Floor Statements

Mr. President, I take this opportunity to honor the work of Ms. Adrienne Arsht on the occasion of the 5-year anniversary of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council. Throughout her career, Ms. Arsht has worked in and called home New York, Miami, and Washington, DC. Today, she tirelessly dedicates herself to promoting artistic, business, and civic growth in these three cities.

In 2013, Ms. Arsht founded the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council to broaden the understanding of regional transformations with a focus on high-impact work that shapes the conversation among policymakers, the business community, and civil society. The center focuses on Latin America's strategic role in a global context with a priority on pressing political, economic, and social issues that will define the trajectory of the region now and in the years ahead. Its work provides an essential forum for navigating the dramatic economic and political changes defining the 21st century by informing and galvanizing its uniquely influential network of global leaders.

In 2013, the Ambassador of Spain to the United States presented her with the prestigious Spanish diplomatic honor, Order of the Cross of Isabella the Catholic, for her contributions toward Spanish-speaking countries. Earlier this year, Ms. Arsht was awarded the distinguished Order of San Carlos of Colombia by direction of President Juan Manuel Santos to recognize her deep commitment and support of Colombia.

Ms. Arsht serves as executive vice chair of the Atlantic Council. In 2017, she founded the Adrienne Arsht Center for Resilience to explore the intersection between people and the geopolitical events that affect them. From natural disasters and displacement, to global pandemics and terrorism, the Center for Resilience helps individuals, communities, and societies navigate the global changes that define the 21st century.

Ms. Arsht has also been an ambassador for the arts in the United States. She has contributed to the preservation and sustainability of multiple artistic institutions in the cities she calls home. In Miami, she secured the financial footing of the city's performing arts center, prompting its board to rename it the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in 2008. Her contributions to the Lincoln Center in New York City were recognized with the dedication of the Adrienne Arsht Stage in Alice Tully Hall in 2012. In Washington, DC, she created the Adrienne Arsht Theater Fund at the Kennedy Center to support a wide variety of musical productions. Ms. Arsht was awarded the Carnegie Hall 2017 Medal of Excellence, recognizing her visionary and outstanding contributions to cultural and nonprofit institutions nationally.

Adrienne Arsht is a philanthropist at heart and an extraordinary business leader who serves our country and advances international understanding.

Mr. President, today we are about to mark a milestone. Maybe it wouldn't be a milestone for any

other group except for the U.S. Congress; that milestone is getting a significant part of our work done on time.

This will be the first time in 22 years that we have passed the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill before the start of the fiscal year. Just a few days ago was the first time in 11 years this bill has even been debated on the Senate floor. So we are heading in a good direction.

This is a bipartisan agreement. It isn't exactly the bill that I would prefer; it isn't exactly what my ranking member Senator Murray would like to have done here. But working with our House colleagues and with Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy, we have actually done the job this year that the appropriating committee is supposed to do, which is to appropriate the money--to decide how to spend the people's money that we have been entrusted with.

For instance, this bill funds things like the opioid bill that 99 Senators voted for yesterday. It is one thing to vote on a bill that says: Here is what we ought to do. It is another thing to then actually do it. Most of the things we voted on yesterday will not happen unless we decide to fund the things we said we wanted to do.

This is one of the most difficult bills to negotiate. It is 30 percent of all nondefense spending. It is, interestingly, combined this year with the defense bill. So you have the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government--to defend the country--as part of the bill, which is 50 percent of all the discretionary spending, and then another 12 percent or so with the Labor-HHS bill. Sixty-two percent of all of the spending the government will do that we have a choice in--that is not mandatory spending--happens in the bill the Senate is voting on today.

There is a lot of push and pull in this bill. In fact, our committee got 6,164 requests from Senators during committee negotiations about things they cared for in this bill. There were 31 amendments that were offered in the debate on the bill on the floor.

Today's bill, I think, reflects the priorities of both sides of the Capitol and both sides of the aisle. We fulfilled the commitments the leaders made in the February budget agreement to keep the extraneous issues off these bills that fund the government. It also fulfills the President's demand that he doesn't want any more omnibus spending bills. He wants these bills in small packages that we can debate and he can look at.

It invests in national priorities, like fighting the opioid epidemic, expanding medical research, promoting college affordability, and strengthening our workforce. This bill accomplishes a huge goal that I, Senator Murray, Senator Durbin, Senator Alexander, and others have had for several years now, which is to get back, fully committed, to health research funding, the NIH grant process that to a great extent had gone into a stagnant, no-growth mode for over a decade.

This bill looks at things like Alzheimer's. We are spending well over $200 billion a year in tax dollars for Alzheimer's and dementia care. Now we will spend 1 percent of that in a way that will try to find a solution. If we don't find a solution, the tax dollars spent on Alzheimer's disease alone are anticipated to increase to the size of twice today's defense budget by 2050. Twice what we are spending today to defend the country is what we will be spending to deal with Alzheimer's if we don't find more ways than we know now to diagnose and delay onset. If you could delay onset by 5 years, you would cut that number by 46 percent.

So there is a focus on research--whether it is Alzheimer's, immunotherapy for cancer, or CRISPR technology. Young researchers are back in the business of getting grants that encourage them to stay in research. That is an important part of this bill.

Things we are doing with opioids--again, yesterday was about what we want to do; today is about whether or not we are willing to do it. This continues that commitment. The Council of Economic Advisers says that the cost of opioids is more than $500 billion a year in lost work, family trauma, other health matters that occur, and loss of life.

The No. 1 cause of accidental death in America today is drug overdose. This bill provides $3.8 billion toward targeted opioid funding and represents the fourth year we have increased opioid treatment, prevention, and recovery programs. One of those programs is $1.5 billion that would be divided among the States to see what they can do in their State. Again, it is not only the No. 1 accidental cause of death in America; it is the No. 1 accidental cause of death in most States in the country today.

We have $200 million for community health centers to expand behavioral health and substance abuse disorders. If you don't have a behavioral health problem before you get addicted to opioids and other drugs, you certainly have one after. We increase funding to improve surveillance and prevention in all 50 States.

There are extra dollars for research at NIH in pain management to try to figure out a better way to manage pain without the addictive impacts of opioids. We have a set-aside for the hardest hit rural communities. On a per capita basis, rural America is much more dramatically impacted by this opioid epidemic than urban America is.

There is money here for services for children at risk--children who have to be taken out of the home they are in and helped and assisted back to some normal environment where a kid can grow up.

We have money to help people in schools to be ready to learn and to be prepared for careers and training. Certainly, the apprenticeship programs are programs that Senator Murray has advocated effectively for, both in this bill and on the floor. The bill includes an increase for Head Start--again, getting kids ready to go to school--more title I money to support students in low-income schools and help them meet challenging State economic or academic standards.

There is an increase for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, so students with disabilities have more Federal encouragement, even though more of that burden is still borne locally than was ever thought possible when the IDEA was passed.

There is more funding for academic enrichment grants and charter schools, impact aid for dedicated, evidence-based STEM education programs, and for career and technical programs.

I will say that in the 4 years we have worked on this committee together, we do have a little more funding this year than we had in previous years, but we continued to move in all of those directions the first 2 years, and we did that by eliminating programs and combining programs that weren't working. So this bill still reflects hard choices--things that allow people to get to college, to stay in college, returning to year-round Pell grants and increasing the maximum Pell grants.

As I said earlier, I believe, for the first time ever, it is on the floor with the defense bill. It is something our leaders on both sides of the aisle thought we might be able to do. It was, frankly, by a lot of standards, a pretty bold experiment. But I believe the vote today is likely to show it is an experiment that really makes a lot of sense.

So I am certainly urging my colleagues to support this bill today, and I thank Senator Murray and others who have worked so hard to make this happen.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I want to speak for a few minutes about the hearings going on today with Judge Brett Kavanaugh. I had a chance, as you did, to meet him a little over a month ago. It was clear from that conversation that he is clearly the best person available, in my view, to fill the vacancy left by Justice Anthony Kennedy. I think his opening remarks this week gave great evidence to that. He said, as he described himself, that ``a judge must be an umpire--a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy. . . . I do not decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro- plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro- defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.''

What does it mean to be a ``pro-law'' judge? It means that you see your job as a judge who will look at the law and determine what the law says, whether that is criminal law or civil law.

I am not an attorney, but if you hire an attorney to give you advice on civil law, the greatest benefit you can have

in making a decision based on that advice is that judges at all levels, up to the Supreme Court, will look at the law as hopefully your good attorney did and say: This is what this law means. If you make this decision based on what the law says, the courts in the United States of America will reach that same, likely, conclusion. Your attorney might say that the law is not clear on this issue, and that is a different scenario. But the judge's job is not to decide what is the right thing. The judge's job is not to decide what the law should say. The judge's job is not to decide what the people who wrote the Constitution should have written or should have meant if they had known everything we know today. The judge's job is to look at the law and look at the Constitution and decide that is what it said.

Nothing would be a better example of Judge Kavanaugh's philosophy than the 300 opinions he has issued as a judge. There is a lot of discussion: Well, there is not enough material out there. We haven't seen everything. We haven't seen everything that went through the White House when he was the Staff Secretary for President George W. Bush. We haven't seen all of that.

Of course, that is not the case. There is plenty to be seen. In fact, there is more paperwork available to look at from Judge Kavanaugh than from the last five Supreme Court Justices put together. I will state that if you are looking for paper, you have paper. If you are looking for the judge's position, you also have 300 cases, some of which were appealed to the Supreme Court. Thirteen of his opinions--and I think some of them were when he was in the minority on the circuit court bench--became the opinions that the Supreme Court essentially adopted almost exactly as Judge Kavanaugh had written them.

What we are trying to do is put somebody on the Supreme Court for a lifetime appointment. This individual happens to be somebody who for 12 years has been on what is often described as the second most important court in the country.

Why would the DC Circuit--that is the court of appeals for the DC area--be the second most important court in the country? The reason is that most of the cases that involve new Federal law, that involve expansive Federal law, wind up right here. For 12 years, Judge Kavanaugh has been one of those judges.

Believe me, if the Supreme Court had said over and over again, when there was an appeal from the DC Circuit, that Judge Kavanaugh's opinion really makes no sense or that Judge Kavanaugh's opinion wasn't based on the law, the facts, and the Constitution, we would have heard about that. In 300 opinions, we would have heard about that if that had been the case, and we have not heard that. In fact, what we have heard over and over again is about the job this judge has done and the skill he brings to the court.

Going back to the idea that a judge's goal is not to decide what the judge would like the outcome to be but what the law says, Justice Scalia, who was replaced last year by Judge Gorsuch, said that ``the judge who always likes the results he reaches is a bad judge.'' Why would you be a bad judge if you always liked the decisions you reached? The reason is that you couldn't have always been looking at the law. The judge doesn't write the law. The judge doesn't come up with the law. The judge doesn't even have to agree with the law. The judge's job is to decide what the law says. If you look at every case before you and evaluate it based on the facts and apply the rule of law, you are going to come up with a conclusion you won't always like, but you will come up with a conclusion that the people who are in the case will understand as far as how you came up with it because you came up with it based on the law and the facts.

Judge Kavanaugh's credentials have been discussed before. Frankly, they are not being very widely discussed this week because the hearing--at least half the time--appears not to have much to do with Judge Kavanaugh at all but whether there is enough paperwork to look at or whether a judge would have reached a different conclusion than he reached. But his qualifications are pretty significant. He is a graduate of Yale Law School. He clerked for three Federal judges, including the Justice he is about to replace. Of course, being a clerk for a judge means that you have graduated from law school. Someone has looked at all the applicants to be their clerk, and--it is almost like graduate work after you have graduated from law school--you are chosen to be that clerk. So that happened three times with Judge Kavanaugh, including for Justice Kennedy. He clerked for Justice Kennedy alongside Justice Gorsuch.

In 2006, President Bush nominated him to serve on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. In addition to that, since 2009, he has been the Samuel Williston Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. He was hired by Justice Kagan before she was nominated to the Court by President Obama and who was then dean of Harvard Law School. He has the interesting opportunity to be confirmed to the Court--and I believe he will be--and to be sitting on the Court with a Justice nominated by President Obama who hired him to be a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

In addition to his legal career, he has devoted himself to his community. He coaches his daughter's basketball team with some pride, Coach K--not always the Coach K I would think of but the Coach K the girls on that team think of when they think of Coach K. He is a church volunteer. He has mentored people at schools. He has been widely supported by those who have dealt with him--his classmates, colleagues, clerks, and legal scholars.

This week, he received a unanimously ``well qualified'' rating from the American Bar Association. That is the very highest rating they can give, and it was unanimous. That is a pretty good signal that he must have been well prepared as a lawyer to be a judge.

The Judiciary Committee has received letters from more than 140 law professors, more than 40 members of the Supreme Court Bar, 34 of his former law clerks, 80 former Harvard Law students, 31 Governors, and many more.

His nomination isn't just widely supported, it is thoroughly vetted. There are 480,000 pages of documents and, in 300 cases, the opinions he has written.

I continue to believe that the Supreme Court is one of the longlasting and most important legacies of a President, but it is also one of the important legacies of the Senate. The Constitution says the President nominates but the Senate advises and consents. This is not just about advice, it is about becoming a partner in that process of becoming a member of the Supreme Court for as long as you live, unless you decide to leave earlier than that.

I am disappointed that almost half of this Senate announced they wouldn't be for Judge Kavanaugh before his confirmation hearings. At least one-fourth of the Senate announced they wouldn't be for Judge Kavanaugh before he was nominated. No matter who was going to be nominated, one-fourth of the Senate was not going to be there.

I think we will find that a majority of the Senate will be there later this month. I think we will find the majority of the Senate will be there before the first Monday in October, which is the day the Court starts to hear cases for the coming year.

I think Judge Kavanaugh is going to serve our country well and, I hope, long. I look forward to his confirmation later this month.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I know we have a series of votes coming up, and I won't stand in the way of those votes once we get over the next couple of minutes, but I didn't want to let the week go by without talking a little bit about John McCain here on the floor.

A number of people have asked me this week--particularly members of the media have asked: Who is going to replace John McCain? I think the point

is, he will be a hard man to replace. He brought a unique background to this job. He was raised in the house of a man who was going to become an admiral. His grandfather was an admiral on the deck of the USS Missouri when World War II ended. John McCain grew up in a house where visiting Members of the House and visiting Members of the Senate was not unusual. I think that gave him a real capacity to have a comfort level to speak forcefully and truthfully with people at all levels.

Clearly, his time as a prisoner of war had a great impact not only on who he was but also on what he was able to do and what he was able to say and how he was able to say it. He was a man of intense energy.

There is a picture in this building of Theodore Roosevelt seated in a chair, and his left hand is made into a fist. I never saw that picture thinking it was a fist about to hit somebody but a fist trying to contain his own energy.

There was a reason Theodore Roosevelt was John McCain's hero. H.W. Brands wrote a book about Theodore Roosevelt, which was called ``T.R.: The Last Romantic.'' The truth is, if there were a last romantic, it was John McCain, not Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt was who he was, but John McCain brought an intensity to what we do, an immediate willingness to engage. Certainly, I think every Member of the Senate experienced at least once when that immediate engagement, with no doubt in his mind, was there. Members of the media also saw that. He was a man of intensity. He was a man who believed in his country. He was a man who believed this country deserved to be represented well all over the world and that freedom should be defended.

Somebody observed to me earlier today that when traveling with John McCain, he was unbelievably patient with the troops and unbelievably tough with the generals. I saw that, and many of us saw that. He will be missed, but his work was well done. His place was clearly filled. He made a difference in the history of the country, and he made a difference for all of those of us who got to know him.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, we will vote in a few minutes to move forward with the Defense, Labor, HHS, and Education appropriations bill.

That probably sounds like a pretty unusual combination, even though I think most voters, most taxpayers, understand that to get this work done in the timeframe we have to do it, we generally need to bring more than one topic together on the floor at the same time. But why Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education?

Well, first of all, that is 62 percent of all the spending. If we can get this bill passed today, get a conference with the House, get this single bill on the President's desk by the end of the fiscal year, we will have funded that much of the government in a timely way for the first time in a decade.

If we can add the other bills to it that the House and Senate have passed, we will have 90 percent of the spending on the President's desk and in place before the spending year starts.

It doesn't sound as if that would be a very big accomplishment, but by the standards of the last decade, it would be an incredible accomplishment to bring these bills to the floor, to allow them to be debated, to allow them to be amended. We have a managers' package that would include a number of the 60 or so proposed amendments just on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education part of the bill. I don't know how that is exactly going to work out today, but I do know we can take that managers' package to the conference and say: This is what we agreed to as a managers' package. Whether we officially are able to add it or not, every bit of it is germane to the bill, germane, in my view, to what could happen in conference.

I would also point out that, for decades, the priority of my side of the aisle, of our side of the aisle, has been that defending the country first is the No. 1 priority.

One of the top priorities on the other side of the aisle has been: Well, let's take the biggest of the nondefense bills and be sure we are equally prioritizing it.

So in my view, for perhaps the first time this has ever happened, the leaders have decided to bring these two top priorities to the floor together and let voters, Democrats and Republicans, voters on the Senate floor, decide how they want to move forward with those bills.

Let me just talk for a few minutes about one of the items in our bill--the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee, which you and I serve on--and that would be healthcare research, specifically Alzheimer's and how it relates to that research.

First of all, for a dozen years, ending 4 years ago, there had not been a penny of increase in health research.

When I became chairman of this committee 4 years ago, Senator Murray and I began to work on reprioritizing healthcare research, with Democrats and Republicans getting together to figure out what we needed to do. For at least the first couple of years, what we needed to do was eliminate other programs and combine other programs and make tough choices to be sure that health research was a priority.

When we pass this bill today, we will have increased health research spending in a budget that for 2 years had no growth at all and has had some growth in the last 2, but by 30 percent--30 percent--from $30 billion a year to $39 billion a year at a time when we know more about the human genome, we know more about what makes each of us different from all the rest of us than we have before.

What are we beginning to see? We are seeing things in immunotherapy in cancer; we are seeing things in brain research. We are not seeing the kinds of results we want to see yet in Alzheimer's, but we are moving in that direction.

Every hour, Alzheimer's disease costs taxpayers at least $21 million--every single hour. Someone in the United States is developing Alzheimer's every 65 seconds. We are spending somewhere in the neighborhood of 277 billion tax dollars a year on Alzheimer's and dementia-related care.

I have just given three numbers. It is hard to talk about appropriating without giving numbers. Maybe numbers are not the most riveting thing, particularly when you start talking about millions or billions or even trillions. What does that really mean?

That means we are spending basically an amount equal to half of the defense budget on Alzheimer's and dementia-related care. That will have an overwhelming impact if we don't do something differently than we are doing right now, just because of the projected long life and demographics of the country. In 2050, which is 32 years from now, we will be spending, in today's dollars, $1.1 trillion on Alzheimer's and dementia care--$1.1 trillion. One point one anything--who knows? Let's go back to defense again. That is twice the defense budget of last year--twice the defense budget.

I don't really have a great grasp of what $1.1 trillion is, but I do have a sense of what every military base everywhere in the world would be. Add to that every ship, every plane, every piece of equipment, and add to that every training dollar, and add to that every paycheck for every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, person in the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Reserves, and you will begin to approach a pretty big number.

We would be spending more than twice that amount. If you add up all I have just talked about, taxpayer spending would be more than twice that just on Alzheimer's and dementia.

Obviously, there is a huge taxpayer need to find a solution here. There is an even bigger individual need. It is not only a devastating disease for people who have it, it is a devastating disease for the people who care about them. There is one generally used number out there that says for every tax dollar we are spending on Alzheimer's and dementia right now, we are spending two private dollars, almost never insured. These are caregivers. These are people who care about you, who give up part or all of their career and time to take care of you instead of doing what they otherwise would be doing. The person being taken care of may not have any real idea, at some point, as to what is going on, but the people taking care of them know. That is a big reason to find a solution.

If we could just delay the onset of Alzheimer's, if we could figure out how to come up with something that would slow down the onset of that disease, if we could delay the onset by an average of 5 years, we would cut that $1.1 trillion by 42 percent--almost in half. If we could just have the average person who gets Alzheimer's get it 5 years later than they are getting Alzheimer's today, almost half, 42 percent, of that $1.1 trillion would go away. So this is something we obviously need to prioritize.

Just 4 years ago, we were spending about $600 million on Alzheimer's research. We were spending $250 billion on taxpayer-related care. We were spending $600 million--what is that? Is that one-quarter of 1 percent? We were spending $600 million on research to try to help solve this problem that we are spending these billions of dollars on every year.

In 4 years, we have gotten that number beyond the disease goal a handful of years ago. We said: If we just could have $2 billion for Alzheimer's research every year, we would have a better chance to find a solution.

Well, this year, we have passed the $2 billion. We are at $2.34 billion, but we are still spending less than 1 percent on trying to find a solution to the problem of what we are spending every year on the problem. It is an important 1 percent.

At Washington University in St. Louis--I didn't know when I started chairing this committee what great leaders they are in this research effort. I knew this was one of the top health research universities in the country. I didn't know where we were in terms of the cutting-edge on Alzheimer's, but Dr. Randy Bateman at Washington University in St. Louis is very close. He has unveiled the results of a blood test that hopefully will detect early on whether you individually are on the way to developing this problem.

Obviously that matters if we can find things that could be done to significantly slow down the advance of this disease. It is not particularly expensive to take a blood test. It is not very invasive. It gets a quick result. Now what you have to do--you have to have a CAT scan. Somebody, in an expensive process, looks at your brain and figures out if you have amyloids developing in your brain that are likely to cause this.

So early detection--Dr. Hodes at the National Institute on Aging at NIH says that one of the real reasons we can't find solutions is we cannot figure out how to get the right group to clinically test. A blood test would help with that. So we are working on that.

I see my friend Senator Markey is here. I would point out to him that because of the leader's time, I started talking only about 8 minutes ago and maybe have only 2 minutes right now.

If you want to use that 2 minutes before the vote--but we do have a vote--then we will figure out later, maybe, how to get back to your time. But thanks for your interest in health research. Certainly, Dr. Blumenthal, the Senator's wife, is a great advocate of this. Why don't I yield this last minute or so to Senator Markey; then maybe there will be other time later, but I know we have a vote scheduled in a minute.

I yield back my time as well.

Mr. President, certainly I want to thank my colleagues today for the credit that they have shared with me and that I am reluctant to accept. This is clearly an effort to establish what our priorities are. There are a lot of things in this bill that are goods things for somebody to do. In some cases over the years, we have not done them as well as we should have, and well-intentioned programs didn't work. We have gone through the process of eliminating programs and combining programs so we could set the priorities mentioned just this morning by Senator Collins, Senator Capito, and Senator Moran.

When you think about what we are talking about here--healthcare research, the opioid epidemic, and what is happening in the Alzheimer's space--we would have never imagined these numbers in cost or family impact.

There is one thing I want to mention just briefly before we end this part of our discussion. I think between votes and other things this morning--Senator Cardin is here and, like me, planned to do what I am doing now about an hour ago. So I am going to take just a couple minutes.

I want to talk a little about the labor part of this bill. For the first time in the 20 years we have been keeping statistics on jobs available and people looking for work, this is the first time there are more jobs available than people looking for work. That is a big number and a big thing to think about.

The other thing to think about is that the match between the people looking for work and the jobs available is not exact. In fact, most of the people looking for work don't have the skills for the jobs that need to be done. Recently, I was in Missouri visiting with a small manufacturing company. They had 20 job openings and were just waiting for somebody to come in the door who had the skill set for those job openings.

What we do to do a better job of combining the skills people need with the jobs that are out there or the jobs that will be out there-- the apprenticeship programs in this bill that Senator Murray and I have particularly been focused on with Secretary Acosta give people new ways to get ready for work. They create new ways for partnering between people already in the workforce and someone they can mentor, an apprentice. We are looking at the Pell grant area for ways that the post-high school Pell grant can be used in different ways that allow not just traditional college programs but various kinds of certificated programs that allow people to go to work in areas where there are high demands. Right now, construction, energy, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing are only a few of the industries where jobs need to be done.

We have around 400 registered apprenticeship programs in my State, with more than 13,000 apprentices working with several hundred employees. There are 530,000 Americans in apprenticeship programs nationwide--over half a million Americans--getting ready for the jobs that are out there.

What the Department of Labor is doing with Job Corps--for years, the major Job Corps measurement has been ``Did you get some kind of certificate?'' Well, we are now shifting from ``Did you get some kind of certificate?'' to ``Did you get a job?'' It is great to have a certificate; it is a whole lot better to have a certificate that gets you a job.

Over the next 3 years, we are moving from--of course you get the certificate--that is a basic part of the program--but does it lead to a job, and do you still have that job or a job like it a year later? That is how the people running these programs are going to be measured in the future, as opposed to whether they just got somebody through the program. Now it will be ``Did you get somebody through your program in a way that met the goal of the Job Corps?'' It is not the Certificate Corps; it is the Job Corps--now measuring by getting a job.

This bill is reflective of the new efforts in our society to try to match people with the jobs that are out there and to do the kinds things in our economy that ensure that those are jobs that allow people to raise a family and allow people to have opportunities they wouldn't have otherwise.

So I am looking forward to later today when I believe we will all vote for this bill--Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, combined with the critically important bill on defense.

Mr. President, I appreciate the concern of my friend from Wyoming on this. I will be voting to waive the point of order.

My colleague from Wyoming was exactly right when he said this is a complicated formula. It is a combination of discretionary and mandatory funding for the Higher Education Act. The discretionary portion of the maximum award is established annually in the Labor-HHS bill. We changed the maximum Pell for discretionary funding from $5,035 to $5,135 for the 2019-2020 school year. That is an additional mandatory funding of $1,060. Maximum Pell will be $6,195. That is in line with the kind of increases we have had now for the last 12 years in a row.

I will be voting to waive and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. President, it has been 11 years since this bill has been on the floor. Consequently, none of these staffers have probably ever been mentioned on the floor before, even though every single year they have made this continued, great effort.

Senator Shelby, Senator Leahy, and Senator Durbin decided, along with Senator Murray and me, that we would bring this combination of bills together that has never been on the floor at any time--Labor-H and Defense.

The Defense staff has been recognized, but let me just mention the Labor, HHS, and Education staff: Mike Gentile, Jeff Reczek, Ashley Palmer, Courtney Bradford, and Laura Friedel, our staff director. All of them are on our side of the aisle.

Obviously, Senator Murray's staff played a critically important part in this as well: Mark Laisch, Lisa Bernhardt, Kelly Brown, Catie Finley, and Teri Curtin.

Clearly, this bill would not be here today, in the condition it is in, or we would not have been able to have responded to all of the suggestions this week without both of these staffs having worked to have made it happen.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I have 6 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Kelvin Droegemeier, of Oklahoma, to be Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, James Morhard, of Virginia, to be Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Joel Szabat, of Maryland, to be an Assistant Secretary of Transportation.

Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Kathleen Laura Kraninger, of Ohio, to be Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, Kimberly A. Reed, of West Virginia, to be President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, Elad L. Roisman, of Maine, to be a Member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Michael R. Bright, of the District of Columbia, to be President, Government National Mortgage Association, and Rae Oliver, of Virginia, to be Inspector General, both of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Dino Falaschetti, of Montana, to be Director, Office of Financial Research, Department of the Treasury.

Committee on Foreign Relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: David T. Fischer, of Michigan, to be Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco, Earl Robert Miller, of Michigan, to be Ambassador to the People's Republic of Bangladesh, Daniel N. Rosenblum, of Maryland, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan, Kip Tom, of Indiana, for the rank of Ambassador during his tenure of service as U.S. Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, and Donald Y. Yamamoto, of Washington, to be Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Somalia, all of the Department of State.

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: William Cooper, of Maryland, to be General Counsel, and Lane Genatowski, of New York, to be Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, both of the Department of Energy.

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Prioritizing Cures: Science and stewardship at the National Institutes of Health''.

Committee on the Judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Ryan Douglas Nelson, of Idaho, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit, Richard J. Sullivan, of New York, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit, Gary Richard Brown, Diane Gujarati, Eric Ross Komitee, and Rachel P. Kovner, each to be a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, Stephen R. Clark, Sr., to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri, Lewis J. Liman, and Mary Kay Vyskocil, both to be a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, John M. O'Connor, to be United States District Judge for the Northern, Eastern and Western Districts of Oklahoma, John L. Sinatra, Jr., to be United States District Judge for the Western District of New York, Joshua Wolson, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, James W. Carroll, Jr., of Virginia, to be Director of National Drug Control Policy, and Ariana Fajardo Orshan, to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Peter G. Strasser, to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, and G. Zachary Terwilliger, to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, all of the Department of Justice.

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

Mr. President, this is the first time in 11 years that the chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee has had a chance to stand on the floor and present a bill. It is a subcommittee that I am honored to chair. As a subcommittee member, I am honored to get to serve on that committee with the Presiding Officer. It is a subcommittee that is led on the other side by Senator Murray from Washington, the ranking member on this committee.

This is not a bill that either Senator Murray nor I would have drafted on our own, but our job was not to draft a bill that I thought was the perfect bill for me to vote for or the perfect way for all of these agencies to be run. There is a reason that this bill has not been on the floor in 11 years. It is big. It is complex. It can be contentious. But Senator Shelby, the chairman of the full committee, and Senator Leahy, the lead Democrat on the full committee, have made an incredible, good-faith effort to come to the floor with a bill that focuses on how we spend the money.

There is not much new in this bill about all of the things we could try to determine about social policy and about issues that all of us feel strongly about, but there are other committees whose principal job is to do that. Our committee's principal job is to decide how we establish the priorities for the country and how we spend the money.

Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer have also both had to agree that if we are going to get these appropriations bills on the floor, if we are going to have all of the Members of the Senate--for the first time, in the case of this bill--get a chance to debate this bill for the first time in 11 years, that is not going to happen if we try to have a big authorizing bill and a big appropriating bill all wrapped into one.

I see the ranking member has come to the floor right after I praised him and Senator Shelby for the unique leadership they have had that has allowed us to get this bill on the floor.

This bill deals with everything from medical research to home energy assistance, to employment opportunities, training programs, and Pell grants for people who are trying to go to college who don't have the resources that would allow them to do that otherwise. It is the largest of the nondefense discretionary bills. About 30 percent of all of the nondefense spending is in this one bill.

We take that bill and add it to the defense spending bill, and suddenly we are looking at roughly 62 percent of all of the spending of the Federal Government. That still sounds like a pretty big bill, but it is the first time in the case of the Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education Subcommittee--and then we have that unique add-on, ``and Related Agencies,'' just to get the footprint even a little bigger--in over a decade that Members have been able to come to the floor and say: No, we would like you to spend the money here rather than here.

By the way, as the Presiding Officer understands, to do that, that Member also has to say: Here is where we are going to take the money from to pay for it.

So it is not just on the floor and you get to make up all of the spending you want to that those of us on the appropriating committee didn't have a chance to do. There is still a finite amount of money.

So for the Presiding Officer's amendment, the Kennedy amendment, which will be offered right after we finish this morning's discussion and go to votes, he had to come up with an amount of money to pay for that.

I am fully supportive of the amendment that he and Senator Reed came up with to deal with the pressing issue of suicide prevention and the disturbing suicide rates. In my State of Missouri, suicide rates have increased by 36 percent above where they were in the year 2000--a 36- percent increase. Too many of those are our veterans. Too many of those are people who serve on the frontlines of homeland security, police, and veterans. All of that is something we need to look at. Here is the Presiding Officer's opportunity, which he took, to say: No, I think there is a better way to spend some of this money than how the committee spends it. That is what we missed for the last 11 years, when 69 of the Senators didn't have any say as to what the 31 of us who serve on the Appropriations Committee need to debate and talk about.

So we now bring this bill to the floor. There were 6,164 ideas that came to Senator Murray and me--6,164 Member requests of ideas as to how this could be the best possible bill. I think most of those are reflected in what we did.

In this bill, we talk about fighting the opioid epidemic. We talk about promoting college affordability, strengthening the workforce, and having people better prepared for the jobs that are out there to be filled than they would otherwise see.

Now, both sides would approach drafting this bill differently. We would both start out with some significantly different sets of priorities. We have

been able to reach an agreement that neither of us would have drafted on our own, but that is not the job that we were given. We have been able to present a bipartisan bill to the full committee and have that bill referred out of the full committee with 30 ``yes'' votes and 1 ``no'' vote, and now we are bringing that bill to the Senate floor.

It represents a compromise on both sides. It represents taking a step back on issues that authorize on both sides, which we can deal with at a later time. I certainly appreciate not just the leadership of Senator Leahy and the leadership of Senator Shelby but also the leadership of Senator Murray in helping to determine what those priorities would be and should be.

I see Senator Leahy is standing on the floor, and I am glad to yield to him for a comment.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for his leadership. Again, this is the first time in over a decade for the 69 people who aren't on the Appropriations Committee to get to come to the floor and offer amendments and think about what this bill does.

Let's talk about some of the things it does. We worked really hard over the last 4 years to do the kinds of things we ought to do in healthcare research. This bill, for the first time, reaches a long-held goal of the national plan to address Alzheimer's disease, of getting those annual research dollars up over $2 billion--in fact, $2.34 billion, exceeding what had been a long-term goal. The goal should not be how much money we spend. It should be finding a way to solve this problem. This is a significant increase over last year. It quadruples where we were 4 years ago. We spent 277 billion tax dollars a year on Alzheimer's and dementia-related care. A lot more private money is spent than that--three times that amount in private money--and there is lost work as caregivers step back to help people with these terrible diseases of dementia and Alzheimer's. But here is $277 billion. So this bill does about 1 percent of that in research to try to solve a problem that taxpayers are overwhelmed by. It is a problem that by 2050, if we don't find a solution, we will be spending about twice today's defense budget on Alzheimer's care, twice today's defense budget--$1.1 trillion of today's dollars being spent on Alzheimer's care if we don't do what we need to. This is the only leading cause of death that doesn't have a treatment, doesn't have a cure, doesn't have a way to prevent it, and, obviously, the right kind of discovery, the right kind of medical advancement that can change the lives of millions of American families now and in the future if we do this.

I am pleased to see we are making that investment. I am also pleased to see that after a 12-year period, when there wasn't any increase in healthcare research spending at all, we continue to find money, in many cases by eliminating programs that weren't working, to where we had a 30-percent increase in NIH funding over the last 4 years. What a 4 years to be doing that--understanding the things we know now about the human genome, understanding how each of us is different than all the rest of us and that, in fact, each of us has a different capacity to fight disease than any other person does. If you can figure out how to maximize that, such as things like immunotherapy in cancer, where many cancers that 5 years ago were largely untreatable--and if they were treatable, they were treatable with radiation and chemotherapy--are now treatable by just simply figuring out how, in your own system, you can maximize your ability to fight back. That is the NIH healthcare research kind of victory we need to now continue to find out why it works on some cancers and why it doesn't work on others.

This kind of research and commitment to NIH not only helps individuals and helps families but, frankly, at a time when healthcare is dramatically changing, has the ability to help our economy. The economy that figures out new ways to be in this healthcare fight is also going to be the economy that has the job opportunities and the transformational opportunities to be part of that.

Not only are we looking at healthcare research, but we are also looking at research as it relates to the opioid epidemic. The opioid cost to the economy is now anticipated to be about $500 billion a year in lost work time and other costs related to the opioid epidemic.

This bill provides a significant, targeted opioid funding. This is the fourth year in a row we have increased our funding. Again, this is only the second time we have had any more money to do it with. We have had to look at programs that weren't working and cut, reduce, and combine those programs to fight back on the opioid epidemic, which is now, and for a couple of years has been, the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the United States. It is the No. 1 accidental cause of death in my State of Missouri. The 73,000 people who died last year with overdoses exceed the number of people who died in car accidents, which for decades had been the No. 1 cause of accidental deaths until opioids replaced it.

We have $1.5 billion available for State opioid response grants. Understanding that every State is different, and frankly the more things we try to do in different ways, the more likely we are to find the things that work. We have that.

There is more money for community health centers to expand behavioral health and substance abuse disorder services. There is an increase in the ability to improve surveillance and prevention efforts in the illicit drug space or the drug abuse space, more money to research pain management. Part of the NIH money, at half a billion dollars, is designed to find more ways to research for better pain management and better ways to, if you have become addicted to drugs and opioids specifically, end that addiction in an effective way. There is more money for the hardest hit rural communities. Some of our Members have advocated strongly for a drug problem that is more of a rural drug problem on a per capita basis than it is an urban drug problem.

There is more money for children and families who are put at risk by opioids. I saw a news report just this week focusing on kids being raised by their grandparents because their parents wound up with an opioid addiction problem that drove their life in a way their children were not only in danger and ignored but had to go somewhere else.

This bill prioritizes education programs through a student's life, focusing on programs that provide the most flexibility for States and communities that meet the needs of families, children, and their workforce in their State.

There are increases for Head Start, increases for title I support for low-income schools to help them meet academic challenges. There is more money to meet the goal the Federal Government set decades ago, where individuals with disabilities are assisted within the school context, as the Federal Government determined they had to be, but the Federal Government has been wanting and coming up with the money that was committed to do that

decades ago. We continue to make steps in the right direction there, and I think there are substantial steps in this bill.

There is flexible spending so schools can look at more science, math, and STEM education, more computer science education, and more ability for schools to take some of their funds and look at school safety. Nobody wants to see kids go to school in an environment that is not as safe as we can possibly make it. This allows more flexibility for local administrators and local school boards to decide how they are going to meet that school safety need.

We looked at impact aid, charter schools, and programs that create both competition and fairness in a way I think people we work for will like.

This bill maintains the significant investments made last year on college access. The best way to minimize college debt is to get done, finish. Year-round Pell is something we returned to after several years of having only the normal traditional school year Pell. Year-round Pell is maintained in this as part of our Federal commitment to have people going to school. If you are an adult going back to school, if you are somebody who is a first-time college attender in your family, if, for whatever reason, you are paying for your own school, the most likely way to get done is don't interrupt a pattern that is working. This bill allows that to continue.

We also do things that I think better prepare our workforce for the workplace. It is a bill to look forward to working with Members to see how it can be improved, just like the amendment we will be voting on soon that deals with suicide prevention in ways Senator Kennedy and Senator Reed have suggested, and I support.

With that, I will conclude my remarks.

I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes of debate, equally divided in the usual form, prior to the vote on the Kennedy amendment.

I yield the floor.

Vote on Amendment No. 3773

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I have 8 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Armed Services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Alan Ray Shaffer, of Virginia, to be Deputy Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment, Veronica Daigle, of Virginia, and Robert H. McMahon, of Georgia, both to be an Assistant Secretary, and Casey Wardynski, of Alabama, and Alex A. Beehler, of Maryland, both to be an Assistant Secretary of the Army, all of the Department of Defense.

Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Russia Sanctions current effectiveness and potential for next steps.''

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

Committee on Foreign Relations

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``U.S.-Russia Relations''.

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Financial Literacy: the Starting Point for a Secure Retirement.''

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining CMS's Efforts to fight Medicaid fraud and overpayments''.

Select Committee on Intelligence

The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 16, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a closed hearing.

Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism

The Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, August 21, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Cyber Threats to our Nation's Critical infrastructure.''

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the Richardson nomination, the Senate proceed to legislative session and the consideration of H.R. 6157; further, that for the purpose of rule XVI, in relation to substitute amendment No. 3695, the text of H.R. 6157 serve as the basis for defense of germaneness for division A of the amendment and the text of H.R. 6470, as reported by the House Appropriations Committee, serve as the basis for defense of germaneness for division B of the amendment.

Mr. President, I wish to talk for a few minutes about the principal work that we will be starting this week and, I would hope, be completing next week--certainly completing before we move on to other work. I want to highlight the critical work of the National Defense Appropriations Act and the decision just made by the body that will allow us to go to that bill and to the Labor, Health and Human Services bill this week.

On Monday, the President signed the authorizing bill for fiscal year 2019, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. This bill provides important authorizations for a number of programs. By the way, in its title, it also recognizes the extraordinary courage and service of our friend and colleague John McCain. On more than one occasion, I know Senator McCain has said that chairing that committee has been the most important public service he has ever been allowed to do. So to have this bill named for him is something that I appreciate and that I know the Presiding Officer does too.

I commend my colleagues for the work they have done and for completing that work, the defense authorization bill, in the fastest time in 20 years. This bill has been signed into law by the President. Now we get to take a step further and do the second thing that Congress is responsible for, not just for authorizing and setting out a blueprint for how we defend the country but for providing the funding with which to do that.

Over the years, I have seen that many of our colleagues have forever been prepared to debate with regard to how we need to spend more money on

defense until it comes time to vote on a bill that includes more money for defense. This bill does that. Frankly, I think it is the most important of our responsibilities--the defense of the country. The Federal Government's principal role is only ensured when we provide the money to do that. We need to be sure that we provide for those who serve in uniform--those who serve us--and for what they need to carry out their missions. I believe the bill we will debate in the later part of this week and all of next week--and as long as it takes to get it done--does that. As a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, I was pleased to vote for this bill. I was pleased to vote for it as a member of the full Appropriations Committee, and I look forward to voting for it as the debate ends. I also look forward to the full debate.

One of the things we have done this year that has not been done in recent years is to bring these appropriations bills to the floor in a way that not just the two dozen or so Senators who serve on Appropriations get to amend and debate and argue in public about what should be in the bill but to do this in a way that every Senator can come to the floor and offer an amendment and that every Senator can debate that amendment if it is germane to the bill and if it meets the standards of the bill. Everybody who is willing to find the money somewhere in that bill to pay for what one would rather do rather than what the bill does gets a chance to do that, and that is a good process.

This defense funding bill provides a $20 billion increase for defense, and it supports the largest pay increase in over a decade for those who serve and defend us. This bill prioritizes resources for equipment and training to ensure that our troops have every possible advantage on the battlefield.

I have said before on this floor and at this podium that we never want our troops to be involved in a fair fight. We want them to be involved in a fight where they have every possible advantage over their adversary, and this bill takes steps to do that.

Missouri has a number of military installations. Those installations and people who work at those installations, civilian and military, really provide a great part of our Nation's defense--Whiteman Air Force Base, Rosecrans Air National Guard facility, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri National Guard units, the AVCRAD--the repair center in Springfield, MO, my hometown. People who work there have a big stake in our country, and we have a big stake in them, as we do in bases all over the United States.

The chairman, Senator Shelby, and Senator Durbin, the ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee, have crafted a bill that really makes crucial investments across the board, from Army end-strength increases to important investments in the B-2, the A-10, the B-21, the C-130 programs, and others that are essential to the infrastructure of the military and the very infrastructure itself. The defense facilities and the Army ammunition plants that haven't been changed very much since World War II have some update potential in this bill.

This bill is good news for those who serve at Missouri military bases. It is good news for those who work as civilians at those bases. It is also good news for the many Missourians who are part of the defense industry. We have people who work at businesses, large and small, who are contractors and subcontractors to those contractors, facilities I have visited in our State where the initial facility was a converted dairy barn but then added on as they got better and better and got more subcontracts. Those people are all part of this system.

This bill includes multiyear procurement authority for the F/A-18 Super Hornets. These are manufactured in St. Louis. Year after year, the Navy has had the Super Hornets included at the top of the unfunded requirement list, I assume hoping that we in Congress would first look at that list once we decide what else we could do. On the committee, this is something that Senator Durbin from Illinois, who is right across the river from the Boeing facility, and I have worked on to ensure that this unfunded request was usually met. Because the Navy has asked for it as part of their long-term structure, what this bill does, for the first time in some time, is make multiyear commitments to this plane, which is an important part of many flying packages that we have.

Additionally, the bill provides research funding that is badly needed to counter threats from China and Russia--huge investments on their part, using at least some of the things they have taken from us. They have taken intellectual property we have designed in our aircraft and other things, and then they have taken their money to see how far they can get ahead of us, using our technology, in some cases, as the foundation for what they are trying to do and making major efforts to try to get ahead of us in things like hypersonics, directed energy, artificial intelligence, and cyber infiltration, and cyber warfare. This bill looks at all of those and says that we are not going to let other countries that are adversaries of ours in the fight for freedom around the world have the advantage. We are going to continue to do everything we can to maintain the advantage.

We have to have technological superiority. It has been one of the great things we have been able to do for those willing to serve, but we have to be sure that our servicemembers have the training, the equipment, and the support they need to carry out their mission. That is my top priority. I think it is the top priority of the Federal Government.

Over the next few days, we will have a chance to debate that top priority. There are different ways to do this. There is nothing wrong with people having different opinions, particularly if they can get a majority of the Senate to agree with that opinion. I think this is a bill that is going to stand the test of that debate. We will find a few ways to improve it as we move forward.

This is a bill in which we demonstrate our gratitude to those who serve. We demonstrate our commitment to the defense of freedom and democracy, both in the debate and in the bill. If we don't fund the decisions we have made in the Defense Authorization Act, we really haven't made those decisions; we will have talked about what we might like to do rather than what we are determined to do. This Defense appropriations bill decides what we are determined to do, willing to do and to establish as a priority.

I look forward to the entire Senate being able to debate that bill and hopefully send that bill to a conference with the House and to the President's desk.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have a request for one committee to meet during today's session of the Senate. It has the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees is authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Subcommittee on National Parks

The Subcommittee on National Parks of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 15, 2018, at 4 p.m. to hold a hearing.

I thank my friend, the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. President, today the Senate overwhelmingly supported the conference report for the 2019 John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. That bill is now on the way to the President's desk.

Many Americans have bravely fought to uphold the values that our country holds dear. There are many people in the Senate who have been stalwart supporters of the military during their time here, but the legislation we passed today is named for one of those Senators, our colleague from Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, John McCain.

Senator McCain not only has given much of his life in military service, but he has given tirelessly in service to the country in so many ways, including service here. He has been an incredibly effective advocate for the men and women who serve in uniform and defend us.

There is no Member of the Senate for whom my admiration and appreciation has increased more during the time I have had the opportunity to serve with him. As a House Member, I knew Senator McCain, but I knew him only in the kind of passing that occurs when the House and Senate are trying to work out an issue or deal with a specific problem. I didn't really get to know John McCain until I came to the Senate. That daily contact with him made a real difference in the way I felt about him.

His courage, his sometimes seemingly short fuse, but always his desire to do the right thing as he saw the right thing have continued to make him an important advocate here. Even

in recent days, when he couldn't attend the Senate, he was the first to let his views be known.

Certainly, Senator McCain and I didn't agree on everything. We still don't agree on everything. We don't make any particular pretense that we agree on everything. There has been more than one occasion when he expressed to me his absolute dismay that I voted the way I voted on a certain issue, but that is when I began to think that maybe we really had a relationship I could treasure--and I do treasure it.

I am pleased that we named this bill after our friend Senator McCain. One of the principal responsibilities we have is to defend the country. It is the one job the Federal Government does that almost no American will argue that somebody else could do better, either personally or at a different level of government. It is the No. 1 priority, I think, of the Federal Government. This bill addresses that priority.

In our State, we have Whiteman Air Force Base, Fort Leonard Wood, Rosecrans Air National Guard Base, where people from all over the world come to train on how to use the C-130s. We have the AVCRAD facility, a National Guard facility in Springfield, MI, that repairs helicopters for the armed services and saves a lot of money doing that. We are the home of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's western headquarters, and we are proud to be.

Missourians serve in uniform and are proud to serve. Missourians serve in many ways, including all of those organizations I just mentioned, and they are proud to do that.

The people who serve in the military and the people who serve in the intelligence branch of our government are increasingly challenged. I think the missions we have around the world, the challenges we have around the world, the national security threats we have around the world--as the Presiding Officer knows from his job as Foreign Affairs chairman--are as complex and complicated and multifaceted as they have ever been. Some have said that there are more threats from more directions in more ways than at any other time.

I think this bill begins to recognize that--tries to recognize that-- and understands that to remain successful, America has to have a military that creates a military advantage. It has to be able to counter the potential that our adversaries have. We have to be able to defend international order and protect ourselves and those who rely on us in their defense of freedom.

To that end, Secretary Mattis and the senior leaders throughout the Department of Justice put together the plan and the thought that really is the backbone for how this legislation has been crafted. This National Defense Authorization Act authorizes the necessary investments and establishes the policies to carry out our national defense strategy.

First and foremost, President Trump and his administration have prioritized rebuilding the military. This bill, with a total of $716 billion in authorization, provides the resources, the equipment, and the training necessary to do so.

For 2 years in a row, we authorized a substantial increase in defense spending. We will have a chance, when we get back in a week or so, to bring the defense appropriating bill to the floor, which hopefully will be the second year in a row that our defense spending has matched the plan that has been authorized.

The National Defense Authorization Act provides our servicemembers with a pay raise of 2.6 percent, the biggest pay raise in 10 years. Our troops and their families make a tremendous sacrifice to serve. They move often on a minute's notice, but in the last year's legislation, we gave more flexibility to families on that topic. Still, when you are in the military, you know you are not likely to be wherever you are for very long. That increase in pay is something we should be pleased about as a country.

This bill authorizes critical multiyear procurement authority. Why does that matter? That doesn't sound very exciting--multiyear procurement authority--but it allows people in the military to plan not only what they are getting this year but how that gives them the ability to build on that next year.

We have been using the Super Hornets, for instance, which are made in St. Louis, MO, at a high volume with desert warfare. The desert is harder on our equipment than other places might be. There is a serious shortfall of fighter aircraft in the Navy. All of those things are taken into consideration as this bill moves forward. It is a bill that recognizes the importance of readiness issues.

We had more people die in training accidents last year--by a substantial number--than were killed in combat. That means we hadn't been providing the kind of training or the kind of equipment needed because we had budgets that didn't allow for that. These budgets that we voted on in the last few months, hopefully, will get us back to where we are going to close that readiness gap. We are going to be able to say to those who serve and to their families that we are providing the best equipment, the best training, and an adequate amount of time to fly a helicopter or fly an airplane to try to see what you would do in adverse conditions, which, frankly, we just have not been able to do.

This takes into account actions to really address specific threats from countries that have actively worked to undermine our economic interests and our national security interests.

According to the national defense strategy, China is using what it refers to as an ``all-of-nation long-term strategy''--all of the resources of the nation of China, according to that blueprint, in a long-term strategy of leveraging military modernization, influencing operations, and predatory economic efforts in order to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the structure of the Indo-Pacific region to its advantage. It is not to our advantage or to the world's advantage for China to restructure that part of the world to its advantage. It also classifies China as a strategic competitor that seeks to shape the world toward its authoritarian model through destabilizing activities that threaten the security of the United States and its allies.

To counter China and reassure our allies and partners, this bill takes action to prohibit telecom companies with links to the Chinese Communist Party's intelligence apparatus from doing business with the U.S. Government. Many of us on the Intelligence Committee think we could have gone a step further than that, but at least we are now prohibiting those organizations from being government contractors. We need to continue to be vigilant so as to be sure that their presence in our other systems doesn't also jeopardize us.

This bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, contains modernization language for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in its effort to look at what national security issue may be at risk when a foreign company is able to buy a company or the technology of an American company.

The national defense strategy, in addition to China, also says that Russia seeks to ``shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor,'' which is also not to our advantage or to the advantage of those in the world who would be affected by it.

Russia has violated key arms control treaties. It has expanded and modernized its nuclear arsenal--sometimes outside agreements that have been made. It has tested counterspace weapons. It has used emerging technologies to undermine our election process. It has infiltrated the way that we communicate with each other on social media. It has confronted the elections of our NATO allies and others.

I think this bill shows not only a firm commitment to NATO but a firm commitment to article 5, which means that any NATO country, when attacked, will have the other NATO countries come to its help and aid.

Additionally, this bill authorizes important resources and policies to counter North Korea, Iran, ISIS, al-Qaida, Syria, and others that we should be concerned about as they oppress the people of their countries and try to expand their oppressive governments to other places.

This bill recognizes the critical importance of our allies and our partners around the globe so that we can be willing to stand together and to advance shared values and goals.

The men and women who serve us in uniform, the men and women who serve us in the intelligence agencies, and the civilian employees who come every day to be part of a defense and intelligence structure work hard for America. This bill shows that we appreciate that work. In the Senate today, the overwhelming vote on this bill verifies that, and the President's signature soon to follow will set a blueprint that will allow us to do the No. 1 job of the Federal Government--to defend the United States of America.

I yield the floor.