon coast? The answer was this: You have got to be kidding me. On my watch, that is going to be the policy we

are going to have for protecting the Oregon coast. That is what Oregonians are saying today, specifically. In fact, Oregonians are lining up to make their opposition known by protesting this proposal outside a meeting today, hosted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in Salem.

We have a picturesque coastline that looks as if it is right out of a storybook. It is 362 miles that supports 22,000 jobs and a $2 billion economy. Tourism, fishing, and recreation are all dependent on a healthy Pacific Ocean.

Our coast is entirely publicly owned, and it has been protected from oil and gas drilling for decades. That is, in large part, because we have learned harsh lessons from the past. In 1999, the freighter New Carissa ran aground off the coast of Coos Bay. The ship split apart, spilling tens of thousands of gallons of oil and diesel that covered our beaches in oil and tar balls. Some of that toxic mess remained on our beaches for almost a decade, costing tens of millions of dollars to clean up.

The thousands of fishermen, recreation business owners, and guides shouldn't have to go to bed at night hoping there is not a spill or an explosion--or risk their livelihoods on the good will of oil and gas executives. To make matters even more ominous, just days before announcing his intention to open up our entire coastline to oil and gas drilling, Secretary Zinke reversed basic safety standards for workers that were adopted after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. So what you have here is a double whammy. First, gut safety standards for oil and gas workers on offshore rigs. That is right; gut the safety standards for oil and gas workers. Second, increase the probability that these workers are going to be put in danger in the first place.

As I said on Saturday on my way to those town meetings, the people of my State, Oregonians, overwhelmingly do not want to be a part of any of this. Secretary Zinke went ahead and made a wrong decision with respect to coastal drilling without any input from Oregon. Our commercial and recreational fisheries industry--hard-working families who depend on healthy fishing stocks--had no seat at the table. In fact, an entire west coast industry was left out of whatever discussions happened between the oil executives and the Trump officials in the back room of the Department of the Interior.

One day after his decision, Mr. Zinke met with the Republican Governor of Florida, and my colleague who will speak next has been eloquent on that point, describing the plan as a threat to the environment and economy of his home State. That was enough for Secretary Zinke to let Florida off the hook, but there has been an outcry of opposition from the Governors of 15 coastal States, including mine. We have raised the very same environmental and economic concerns, yet Secretary Zinke seems deaf to our voices. I guess the only voice that is really relevant is that of a Republican Governor, and that is about as nakedly political as it gets around Washington--a big gift for the oil and gas companies but one that poses an enormous danger to the economies and environment of local communities along our coast.

Finally, the decision doesn't make sense in terms of energy policy. Our country is more energy-secure now than ever. The International Energy Agency reports that within 10 years the United States will move from being a net importer of oil to a net exporter. So Secretary Zinke's scheme to expand offshore drilling is going to benefit--let's acknowledge that--a handful of Big Oil interests and then leave hard- working fishing families and coastal business owners to pick up the bill. That is not how we do things on our west coast.

The lasting economic uncertainty and ultimate environmental degradation are not worth it, and today, on behalf of the people of Oregon, I urge Secretary Zinke to rescind his proposal.

I yield the floor and thank my colleague from Florida for his courtesy.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Hawaii for a very eloquent statement. I so appreciate her leadership and miss her on the Intelligence Committee. I also want to express my appreciation to the organizers of this effort--Senator Whitehouse and Senator Blumenthal--who have been tenacious in pursuing these issues. Both of them serve on the Judiciary Committee, and I serve on the Intelligence Committee.

It is quite obvious what has been going on in the last few weeks. The President, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and others are working hard to get the American people just to forget that our country is in the middle of an ongoing national security crisis. Russia has attacked our democracy; Russia has intervened in our election; and there is every reason to believe that they are just going to keep doing it.

In the year since the assessment I mentioned was conducted by the intelligence community, virtually everyone has come to see it this way. Donald Trump obviously disagrees. The only change has been the extent to which Donald Trump's protectors are willing to go out and throw dust in the air to prevent America from focusing on this direct threat to the people of this country and our very system of government.

Congress has to get to the bottom of what has been done to our democracy, but the fact is, the Senate has been stonewalled, particularly when it comes to the crucial issues of following the money. It began when Donald Trump refused to do what every other Presidential candidate has done now for four decades; that is, release his tax returns. It continues on other fronts. I have repeatedly asked the Secretary of the Treasury to provide the Senate Finance Committee with Treasury Department documents that would allow investigators to follow the money between Russia, Donald Trump, and his associates. The committee has been given nothing. Secretary Mnuchin has simply refused to cooperate with congressional oversight conducted by members of the committee that has direct jurisdiction over his agency.

So the question is, Mr. President, what are you hiding? What is in those tax returns and those financial documents that you don't want revealed? What would be so damaging?

It seems to me that if you are to understand Russia's ability to undermine our democracy, it is essential to follow the money. Donald Trump's family has acknowledged its financial ties to Russia. In fact, in 2008 and 2009, when it was pretty hard to get money for investment, the Trump family said--their words, not mine: Much of our portfolio comes from the Russians.

The special counsel included extensive information on money laundering and tax evasion in his recent indictment of Paul Manafort. There have been dozens and dozens of press stories--it seems there are several every week--about the finances of the President and his associates that warrant real congressional oversight.

Americans are alarmed by the administration's stonewalling, and millions have been appalled by the idea that this would somehow be treated like just another political game. Those who abuse the classification system to put out a laughable partisan memo that doesn't stand up to scrutiny apparently are willing to do it just to protect the President at any cost.

The cost is our national security. The cost is our democracy. No matter how much the President and his protectors in Congress try to change the subject, we are not, on the floor of this Senate, going to lose sight of what is really at stake.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the odds are quite good that when this Republican-controlled Congress closes up shop in December, time spent attacking the healthcare of women is going to be right up at the top of how this Congress spent their day. They are back at it again, and this latest attack that we will be discussing this week goes after women's essential healthcare decisions.

In my view--and I want to be very clear about this point--this is another key part of the Trump agenda of healthcare discrimination. This time, it is going after women. This entire agenda is what the Republicans are doing their best to blast through the Congress into law. It is not just a one-off, either.

So I am going to spend a few minutes now to put this particular health proposal that discriminates against women in the appropriate kind of context. To do that, I think it is important to describe what has happened on healthcare since day one of the Trump administration.

The administration and Republicans in Congress came right out of the gate with legislation that would have deprived hundreds of thousands of women of the right to see the doctor of their choosing. There was another attack on Planned Parenthood that completely ignored the fact that the Congress already regulates what these trusted healthcare providers can and cannot spend public funds on. What Planned Parenthood does use public funding for are vital healthcare services that have absolutely nothing to do with abortion. Let me just make sure people understand what I am talking about. We are talking about cancer screenings, prenatal care, preventive services, routine physicals, and more.

I have townhall meetings in every county in our State. I have had more than 860 of them. The vast amount of terrain in Oregon is rural. When I go to those small communities and the least populated areas of our State, that is what people tell me they go to Planned Parenthood for--to get those basic essentials, ranging from cancer screenings to routine physicals. That is what women would lose with this Trump agenda of healthcare discrimination.

Next up, given the way the year and a little bit longer has evolved, is the ongoing attempt by the Trump administration to deny women guaranteed no-cost access to contraception. This is one of the most popular healthcare policies in recent memory. There are a lot of reasons why this is smart, not just because it is a matter of fairness for all women to have access to birth control. When women have access to contraception, it means healthier pregnancies and healthier newborns. It also reduces the risk of cancer among women.

You can also look at it in terms of dollars and cents. When you take away no-cost contraception, you are essentially taxing women based on their gender. You are driving up the cost of their routine healthcare. It flies in the face of everything my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say about the problems of healthcare costs in America.

So those are strikes one and two: denying women the right to see the doctor of their choosing and making it harder for them to access contraception. Now the Senate is debating

whether to throw a matter of settled law out the window with a hyperpartisan ban on abortion after 20 weeks.

My view on abortion throughout my time in public service is it ought to be safe, it ought to be legal, and it ought to be rare. I have supported a whole host of policies that bring both sides of the aisle together.

The Presiding Officer is fairly new to the Senate Finance Committee and is looking to be involved in a host of issues. My guess is, he will be very interested in the adoption tax credit concept which I and others have championed for some time, something that brings both sides together.

So my view is, abortion, safe, legal, and rare; find ways to bring both sides together; and respect that the Federal Government ought to leave women alone on these most intimate decisions that involve women, their spouses, and their healthcare providers.

The proposal the Senate is now debating is all about telling women what they can and cannot do. It criminalizes healthcare services that ought to stay between women and their doctors--healthcare services often necessitated by potentially life-threatening complications.

I just, for the life of me, don't see the wisdom of a lawmaker or a bureaucrat in Washington, DC, or a State capital telling a woman how severe the danger to her life has to become before she is legally allowed to make this variably gut-wrenching decision to choose an abortion.

This issue has been settled law in America for 45 years. The debate should be over, but here it is again, along with these other policies I have just described, as part of the Trump administration's healthcare discrimination agenda which is particularly punitive against women.

Let me also recognize the biggest victims under this discriminatory agenda are women who walk an economic tightrope every single day. If their local Planned Parenthood clinic is forced to close its doors, they may not have the ability to take time off work and travel long distances to see another provider for routine healthcare. They already balance every day the food against the rent, the rent against electricity, electricity against gas. Take away these choices, like no- cost contraception, and make their struggle to get ahead that much harder--especially when the rate of unintended pregnancy is five times higher among women living in poverty--folks who may not be able to afford a plane ticket or even a bus ticket to somewhere where they can find the essential healthcare services they believe are necessary.

There are serious, genuine healthcare challenges that face the country. Millions of Americans get clobbered every single time they walk up to a pharmacy window and get pounded by the cost of prescription drugs. That is the kind of bipartisan debate looking for solutions.

Another example is the opioid epidemic raging from one end of the country to the other. More than half a million lives lost in the last two decades, countless families and entire communities torn apart. The Congress and the Trump administration haven't done nearly enough to fight the crisis and, frankly, not anywhere near close to what was promised in the fall of 2016.

Instead of taking on these challenges, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are just full steam ahead with this agenda of healthcare discrimination; this week, an attack on women and their healthcare choices. Passing this bill is going to make it harder for women to be in a position to make the healthcare choices they believe are important--maybe essential--for their lives.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Senate has been running a bit behind. I wanted to accommodate my Republican colleagues.

I ask unanimous consent that the vote be moved to 2:20 p.m., rather than 2:15 p.m., on Mr. Azar.

Mr. President, a year ago, the President stormed into office promising better, cheaper healthcare for everyone. He said he would bring prescription drug prices down because, in his words, drug companies were ``getting away with murder.''

So as we move to this vote, as the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee, I wanted to make sure we took stock after year 1. The Trump record on healthcare is worse than your garden variety case of a President failing to live up to his campaign promises. This President has surely hurt the people he promised to help. Very shortly, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Alex Azar to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. In this position, he would be the captain of the President's healthcare team. So in my view, this debate is about a lot more than Mr. Azar's resume. It is a referendum on a year of healthcare failure, particularly on prescription drug costs, and it is a referendum on what I consider to be a healthcare agenda of discrimination.

I am going to begin with the skyrocketing prescription drug prices because they are a gut punch for millions of Americans each time they step up to the pharmacy window. Few promises the President made with respect to healthcare resonated more than his promise to bring down prescription drug prices, but now, a year later, he has chosen Alex Azar, a drug company executive with a documented history of raising drug prices.

From 2012 until last year, he was the head of Eli Lilly's American subsidiary, Lilly USA. He chaired its U.S. pricing, reimbursement, and access steering committee, which gave him a major role over drug price increases for every product Lilly marketed in America. On Mr. Azar's watch, Lilly more than doubled the prices of drugs used to treat diabetes, osteoporosis, heart disease, and ADHD. And these are only some of the drugs under his purview.

He told the Finance Committee staff that he had never once approved a decrease in the price of a drug at Lilly. Mr. Azar said: That is just how the system works. Prices always go up. I would say that Mr. Azar may have had his facts straight about the system, but that doesn't make it right. Mr. Azar was a part of this broken system, and despite the cheerful overtures that he has made to Senators on both sides of the aisle over the last few weeks about how he wants to work on the issue, he has not offered even a single concrete example of how he would actually change the system he said is broken. He will not give us an example of how he would change it to make it better.

Members of this body, Democrats and Republicans, have come forward with specifics about what they would do to help those Americans getting clobbered at the prescription drug windows across the land. We have colleagues who are for drug importation. We have colleagues who are for more negotiating power for Medicare. We have colleagues who understand the challenge with the pharmaceutical benefit managers, where there is so little transparency. We asked Mr. Azar repeatedly for examples, but all he had to say about this system that was so broken is that he would be ``open'' to ideas.

As important as that is, there is a whole lot more for Senators to reflect on as they think about this vote. After a year in office, the Trump administration is steadily and relentlessly enacting a healthcare agenda of discrimination--discrimination against those with preexisting conditions, discrimination against women, discrimination against LGBTQ Americans, discrimination against those struggling to get ahead. The question up for debate today ought to be whether or not this nominee to head this critical office of healthcare policy is going to end that discrimination.

Colleagues, as you think about this vote, all I can tell you is that when you review the record--in the face of an administration moving relentlessly to promote discrimination in healthcare--there is not a shred of evidence that Mr. Azar is going to try to stop it, reform it, or in any way try to make sure that those Americans--all of them--get a fair shake.

From day one, in addition to this pattern of discrimination, the administration has been on a campaign of sabotage against the Affordable Care Act and the private health insurance markets. They cut the open enrollment period in half. They slashed the advertising budgets. They made it harder for people to sign up in person. That is the major reason why the number of Americans without insurance coverage increased by more than 3 million last year. Our friends and our neighbors are one sudden illness or injury away from the nightmare of personal bankruptcy

as a result of the healthcare policies this administration has pursued and cheered.

Even worse--and I touched on this yesterday--the administration is bringing back to life junk insurance, letting fraudsters get back into the insurance business with health plans that aren't worth the paper they are printed on. It takes me back to my days as codirector of the Oregon Gray Panthers. Back then, I met older people who sometimes had 15 or even 20 private insurance policies to supplement their Medicare. Those policies were junk. Some of them were just out-and-out scams.

So the Congress passed a law. I was proud to be a part of that bipartisan coalition to change it to protect older people. The law worked. We drained the swamp when it came to those fraudsters ripping off seniors. Then 8 years ago, some of the key parts of the Affordable Care Act put consumer protections in place so that nobody of working age would get ripped off with junk insurance. It is those policies and those people that the Trump administration would let the fraudsters exploit because the Trump administration wants to undo those protections against fraudsters who are ripping off those of working age.

They have already taken steps on what are called Association Health Plans. Next up are short-term plans that are likely to be even worse.

What this comes down to is the Trump administration's tradition of turning back the clock on healthcare and allowing junk insurance to discriminate over preexisting conditions and age. This is going to be a big test for Mr. Azar if he is confirmed.

I would just ask my colleagues: We will see if Mr. Azar is going to look the other way and allow scam artists to peddle junk coverage, or is he going to protect Americans who need care and health coverage they can count on?

There is also an array of discriminatory policies with respect to women's health. They tried to take away guaranteed no-cost access to contraception, essentially taxing women for their gender. Fortunately, that move has been held up in the courts. They overturned longstanding protections dealing with States and family planning--what amounts to an attack on a woman's right to see the doctor of her choosing and an attack on Planned Parenthood.

They are broadening exceptions that give employers and universities say over what healthcare women can access. When asked on these issues during his nomination hearing, Mr. Azar said: ``We have to balance, of course, a woman's choice of insurance that she would want with the conscience of employers and others.'' My counter to that is absolutely not. There is no balancing women's choices against anything. In America, a woman's choice of healthcare ought to be her choice and nobody else's.

In much the same way as going after women's healthcare, this administration is permitting discrimination against LGBTQ Americans in need of healthcare.

Then, finally, there is Medicaid. In just the last few weeks, the administration has been giving States a green light to slap punitive, new requirements and limitations on Americans covered by State Medicaid Programs. This action by Health and Human Services goes after people across the country who are working on an economic tightrope. They are people who are taking care of kids or elderly parents or who are struggling with a chronic condition.

These punitive new requirements aren't going to improve anybody's healthcare. As the first waivers are coming out from the Department of Health and Human Services, the public is learning some disturbing details. In Kentucky, the State is introducing what sounds a lot like a literacy test for healthcare. Nobody in this body should have to be reminded that the history of literacy tests is an ugly and discriminatory one. That is the wrong direction to take on healthcare.

I close by saying that the record after 1 year shows that the Trump agenda on healthcare isn't about improving care for all Americans. The Trump agenda on healthcare is about discrimination and ideology.

So the question, as my colleagues come over to this floor to cast their votes, is whether the Trump administration is going to be allowed to continue to turn back the clock and advance discrimination. Given the opportunity to demonstrate that he would actually lead the Department in a new direction, he came up short. So I will not support his nomination.

Through my time in public service, back from those early days working with the senior citizens, I have always said: Healthcare has to be a bipartisan issue. To do healthcare right, you have to find a way to bring people together.

If Mr. Azar is confirmed, I hope he will make his stated willingness to listen to ideas a reality and begin to work closely with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to actually make some changes in these key areas I have described. From policies where we just sit on the sidelines with our skyrocketing drug prices, to sitting out in the fight against opioids, to allowing discrimination against women, to rolling back the protections on Medicaid--these are issues that go right to the heart of the health and safety of millions of Americans.

Mr. Azar certainly does not carry the ethical baggage of his predecessor, Tom Price. The question for the Senate this afternoon-- after we have asked him again and again and again to give any examples of how he would break with these harmful policies of the last year, we have come up short. So I regret to say to the Senate that I am going to oppose this nomination.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, very shortly, the Senate is going to take two votes on the President's nominees. The first is to confirm Jerome Powell as the next Fed Chair. Once that vote wraps up, the Senate will vote on whether to begin debate on the nomination of Alex Azar to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.

This is one of the key roles in our entire Federal Government in caring for America's sick and vulnerable. Let me begin by saying that Mr. Azar does not come with the staggering ethical challenges of his predecessor, the first Trump HHS nominee, Tom Price.

Here is my concern: Mr. Azar's nomination is a clear symbol of the President's broken promises on prescription drugs and pledge to secure better and more affordable healthcare for all Americans. At the outset of my remarks, I am going to start with the issue of skyrocketing prescription drug prices that now clobber millions of Americans at pharmacy windows across America. It is one thing for a Presidential candidate to have claimed he would just be too busy working to have time to golf and then spend almost 1 out of 3 days in office golfing. It is another thing altogether to promise cheaper prescription drugs to sick and vulnerable Americans who empty their pockets to pay for their medications only to abandon them completely once you are in office.

Now, it was barely a year ago that Donald Trump stood before our country and said prescription-hiking drug companies were getting ``away with murder.'' Those were his words, not mine, not somebody in the news media. The President said the drug companies were ``getting away with murder.''

Now he has nominated Alex Azar, a drug company executive with a documented history of raising drug prices, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. From 2012 until last year, Mr. Azar--who is the head of Eli Lilly's American subsidiary; that is, Lilly USA-- chaired the U.S. pricing reimbursement and access steering committee, which gave him a major role over drug price increases for every product Lilly marketed across the country.

On Mr. Azar's watch, the price of Forteo, a Lilly drug used to treat osteoporosis, more than doubled. The price of Effient, a Lilly drug used to treat heart disease, more than doubled. The price of Strattera, a Lilly drug used to treat ADHD, more than doubled. The price of Humalog, a Lilly drug used to treat diabetes, more than doubled, and these are only a few of the drugs that were under Mr. Azar's purview.

Mr. Azar told the Senate Finance Committee that he had never--not even one time--signed off on a decrease in the price of a medicine, and when asked about that statement in his confirmation hearing, Mr. Azar was quick to say: That is just the way the system works, but he didn't give us any concrete examples of how he would buck that system if he became the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. It seems to me, given the fact that he was asked questions about what concrete ideas he had for reforming the system and carrying out the President's promises to hold down prescription drug prices, he came up empty. I guess that says he would fit right in with the Trump administration on prescription drug practices.

In its first year, the Trump administration has made exactly no progress when it comes to tackling these skyrocketing pharmaceutical prices. They don't have any Executive orders that have any teeth in them. There don't seem to be any new initiatives at all. No new legislation has come from the Department or the White House. Perhaps, in my view, that is because the administration seems to be busy on other fronts, like taking healthcare away from those who need it, people who can least afford to have their bills climbing upward because of a decision made by a bureaucracy here in the Nation's Capital.

This nomination, as you are going to hear Senators discuss tomorrow, is about more than just the administration's failure on prescription drugs. It is, in effect, a proxy on an entire healthcare agenda. This is really a referendum on a healthcare policy from this administration that I think is an abject failure.

It is a year in now, and the administration's track record on healthcare is pretty clear. New data came out a few days ago showing that the number of Americans with health insurance dropped by more than 3 million people. That means 3 million Americans are a sudden illness or injury away from the nightmare of personal bankruptcy, having to sell their home or their car or empty a retirement account to escape from under that mountain of medical bills.

A very substantial part of that problem stems from the administration's sabotage on the Affordable Care Act. The administration cut the open enrollment period in half. That meant anybody who clicked on the internet, hoping to sign up this month, has found out that they are just too late. They slashed advertising budgets that helped reach the younger and healthier customers that make the private health insurance market affordable. And they made it harder for those having difficulty signing up for coverage to get a little bit of help in person.

This sabotage agenda, in my view, is an attack on the kind of health insurance this administration says it is for. They say they are for a private health insurance market, but the fact is, what they have been doing is undermining

the private health insurance market as part of their effort to undermine the Affordable Care Act. So this policy, perpetrated by a party and the President who professed to want to run this country like a business, certainly doesn't reflect the kinds of sound business practices we see from business leaders in my home State of Oregon.

If that wasn't harmful enough, the administration also is allowing fraudsters to, once again, sell junk coverage insurance policies that aren't worth the paper they are printed on.

A major part of the Affordable Care Act was laying down basic consumer protections for the private market. It was all about saying that Americans would no longer get stuck with junk insurance that turned out to be worthless when they actually suffered an injury or came down with an illness. I can't tell you what a step backward it is to see the sale of these junk insurance policies.

Years ago, when I was director of the Gray Panthers, it was common to see older people buy 15 or 20 private health insurance policies to supplement their Medicare, and they weren't worth the paper they were written on. They were junk. Finally, we got that changed. We passed a law with teeth to change it.

But now the Trump administration has, with respect to the private market and the Affordable Care Act, decided to turn back the clock and bring back junk insurance in the private insurance marketplace. So instead of working on a bipartisan basis to make the private health insurance market more affordable and competitive, the Trump administration has sabotaged those markets, hiking the number of Americans without coverage and sticking a whole lot of Americans with junk coverage that, in my view, is virtually guaranteed to fail them when they are most in need. The biggest threat their strategy poses on a basic level is that it wipes out the ironclad guarantee of protection for Americans with preexisting conditions. Guarantee of access to healthcare isn't worth much if you can't afford it, and the Trump administration is doing a bangup job of making healthcare unaffordable for those with preexisting conditions.

The Trump administration has also undermined years of progress with respect to women's health. They attack the rule that says women have to be guaranteed no-cost access to contraception--one of the most popular healthcare rules in recent memory. Fortunately, the administration's action on that issue has been held up in the courts, but that is only one part of the anti-women's health agenda that plays out now.

Just last week, the Trump administration overturned longstanding protections dealing with States and family planning providers. This, in my view, is an attack both on a woman's right to see the provider of their choosing and Planned Parenthood. The administration is also broadening the exceptions that give employers and universities say over what kinds of healthcare women can access.

Here is how Mr. Azar described his perspective on that issue when he went before the HELP Committee. He said: ``We have to balance, of course, a woman's choice of insurance that she would want with the conscience of the employers and others.''

We don't have to that. A woman's choice of healthcare is her choice-- her choice and nobody else's. The care she has access to and receives is not up to her employer and not up to her university. It is up to that woman and her physician. And now the administration is even going after protections for LGBTQ Americans.

The bottom line is, the administration is doing a lot more to protect the perpetrators of discrimination than the victims. Healthcare is a right in America, but discrimination is not.

The way Mr. Azar describes the position he is nominated to fill, it sounds as if he understands it. He said in his confirmation hearing: If I get this job, my job is to ``enhance and protect the health and wellbeing of all Americans.'' But he is not committed to reversing these kinds of anti-discriminatory practices I just described.

When I heard Mr. Azar say it would be his job to ``enhance and protect the health and wellbeing of all Americans,'' I couldn't help but think back to the first nomination hearing the Finance Committee had for a Trump HHS nominee. Back then, Tom Price told the committee it would be his job at the Department just to administer the laws passed by Congress. He would be out of the legislative business. Once he got the job, he broke his word, and that has been the norm for the Department over the year. Congress has every reason to believe that is going to continue, regardless of the talking points Mr. Azar and administration officials use.

Finally, I want to discuss Medicaid. Just in the last few weeks, the administration has begun giving States a green light to slap new and punitive requirements and other limits on Americans covered by State Medicaid Programs. My bottom line is, Medicaid is a healthcare program. The vast majority of those who count on Medicaid either already have a job or are unable to work due to old age and infirmity. We shouldn't be trying to make life harder for those folks. The action by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services goes after people who are just trying to get by. It is a decision by bureaucrats in Washington, going after Americans who walk an economic tightrope, who might just be trying to take care of kids or elderly parents or struggling with a chronic condition. This looks, on Medicaid, like yet another ideologically motivated attack on a program that covers vulnerable Americans--all generations, from newborn infants to two out of three seniors. The Trump administration is giving States permission to attack it.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. President, in a short while, the Senate will have a cloture vote on Mr. Azar's nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services. The debate will be about a lot more than that. It is a question of whether the Trump administration should be allowed to take this country backward on health and to discriminate against Americans. It is a question of whether the attacks on Medicaid should continue and whether this administration will be held accountable for its broken promises on lower drug prices, insurance for all, no cuts to Medicare or Medicaid.

I regret to say to the Senate today that I have no confidence that Mr. Azar will change course at the Department of Health and Human Services. I do not support his nomination, and I urge a ``no'' vote today.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I know the distinguished Senator from Ohio is going off to champion yet another cause for workers--the whole question of justice with pensions. I want to thank him for his eloquent remarks, as well as our colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Casey, and my seatmate on the Finance Committee, Senator Stabenow.

I will be making some remarks, and we may have another colleague or two come, and then Senator Stabenow on behalf of all of us will be making a motion with respect to these health programs. For my three colleagues on the Finance Committee, thank you for your commitment-- months and months of commitment around the proposition. As Senator Brown just said, this program should have become law a long, long time ago.

It is heartbreaking to see these CHIP families put through the political ringer; there is no other way to describe it. They come up to us--the moms, the families--and they talk about how they are being told: Well, maybe this program isn't going to be around pretty soon. And they heard that at the end of the year there was going to be big slabs of tax relief for those at the top and some multinational corporations. What did these kids get? They got something called a patch. In effect, that says it all. They were given second-class treatment, and the powerful and the well-connected got first-class treatment. As my colleagues have said, you didn't hear much of a mention about the Children's Health Insurance Program back then.

Our friend, the distinguished majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was over here last night--I think my friend from Michigan knows her well, but the majority leader, talking last night about the Children's Health Insurance Program, sounded as if he were Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children's Defense Fund. Last night he was saying that this was the biggest priority to him. We had to make sure the kids got a fair shake.

I looked over and I said that I thought I was listening to Senator Ted Kennedy, who had devoted his whole life to healthcare.

Before we go to my colleague's important unanimous consent request, I just want to go through a little bit of the history on this. Back in the fall, on the Finance Committee, we were committed to a multiyear Children's Health Insurance Program, generously funded, and we wanted it done in early October. We had virtual unanimity in the Finance Committee. I think there was only one Senator who had reservation, and we worked with him as well. So we were ready to go in the fall. Had we moved then, all of those families wouldn't have had the months and months of heartache, and the wonderful people who run the Children's Health Insurance Program, who were trying to figure out if they had to send out a notice and tell people ``Well, maybe it is not going to be there,'' and how to tell them and when to tell them--we could have spared everybody all of that.

People find it hard to follow what goes on here in the U.S. Senate. Following government is tricky under the best of circumstances, but this is not a complicated proposition, as my colleague from Michigan has stated. The Republicans in Washington, DC, with respect to the Children's Health Insurance Program, run all of the critical branches of our government that relate to these kids. The Presidency is occupied by a Republican, the Senate is run by Republicans, the House is run by Republicans. All of those institutions could have made it possible for us to take our bipartisan CHIP bill and enact it in October. It could have all happened then.

People are trying to watch this now and are wondering why the kids didn't get healthcare, and it didn't have to be this way. I know because Chairman Hatch, whom we all admire--40 years in the proverbial ring; he was a boxer--is retiring. Because this storied program was so important to him, I spent an enormous amount of my time working both inside and outside the Congress to line up support for this bill, and one of the reasons we moved first in the Senate is that we knew we might have some challenges with this

program in the other body. So I spent a lot of my time trying to line up support for a bill that Chairman Hatch felt particularly strongly about because of his history on it, and we could have moved then.

Somehow, shortly after the Finance Committee acted in a manner that is really a textbook for how the Senate ought to work, things went off the rails, not because of Democrats but because immediately after we acted, the other body--the House--went forward with a bill that was ensnarled in partisan fighting to the point that many on our side who believe deeply in the Children's Health Insurance Program couldn't support it because it meant, for example, doing great harm to Medicare and other kinds of programs. That began this kind of odyssey where, for months, there was always something more important for the leadership of the three branches of government--the White House, the Senate, and the House--than these kids. That is the bottom line. For 3 months, there was always something more important.

My eloquent colleague, Senator Stabenow, came to the floor during that period day after day after day, saying: Why can't we do this now? All the stars are aligned.

Again, there was always a reason not to do it. I will tell you, because we serve on the Finance Committee, it was particularly sad to see in December how those who had power and clout and were well- connected and had lots of lobbyists--their priority went lickety-split through the U.S. Senate. A whole tax reform bill--unlike what was done when Ronald Reagan got together with my friend, Bill Bradley, and they spent months working in a bipartisan way, the powerful and the well- connected got what they needed in a matter of weeks. They set a land- speed record for moving a tax reform bill. They had to borrow $1.5 trillion, and hundreds of billions of dollars went to the most influential, the most well-connected, and the kids at the end of the year got their patch.

That brings us to last night. I have worked with the majority leader on a host of issues over the years, but I will tell you that having him come to the floor and talk about how committed he was to the Children's Health Insurance Program after turning his back on it for months and months--that is a little much. That is a little much.

Today, months after it ought to have been done, we are going to try to advance this long-delayed priority. It is a long-delayed priority, which has had a storied, bipartisan history which, if we had our way, would have been built upon back in October--a bipartisan bill with the lead sponsor being our distinguished retiring colleague, Chairman Hatch, on its way to the President's desk early in October. But for all of the reasons I have described, it was derailed.

Now the hour is late, and I guess it is convenient for them to say ``Well, it was really our priority all along,'' but I think the record shows something else. That is why I look forward to my colleague's motion to make the Children's Health Insurance Program and the other programs that we have fought for so hard--particularly the community health center program, which has been a lifeline to so many families who walk an economic tightrope balancing the food bill against the fuel bill and the fuel bill against the rent bill.

I look forward to my colleague from Michigan closing this part of the debate. I want to thank her and note that the eloquent speakers on this topic have years and years' worth of expertise. Our colleague, Senator Carper, got held up. He was going to be here--another good member of the Finance Committee who was with Bill Clinton when they really were part of launching this whole effort.

I am very grateful to my Finance Committee colleagues. I look forward to the motion to be made by the distinguished Senator from Michigan.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will object here in a moment. I just would like to say that on our side, we feel so strongly about getting this resolved. We now are seeing a whole host of discussions between Members on both sides of the aisle in the Senate. We are hearing about discussions between this body and the other Chamber.

It would be my hope that with the good faith we have seen since last night--and I know the distinguished Presiding Officer is involved in some of these discussions--that with those kinds of good-faith discussions, we would have a chance to get this resolved and address the concerns the American people have in a matter of days rather than several weeks.

So, for that reason, I object.

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

Mr. President and colleagues, Chairman Hatch was on the

floor a bit ago talking about the Children's Health Insurance Program. Because his remarks were greatly misleading, I thought it was important--having heard my good friend, my longtime friend, earlier, I thought it was important to come to the floor this afternoon and set the record straight about the Children's Health Insurance Program.

The fact is, the chairman and I did negotiate an important Children's Health Insurance Program extension back in September--bipartisan--and I put in a lot of time, both inside this Congress and outside the Halls of Congress, in order to line up bipartisan support for that effort. And we did, in fact, in the Finance Committee, have near unanimous bipartisan support. That was months and months ago.

The fact is, at that point, the Children's Health Insurance Program could have passed the Congress within days, but unfortunately the Republicans in the other body had some other ideas. From the moment the Senate Finance Committee passed the bill in a bipartisan way, the kids became hostage to the Republican political agenda.

First, the House Republicans tried to force ideological cuts in important health programs, including Medicare, in order to allow this deal to go forward. Then they conditioned helping the vulnerable kids on kicking Americans off their private health insurance. When that didn't work, they took yet another hostage: vaccines and preventive health. For some reason, the other body, the House, wanted to cut off programs that make Americans healthier by preventing disease in the first place. For obvious reasons, Democrats weren't willing to sacrifice that hostage, either.

Now, months after there was a bipartisan deal to finally give peace of mind to these parents and children, the House Republicans have taken yet another hostage. This time, we are talking about the proper functioning of the Federal Government.

The Republicans have been stumbling from one continuing resolution to another continuing resolution since they took power, sacrificing the readiness of the military, impeding the Federal response to natural disasters, and handicapping rural hospitals that don't know when they are going to get paid for the care they provide. We are not going to sacrifice this hostage, either.

The minority leader, Senator Schumer, has made a good-faith offer to give the Senate a week to actually come to an agreement to keep the government functioning. I think this makes sense because the cycle of destructive, nakedly political, bad-faith governing can't continue.

What we have is a display of the worst of American politics. The fact is, Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. That means that you get to set the agenda, and you get to set the schedule. But Republican leaders watched and did nothing as the deadline for CHIP funding passed in the fall. So what we had at the end of the year was this picture of how millions of American kids were lower on the list of the Republican priorities than borrowing $1.5 trillion in order to give additional money to multinational corporations and the political donor class, when the multinational corporations were already awash in cash.

Since the fall, there has been a near constant stream of Republicans appearing on television and in print saying again and again that they are all for the Children's Health Insurance Program--by God, they just want to take care of the kids. The fact is, those Republicans speaking out on television had months to act. They had almost a year. The program expired 111 days ago, and the Finance Committee passed a bipartisan bill that really kicked this all off. I felt very strongly about doing that. The chairman has a long history of working on it, and I wanted to make sure that we were coming right out of the box and getting a strong, bipartisan bill, knowing that perhaps the chairman of the committee would retire. So if there was an up-or-down vote on the Children's Health Insurance Program in the Senate after we moved last fall, it would have gotten 80 votes--probably more--and probably 300 votes in the other body, if that bipartisan measure that came out of the Finance Committee in the fall had had an up-or-down vote. The fact is, the only reason that hasn't happened is the cynical political strategy which I have described that evolved over the months since the Finance Committee acted in a bipartisan way and which has produced this crisis this body faces now.

Even the President, apparently in a moment of unsupervised so-called executive time, said that a long-term CHIP bill ought to move forward unobstructed.

A few weeks ago, the Congress learned--and I made a special push for this because it was clear, as a result of these ill-advised changes that were part of the tax bill, that coverage would be more expensive in the private exchanges and that CHIP would look like an even better investment than it already was. As a result of that information we obtained, it, in fact, saves money to make the Children's Health Insurance Program permanent. Making it permanent, as amazing as it sounds, is a better deal than a 6-year extension and less of an expense for the taxpayers.

True fiscal conservatives, in my view, ought to be tripping over themselves in order to pass a permanent Children's Health Insurance Program without preconditions. Yet, at every turn in this program for the future of so many vulnerable kids--9 million kids--what we saw was not action but Republican leaders taking yet another hostage.

So I want to be clear. I think what we have seen over the last few months is the exploitation of children by the governing party here in the Nation's Capital. It is wrong. It is causing needless panic among millions of families who are caring for sick kids. This is a crisis made over the last few months by the governing party here in Washington, and it ought to end here, today, with the governing party, the Republicans, releasing the hostage, passing--all of us together--a clean, very short spending bill that would allow this continuing resolution nonsense to end once and for all.

I believe it is in the country's interest to have a permanent extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program. It is an extension that saves the taxpayers money. What you do by making this program permanent is you give more youngsters in America the opportunity for better health, which gives them more opportunity to achieve their full potential in the years ahead.

I will close with this. More than anything else, what I have tried to do is dedicate my time in public service to working in a bipartisan way on healthcare. I have always felt that healthcare was the most important issue. I was director of the senior citizens for almost 7 years. The group was called the Gray Panthers. I ran the legal aid office. I decided then that if you and your loved ones--my good friend, the Presiding Officer, has worked with me and did such good work with us on the veterans bill, another important issue--I always felt that if you and your family didn't have your health, then everything else didn't matter. You couldn't go to the football game. You couldn't find a way to pick up a new skill and have some exciting job options in the future because if you didn't have your health, it went by the board.

Everything I have tried to do in healthcare--everything--I have tried to say ought to be bipartisan. Usually there is a set of options for finding common ground. So often, for example, I felt that my party was right about wanting to expand coverage because if you don't get everybody covered, you have a lot of cost-shifting and not much prevention. I thought Republicans had some valid points, as well, with respect to a role for the private sector.

When it came time to get the Children's Health Insurance Program extended and do it in a bipartisan way, I was very pleased to meet the chairman of our committee, my friend Senator Hatch, in a bipartisan way for a long-term extension with additional funds. That could have been done in the fall. Yet, over the months since then--I have described all of the hurdles, all of the obstacles that Republicans have put in front of making that bipartisan effort, which, as I just indicated, has gotten even more attractive with the new estimates that permanent extensions save money. Republicans have made it harder to take that bipartisan

work, which was part of what I have always thought was the way to do health policy, in the fall and make it law. There is still time to do that. The way we are going to do it is not through the kinds of misleading statements, unfortunately, we heard this morning on the floor. We are going to do it by working in a bipartisan fashion.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, I believe the American people should be deeply concerned about the vote the Senate took yesterday to invoke cloture; in effect, ending real debate and preventing the Senate from considering any amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization.

This isn't what is called regular order. This isn't how the Senate ought to operate. In fact, it is not even how the Senate has handled surveillance bills in the past. Even in the weeks after the horrendous attacks of 9/11, the Senate considered amendments to the PATRIOT Act. In 2008, when the Senate first considered section 702, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there were, in fact, amendments.

Now debate has been cut off, and no Senator--neither a Democrat nor a Republican--is going to be allowed to offer an amendment. What the country is going to be left with is a deeply flawed bill that, in a number of ways, is actually worse than current law.

I want to talk first about whose rights are at stake. We are talking primarily, at this part of my address, about Americans who talk to foreigners overseas--law-abiding Americans whose communications can get swept up under this law. They could be, for example, American businesspeople--perhaps somebody working for a tech company in Colorado or Oregon or perhaps somebody working for a steel company in the Midwest. These are American businesspeople--law-abiding people--talking to a foreign contact. They could be swept up under this law or we could be talking about first-, second-, or third-generation Americans talking to family and friends still overseas. Maybe they are catching up. Maybe they are talking about kids and grandkids. Maybe they are just talking about their hopes and aspirations, but they are still law-abiding Americans who could get swept up in this bill. We could be talking about American journalists covering foreign stories. We could be talking about U.S. servicemembers talking to foreign friends they made while deployed. Try to get your arms around that one.

I think it is particularly unfortunate because one of the things I am proudest of is I was able to ensure that Americans overseas-- servicemembers--would have their privacy rights protected. We have a law passed to do that.

I remember George W. Bush had reservations about that proposal I made to protect the privacy rights of our law-abiding servicemembers overseas. He originally said he might veto the bill. In the end, it was in his press release saying how great it was, and I think it was because nobody had really talked about the rights of these wonderful men and women who wear the uniform in the United States.

We did it right back when George W. Bush was President. We protected the privacy rights of our servicemembers overseas. Now we are talking about walking back the rights of those U.S. servicemembers if they are talking to foreign friends they made while deployed, and we could be talking about American teachers and researchers seeking information from foreigners.

Now this body isn't going to have a chance to even consider reforms that might protect the constitutional rights of these Americans--the businessperson, the servicemember, the first-, second-, or third- generation American immigrant--because what has happened is the Senate is being forced to vote on a reauthorization bill without any public discussion about any kind of alternatives. The one committee consideration--what is called a markup--occurred entirely in secret. That is public law being debated in secret.

Yesterday, the Senate discussed whether to cut off debate on a bill that authorizes vast, unchecked surveillance powers in less time than it takes to shop for the week's groceries. So now, with no amendments possible, there is not going to be a single opportunity for the public to see its representatives explain why they are supporting or why they are rejecting these key reforms.

You can only conclude from this that opponents of reforms were just scared. They were frightened. They just didn't want to have them debated in the open. They must be worried that the more Americans understand about the program--and the more they hear about commonsense, bipartisan proposals to fix it--the more the public is going to say we can do better. We can do better than the status quo because the public, once they have the benefit of a little transparency and a little open debate, what I have seen--and I just finished my 865th open-to-all town meeting at home in Oregon. Once you talk to folks at home about these issues, they understand that security and liberty aren't mutually exclusive; that sensible policies get you both and not-so-sensible policies and failure to look at the issues really get less of both.

My view is the Senate let down the American people yesterday. In my view, we have a solemn obligation to deliberate, to consider amendments, and to vote up or down. I think that is really what the Senate is all about.

One of the worst arguments for jamming this bill through without amendments was that somehow this law was going away. It just wouldn't be around. It was expiring.

First, Members who wanted to debate reforms were prepared to go to this floor many months ago. Nothing stood in the way of a floor debate last year. Even today, there is no reason to rush all this through. Absolutely nothing prevents the Congress from extending 702 authorities for a week or two to allow us to carry out our constitutional responsibilities. By the way, the Director of National Intelligence has said publicly and on the record that its authorities continue until April. I was stunned.

I had Senators on both sides of the aisle whom I like very much-- good, dedicated Senators--saying: Oh, my goodness, we have to act. If we don't act in the next few days, oh, my goodness, powerful tools we need to stop the terrorists--and I will not take a backseat to anybody in terms of stopping the terrorists--they are going to be gone. That is just not true.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article with the statement from the Office of National Intelligence, where the Director said on the record that its authorities would continue.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Despite yesterday's vote, I regret to have to say I am going to have to oppose this legislation's final passage. My view is, if this bill does not go forward now, it is possible to get Democrats and Republicans back to work together to ensure there is a meaningful debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate and that this is done with ample time to meet this window that the Office of National Intelligence has talked about publicly, but if that doesn't happen, the Senate has denied itself the opportunity to even attempt to fix this badly flawed bill.

This surveillance authority allows the government to sweep up some untold amount of law-abiding Americans' communications. The government says, of course, that its targets are terrorists, and this is about keeping Americans safe from terrorism. I don't take a backseat to anybody in terms of fighting terrorist threats.

Having served on the Intelligence Committee for some time now, I can tell all Members and the public there is no question that the terrorist threat is real and that there are significant numbers of people who represent a very real threat to the well-being of our country.

Now, if somebody says, We have to keep Americans safe from terrorism, I am all in. I would submit that I don't know of a single U.S. Senator--not 1 out of 100--who is not all in on this fight against terrorism, but that is not what the law says. The law says that, under section 702, the government can collect, without a warrant, the communications of foreigners ``to acquire foreign intelligence information.''

Here is how the law defines ``foreign intelligence information.'' It is information that relates to the conduct of the ``foreign affairs of the United States.'' That is just about any piece of information about a foreign country.

Who can the government target to get all of this information? Anybody ``expected to possess, receive, and/or is likely to communicate'' that information. So if you unpack that, you don't have to be a terrorist suspect or any kind of threat to the United States to be a target under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The government just has to think you know something the government wants to know.

That is why so many Americans--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--are worried about getting their private communications swept up. They are law-abiding people, as I have been saying-- servicemembers, businesspeople, Americans who, on a regular basis, talk to friends, families, and contacts overseas. They are worried because, based on what the law says, which I have just read, those foreigners could be the targets, and Americans' communications could be collected by the government.

Now, for years, I and other Members of the Congress--both Houses, both parties--tried to at least get an estimate of how many law-abiding Americans' communications have been getting swept up. As recently as April 2017, the Director of National Intelligence said the public was going to get some kind of estimate, but in June, the Director suddenly changed course and told the public and the Congress: You are not getting anything. What that means is no one knows the size of the database. Nobody knows how many Americans' private communications are sitting there, waiting to be searched and possibly used against those Americans.

Just yesterday, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was invoked by those opposing reforms, but what that Board had to say about the sheer volume of Americans' communications being swept up is actually, in their words, ``too much expansion in the collection of U.S. persons' communications or the uses to which those communications are put may push the program over the [constitutional] line.''

So here they were being cited, in effect, as supporters for the status quo when I just read you their concern about the status quo.

This is why today section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is an end-run on the Constitution, and it is what the Presiding Officer and other Members of this body--both Democrats and Republicans--have wanted to change.

This end-run is not just about the collection. It is that, after all the communications of our people are swept up, the government can go searching for individual Americans through all that data. They don't have to be suspected of anything. The government just has to decide on its own that your private communications might reveal some intelligence or some evidence of a crime, and like the collection of the communications, that search can take place without a warrant--no warrant on the collection of Americans' communications, no warrant on searching for individual Americans. This is a case of two wrongs certainly not making a right.

What the Senate did last night was prevent any debate on this basic constitutional question. The USA Rights Act, introduced by 15 Senators of both parties, would have required a warrant for those searches of Americans.

Our colleagues Senator Leahy and Senator Lee have legislation requiring a warrant--a Democrat and a Republican. Other Members have had their own proposals. None of them are going to get heard by the Senate.

We had a chance to consider amendments. We could have fixed the underlying bill, which doesn't require any warrants for any searches for Americans. Let me just repeat that. The underlying bill does not require any warrants for any searches for Americans--none, not in intelligence cases, not in criminal cases. Warrantless fishing expeditions for Americans can just go on and on and on.

The bill's so-called reform only applies to the government's access to the results of the searches, but it really doesn't even do that. It only kicks in if the government is already well down the road of investigating somebody.

This means the bill provides more rights to criminal suspects than to innocent Americans. Think about what that is going to mean in Texas or Oregon or North Carolina or anywhere else in the country. As I have described it, this bill provides more rights to criminal suspects than to innocent Americans.

It gets worse because the bill is even narrower than that. It imposes no limitations at all if the government determines the search relates to national security or to a criminal matter that has anything at all to do with national security. Why are opponents of reform happy now? Because their bill does nothing.

I went and read the Director of National Intelligence's statistics for 2016. The CIA and the National Security Agency conducted over 5,000 warrantless searches for Americans, according to this material. It doesn't include the FBI, whose searches are supposedly too numerous to even count. It doesn't include communications records, which number in the tens of thousands.

How many times does the government encounter a situation in which, under this bill, there would even be the possibility of needing a warrant? Exactly one--that is right--one among the thousands and thousands of warrantless searches for Americans. Even that is an overstatement because that one instance in 2016 could have occurred prior to a predicated investigation; in which case, it, too, would be exempt from warrant requirements.

Basically, this bill we will vote on provides an easy-to-read roadmap to the government to make sure it never has to get a warrant for anything. Meanwhile, the thousands of Americans subject to warrantless backdoor searches each year have no protections at all.

Had there been amendments, I think there would have been the familiar argument against requiring a warrant for searches of Americans' private communications. We would have heard that section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is necessary to connect the dots between suspects and terrorists.

Here is why that is misleading. Opponents of reform like to talk about a tip to the government that somebody is acting strange on a bridge. They say this is a situation where the government needs to go directly to reading the private communications of this person. That is just not how the Constitution works.

Think about it. Would you want the content of your private communications searched, accessed, and read just because somebody has a slight suspicion about you?

Here is the misleading part. Opponents of reform say that, unless the government searches for and reads the emails, it just can't connect the dots to the terrorists. That is just false. The government already has the authority to get this information and in a less intrusive way.

Some may remember just a few years ago there was a debate about ending metadata--the bulk collection of millions of phone records of law-abiding Americans. What remained at the end of that debate was the authority of the government to go get the phone and email records of anyone as long as the records were relevant to an investigation. If it is an emergency, the government can get those records immediately without having to go to the court first.

I want to emphasize that because it is something I have felt very strongly about. I wrote that section, section 102 of the USA Freedom Act, because I wanted to make sure it was clear in this debate about finding policies where security and liberty are mutually exclusive, where we have both, that the strongest possible message was sent; that if the government believes there is an emergency, the government can move immediately--immediately--to get the information it needs and then come back later and settle up with the court.

When I have the opportunity to be in the Oval Office, which I have had several times--it is a wonderful honor and privilege given by the people of Oregon to pursue these issues--I will say what I say to the President, not what the President says back because I think those are private communications of the President. At one point in this debate, I said to President Obama: If you and your staff feel the current emergency provisions are not adequate, if you think they are not strong enough, I want to know about it because I will work with you to make sure they do the job.

That is because when there is an emergency and the security and well- being of the American people is on the line, the government gets a chance to move quickly, come back, and settle later with the court. I have included that in essentially all the legislation that I have authored. This provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is what allows the government to connect the dots without going directly to the content of private communications. That is how our system is supposed to work. The government gets less intrusive information on Americans, using a lower standard, first.

But what if the government needs the content of communications urgently? What if the government sees an immediate threat and believes it has no choice but to read those communications right away? As I said, that is why we had the amendment that I have described in USA Freedom Act, and it is why we said in our amendment to section 702--in this proposal--that we would also have an emergency exception. Again, the USA Freedom Act has an emergency exception, and our reform to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has an emergency exception. In this case, under our proposal, in an emergency, the government can search for and read those communications immediately and seek a warrant later. Our proposal also includes other exceptions to the warrant requirement, such as a hostage situation, where a search might help save someone.

I bring this up only by way of saying that reformers have been very clear. When the government has an emergency that is defined by the government--not by somebody else who might conceivably not have all the information--what we did in the USA Freedom Act is what we are doing in section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is protecting the American people in an emergency.

Now, there are other facts about warrantless backdoor searches that opponents of a warrant requirement omit from public argument. For years after the original passage of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the CIA and the National Security Agency didn't have the authority to conduct these searches. What is more, the Bush administration never asked the FISA Court, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, for those authorities. The Bush administration didn't think it was a problem

that the CIA and the NSA couldn't conduct warrantless backdoor searches of Americans. But now people act like the warrantless searches are somehow inseparable from the broader program. They pretend that we really can't have an effective foreign intelligence collection program unless you just make sure you are violating the rights of Americans.

This week should have been an opportunity to discuss the facts of how this bill could have been improved. It should have been an opportunity to clarify that Americans don't have to choose between security and liberty. It should have been the Senate's chance to push back against scare tactics and fearmongering and to lay out for the public what the government does and doesn't need to protect us. Instead, we get a bill that isn't necessary for our security and does nothing to protect our liberty.

There are other important amendments that are not going to be considered. One relates to what is known as ``abouts'' collection, a process in which two innocent Americans could have their communications swept up if they just write an email referencing a foreign target. We are talking communications entirely among individuals who themselves are not targets and are, potentially, all Americans. The whole concept is just contrary to the Fourth Amendment. As the privacy board concluded, there was ``nothing comparable'' in the law.

``From a legal standpoint, under the 4th Amendment, the government may not, without a warrant, open and read letters sent through the mail in order to acquire those that contain particular information. Likewise, the government cannot listen to telephone conversations, without probable cause about one of the callers or about the telephone, in order to keep recordings of those conversations that contain particular content.''

That is the quote from the privacy board, and we sure heard on the floor sponsors of the status quo, in my view, suggest that the privacy board had a different view of what they were up to.

From a practical standpoint, this form of collection was so problematic that the government itself was forced to shut it down. Now, the underlying bill says: Go ahead and start it up, as long as you tell Congress. Congress has to be told anyway.

Based on the bill before us, if Congress does what it does best-- which is nothing--the government can just go ahead.

Again, I don't think that is what the public thinks the Senate should be about. If the government ever wants to get back into the business of this collection, it can come to the Congress and get it authorized. If their argument wins the day, so be it, but preemptively writing into black letter law this form of collection, sight unseen, means that this Senate is surrendering our constitutional responsibilities.

This is one of the examples, the ``abouts'' collection, which I mentioned, of why this bill actually is a retreat from current law. Congress has never approved ``abouts'' collection. It wasn't in the 2008 bill creating the law or the first reauthorization of section 702. It happened because of a secret interpretation of law, and most of Congress knew nothing about it. But now, for the first time, when the government itself has suspended it--largely because they know it had been abused--what we are doing is essentially setting up what amounts to a fast-track process to write it back into the law. It defines ``abouts'' collection broadly--broader even than the government--and it invites its resumption.

The Senate also is not going to get to consider an amendment limiting how information on Americans can be used against Americans. The bill allows unlimited secret use of section 702 information--all collected without a warrant--in any investigation or in any administrative or civil procedures against Americans. Now, Americans understand how the government can thoroughly disrupt their lives without ever charging them with a crime, particularly if they are doing it based on secret information.

But even when it comes to using 702 information as evidence in criminal proceedings against Americans, the bill provides no real protections. All the government needs is for the Attorney General to determine that the criminal proceedings relate to national security or involve a set of crimes that have nothing at all to do with national security. There is a catch-all category called ``transnational crime.'' Now, I have tried for some time to get the government to tell me what this ``transnational crime'' is. I haven't gotten much of a response. In any case, the underlying bill here specifically says that the Attorney General's decisions cannot be challenged in court.

So there you are. If the Attorney General decides that the crime you are being charged with somehow relates to national security or is a ``transnational crime,'' that decision by the Attorney General is really pretty much sacred. You can go to jail without ever being allowed to challenge the government's use of section 702 information against you--information obtained without a warrant and potentially uncovered as a result of warrantless searches specifically conducted to find your communications and communications about you.

The ways in which the government could potentially use this information, collected without a warrant to investigate and prosecute Americans and those in the United States, are limitless--immigration status, recreational drugs, back taxes. The list goes on and on. I don't think Americans think that is how the system is supposed to work. Is that what a warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance bill is supposed to do? I don't think so--immigration status, recreational drugs, back taxes--but this bill allows it.

The bill leaves in place other problems that affect our rights. One of them is the issue of what is called parallel construction. That is a lot of fancy legalese that says that, even if information against an American originally comes from section 702, if the government subsequently constructs a case from other collection, it never has to tell that American that it used section 702. My bill, with Senator Paul and 13 other Senators, would have fixed that.

The bill we are voting on shortly, without any debate on amendments, also leaves in place a big catch-22 that prevents anybody from ever challenging section 702 in court. Section 702 collection is secret, so almost no one can prove definitively that they personally were swept up. That means it is also almost impossible to get standing to go to court to challenge section 702. I am sure it pleases opponents of reform, but it means that section 702 isn't going to be part of any court review process where both sides of the adversarial system get heard.

Fixing this problem is not, as so many in the House misleadingly said, giving rights to terrorists. That was part of the fear-mongering that went on. This is simply saying that section 702 is not exempt from constitutional challenges that apply to every single Federal statute-- by the way, the hallmark of our constitutional system.

There are other problems that could have been fixed with amendments. I am particularly troubled by the fact that the underlying bill doesn't fix the problem of reverse targeting. This is where the government targets a foreigner overseas when it is really interested in collecting the communications of an American without a warrant. Right now, the law as written allows this collection to continue without a warrant, unless, in effect, the only purpose of the collection is to obtain the American's communications. My concern is that, if the government has even the slightest interest in the foreign target, it is not going to seek a warrant, regardless of the intensity of the government's interest in the American on the other end of the phone or the email. This could mean, again, frequent, ongoing searches of the American's communications. It could mean the use of the American's communications in investigations and criminal proceedings. There is a solution to this, and we proposed it; that is, if a significant purpose for targeting a foreigner is to get an American's communications, the government would need a warrant--pretty simple. I note that the Presiding Officer of the Senate is supportive of reforms and our bipartisan coalition. I very much appreciate that.

Just think about that. We had a solution to the fact that reverse targeting had been abused. We simply said, if a significant purpose of the government for targeting a foreigner is to get an

American's communications, the government would need a warrant--and, of course, we have an emergency exception in the bill as well.

The bill also doesn't prevent the government from directing service providers to modify or weaken encryption without any court oversight. I am telling you that this problem has been underappreciated. As we all know, there is an ongoing debate about whether the government should be able to mandate backdoor weaknesses in encryption. I believe this kind of authority is just a loser all around. I think Americans, if you weaken strong encryption, will be less safe. Certainly, parents who are concerned about a youngster don't want to weaken the protection in their smartphone for the tracker so they can keep tabs on their kids. If the government is allowed to mandate backdoor weaknesses in our products, I believe we will be less safe, we will have less liberty, and it will be a big loser for many of our high-skilled, high- wage companies.

I have already announced that, if there is any effort to weaken strong encryption, I will do everything in my power to block that legislation because it is a loser from a security standpoint, it is a loser from a liberty standpoint, and it will be bad news for a lot of our companies that pay good wages for the high skills of Americans, but even those who argue that the government should be able to mandate backdoor weaknesses in encryption assure us it is only going to happen if the court orders it. But under section 702, the government could direct a service provider to do that without any court awareness at all. And, of course, Congress might not know either.

Again, we would have liked to have fixed this here on the floor. The bipartisan legislation I have with Senator Paul requires that the FISA Court approve the kind of technical assistance the government is seeking from providers, which would also result in the Congress finding out. This bill we will be voting on soon doesn't do that. As a result, the court and the Congress could end up totally in the dark about an issue that I think is absolutely central to the security and well-being of our people in the 21st century.

The bill also provides no clarification on the question of whether section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act can be used to collect communications the government knows are entirely domestic. Put your arms around that. This law is called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and we can't even get a straight answer from the government's Director of National Intelligence about whether the law can be used to collect communications the government knows are entirely domestic.

When I first asked the head of national intelligence whether 702 provided this authority, he said in a public hearing: No. That would be against the law.

Then, apparently, he told folks in the news media that he was answering a different question than the one I asked.

Once again, I asked the Director of National Intelligence to answer the question I had asked, at which point he then wrote and said that the whole thing was classified.

This is the essence of what is secret law. I believe it is the kind of thing that erodes trust in the government and in the intelligence community specifically.

Had we been able to have a real debate, I would have offered an amendment that would, in effect, write in the black letter law what the head of national intelligence told me at first when I asked him ``Could FISA be used to collect wholly domestic communications?'' before all this George Orwell stuff. The head of national intelligence said: No, FISA could not be used to collect wholly personal communications. That answer would have reassured the American people.

After all of this back-and-forth and the bizarre situation where the Director of National Intelligence says the whole thing is classified after he has already given an answer in public, now the public isn't going to have an opportunity to see its representatives address this issue or take a position.

Supporters of the bill point to provisions related to oversight of section 702. Here is how inadequate those are. Yesterday, we again heard about the privacy board. Right now, the privacy board is restricted to reviewing counterterrorism programs. Most intelligence programs aren't neatly categorized that way. They are broader than that. And, of course, the effect on Americans' privacy has nothing to do with whether a collection program is about terrorism or anything else. This bill leaves in place completely arbitrary limits on the privacy board and their ability to oversee the country's intelligence programs.

The bill does not meaningfully strengthen the FISA Court in a way that I think is very basic. There are people with top security clearances who appear before the court and provide the only alternative view in what is otherwise basically the government's show. The FISA Court has often gone years without addressing serious legal and constitutional questions. Sometimes, the court never gets to them. Right now, these sort of friends of the court are only heard from when the court invites them. But imagine if these folks who have top security clearances were informed about what was going on and could raise issues with the court whenever they felt it was important. This would not hinder the FISA Court, but it would greatly improve the chance that the court would consider serious issues earlier. Once again, no reform.

There are also basic principles of transparency that are ignored in the bill. Right now, the CIA and the NSA are obligated to inform the public how many searches of Americans they conduct. The FBI is not. I don't see a good argument why Congress shouldn't change that. The American people deserve to know how often the CIA and the NSA conduct warrantless searches looking for information on them. They deserve to know how often the FBI does so, particularly because the FBI conducts searches for evidence of a crime as well as for intelligence.

I believe I have outlined the faults of the bill. This is not reform. It is not even business as usual; it is a retreat. It is, in fact, worse than just extending the program's business as usual because, for the first time, it writes into black letter law the problematic practices that I have outlined. There is not real oversight. There is not transparency. That is what the public demands. That is what I heard people asking for at the townhall meetings I held last weekend in Oregon. Americans still have a lot of unanswered questions about the program.

There are certainly many Members of Congress who share my concerns who have devoted much of their career to ensuring that Americans have security and liberty. I want to especially express my appreciation to Senators Paul and Lee. They have been tireless champions. Chairman Leahy has led on this critical matter for decades. Senator Heinrich, my seatmate on the Intelligence Committee, is one of this body's rising stars because he is willing to dig deeply into the issues. In the House, 183 Members voted for the most comprehensive section 702 reform bill, the House version of the USA RIGHTS Act. As we saw last night-- and the President of the Senate and I were involved in a lot of those deliberations down here in the well of the Senate--this was a very close vote.

A lot of people say: Well, the reformers are going to say their piece, and they are going to get 6, 8, 10 votes and the like.

I think, last night, we really brought home what I hear Americans say, Democrats, Republicans--by the way, many Independents--who have questions about the way the government works and want to see their liberties protected in a way that also keeps them safe, and a big group of Members in the other body. And last night, a big group of Senators said: What a quaint idea. Let's have the U.S. Senate be the U.S. Senate. Let's have a few amendments.

It was communicated to the leaders. I want to thank Senator Schumer for making it clear that he thought that some amendments would make this a better, fuller, and more complete debate. I think it is very unfortunate, with the fact that there are so many important issues here--it is an important bill. I hope people have seen that--having spent a lot of time on these issues over the years, I think we really need to have more time spent on this floor getting a chance to debate these issues, having Senators of both

parties work in good faith, work toward constructive solutions.

I think support for what we sought last night, which is a real debate and real solutions and actual amendments--I think more and more Americans are coming around to see that is the way to proceed because Americans aren't going to buy the idea that, well, we will just say you have to give up some of your liberty to have security. Ben Franklin said it very well: Anybody who gives up their liberty to have security doesn't really deserve either.

What we need are smart policies. That is why I talked about encryption. Strong encryption makes us safer. It also protects our liberty. That is why I outlined some of the deep flaws in this bill. I think this bill puts on fast track going back to ``abouts'' collection, where somebody is barely mentioned and, all of a sudden, the government is collecting the communication.

I will oppose final passage of this legislation. Nothing is preventing the Congress from getting this right. As I mentioned, the office of national intelligence--the Director of the relevant agency has said there is plenty of time for us to take this bill, have a few amendments, a real debate, and come up with a bill that better ensures that Americans are both safe and free.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my law clerk, Jeff Gary, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. President, I want to thank Chairman Leahy for his excellent remarks.

Let me simply say, to move forward without amendments surrenders the constitutional obligations Senators have to the American people. This issue is important, it is complicated, and the American people deserve to have an opportunity for some real amendments to make sure that, at the end of the day, we have policies that keep our people safe and protect our liberties.

I see my friend from Kentucky. He is joined by his colleague from Utah Senator Lee, Senator Leahy, and me.

Our bipartisan coalition is dedicated to essentially one mission: We think the country deserves a Senate that is very tough on terrorists. We don't take a backseat to anybody in terms of fighting terrorists. What we are opposed to is an end run on our sacred Constitution.

Right now, with the changes in communication systems around the world and communication systems increasingly becoming globally interconnected, we have more and more law-abiding Americans swept up in searches under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We want to fight terrorists, but the law allows the government to target foreigners to acquire foreign intelligence information, which basically means anything related to the conduct of foreign affairs.

So let's talk about who could get swept up in these searches and who the people are whom Senator Paul, Senator Lee, Senator Leahy, myself, and colleagues on both sides of the aisle sought to protect as law- abiding Americans--we think they ought to have their constitutional rights. The kinds of people who could be swept up in these communications and have their emails or texts or their data searched without a warrant--it could be American businesspeople talking to foreign contacts. It could be first-, second-, or third-generation American immigrants talking to family and friends who are still overseas; American journalists covering foreign stories; U.S. servicemembers talking to foreign friends they made while they were deployed; American teachers and researchers seeking information from foreigners.

How many Americans get swept up? We don't know. And we don't know-- not because of a lack of effort. We have been trying for 6 years to get the government to provide even an estimate. On a number of these issues, my concern is to ensure that we have both safety and liberty, but we have actually gone backward.

In an open hearing of the Intelligence Committee, when the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats--our former colleague--was asked about whether the government could collect, in effect, wholly domestic, personal data here in the United States, we couldn't even get a straight answer with respect to whether the government, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, could collect wholly domestic communications. We couldn't even get a straight answer to that.

What we need is the opportunity to have a real debate. We have a number of amendments that go right to the heart of what these issues are all about, particularly the government conducting repeated, warrantless searches of Americans, even if those Americans aren't the subject of any investigation, and the government then can read those private communications.

Finally, I want to put this whole issue in context. Every year, the CIA and the NSA conduct thousands of warrantless searches of 702 data on Americans, and that is just for content. They conduct tens of thousands of warrantless searches for communication records. The FBI is conducting these searches so frequently that they don't even count. But this bill might have some marginal effect on only one of those searches. So the House bill is not just fake reform; it is a setback.

The last point I would make is that we finally made some headway with respect to collection of communications that are neither to nor from a foreign target but are simply about a foreign target. I went after this issue for years, this question of abuse of what is called ``abouts'' collection. Finally, the government realized it was going too far, and they put limits on it. Now it looks as though they want to get back in the business, and the other body--the House--basically creates a path to going back to ``abouts'' collection, which even the government has admitted has been abused.

There is an opportunity, if we vote, to allow some amendments, to come up with policies that will allow Americans to look at the Senate and say: We didn't go backward. We went forward. We protected law- abiding Americans, but we made it clear that we were going to be relentless in our search for terrorists.

I know I have a little bit more time, but I see my colleague and partner Senator Paul on the floor.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 2 minutes.

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues. I will be very brief.

Colleagues, what we are debating is whether the Senate will be the Senate. If you vote in favor of this, you are voting for cloture, there will be no amendments then. We would have the opportunity, if we vote against cloture, for improving this bill.

I want to emphasize that if we take a short time to improve this bill, as Senator Lee, Senator Leahy, and Senator Paul want to do, this program continues to operate. It is not in any way going to harm our ability to fight terrorism. This program would stand.

I urge my colleagues to vote to carry out our constitutional obligation as Senators, to have real debate and vote against cloture.

I yield.

Cloture Motion

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