Floor Statements

Mr. President, while our colleagues from Tennessee and Missouri are here, I just want to tell you that along with Lisa Murkowski and Tom Harkin, I worked on this issue when we were debating the Affordable Care Act.

As I recall, a provision on menu labeling was included not just in the Finance Committee version of the bill but also in the version that came through the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. That was adopted out when we did the Affordable Care Act--I want to say around 2009, 2010, 2011--and it has taken a long time for the FDA and other regulatory bodies to figure out how to actually implement our legislation.

The reason we adopted legislation is that we spend a whole lot more money on healthcare in this country than many other developed nations. In the United States, we spend 18 percent of our GDP--18 percent. In Japan, they spend 8 percent of their GDP. If you look at people in Japan--I have lived there and worked there as a naval flight officer. When you look at the people in Japan, compared to us, they are less obese.

We have a huge problem. One out of three people in our country are overweight or obese, including kids. Hence, we decided we weren't in the business of telling people what they should eat or shouldn't eat, but the idea of trying to inform people what they were eating and to work with the restaurants and grocery stores and others to try to make this happen is something that was close to my heart and certainly close to Lisa Murkowski's heart and Tom Harkin's heart.

I am not one of the people who has objected to what I think Senator Blunt is proposing, but I am still deeply interested in the issue and would welcome a chance to be involved with my colleagues from Mississippi and Tennessee going forward, if they would like, and I am sure Senator Murkowski would feel the same way.

That is not why I came to the floor, but thank you very much and bon appetit.

Mr. President, what I did come to the floor for was to talk about something I think is important to almost all of us.

Back in the late sixties--actually early seventies--I served two tours in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war, and the highlight for us every day was mail call. Every day, every week we looked forward to what we would get from our families and friends back home. We even welcomed getting credit card bills. Just having some connection to the mainland was always welcomed then.

Today we have troops scattered around the world. They still get mail call. It is not as important to them. It is not as meaningful to them. They still get packages and that kind of thing--letters, birthday cards, and so forth--but it is not as important to them as it was to us.

We communicate a lot differently now. Folks who are deployed around the world can use Skype. They can use the internet. They can use text messaging and all kinds of ways to communicate with their families, loved ones, and others.

Having said that, the Postal Service is still vital to an industry that supports about 8 million jobs in America. It is a trillion-dollar industry, and it is especially important in rural parts of our country.

We are a nation, where most of us live--I think something like 75 percent of Americans live within about 100 miles of one of our coasts. Think about that. Seventy-five percent of Americans or so live within 100 miles of our coasts. That means we have a lot of rural areas in the eastern part of our Nation, the central part of our Nation, and the western part of our Nation. For a lot of those folks, they don't have broadband--so they don't have internet connection--and so the mail is especially important for them.

There are places like Alaska where they even get their food by the mail, and there are places, I understand, in Maine, especially up along the Canadian border, where the mail service is enormously important.

So as we look at not just reorganization of our government, but as we look at the Postal Service, there are some people who are interested in privatizing, and the President has talked a bit about privatizing. There has been talk about that for years.

Senator Collins is on the floor. She and I have worked for a number of years to try to make sure the Postal Service has what it has and what it needs to be successful and vibrant, to be able to generate enough money to meet their obligations, to modernize their vehicle fleet--which on average is about 25 years old--and to be able to modernize the mail processing centers that used to handle mostly first- class mail. Now they handle just a lot of packages and parcels. We want to make sure they have the infrastructure to meet that opportunity today.

Today I am here to talk about an amendment that is important to the American people, to rural and small towns, and to our economy. However, apparently, some of our Republican friends will not allow a bipartisan amendment to be considered for a vote.

The amendment was offered by Senator Heitkamp, Senator Moran, and myself. The goal of our amendment is pretty simple, and that is to protect American taxpayers from misguided efforts to privatize the Postal Service.

Frankly, I think this amendment should be an easy vote for all of our colleagues. Yet a couple of our Republican colleagues are reluctant to tell their constituents that they support rural and small America losing their postal services.

We know privatizing the Postal Service would be a disaster, maybe not for

all American consumers but for a lot of them, especially in parts of America that I talked to, where there are not too many people but a lot of land, and people are separated by wide expanses in those States. But privatizing the Postal Service would be a disaster for a number of Americans, especially those in rural parts of America.

It would be a devastating blow to the trillion-dollar mailing industry, which persists around this country, which was built around this country, and which is built on the mailing industry.

It would put more than 8 million American jobs in jeopardy--not just jobs in the Postal Service but jobs across our economy. The number of people working in the U.S. Postal Service is down by at least one-third over the last 10 years--by at least one-third. The number of mail processing centers has been cut in half. The number of full-time post offices that are operating 5 or 6 days a week, let's say, from 8 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon, the number of those post offices that will have full service full time is down by at least one-third. The Postal Service has worked to rightsize their infrastructure and their distribution network to meet the demand for their services today, but you don't have to take my word for it because, for years, privatization efforts have been overwhelmingly opposed by stakeholders across the board. That is not just by the Postal Service, not just by people working in the Postal Service but by industry that uses the Postal Service, by small businesses--not just by big businesses but small businesses--by unions, and by the American people as a whole.

The Trump administration has just put forward a government reorganization plan that included a recommendation to privatize the Postal Service. Since the founding of this country and the creation of the Postal Service, we have maintained that every American should have equal access to the mail, regardless of whether the Postal Service were to be privatized. That will no longer be a promise we can make to Americans who do not live in urban centers. Yet we have companies, such as UPS and FedEx, that use the Postal Service to get to most homes in America for the final stretch of delivery. For a lot of folks who get service by UPS and FedEx, the folks who actually deliver the packages and the parcels the last mile are with the Postal Service, and that is a piece of their business. It is a constructive way for them to work with these other businesses to get the job done, almost as partners.

If we do privatize the Postal Service, the only places where it will be profitable will be where it retains mail delivery. Let me say that again. If we were actually to privatize the Postal Service, the only places where it will be profitable will be where it retains postal or mail delivery.

If we allow the Postal Service to be privatized, I can't imagine we will be able to maintain Alaska Bypass mail or delivery to Hawaii or to rural mail routes around the Canadian border in Maine because, for a private company, the costs would outweigh the profits, and they are in business to make money.

We cannot let that happen. Everyone, regardless of location, age, race, gender, should have equal access to what is an essential American service.

For any colleague of mine--of ours--who wants to help rural communities, who wants to protect the rights of American consumers, and who wants to bolster our economy, this should be a no-brainer.

With that, I yield the floor.

I see the Senator from the State of Iowa--which has great mail service--who knows of which I speak.

Mr. President, as my colleagues and the Presiding Officer may know, I spent many years of my life in the Navy. I spent some 23 years, starting at the age of 21, on Active and Reserve Duty in the U.S. Navy as a naval flight officer, and I spent most of those 23 years as a P-3 aircraft mission commander. I was even, for a limited period of time, the air intelligence officer for my P-3 squadron when we were deployed in Southeast Asia.

I flew hundreds of missions during both the Vietnam war and the Cold War, conducting surveillance operations, gathering intelligence on the Soviets and on others who undermine and destroy the American way of life.

As a Cold War warrior, watching an American President yesterday blatantly ignore attacks on a democracy and our intelligence agencies was beyond galling. It was reprehensible--reprehensible.

Four days ago, Special Counsel Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering in our democratic elections in 2016. That same day, last Friday--Friday the 13th--the Director of National Intelligence, our old colleague, Dan Coats from Indiana, said that our country's digital infrastructure is literally under attack. Here is what he said:

The warning signs are there. The system is blinking. It is

why I believe we are at a critical point.

That was on Friday the 13th.

Yesterday, our President, with the entire world watching, chose to attack not the Soviets, not the Russians, but Bob Mueller. He is one of the finest people I have ever known and worked with. He attacked Bob Mueller and rebuked the U.S. intelligence community--with whom I have worked as a member of the Homeland Security committee for any number of years, as has our Presiding Officer--instead of siding with the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, all of whom agreed unanimously, without dissent, that the Soviets, the Russians, intervened in our election in 2016 in an effort to throw the election to Donald Trump and to take it away from Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. There is no question that is what they did.

Our President chose to ignore that, and instead of admiring and speaking to the work of the intelligence agencies and concurring with them yesterday, he decided to side with an authoritarian thug, Vladimir Putin. That was a defining moment in our Nation's history.

I think it is a sad moment in our Nation's history. We ought to move immediately to pass bipartisan legislation, introduced in the Senate earlier this year, to allow Bob Mueller's critical work and that of the people working with him to be completed without the constant threat of political interference.

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to allow the District of Columbia to receive funding and other benefits under the Coastal Zone Management Act. I am pleased to offer this companion legislation to a bill, H.R. 2540, introduced by the Congresswoman from the District of Columbia, Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Few of us realize that 70 percent of the District is located within the coastal plain. Similar to my State of Delaware, sea level rise, upstream sources of water and degraded infrastructure mean that the District could experience serious future cleanup and repair costs due to flooding--including damage to federal property, which makes up almost 30 percent of the District. Since 1950, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports there has been a 343 percent increase in nuisance flooding in the District. And, since 2006, DC has experienced two 100-year flooding events, and District officials estimate that a future 100-year flood event could cause over $1.2 billion in damages. Needless to say, these events will become more and more common due to climate change and sea level rise.

The District of Columbia would use funding from the Coastal Zone Management Program for flood risk planning and environmental restoration to prevent and mitigate future flood damage. At the same time, this work would help to restore and conserve the District's coastal resources such as habitat, fisheries, and endangered species.

If included in the Coastal Zone Management Program, the District of Columbia would be eligible for $1 million or more of federal funding annually to assist in coastal flood-control projects, to combat non- point source water pollution, and to develop special area management plans in areas experiencing environmental justice and/or flooding issues.

The National Coastal Zone Management Program, housed in NOAA, was established through the passage of the Federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972. At the time, Congress recognized the need to manage the effects of increased growth in the nation's coastal zone, which includes jurisdictions bordering the oceans and the Great Lakes.

There are currently 34 jurisdictional coastal zone management programs, including both states and territories. In order for the District of Columbia to participate in the program, Congress must pass this amendment to the Coastal Zone Management Act that would include the District under the definition of a ``coastal State.'' Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to allow the District of Columbia to receive funding and other benefits under the Coastal Zone Management Act. I am pleased to offer this companion legislation to a bill, H.R. 2540, introduced by the Congresswoman from the District of Columbia, Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Few of us realize that 70 percent of the District is located within the coastal plain. Similar to my State of Delaware, sea level rise, upstream sources of water and degraded infrastructure mean that the District could experience serious future cleanup and repair costs due to flooding--including damage to federal property, which makes up almost 30 percent of the District. Since 1950, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports there has been a 343 percent increase in nuisance flooding in the District. And, since 2006, DC has experienced two 100-year flooding events, and District officials estimate that a future 100-year flood event could cause over $1.2 billion in damages. Needless to say, these events will become more and more common due to climate change and sea level rise.

The District of Columbia would use funding from the Coastal Zone Management Program for flood risk planning and environmental restoration to prevent and mitigate future flood damage. At the same time, this work would help to restore and conserve the District's coastal resources such as habitat, fisheries, and endangered species.

If included in the Coastal Zone Management Program, the District of Columbia would be eligible for $1 million or more of federal funding annually to assist in coastal flood-control projects, to combat non- point source water pollution, and to develop special area management plans in areas experiencing environmental justice and/or flooding issues.

The National Coastal Zone Management Program, housed in NOAA, was established through the passage of the Federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972. At the time, Congress recognized the need to manage the effects of increased growth in the nation's coastal zone, which includes jurisdictions bordering the oceans and the Great Lakes.

There are currently 34 jurisdictional coastal zone management programs, including both states and territories. In order for the District of Columbia to participate in the program, Congress must pass this amendment to the Coastal Zone Management Act that would include the District under the definition of a ``coastal State.'' Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that I rise on behalf of the Delaware delegation to honor the exemplary service of Bernard Brady, secretary of the senate for the State of Delaware.

A native of Wilmington and a graduate of Trinity College, University of Dublin, Bernard began his career with the Delaware Senate in January of 1979. After nearly 40 years of public service, he has made the difficult decision to retire. Bernard serves as the chief administrative officer of the Senate, which is a position elected by the members. For four decades, Bernard has been the cornerstone of the Delaware Senate, involved in matters relating to budget, legislation, and overall operations. His office maintains records of official Senate transactions, handles the introduction and flow of legislation, sends and receives legislative messages and executive communications, compiles and posts agendas, records committee reports, rollcalls, and the legislative journal. This is no small task for one person. Many nights while serving as Delaware's Governor, I

recall leaving legislative hall and noticing that Bernard's car was still parked in its regular spot and his office light would still be on. It was not unusual for him to work well into the night to ensure that all of that day's loose ends had been tied up and that the stage was set for a smooth transition to the next legislative day.

During my 8 years as Governor, my staff and I were fortunate to work with Bernard on many occasions, often seeking out his guidance and wisdom regarding legislative issues or gubernatorial appointments. Bernard readily made himself available to our team, generously offering us the benefit of his historical knowledge.

Bernard is so ingrained in the daily workings of the Senate that most people in legislative hall cannot imagine the senate chamber without him. Bernard is invaluable for his insight and expertise on the Delaware Legislature, but talk to anyone, and they will tell you that Bernard is beloved because he has the patience of a saint and the heart of a true servant, respected by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Today, we join Bernard's siblings, Geraldine, Mary Lou, Chip, Gerald, and Philip, along with his many colleagues and friends, in honoring Bernard for his dedication to the Delaware State Senate and the people of Delaware. On behalf of Senator Chris Coons and Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, I wholeheartedly thank Bernard for his four decades of service to Delaware. His model leadership and dedication to the order and rules in the senate chamber are second to none. We offer our sincere congratulations on a job well done and wish him many happy, healthy, and successful years to come.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the 74th anniversary of the GI bill, which we will be celebrating later this week.

Before the Senator from Connecticut leaves the floor, I want to thank him for his comments. I want to follow up briefly on what he has said. As the Presiding Officer knows, and our colleague from Connecticut knows, every Wednesday morning, there is a prayer breakfast. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and a number of Senators from both sides have breakfast together. One of the Senators talks about their faith and how their faith affects the way they approach their work here, our work here.

Today, I was invited to speak, and I mentioned that sometimes when people say ``What kind of Democrat are you?'' I say I am a Democrat who has read Matthew 25.

People say: What is Matthew 25?

Matthew 25 goes something like this. When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was thirsty, did you give me something to drink? When I was sick and imprisoned, did you visit me? When I was a stranger in your land, did you welcome me?

Every day here, the Chaplain starts our session with a prayer, and we have Bible study groups. I want to take a minute, and I don't expect my friend from Connecticut to stay on the floor, but I want him to hear the beginning of this. I just want to cite a couple of Scriptures. There are one or two in the Old Testament and maybe one or two in the New Testament.

In the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, chapter 19, we read these words: ``When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.''

The next verse, 34, reads: ``You should treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him [or her] as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.''

In the New Testament are the words of Jesus. We read in Matthew 18, I think verses 2 through 6: ``He called a little child [meaning Jesus] and placed the child among them.''

Jesus said to them: ``Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child [who was with him that day] is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my Name welcomes me.''

Matthew 18:6 reads: ``If anyone causes one of these little ones, those who believe in me, to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck than be drowned in the depths of the sea.''

That is pretty straight talk or, as we used to say in the Navy, the straight skinny. Those are good words from the Old Testament and the New Testament to keep in mind.

Again, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for his words.

74th Anniversary of the GI Bill

Mr. President, our colleague from Connecticut, by the way, is somebody who has spent time in uniform. His sons have spent time in uniform, and I think one or two are still serving.

When I came back from Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam war, after having been a naval flight officer for a number of years, I was fortunate to have been eligible for the GI bill. The GI bill that I was eligible for was a bill that provided me $250 a month to help pay for my tuition and my expenses at the University of Delaware, where I was in the business school trying to earn an MBA, which I ultimately did.

The benefit for GIs today is not $250 a month. As my colleagues know, whatever the tuition costs are, they are paid for by the GI bill. If you go to a private school or something like that outside of your State, the benefit could be higher. There is a cap on that, but I think it is over $20,000. The expenses for tuition, tutoring, books, and fees are paid for by the GI bill. In Delaware, there is a monthly housing allowance, and there is in every State. The monthly housing allowance in Delaware is $2,000 a month. That compares with those of us who, at the end of the Vietnam war, received $250 a month.

I don't deny or feel bad about the current GIs--sailors, airmen, airwomen. I don't feel bad about their getting a lot more, because it is a good benefit, and it is one that is worth celebrating.

My dad came back from World War II, and my uncle served either in World War II or Korea. I was born after the war was over. Somewhere along the line when I was a little kid, my dad talked about how he got his early training after the war, but I was not old enough to understand what he was talking about. Shortly after the war ended in 1945, he went back to West Virginia.

As best I could figure out, other people took advantage of the GI bill, which was new then. They went to colleges and universities. My recollection is that Frank Lautenberg, who was a Senator for a number of years, went to Harvard. People went to different kinds of colleges and universities and maybe to community colleges.

Apparently, my dad got training not by going to a 2-year school or a 4-year school but by gaining a skill. The skill that he apparently gained was to be able to fix wrecked cars and to do bodywork on those cars. He worked at a place called Burleson Oldsmobile in Beckley, WV. He must have been pretty good at what he did. One day, an insurance adjuster came in from Nationwide Insurance to look at a car that was insured by Nationwide. He talked to my dad for a while.

The insurance agent from Nationwide Insurance said: You sound like a pretty sharp guy. I am surprised that somebody who seems to have as much on the ball as you do is here, fixing wrecked cars. You could do what I do.

My dad asked: Do you mean be a claims adjuster for Nationwide Insurance?

The fellow said: Yes.

Sure enough, a year later, my dad, apparently, became a claims adjuster for Nationwide Insurance. He had a high school degree from Shady Spring High School, which is just outside of Beckley. My mom did as well. Neither of them ever went to college. My dad worked for Nationwide for probably 25 years or more--maybe 30 years--in different places around the country. One of his last assignments for Nationwide Insurance, in its home office of Columbus, OH, was to run the training school for Nationwide's insurance adjusters from all over the country.

Here was a guy with a high school degree, who had served in World War II with honor, who had a chance to get a GI bill benefit and turn it into a lifetime opportunity for himself and his family. It enabled my sister and me to go on and finish school. Thanks to the Navy, I got my Navy scholarship and used some money when overseas to help my sister go to school.

The GI bill means a lot to my family, and it does to a lot of families. I think this is a benefit which has been around now for I believe 74 years this Friday. Think about that--three-quarters of a century this Friday. This Friday marks the 74th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's signing of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 into law. This legislation is more commonly known as the GI bill, and we have always called it the GI bill.

Thanks to the GI bill, millions of returning World War II veterans flooded our Nation's colleges and universities,

and it ushered in an era of unprecedented economic expansion. Since 1944, the GI bill has transformed our country and the lives of millions of veterans, including mine. It really helped to create a middle class in this country, as millions of GIs came back and had a chance to learn a skill and go to college in many cases and have economic opportunities for themselves and their families that never before had been possible.

This week, we are recognizing--I think for the first time--the historical significance of the GI bill. We are going to designate the week from June 18 through June 22 as ``National GI Bill Commemoration Week.''

I want to thank several Senators.

I thank Senator Sullivan from Alaska--a colonel in the Marine Corps.

As the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, I thank Johnny Isakson and Senator Jon Tester for joining me in submitting the resolution in the Senate to designate June 18 through 22 as ``National GI Bill Commemoration Week.''

I thank House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Roe and Ranking Member Walz for submitting the same solution in the House of Representatives.

I also thank the American Legion for its hard work in making this resolution a reality and for advocating for veterans and veterans' education benefits in Congress, as have other service organizations, but I think the American Legion was present at the creation and worked very hard right at the creation to make sure that we had a GI bill and that it would survive.

Because this is GI Bill Week, I want to mention just a few reasons some folks refer to the GI bill as the greatest legislation. We have a greatest generation--my parents' generation. They are the folks who grew up in the Great Depression and went on to do amazing things with their lives.

Some have referred to the GI bill as the greatest legislation, and I have already shared my own story today. The GI bill made immediate financial support, education, and home loan programs available. I bought my first home with the GI bill, with VA mortgage-backed insurance. That is how I insured my mortgage. I was able to get the low rate offered in the GI bill. Millions of veterans bought homes with the help of the GI bill. This combination of opportunities changed the social and economic fabric of our country.

A 1988 report from the Joint Economic Committee estimated that for every $1 the United States invested in the GI bill, about $7 was returned in economic growth. Think about that. For every $1 we invested, there was a $7 return in economic growth thanks to the GI bill.

Close to half a million engineers, close to a quarter of a million accountants, close to a quarter of a million teachers, almost 100,000 scientists, about 67,000 doctors, over 120,000 dentists, and thousands of other professionals entered the workforce of the United States. I might add that they are still entering the workforce of the United States.

The GI bill truly democratized our higher education system, established greater citizenship and civic participation, and empowered the ``greatest generation'' to lead our country following World War II.

Over the past 74 years, Congress has enacted subsequent GI bills to provide educational assistance to new generations of veterans, including the Veterans Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966, the Post- Vietnam Era Veterans' Educational Assistance Act of 1977, the Veterans' Educational Assistance Act of 1984, and most recently the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, which we voted on and debated here, I think in about my eighth year here in the Senate.

After returning from three tours of duty over in Southeast Asia, as I said earlier, I was fortunate enough to be able to use my Vietnam-era GI bill benefits at the University of Delaware.

I close by saying that Senator Young is on the floor. I think he is going to offer an amendment in just a moment. He is a marine, and I am proud to serve with him. The Marine Corps and the Navy have different uniforms but are on the same team. I salute him for his service.

If you go back to 2008, that was when we were falling into the worst recession since the Great Depression, some of us will recall. These pages up here were about half their current age. They are now about 15 or 16 years old. They were about 8 years old when we were falling into the worst economic hole we had been in since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate for our country, as I recall, reached or exceeded 10 percent. The unemployment rate--I was told by my staff--was higher for veterans. It was higher than 10 percent. I have been told it was significantly higher. That was where we were in 2009--at the bottom of the great recession.

Since that time, a lot of veterans have come home. They have been able to take advantage of the current GI bill, the new GI bill--a very generous GI bill. Do you know what has happened? They have found jobs. They have found economic opportunity. They are doing all kinds of things with the education they have gained at sometimes 4-year colleges with advanced degrees, at 2-year colleges, at trade schools.

The unemployment rate for our country has now dropped to under 4 percent. We are in the ninth year of an economic expansion--the longest running economic expansion in our country's history. While the national unemployment rate is about 3.9 percent, the veterans' unemployment rate is no longer above the national average. It is below. The national average is down to about 3.9, and the veterans' unemployment rate is about 3.4. Again, I think we can say that the GI bill has helped to educate a whole new generation of young men and women. The GI bill is in no small part responsible for that.

I commend my colleague Jim Webb, a former Senator from Virginia, who was the author of the legislation in 2008 that a lot of us supported and voted for.

We are also grateful to those veterans and to the people of this country for having confidence in us in making sure that we could make an investment on their behalf and our behalf.

Later this week, on Friday--people ask, what day is Friday? It will be the 74th anniversary of the GI bill. It is one of the greatest pieces of legislation we have ever passed and enacted in this country. It is the gift that keeps on giving, and it hopefully will continue to do so for a long time.

Mr. President, there are two Senators on the floor who lead the Veterans' Affairs Committee. I ask unanimous consent for Senator Young, who is the author of an amendment that has been offered, to speak for 5 minutes and for Senator Tester to speak for 3 minutes.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. President, I think we are going to have a couple of votes shortly on amendments. Senator Alexander and I will offer one to the underlying bill. I think Senator Coons will offer another one along with, I believe, Senator Rounds.

Amendment No. 2920 to Amendment No. 2910

As Members are returning from their caucus lunches, I will kick it off and lay the groundwork for the amendment Senator Alexander and I will be offering. I believe we have Senate amendment No. 2920 at the desk on behalf of Senator Alexander and myself.

I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 2920 be called up and made the pending business.

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

Mr. President, the amendment Senator Alexander and I are offering is a bipartisan effort, as you can tell. It is the result of discussions between Senator Alexander's Appropriations Committee staff and the staff who works for us on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The amendment would require the Corps to report to Congress on the status of Corps project expenses. The amendment would allow project sponsors to receive a final cost accounting of project dollars so that they understand how those dollars are spent and know whether there are excess unspent funds and whether those funds are being returned to State and local government or to the Federal Government.

As many of our colleagues know, the Senate is getting ready to address soon--probably, if not this month, then next month--the water resources development legislation that Senator Barrasso, our chairman on Environment and Public Works, and I and other colleagues have worked on. It was reported unanimously out of the Environment and Public Works Committee. That bill, which is called America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2018, makes investments in updating and expanding water infrastructure systems throughout the country. Along with reauthorizing the ongoing work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, our legislation addresses a wide variety of priorities. Again, it was reported unanimously out of our committee about a month or so ago, 21 to 0.

In the drafting of this legislation, several concerns were raised about how the Corps selects and prioritizes projects for construction, as well as what happens to excess local cost share dollars at the end of a project. For example, in my home State of Delaware, our State agency that sponsors the beach renourishment and other shoreline protection projects has been asking the Corps for a detailed balance sheet for years to understand how funds are being allocated on various projects and how local tax dollars are being spent. Unfortunately, that material has never been provided despite repeated requests.

Delaware is not alone in this. The Senator from Kansas, Mr. Moran, has brought to my attention an issue of malfunctioning radial arm gates--also called Tainter gates--on a reservoir in his home State of Kansas. The local irrigation district was billed for the repairs of the gates, which was added as an additional cost to their annual share of the operations and maintenance of that project.

Although the irrigation district has been paying on this bill, they never knew how much it actually cost to repair the gates. It took my staff and Senator Barrasso's staff to find out that the total cost of repairs was $31 million. This means, according to the Corps, that the remaining local cost share is about $5 million. However, because there is not a detailed accounting, the question has been raised about whether the Corps billed the irrigation district correctly. If the Corps had accounted for this program correctly, the cost share should have been about $1 million. That difference of $4 million may not sound like a lot to us here in the Senate or in the Federal Government, but $4 million to a local rural irrigation district is a lot of money.

Sadly, as I said before, this data has not been provided to many cost share partners, as is the law, and we need to get to the bottom of why and where it is happening.

Senator Alexander and I believe that this report that is being requested sets the stage for more transparency and better budgeting at the Corps, which is also a theme in the America's Water Infrastructure Act that we will be addressing, I hope, next month.

Let me conclude by once more thanking Chairman Alexander and his staff for working with my staff and me and also with Senator Barrasso on the water resources development legislation and on this amendment. It truly is a bipartisan amendment and a good one to start off the discussion on the underlying bill. We are pleased to be a part of this, and we look forward to passing this important piece of legislation that is critical to funding a central piece of our Nation's economic infrastructure.

I encourage support for my amendment.

I yield the floor to Senator Alexander and look forward to working with him as we go forward.

Mr. President, earlier when I spoke about the amendment with Senator Coons as the lead Democrat, I mentioned the wrong cosponsor. I would correct myself to say it is not Senator Rounds, who does great legislation, but in this case, it is Senator Gardner.

I yield back our time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that privileges of the floor for the remainder of this Congress be granted to the following members of my staff: Andrew Wishnia, Zachary Pilchen, Christina Baysinger, and Skylar Bayer.

Madam President, good morning. I looked down, and the Presiding Officers have changed. It is nice to be here with you this morning.

Our Presiding Officer is tied to the military--Army colonel, highly distinguished. She comes from Iowa and travels home every weekend. She covers every county in Iowa. In a year, I cover every county in Delaware, sometimes in a day. We only have 3; she has probably 100 or so. But we have the opportunity to go home frequently to our respective States and to be with our families and the folks we work for. I love doing it, and I know our Presiding Officer does as well.

People come up to me--I go back and forth on the train just about every

night and will do that tonight, as I did last night. I feel very fortunate to be able to be that close to my constituents. I serve in the Senate with my colleagues and actually live in my home State. It is a blessing.

I think I am approachable. I know our Presiding Officer is. Senator Cornyn is approachable. People come up and talk to us all the time, which is good--which is good. Sometimes I just want to say hello. Sometimes I will ask them how they are doing. More often than not, lately, people say: I wouldn't want your job for anything. You have the worst job in the world.

I say: No, no. I feel really lucky.

Throughout the 200-and-some years we have been a country, only about 1,800 people have been privileged to serve in this body, and we are fortunate that we are able to serve here today, especially during these challenging times.

Since the 2016 election, however, a broad number of Delawareans and American citizens have approached me, whether in the Rite Supermarket or on the Amtrak train, to share with me their sense of uncertainty and their fears regarding the trajectory of our country. Specifically, they have expressed their uncertainty about the future of the special counsel's investigation and their fears that the President may put his own personal interests above the interests of all Americans and the Constitution of our country.

As we pass the 1-year mark following Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein's appointment of former FBI Director Bob Mueller to become special counsel, I think it is worth remembering why the investigation began, what it has uncovered, where it is headed, and how we can uphold the rule of law and protect the investigation from political interference as we seek to ascertain the truth.

During the 2016 Presidential campaign, our democracy was attacked by a foreign adversary. No shots were fired. No bombs were dropped. But let me be as clear as I can be. Russia attacked the United States of America. Using sophisticated cyber warfare, Russia interfered in our electoral process. As they have in other Western democracies, Russia borrowed from their tried-and-true playbook. Russian internet trolls posed as American citizens on Facebook and on Twitter. Russian shell companies funded political propaganda online, all with the intent of pitting us against one another and spreading this information among the American electorate.

We also know that our Nation's election infrastructure was targeted by the Kremlin and that Russian cyber attacks penetrated voting machines in some of our States--not all of our States but a number of them.

Thomas Jefferson often wrote about the truth, including a famous description of a few truths that we still consider self-evident; namely, that all men--I would add all women--are created equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Later in life, Jefferson remarked that ``we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.'' Those words really ring true today, don't they?

Jefferson also used to say something to this effect, and I am paraphrasing: The people--that is, the people of the United States-- know the truth. We won't make a mistake. If people know the truth, they won't make a mistake.

Since the attack by Russia on our democracy, many patriotic Americans within Federal law enforcement and our intelligence agencies have been heeding Jefferson's advice and seeking to follow the truth. Here is what we have learned.

In a declassified report released in January of 2017, our own intelligence agencies told us that ``Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at . . . undermin[ing] public faith in the U.S. democratic process.''

Further, our own intelligence agencies told us that ``Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow's longstanding desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order.''

Those same agencies, our own intelligence agencies--I think there are 17 in all that combined to provide this report--told us that it will happen again: ``Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin- ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes.''

During recent testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Director of National Intelligence and our former Senate colleague Dan Coats--a good friend of many of us from Indiana--said these words: ``There should be no doubt that Russia perceives that its past efforts have been successful and views the 2018 midterm U.S. elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations.''

I will read those words again. Our colleague Dan Coats, who sat over there and served with us for many years--he and I served together in the House before that, and he was an Ambassador to Germany, but now he is the Director of our National Intelligence--said: ``There should be no doubt that Russia perceives that its past efforts have been successful and views the 2018 midterm U.S. elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations.'' Then he added: ``Frankly, the United States is under attack.''

I approve that message. I don't welcome that message, but we need to hear that message, and we need to take it to heart.

In response, we have a responsibility--not to any political party but to our Constitution and to the American people--to band together as we would following any attack on our country. We have a responsibility to fight back, to protect and safeguard our democracy, and to ensure that it never happens again.

We also have a responsibility--again one that rises above political party--to determine whether the Trump campaign may have had inappropriate contact with Russia during that campaign.

This responsibility is shared between Congress and the executive branch, including the different committees in the House and Senate, as well as the Department of Justice, the FBI, and our intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, our President has rejected this responsibility from the start.

Let's not forget that President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey and publicly stated it was because of the Russia investigation. President Trump told NBC News: ``When I decided to [fire Comey] I said to myself, I said, `You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won.' '' Those are President Trump's words to NBC News.

Because Attorney General Sessions has recused himself from matters involving Russia and the 2016 election, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a lifelong Republican appointed by President Trump to his current position, made the decision to appoint a special counsel to continue the Russia investigation.

Let me take a moment to remind the American people about the background and the character of this special counsel. Bob Mueller has spent his life serving our country with distinction.

Our Presiding Officer: Army, highly decorated.

Yours truly: Navy, 23 years, all in Active Duty and Reserve.

Here is what Bob Mueller received in some of his decorations as an officer in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam war--a war in which I served as well. He received the Bronze Star, and he earned two Navy Commendation Medals and the Purple Heart--all as an officer in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam war.

After a career in Federal law enforcement and private law practice, President George W. Bush nominated him to serve as our FBI Director, and Bob Mueller guided the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. A steady hand during uncertain times, Director Mueller gained the respect and the admiration of the men and women of the FBI, as well as those of us here on Capitol Hill.

During my tenure as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I had the opportunity to meet with Director Mueller on a range of issues, including protecting our Nation from cyber security threats. Let me just say that I think that maybe in the 17 years I have been here, the best briefing I have ever received on cyber security was from Bob

Mueller. The very best briefing I ever received was from Bob Mueller.

I also got to know him personally. I know his wife. My wife and I know his wife. We believe that he is guided by very strong core values: Figure out the right thing to do, and just do it--not when it is easy, not when it is expedient, but when it is right. Treat other people the way we want to be treated. Focus on excellence in everything we do. If it isn't perfect, make it better. And when you know you are right, be sure you are right. Never give up. Those are his values. I suspect those are the values of many of us who serve here.

Bob Mueller is a man of unimpeachable integrity. There may be no person better suited to this task of special counsel. I have every confidence that he will follow the truth wherever it may lead him and those he leads. But don't just take my word for it. When the Deputy Attorney General appointed him to the position of special counsel a little more than a year ago, his selection drew a particularly resounding endorsement from those of us who serve here in the Senate-- not just on this side but, in particular, on the other side of the aisle.

Here is what John McCain said about Bob Mueller: ``Robert Mueller is a great choice for special counsel.'' John went on to add that he is ``confident that Mr. Mueller will fully investigate all aspects of Russia's interference in our election.''

Senator Burr said: ``By having someone like Bob Mueller head [the] investigation assures the American people that there's no undue influence, be it here or be it at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue or within the Justice Department or FBI.'' Those are the words of Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a Republican.

Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with whom I served in the House, said this about Bob Mueller: ``Robert Mueller is a superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity.''

I have not known Robert Mueller for as long as some who serve here, but I have known him for a while. I have had a chance to work with him on some important issues and matters for our country and for the security of our country. He is as fine as any public servant I have ever known and served with.

Unfortunately, President Trump has not been as praiseworthy of our special counsel as the Senators I just quoted and the former House Speaker I just quoted. President Trump has repeatedly used his Twitter account to call Special Counsel Mueller's investigation a ``witch hunt.'' A witch hunt? In February, 13 Russian individuals and 3 Russian companies were charged with breaking U.S. law and interfering in the 2016 election--13. The indictment details an elaborate, coordinated scheme to disrupt our election. Moreover, three Trump campaign officials have pled guilty to crimes that include lying to the FBI about contacts with Russia during the campaign and a conspiracy to defraud the United States, and the former Trump campaign manager is currently facing similar charges.

Despite the progress of the investigation, we know from news reports that President Trump repeatedly has considered firing Director Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. That would be a grave mistake. That would be a very grave mistake.

Instead of exercising Presidential leadership and holding Russia accountable and safeguarding our upcoming election, President Trump continues to use dangerous rhetoric directed toward the special counsel's investigation, as well as at the people who work for us, who serve at the FBI and the Department of Justice, and who deserve our thanks, not our scorn.

Instead of exercising Presidential leadership and holding Russia accountable and safeguarding our upcoming election, President Trump is now demanding a counterinvestigation.

Instead of exercising Presidential leadership and holding Russia accountable in safeguarding our elections, President Trump is now undermining the special counsel's investigation while risking the identity of American intelligence sources.

Despite this failure of Presidential leadership, the special counsel's investigation must go on.

A Methodist minister in Seaford, in Southern Delaware, Pastor Reynolds--a wonderful man, now deceased--gave me advice during my career, particularly when I was Governor. One day, he said: Governor, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

I said: Would you say that again, Pastor?

He said: The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

In this case, I think the main thing is for us to find out and ascertain the truth. Special Counsel Mueller must be allowed to follow the truth, no matter where it leads, no matter how uncomfortable that makes President Trump or other people, no matter how uncomfortable that makes Vladimir Putin. We must continue to ensure Special Counsel Mueller has the time and resources he needs to follow the truth and bring this investigation to a conclusion.

We must also protect the special counsel from undue political influence, and send a strong signal to President Trump that firing Robert Mueller or Rod Rosenstein, without clear legal justification, would pose a grave threat to our constitutional system of checks and balances.

To be clear, we can't pass a bill to end President Trump's erratic threats on Twitter, though I know there are a few people--some here-- who would support such a proposal. However, here is what we can do: We can pass a bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Coons, Tillis, Booker, and Graham, to protect the special counsel's investigation. The legislation, called the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act, would ensure that the special counsel can only be fired for good cause by a senior Justice Department official, and the reason must be provided in writing. It will ensure that in the event of his firing, the special counsel can seek expedited judicial review of his removal, and it will also preserve all the documents and materials related to this investigation.

I thank our four colleagues--two Democrats, two Republicans--for introducing this bipartisan bill. I support it and urge its swift passage. Passing this bill will demonstrate to the American people that despite the uncertainties and maybe the fears at this moment, we still have a system of checks and balances which still works, as it has been working for 240 years.

There are more constitutions in this world modeled after the U.S. Constitution than any other constitution ever. Ours is the most emulated and longest living Constitution on the face of the Earth. It has an intricate system of checks and balances. Our Founding Fathers-- who convened in Philadelphia 240 years ago--developed the Constitution we know of today and sent it out to the Thirteen Colonies to debate and consider whether they wanted to ratify it. The first State to ratify the Constitution was the State of Delaware, and the Constitution is something we especially revere in the First State, but if we allow the system of checks and balances as called for in the Constitution to work, it will eventually lead us to the truth--which is what we should all seek, not just in this Senate, not just in the Congress, not just in one party or the other, not just any one State or the other but all of us.

If the unthinkable were to happen and the special counsel were fired on a whim, I believe the legislation I just talked about would help us preserve the Russia investigation and the rule of law.

Like Special Counsel Mueller, Congress must not be afraid to follow the truth. We must not be distracted by the President's tweets and other attempts to undermine this important investigation. We must keep the main thing the main thing. Special Counsel Mueller and his team must be allowed to finish this investigation, and Congress--especially our Republican colleagues--must do our part to protect the investigation and insist the President stop the political interference and gamesmanship.

Taken together, I believe these actions will allow us to emerge from this especially challenging moment in our country, as we often have following other crises throughout our history. We will emerge stronger and more resilient, and we will emerge deeply proud that we upheld our responsibility to the Constitution and to the American people.

In closing, I want to mention that a lot of times people come up to me--maybe not every day but several times a week. Some are Democrat, some are Republican, some are Independent, some are probably not even registered to vote. They say: I fear for the future of our country. I don't think it has ever been this bad before. We have never seen it this bad before.

I remind them of the words from Harry Truman, who once served in this body as a Senator from Missouri, later as Vice President, and then as President of our country. Harry Truman used to say: ``The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.'' Think about that, the only thing new in the world is the history we forgot or never learned.

My sister and I grew up in the town of Danville, VA, right on the North Carolina border, the last capital of the confederacy. A lot of people think the last capital of the confederacy was Richmond, VA, but it wasn't. Jefferson Davis and those closest to him got out of Richmond, headed south, and ended up in Danville. That is where my sister and I grew up, and we saw prejudice and discrimination as little kids up close and personal. I will never forget it. There are some people in Danville still fighting the Civil War 150 years afterwards, at least in their minds.

During the Civil War, 800,000 men were killed on both sides, and hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were wounded, crippled. When the war was over, what happened? When the war was over, our President was assassinated. His successor, Andrew Johnson, the Senator from Tennessee, who also served here, was impeached.

Somehow, we got through the Civil War, with the assassination of a President and the impeachment of a President, and we made it to the 20th century--just in time to fight not one but two World Wars. We won them, led the world and our allies to victory in the Cold War, and led the world out of the Great Depression.

Then, when the Sun came up on the 21st century, on January 1, 2001, here is where America was as a nation: We had the strongest economy on Earth, and we had the most productive workforce on Earth. For the first time since 1968, we actually had a balanced budget--not just one, not two, not three but four balanced budgets--the last 4 years of the Clinton Presidency. While we had a Democratic President and administration, we had a Republican Congress. If I am not mistaken, the chairman of the House Budget Committee was very much involved in the balanced budgets, a Republican from Ohio, our friend John Kasich, former Congressman, now Governor of Ohio.

So we had the strongest economy and the most productive workforce, four balanced budgets in a row, and, on January 1, 2001, we were the most admired Nation on Earth, and we had the strongest force for justice on Earth. That is where we were, after all the bad stuff and all those challenges of 150 years, beginning with and following the Civil War.

If we can get through all that, we can get through this. In the words of Jefferson, if the American people know the truth, we will not make a mistake. That is what Bob Mueller and his folks are trying to get to, and it is important that they succeed.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I was filling up my Chrysler Town & Country minivan with gas last weekend, and I noticed the price in Delaware is up to about $2.80 a gallon for regular gas. That is up by close to $1 above what it was not that long ago.

I remember that the first time I bought gasoline in Delaware, I was right out of the Navy. I served in the Vietnam war as a naval flight officer, and I moved from California to Delaware. I drove my car to a gas station right in the middle of a gas war.

I actually benefited from the gas war in 1969 in Texas. I was driving from Pensacola, FL, to the San Diego Naval Station. I filled up my Volkswagen Commandeer for less than $2 during the gas war in some little town in Texas.

Fast forward to, I think, 1970 through 1974, and we are having a different kind of war. It is with OPEC. They are putting the squeeze on us and much of the rest of the world by reducing the amount of oil they are bringing out of the ground and driving up prices.

Then we had an oil blockade, and things really got interesting for a while. I am not sure who was President then, whether it was Gerald Ford, who was succeeded by Jimmy Carter. But somebody--maybe it was Democrats and Republicans--finally said: You know, we have to be smarter than this. We continue to be dependent on foreign oil. They can put a blockade in place and essentially make it difficult for us to get oil and pay the prices that they want.

So Democrats, Republicans, the President, and Congress, working together, decided we should increase the fuel efficiency of our cars in this country. We hadn't done that for quite a while. They put in place fuel efficiency standards for cars. We stepped up the mileage requirements for a period of years, and after several years, that target level stopped. We reached a ceiling; I think it was like 27 miles per gallon, as I recall. But after that, the CAFE standards stayed right there for years, maybe for a couple of decades.

We kind of revisited the issue, I want to say in 2007, and said: You know, that doesn't make much sense. Why don't we begin to increase fuel efficiency again? We did so with bipartisan legislation. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Ted Stevens, and I, along with others, worked on it and passed legislation to increase--not dramatically, but for a while, for a number of years--fuel efficiency standards for cars, light trucks, and SUVs.

When we fell into the great recession in 2007, 2008, 2009, we saw the auto companies--a couple of them, Chrysler and I believe GM--going into bankruptcy. They got a huge bailout from our taxpayers, from the government. I was one of the people who sponsored and supported that. But in return for their getting that kind of help, they agreed to a

more rigorous increase in fuel efficiency standards going forward.

There is going to be talk tomorrow in the White House about whether we should continue to raise fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks and SUVs.

Interestingly enough, the CEOs from a number of American auto companies and those that have plants here but are actually maybe foreign-based, foreign-headquartered auto companies are going to meet with the President tomorrow, and they are going to be talking about what should be done with these fuel efficiency standards. Should we continue to ramp them up? Under current law, they are going to continue to be ramped up until about 2024, 2025, and then after that, there is really nothing in the law that says what should happen after 2025.

There are some in the White House--maybe the President but maybe some others in the White House--who think that we ought to basically hold them in place where they are and not continue to increase fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks and SUVs. The administration has been basically suggesting a message or a path forward that says: Let's just sort of hold it in place--kind of like we did for 20 years on the heels of the Arab oil embargo.

So the White House will be meeting tomorrow with these auto executives, and it will be an interesting conversation. I expect the President is going to say: Look, we are going to give you a break. We don't think you ought to be building cars, trucks, and vans that nobody wants to buy. People want to buy big vehicles, fuel-inefficient vehicles. It doesn't matter; they are basically going to stop increasing fuel efficiency standards. That should help the idea of the White House and the auto companies to say: That should be what you want. That should be what you need.

The message that I think the President will hear from the auto industry is going to probably be a surprising one for him because that is not what they are going to be asking for.

I don't know if our Presiding Officer makes customer calls. I do. I was doing it when I was Governor and as a Congressman and a treasurer before that. I visit businesses large and small, year in and year out.

At one time, Delaware built more cars, trucks, and vans per capita than any other State in the United States. We had a plant in Newark, DE, near the University of Delaware, and 4,000 people worked there for Chrysler. We had another 4,000 who worked at the GM plant not far from here, between Wilmington and Newark. We lost them both during the great recession. We lost them both, 8,000 jobs, just like that. So I like to stay close to the auto industry. I think it is important to have a vibrant and strong auto industry in this country. I have done a lot of customer calls over the years to auto manufacturers, including Chrysler and GM, for reasons that are important for Delaware, but I have visited a bunch of other companies as well.

When I do customer calls, I ask three questions of whomever I am visiting. I ask: How are you doing? How are we doing--``we'' being the State of Delaware, whether as the Governor of Delaware or from the Federal Government. How are we doing, and what can we do to help? How are you doing? How are we doing? What can we do to help?

I hope that during this conversation that will take place about 25 hours from now--I hope the President is in a listening mood. I hope he will say: Well, what do you need? Because here is what he is likely to hear from them: They are not asking for relief and to not have to comply with fuel efficiency standards. Here is what they are asking for: They are asking for some flexibility in the near years, between 2021 and 2025, and in return for some flexibility in the targets for fuel efficiency during those years, they are willing to agree to more aggressive targets in the outyears, between 2025 and 2030.

The auto industry knows that by then--I don't know if the majority of vehicles being built in this country will be electric-powered, battery- powered, maybe powered with fuel cells, but we are going to see a revolution here in this country and, frankly, around the world. In the rest of the world, they are going to be building vehicles--cars, trucks, vans, SUVs--that are much more fuel efficient and, frankly, far less polluting. We in this country will get to compete in a world marketplace against those competitors. How do we better ensure that we are able to compete?

So what the auto industry is going to say is, give us some flexibility in the near term--2021 to 2025--and we are willing to work with more rigorous standards thereafter. Give us some certainty.

Currently, the folks in California and about 10 other States who support California have the ability to, under the law, have their own separate standards, fuel efficiency standards, compared to the rest of the country. When this was first envisioned, the auto companies almost had a heart attack. They said that the idea of having to build one set of models--say for a Ford--or having to build one version of that model for California and 10 or 11 other States and then something different for the other maybe 40 States--they didn't want to worry about that. They didn't want to have to do that. They know we need to be more energy efficient and less polluting. They were concerned about having to do that--two versions of every model. So it has been worked out that California can continue to have its own standards, but the auto industry--and, frankly, other countries, too, that build vehicles--will build one version of one model for each of the models that are sold in this country.

Tomorrow, the auto companies are going to say: We need to be able to continue to do that. We don't need to be building two versions of the same automobile for every car and truck and SUV that is sold in this country.

The automobile industry is going to say to the President that there is no need to kick California to the curb, or these other States that support that position; what we do need is what I said earlier--some flexibility in the fuel efficiency targets in the near term, up to 2025, and after that, more rigorous standards going forward.

One of the things I learned a long time before I was Governor was that among the things that businesses need are certainty and predictability. They need certainty. They need predictability. That is especially true in the auto industry, where the lead time building a new car or truck or SUV or van can be 5, 6, 7 years. That is why this is an important conversation to have tomorrow.

I learned long before I was Governor that Governors don't create jobs, Presidents don't create jobs, Senators don't create jobs, and mayors don't create jobs. What we do is we help create a nurturing environment for job creation. Among the things that help provide that nurturing environment are predictability and certainty with respect to our laws, with respect to our regulations. It is also helpful to have the Federal Government and maybe colleges and universities provide some money for research and development. Some of the R&D that has enabled our auto fleet--our trucks, our light trucks and SUVs--to be more energy efficient--some of the R&D provided, appropriated here by this body, has been used to make us more competitive in world markets.

Our tax policy is designed to encourage people to buy more energy- efficient vehicles. We use the government's purchasing power to buy more energy-efficient vehicles so they will be making a market, so they will be more likely to be able to sell them and build them in quantity.

I would just conclude by saying: Mr. President, when you meet with these folks tomorrow, carmakers from across the country and around the world, I hope that you won't just tell them what you think they want to hear but that you will ask them: What do you need? What do you need?

I think the message he will hear will be quite different from the message he is prepared to give them.

If we really want to help the domestic auto industry, we can do that. It is not by rolling back or freezing in place fuel efficiency standards; it is by helping us to get to the next level using the kind of technology in our vehicles that we can sell around the world and compete against the best in the rest of the world.

I think that is it for me. I don't see anybody else on the floor asking to speak, so 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 don't know if the Presiding Officer was able to be present in the House of Representatives earlier today when the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, spoke to us about a variety of things, including the Paris accords, the Iran deal, the long history we have between their country and our country; the fact that the American Revolution and the French Revolution were really contemporaneous. We share the birth of democracy in our country and, to an extent, in their country at roughly the same time.

Those who have studied American history know that one of the ways we won our freedom and independence from the tyranny of that British throne was with the support of the French. We have not always agreed with one another in the years since then, but mostly we have. The bond between their Nation and our Nation continues to be strong, not just between our leaders but also between our people.

We are fortunate to have a number of French tourists who come to our country. From time to time, some of us are fortunate to go to that part of the world and to visit them, to know them as human beings. The bond between our countries is a benefit for both them and for us, and, I think, for the world.

I have never come to the floor to start reading someone else's speech, but I am really tempted to read some parts of what President Emmanuel Macron said today. I speak a little bit of French. I spoke to him briefly in French before he gave his remarks. His English is a lot better than my French. I want to mention a couple of things that he said and add some comments of my own.

He talked a bit about the Paris Agreement, and he talked about climate change. These were his words, and I think they are worth repeating and reflecting on.

He said:

I believe in building a better future for our children

which requires offering them a planet that is still habitable

in 25 years. Some people think that securing current

industries and their jobs is more urgent than transforming

our economies to meet the global challenge of climate change.

He went on to say:

I hear these concerns, but we must find a smooth transition

to a low-carbon economy. Because what is the meaning of our

life, really, if we work and live destroying our planet while

sacrificing the future of our children?

President Macron then said:

What is the meaning of our life if our conscious decision

is to reduce the opportunities for our children or for our

grandchildren? By polluting the oceans, not mitigating carbon

dioxide emissions, and destroying our biodiversity, we're

killing our planet.

He went on to say:

Let us face it. There is no planet B.

I turned to my colleague sitting next to me and I said, I am going to steal that line: There is no planet B.

He is right.

I like to say this is the only planet we have, and it is going to be the only one we ever have in our lifetime, and probably the lifetime of anybody around this planet.

Then President Macron went on to say:

On this issue, it may happen that we have disagreements

between the United States and France. It may happen. Like in

all families. But that's, for me, a short-term disagreement.

In the long run, we will have to face the same realities, and

we're citizens of this same planet, so we will have to face

it. We have to work together with business leaders and local

communities. Let us work together in order to make our planet

great again--

Isn't that terrific? ``Let's work together to make our planet great again''--not just to make America great again; not just to make France great again but to make our planet great again--

and create new jobs and new opportunities. While safeguarding

our earth.

He concluded this part of his speech by saying:

And I'm sure, one day, the United States will come back and

join the Paris Agreement. And I'm sure we can work together

to fulfill, with you, the ambitions of the global compact on

the environment.

I had the opportunity last week to speak at the University of Delaware to a couple hundred graduate students. It is an annual gathering that they have and they were nice enough to invite me to come and talk to them about leadership. One of the things I mentioned is that leaders are aspirational. We appeal to people's better angels. Leaders unite, not divide. Leaders build bridges, not walls.

I thought we were privileged today to hear that kind of leader. When I spoke to him in French, I wished him well. I wished him good luck, and I thanked him for joining us in the kind of message he brought to us.

I don't suspect he would have any reason to know this, but when people got up today and went to work in this country, 3 million people went to work in jobs that probably didn't exist 20, 30 years ago--3 million people. The jobs they went to work on are jobs where they are creating renewable energy, sustainable energy, clean energy, carbon- free energy, or they are going to work in jobs which conserve energy so we just use a whole lot less altogether. Think about that. Three million people

in this country went to work in those kinds of jobs. We are adding 75,000, 100,000 of those jobs every year.

I have always had a close relationship with the auto industry until about 6 or 7 years ago. We had a GM plant and a Chrysler plant in Delaware, with about 4,000 employees in each of them at one time. We lost them both at the bottom of the great recession. I have always, and even now, tried to work closely with the auto industry, even though they don't have the kind of presence today in Delaware they once did, but they have provided a lot of jobs. Part of the supply chain is in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and other places.

Sometimes people say we cannot have clean air, clean water, and a strong economy. I think that is a false choice. The President of France as much as said that today.

It was not a Frenchmen, but it was Einstein who said that ``in adversity lies opportunity.'' I think if we are smart about it and we look at climate change, global warming, sea level rise, and pollution of one kind or the other, there is actually great opportunity that each of those present to us. They present difficulties and challenges but also great opportunity.

I will never forget a couple of years ago what happened in a hearing in the Environment and Public Works Committee on the issue of mercury emissions from powerplants. We had, I think, four or five, maybe six witnesses. The first four or five witnesses said: We cannot reduce mercury emissions by 80 percent over the next decade. I think that is what they said. They said we cannot; it is just not possible for us to reduce mercury emissions.

Why do we want to reduce mercury? Because it is up in the air; it is carried by the winds, the rains; it ends up in the water; it ends up in fish; we eat fish. It is harmful especially for pregnant women. They give birth, in many cases, to children with brain damage. So we had this hearing, and the first four or five witnesses, all from coal-fired utilities, said: We can't do it. Eighty percent is not a reasonable target for mercury reduction.

The last witness was from a trade association whose members actually focus on developing technology to reduce harmful emissions of all kinds, including mercury emissions from powerplants. Our last witness said: I think we can not only meet that target of 80 percent reduction in 10 years, I think we can do better than that, and I think we can do it in less than 10 years. Do you know what? He was right. It turned out he was right. We ended up with a 90-percent reduction in mercury emissions, and that technology has been used in this country.

The nice thing about it is that technology--there are plenty of coal- fired plants around the world where they need to reduce mercury, and we are selling that technology all over the world. So that is really one of the opportunities the President of France was talking about--looking at adversity and finding opportunities, including climate change and other kinds of pollution; pollution of our water, you name it.

Anyway, it was just a joy to hear him speak today. I was really impressed.

We have a bunch of pages sitting in here today. I don't know if they were able to hear the speech, but if you got to hear the speech today, raise your hands. I think it had to be uplifting for young people because he was focused very much on the future. He was not just looking back but focusing very much on young people. I liked that a lot.

One of the other things he spoke about was the Iran deal. For years and years, as some of my colleagues may recall, we suspected that Iran was secretly developing nuclear weapons. We didn't know for sure. We suspected the worst. In the last administration in this country, we went to work with a new leader in Iran to see if we might be able to better ensure that they are not going to develop nuclear weapons, and we provided safeguards and early detection systems so that if they do, we will know about it. In the meantime, we placed a lot of economic sanctions on Iran, trying to get them to give up what we thought was the development of nuclear weapons. They always said, ``No, we are not doing that,'' but we didn't believe them.

At the end of the day, we looked at entering into this agreement between the United States and Iran and five other nations. Iran had to open themselves up to intrusive inspections. They had to be willing to give up some of the more modern centrifuges they had for developing highly enriched uranium. To the extent that they are willing to do that and continue to put up with intrusive inspections by the atomic energy agency, then we would gradually reduce and relax the economic sanctions.

The intrusive inspections have continued now for several years, and the agencies responsible for this say, so far, they are keeping their word. Does that mean they are always going to keep their word? Not necessarily. Does that mean we should be less resolute in watching what they are doing? No. We should be resolute and hold their feet to the fire. But to the extent that they are keeping their word, I think the idea of lifting our sanctions--along with other countries as part of these accords and joint agreement--is good, not only for Iran but also for us.

We have this agreement because we felt it was important for inspectors to have a window into that country to see what they are doing. We have that. So far, it seems to be working.

Our President now says that in a couple weeks he would like to close out of the Iran deal. If we do that, my fear is they will simply go back to a secret program to develop nuclear weapons. That will encourage the Saudis to do the same and maybe lay a precursor or put us in motion to have a nuclear arms race in that part of the world. Sunni versus Shia, Saudis versus Iran--that is not a competition that will end well.

I am not going to read everything President Macron said today about the Iran deal, but a fair amount is worth repeating. I will do that, and then add some comments of my own:

As for Iran, our objective is clear: Iran should never

possess any nuclear weapons. Not now, not in 5 years, not in

10 years. Never.

``Never'' is a long time.

But this policy should never lead us to war in the Middle

East. We must ensure stability, and respect sovereignty of

the nations, including that one of Iran, which represents a

great civilization.

Let us not replicate past mistakes in the region. Let us

not be naive on one side. Let us not create new walls

ourselves on the other side.

There is an existing framework--called the JCPOA--to

control the nuclear activity of Iran. We signed it at the

initiative of the United States. We signed it, both the

United States and France. That is why we cannot say we should

just get rid of it like that. But it is true to say that this

agreement may not address all concerns, very important

concerns. This is true. But we should not abandon it without

having something substantial, more substantial, instead. That

is my position. That is why France will not leave the JCPOA,

because we signed it.

Your President and your country will have to take, in the

current days and weeks, [its own] responsibilities regarding

this issue.

What I want to do, and what we decided together with your

President, is that we can work on a more comprehensive deal

addressing all these concerns. That is why we have to work on

this more comprehensive deal based--as discussed with

President Trump yesterday--on four pillars.

And then President Macron went on to talk about those four pillars.

[No. 1] the substance of the existing agreement, especially

if you decide to leave it, [No. 2] the post-2025 period, in

order to be sure we will never have any nuclear activity for

Iran, [No. 3] the containment of military influence of the

Iranian regime in the region, and [No. 4] the monitoring of

ballistic activity.

The Iranians have a penchant for firing and testing ballistic missiles. They say that it is not offensive; it is defensive. But one would wonder about that. Questioning minds way wonder.

I think these four pillars, the ones I addressed before the

General Assembly of the United Nations last September, are

the ones which cover the legitimate fears of the United

States and our allies in the region.

I think we have to start working now on these four pillars

to build this new, comprehensive [deal] and to be sure that,

whatever the decision of the United States will be, we will

not leave the floor to the absence of rules.

We will not leave the floor to these conflicts of power in

the Middle East, we will not . . . [increase] tensions and

potential war.

That is my position, and I think we can work together to

build this comprehensive deal for the whole region, for our

people, because I think it fairly addresses our concerns.

That is my position.

I have heard several Presidents speak to joint sessions of Congress over the years; I have heard any number of leaders from other nations speak before joint meetings of Congress in the years I have been privileged to serve here. I don't know that I have seen a warmer and more enthusiastic welcome than the one we witnessed today for the President of our close ally, our friends, the French. I hope the standing ovations he repeatedly received reflect not just the emotion of the moment but reflect the belief that he may be on to something here.

One of my colleagues whom I was sitting next to during President Macron's remarks said that the President of France was delivering an elegant rebuke to our President, and he was so skillful in doing it, it was hard to tell that was what he was doing. Maybe that is true. But I think he might be on to something. He didn't just come up with it today. This is something that President Macron has been talking about for days, weeks, months--at least since last fall.

I hope our President, with whom he had a chance to spend some time, might say: Let's drill down on that. I think you might be on to something.

Meanwhile, I don't know what others have been saying about former Secretary of State Tillerson, but I thought he was an unlikely person to be Secretary of State. He had been the leader of Exxon, knew the world, and knew the world's leaders. It was unusual to have someone with that pedigree to be our Secretary of State. He exceeded expectations, at least for me. I think he was fired by the President a couple of months ago through Twitter, and that was it--no ceremony, no handshake, no thank-you for taking on a tough job and doing his best.

I would say to Rex Tillerson: Thank you for your willingness to give it a shot, for taking on a tough job in a tough administration. We may not agree with everything he said or thought, but he took on a tough job, and we are grateful for that.

The question is, Who is going to succeed him. I have asked to meet with the President's nominee. They have not been able to find time to do that, which I think is unfortunate.

If we had had the time to meet, I would have wanted to talk with him about a number of issues. One of those would be the Iran nuclear deal and how he feels about it. I would like to hear his thoughts on what President Macron suggested today as a possible alternative follow-on to the JCPOA. But I am not going to have the opportunity to do that.

I was reminded recently of something John Kennedy once said. I hope I have this right: America should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear negotiating. Think about that. Our country should never negotiate out of fear, but we shouldn't be afraid to negotiate.

I think President Macron may have given us an opening here, and the opening is to come up with something that could be even more effective than the JCPOA. If we are smart, the door has been opened and we will walk through it instead of walking backward.

While we prepare to vote, maybe tomorrow, on the nominee to be our next Secretary of State, one of my disappointments is not having had a chance to--not negotiate with him but to share with him what President Macron had to say, to try to get his take on that and, if he were Secretary of State, how he might pursue this opening. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen.

I notice my neighbor from across the border in Pennsylvania has risen to address the Senate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, they say that a man or woman's word is his bond. When the Environment and Public Works Committee voted on the nomination of Andrew Wheeler, someone I have known for 25 years or more, I was very clear about my desire to help smooth the way to a faster floor process. I was very clear that what I needed, and what we needed, was an assurance from EPA that it would respect settled law, that it would respect EPA actions and court decisions that found that global warming pollution from cars and SUVs is a danger to our Nation, to our citizens, and to our planet.

What I asked for was an assurance from Scott Pruitt that he would do what the auto industry has asked him to do, which is to negotiate an agreement on vehicle standards for the State of California. I worked with Bill Wehrum, the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, for weeks, and we reached an agreement that I was told Administrator Pruitt supported until Scott Pruitt reneged on the deal and decided he might prefer fighting and litigation to cooperating and negotiating.

Let me be clear, I tried to work with the EPA. I believed that perhaps in just this one instance we could find a win-win. There is one that is right there to be grasped. But Administrator Pruitt ignored his own top air official.

Let me close, if I can.

Whatever Mr. Wheeler's qualifications, he cannot solve this problem alone at EPA, which is that Scott Pruitt has no interest in governing, no interest in leaving a lasting and responsible legacy, and no interest in working with anyone who doesn't enable him to act on his own worst instincts.

I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. President, we are here today primarily to discuss the nomination of Andrew Wheeler to serve as Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Before I turn to Andrew Wheeler, I want to spend a few minutes talking about our current EPA Administrator.

Recent reports of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's ethical shortcomings and lavish spending on the American taxpayers' dime are breathtaking, but they should come as no surprise. Just over a year ago, I stood at the very same spot where I stand today to discuss Mr. Pruitt's nomination. Last February, I said that never before had I been forced to consider a candidate to lead the EPA who had been so focused throughout his career on crippling the very Agency he sought to lead or so hostile to the basic protections that keep Americans and our environment safe.

At the same time, I warned our colleagues that based on his record as attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt had an unacceptably casual approach to meeting obligations as a public servant. Unfortunately, with respect to too many of my colleagues, that warning fell on deaf ears.

In the 15 months since he was confirmed--narrowly confirmed--Mr. Pruitt has proven to be an even worse leader than I imagined on a policy front but also with regard to one ethical failing after another, as well as his disregard for the American taxpayers.

The Presiding Officer and I have spent large portions of our lives serving our country in uniform--he as a marine, me as a naval flight officer. I was a midshipman for 4 years before being commissioned, served 5 years in the war in Southeast Asia, and 18 years at the end of the Cold War as a P-3 aircraft mission commander.

From the age of 11, I was trained to be a leader. My guess is, my colleague was also. I was a Boy Scout, Civil Air Patrol cadet, naval ROTC midshipman, served 5 years on Active Duty, and another 18 years as a Reserve flight officer. If I don't know something about leadership, it is my fault. I have had great mentors, great role models. I was trained as a leader since the age of 11.

I want to mention this about leadership. Leaders are humble, not haughty. Leaders are servants. Our job is to serve, not be served. We lead by example. Leaders stay out of step when everybody else is marching to the wrong tune. Leaders put the best team around them that they can find. When the team does well, the leader gives credit to the team. If the team falls short, the leader takes the blame.

Leaders are aspirational. They appeal to our better instincts. They are purveyors of hope. Leaders build bridges, not walls. Leaders focus on doing what is right--not what is easy or what is expedient but what is right. Leaders treat other people the way they want to be treated. They actually embody the Golden Rule.

Leaders focus on excellence in everything they do. If it isn't perfect, they say: Let's make it better. Let's work with other people to make it better. When leaders know they are right, are convinced they are right, and other people realize they are right, leaders don't give up.

I knew 13 or 14 months ago what kind of steward Scott Pruitt would be with respect to protecting our air, our water, our public health. I had no idea--no idea--what kind of leader he would prove to be with respect to ethical behavior or misbehavior. What a shame. What a shame.

Over the last 2 weeks, we have been barely able to go a day without learning new and increasingly troubling information about the Administrator's failures to conduct himself in a way a public servant, working on behalf of the American people, should behave.

His poor financial judgment and serious ethical lapses make it clear that he is unfit for office. Setting aside his lack of stewardship on environmental issues, he should have never been confirmed in the first place.

Administrator Pruitt's conduct is emblematic of an extraordinarily and ethically tone-deaf administration. There are some good people in this administration, a number of them. Our Presiding Officer knows them, and I know them. Unfortunately, one of them is not running the Environmental Protection Agency, where lavish trips, extravagant office furniture, and personal favors are the norm, not the exception.

President Trump said he was going to drain the swamp. Scott Pruitt is the definition of what I recently heard one person call a swamp creature, with his close ties to polluters, misuse of taxpayer money, and corrupt dealings.

Should the Senate confirm Andrew Wheeler, we will be setting him on a course to address not just these recent allegations but these occurrences, these terrible examples.

As of today, Administrator Pruitt faces growing bipartisan calls for his firing or resignation amid nearly 25 ethics and improper expenditure allegations--25--and growing.

This is 2 weeks of turmoil. This chart is the cliff notes version. There is more. It is not anything to be proud of. It is a lot to be ashamed of--excessive raises for political appointees who came with him from Oklahoma and unprecedented security requirements are just a few of his growing collection of scandals that have made headlines almost every day in recent weeks.

Since his confirmation, Administrator Pruitt has developed a taste for the finer things in life, particularly when the American taxpayer is picking up the tab. Mr. Pruitt has been broadly criticized for his lavish spending of taxpayer dollars on various flights in his first year as EPA Administrator, including international trips, first-class flights, weekend trips home to Oklahoma, and chartered military jets.

Mr. Pruitt somehow managed to spend over $1,600 on a flight from Washington, DC, to New York City last year. It takes real effort to find a seat that expensive. My offer to Mr. Pruitt still stands; that the Administrator join me on Amtrak and save a ton of money.

Administrator Pruitt took a $40,000 trip to Morocco in December 2017 to promote liquefied natural gas--an issue that is not within his Agency's jurisdiction. On his way to Morocco, Administrator Pruitt missed two flights while staying in Paris for 2 days. Reports also indicate that Administrator Pruitt spent $120,000 on a trip to Italy last June, including $30,000 in security-related expenses, $53,000 in travel vouchers, and a $36,000 chartered flight from Cincinnati to New York City to catch his international flight. A $36,000 chartered flight from Cincinnati to New York City--really?

Mr. Pruitt has spent more than $105,000 in first-class flights during his first year alone in office. When confronted with the exorbitant pricetag on his first-class travel, the Agency said Mr. Pruitt's first- class travel was necessary--listen to this--because of the high number of security threats he had received. If that were truthful, we should all be concerned. There are a lot of reasons to believe it is not truthful.

He apparently did not consider a first-class upgrade to be vital to his safety while flying on his own dime, since Administrator Pruitt flew coach on personal trips back home to Oklahoma.

Administrator Pruitt is also facing scrutiny for assembling a team of 20 security agents deployed in 19 vehicles--20 security agents deployed in 19 vehicles--who provided an unprecedented 24/7 level of protection. Administrator Pruitt's unprecedented domestic and international travel has led to rapidly escalating costs, with his around-the-clock security detail racking up so

much overtime--get this--that many hit their annual salary caps of $160,000.

CNN has reported that the demands of providing the Administrator with the 24/7 security coverage he desired meant taking some investigators from their field work.

The New York Times reported that Administrator Pruitt asked his security team to use his vehicle's emergency lights and sirens to speed through traffic en route to a French restaurant right here in Washington, DC, to celebrate the President's withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. And when the security agent advised Mr. Pruitt that sirens were only to be used in an emergency, the agent was reassigned less than 2 weeks later.

The Washington Post reported that Administrator Pruitt also sought a $100,000-a-month private jet membership, a bulletproof SUV with run- flat tires, and $70,000 for office furniture, including a bulletproof desk.

I am not sure where Administrator Pruitt thinks he works, but his security detail has cost the American taxpayers nearly $3 million during his tenure--$3 million--roughly three times that of his predecessor Gina McCarthy.

Related to Administrator Pruitt's apparent privacy concerns, he felt the need for taxpayers to pay for him to install a private, soundproof, $43,000 phone booth in his office at EPA headquarters. He added $6,000 biometric locks to the booth, paid $3,000 to have his office swept for bugs, and described his soundproof booth as a sensitive compartmented information facility. No other EPA Administrator in history felt the need for such a booth. I am not aware of any Cabinet Secretary who has felt that kind of need.

Earlier this week, Administrator Pruitt removed a career staffer who approved an internal report that undermined Mr. Pruitt's claims that he needed to fly first class, a 24/7 security detail, a bulletproof desk, and other unprecedented security protections. The career staffer who questioned those expenditures, who approved the internal report discussing them, was removed.

Reports have also surfaced that Administrator Pruitt bypassed the White House to hire ex-lobbyists and sidestep President Trump's promise to drain the swamp and require appointees to sign an ethics pledge. Utilizing an obscure provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act intended to let the Agency quickly hire senior management and scientific personnel, Mr. Pruitt instead used his authority to skirt the ethics pledge and increase the number of ex-lobbyists who could work on issues of importance to their previous clients with impunity.

It goes on. Mr. Pruitt used this same authority to again bypass the White House and grant significant raises to favored staff.

After the White House refused to boost the pay of those favored staff, Administrator Pruitt reappointed both staffers under the Safe Drinking Water Act authority, allowing him to set salary levels himself. A 30-year-old senior counsel who worked for Pruitt in Oklahoma was given a raise of approximately $56,000 a year--$56,000 a year. That raise is just $1,000 short of the annual median household income for our country. Mr. Pruitt's 26-year-old director of scheduling of events got a pay bump too--almost $30,000.

On his interview with FOX News last week, Mr. Pruitt denied knowledge of the raises, but recently reported emails among EPA staff indicated that Mr. Pruitt was aware and personally involved with at least one of those raises.

Perhaps the most troubling among the litany of questionable financial expenditures and ethical lapses Mr. Pruitt has exhibited during his time as Administrator are recent reports that say he demoted, reassigned, or pushed out staff who tried to curtail his spending or question his ethical misbehavior.

The New York Times reported 2 weeks ago that at least five officials--both career EPA employees and one political appointee, four of them high-ranking--were reassigned, demoted, or pushed out after they raised concerns about Mr. Pruitt's excessive spending and mismanagement.

Just yesterday we learned that Mr. Pruitt wanted to revamp EPA memorabilia to, of all things, more prominently highlight himself. That is not what leadership or public service are supposed to be.

The list goes on. Almost every day a new scandal emerges, and Mr. Pruitt's alleged actions and ethical shortcomings surpass what many of us thought even possible. Yet he continues to serve the American people as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Unfortunately, this outcome was predictable. I hope to go to a baseball game in Delaware tonight, the home opener for the Wilmington Blue Rocks, the Kansas City Royals' farm club. Some of the pitchers are going to throw a pitch tonight, and the pitch will be well telegraphed. That means the hitters can sort of guess what is coming their way.

Well, this outcome was predictable. This pitch was well telegraphed. When the Senate confirms a candidate who has focused throughout his career on crippling the very Agency he seeks to lead, we should not expect a different result. Expecting anything more from Mr. Pruitt would be foolish. He spent 6 years as Attorney General of Oklahoma attacking the very Agency that he now leads--suing the very Agency he now leads.

The only question is when President Trump or Members of this body will finally hold Scott Pruitt accountable for the damage he has done to the Agency and the environment he has promised and pledged and sworn to protect.

We should know whether Andrew Wheeler is up to the task of helping to right this badly damaged EPA ship, to restore confidence, and to get it headed back on the right course.

So, once again, I will warn my colleagues that Scott Pruitt's behavior should give us pause before we consider another nomination.

Some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle may suggest that I am grandstanding or that this is some effort to score political points. Let me just say that this is serious stuff. This is serious stuff not just to Democrats, not just to Republicans or Independents, not just to the people in government, but to the people who pay for that government--the taxpayers of this country.

Today we are considering the nominee to serve as the Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler. The Deputy Administrator is second in command at the Agency. The role of Deputy Administrator is to assist the Administrator--in this case, Scott Pruitt--in overseeing the day-to-day operations that help to keep the Agency running, to protect our air, to protect our water, and to protect our public health.

Scott Pruitt has been making headlines at the EPA as of late, but for all the wrong reasons. From his first-class flights to his ethically questionable dealings with industry, Scott Pruitt has clearly been doing what he wants to do at EPA with little regard for the rules or for the American people. Even if Mr. Wheeler disagrees with the decisions being made by EPA's current leadership, which is something we should find out, it seems as though Scott Pruitt simply silences or isolates or reassigns any dissenters.

It is important to know how Andrew Wheeler views the chaos that has engulfed EPA in the last year, most of which is of Scott Pruitt's own making. After all, the things we have learned about the EPA over the last 2 weeks gives us a different outlook than when Leader McConnell filed cloture on Andrew Wheeler's nomination just before the Easter recess. It certainly gives a different perspective than we had when Andrew Wheeler sat before the Environment and Public Works Committee last year.

It is especially important to learn how Mr. Wheeler would address Scott Pruitt's ethical lapses because it is becoming clear that my Republican colleagues, sadly, have little interest in addressing them.

This week, our colleague Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and I sent a letter to our chairman and our friend, Senator Barrasso, requesting a hearing on the troubling information that we received regarding Mr. Pruitt's expensive and unprecedented security detail. Chairman Barrasso apparently does not intend to hold a hearing. I hope he will reconsider that decision.

When our top government officials fail to follow the rules, we in Congress have a constitutional duty to hold them accountable and to get to the

truth. What did Thomas Jefferson used to say? He said: If the people know the truth, they will not make a mistake. Hopefully, if we in this body know the truth, we will not either.

The legislative branch of government is a coequal branch of government. Our Founding Fathers in their wisdom designed a system where there would be checks and balances built in so that no one branch could get too far out of line, but that system only works if each branch is willing to assert its authority.

I am hardly the first person to recognize the need or the importance of congressional oversight. Many of our Senate colleagues have conducted effective oversight over the years. I have, our Presiding Officer has, and many Members of this body have.

Here is a call for increased oversight from 2010. It reads:

The legislative branch has its own responsibility to

provide oversight over the executive branch agencies. . . .

Our mission should be to provide oversight for the current

administration to ensure integrity and transparency over

policy decisions being made that affect peoples' lives today.

As issues arose in previous Congresses, previous chairmen held hearings into those matters.

Those are not my words. Those are the words of our friend, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Let me just say, that I approved this message.

Here is a call for increased oversight from, I think, April 2016. It reads:

Mr. President, like so much in Washington, D.C., the EPA

has grown too big, too arrogant, too irresponsible, and too

unaccountable. And people in America deserve accountability.

Again, I agree with John Barrasso.

Finally, a quote from September 2015 reads:

The agency needs to step back and rethink its priorities. .

. . The Environmental Protection Agency has been out of

control for far too long. It is time for Congress and

President Obama to hold the EPA accountable for its failures,

and it is time to rein in this runaway bureaucracy before it

does more damage to our communities, to our economy, and to

our country.

September 17, 2015.

Some things are too important to be held hostage by partisanship. Oversight shouldn't only be important when a Democrat is in the White House. Oversight shouldn't only be a critical component of Congress's work when Barack Obama or Gina McCarthy are in charge. Oversight of the executive branch is, in fact, our constitutional responsibility here in the Senate, and it should be constant no matter which party is in power in the Senate, the House, or in the White House. Whether an official's actions are right or wrong does not depend on where they fall on the political spectrum.

Even Trey Gowdy--a terrific Congressman from South Carolina, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee--recognizes the need for oversight here, and our Republican colleagues in the Senate have an obligation to hold Mr. Pruitt to the same standards that they held officials who served in past administrations. If Lisa Jackson had been accused of even a fraction of the things it seems as though Mr. Pruitt has done, we would be holding hearings in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in the EPW hearing room every week--and we should be.

Andrew Wheeler worked as a Senate staffer. He worked for our friend George Voinovich, one of my dearest friends in my whole life. He conducted oversight throughout his career. He later worked for Senator Jim Inhofe. Andrew has worked for Members such as Senator Inhofe and Senator George Voinovich, who I know take and took seriously their oversight roles. We should be able to hear from Andrew Wheeler what his plans are to rein in the abuses at EPA before he takes over this important job.

Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, yesterday, Jeh Johnson, our former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, dropped by to say hello, and I shared with him the results of an annual Federal survey. As the Senator may know, every major Federal agency has its employees surveyed with respect to its morale. Some agencies have very high morale, and some agencies have not so high.

I am still a member of the Homeland Security Committee. Jeh Johnson and Alejandro Mayorkas, who were the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of that Department, spent 3 years serving in these capacities and working with us on the committee to try to figure out how we could help the employees at the Department of Homeland Security feel better about their work.

I would come here to this floor every month and pick out a different part of the Department of Homeland Security where work was being done and have posters and pictures, just as the Senator has done here today, in order to

make real the service and the sacrifices of the folks, whether they be in the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security. It was one of those things, we found out, that kind of resonated in the Department. It just spread. Even to this day, people remember it and express thanks for that.

I thank the Senator for taking a moment to do, really, something very similar--maybe better--than what I tried to do over those years.

When I was the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, I will say I had a chance to work with Jim Comey--not every day but a fair amount. I have worked with a lot of great leaders and some who were not so great. The Senator from Texas has as well. Yet I must say that I have enormous respect for Jim Comey, for his integrity and his commitment to doing what is right. I have high regard for Chris Wray, our new FBI Director, but there is a part of me that still wishes Jim Comey were still leading that agency. So we will see what he writes in his book, but I wish him and his family well.

Thank you.

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

Mr. President, I rise--again today for the second time-- in opposition to the confirmation of Andrew Wheeler, at this time to be Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. It is not a decision I came to lightly or without considerable effort to find a different path. I wish to begin this section of my remarks by describing some of the events that brought us to this point.

First, I wish to talk briefly about my own experience with Mr. Wheeler. As a staff member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, working for our dear friend, the late-Senator George Voinovich, and Senator Jim Inhofe, Mr. Wheeler was not someone with whom we agreed on each and every issue. However, Mr. Wheeler did prove to be someone with whom we could work on policies on which we did agree, like, for example, the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, which reduces significantly diesel engine pollution and emissions from older diesel engines. I would also note that his responses during and after last year's hearings on his nomination were, for the most part, encouraging.

Mr. Wheeler also has some recent professional history that is troubling--and to some, very troubling. During the Trump transition, the public got a chance to read the so-called Murray action plan. What is that? It is a list of policy proposals submitted to President Trump and other Trump administration officials by Mr. Wheeler's former client for a while, Bob Murray. The Murray action plan includes any number of measures that EPA, in the last 15 months, has begun to implement, like the repeals of the Clean Power Plan and the clean water rule and the decimation of the EPA's career workforce. The document also calls for some measures that EPA has not yet acted upon. For example, Mr. Murray calls for the repeal of the mercury and air toxic standards, rules that limit dangerous pollution from powerplants, even though industry is already complying with those same rules.

Mr. Murray also calls for a reexamination of climate change science and the repeal of EPA's so-called endangerment finding. I will talk a little bit more about that in a minute. It is the conclusion that both the Bush and the Obama administrations reached that found that global warming pollution from cars and SUVs was dangerous. I think I will just take a minute and talk about the endangerment finding right here. People talk about the endangerment finding. I don't think it is well- understood where it came from, and I wish to take just a moment if I can to try to relate it in terms that I can understand and, hopefully, other people can as well.

If you go back to the Clean Air Act, section 202 of the Clean Air Act says that if EPA determines that an air pollutant emitted from motor vehicles endangers public health or welfare, EPA has to write regulations to control those emissions. It has to write regulations to control those emissions. I believe it was in 1999 that environmental organizations petitioned EPA to do just that, and they asked EPA to determine that the greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles were dangerous. President Bush rejected their position in 2003, saying that greenhouse gases did not meet the law's definition of an air pollutant.

The State of Massachusetts led a coalition of other States and environmental organizations, though, and they filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration's decision. In April 2007, I think it was, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Massachusetts and those who filed with Massachusetts. The court told EPA in 2007 that greenhouse gasses are ``air pollutants'' under the Clean Air Act, and they went on to say that EPA had to determine whether they were dangerous.

Although President Bush's EPA Administrator, Stephen Johnson, was ready to make the so-called endangerment finding for greenhouse gases being emitted from cars and SUVs, the White House would not let him do it. The White House would not let their own EPA Administrator make that finding. So it wasn't until a year or 2 later--I think it was in December 2009--that the Obama administration's EPA finalized its determination that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles are dangerous. In 2010, EPA and the Transportation Department issued the first joint fuel economy and greenhouse tailpipe standards for cars and SUVs.

In the meantime, many industry groups tried to overturn the EPA's decisions. They filed suits in a number of different Federal courts saying that those groups did not agree with the climate science. They didn't agree with the process that EPA used to arrive at this endangerment finding, and they didn't like the regulation that EPA was writing in 2009. Well, 2 or 3 years later, in 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which is the top appeals court in the whole country, right below the Supreme Court, ruled against the industry, upholding both the endangerment finding and the EPA's clean air rules. The Supreme Court declined to take up the industry's appeal. So it stood.

The U.S. court of appeals essentially sustained what EPA, under the Obama administration, sought to do and what Stephen Johnson, who was the EPA Administrator in the Bush administration the last year or 2, sought to do.

So what does all of this mean? What this means is that this is settled law. The highest courts in the land have said that greenhouse gases are air pollutants, they are dangerous, and EPA must regulate them.

Now, with that as a backdrop, let me say that I met with Mr. Wheeler a couple of times in the last year. I asked him directly whether or not he was involved in writing Mr. Murray's proposal--the so-called Murray plan that has been taken as an action plan by this administration and by this EPA under its current Administrator. Mr. Wheeler assured me that he was not involved in writing Mr. Murray's proposal.

He did go on to tell me, however, that one of Murray Energy's priority issues that Andy Wheeler actually worked on was securing health and other benefits for retired miners. I think that is something most of us would support.

Moreover, Mr. Wheeler also assured me that he views the EPA's legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which is based on the endangerment finding, as settled law. Let me say that again. Mr. Wheeler assured me that he views the EPA's legal authority to regulate greenhouse emissions, which is based on the endangerment finding, as settled law.

I have no reason to doubt Mr. Wheeler's assurances that, at least on the question of the endangerment finding, he holds a view that is distinct from Bob Murray's, and that is a good thing, at least to me. I am sure that I speak not just for myself when I say that I do not feel similarly assured by Administrator Pruitt.

The Trump White House has said it wants EPA and the Transportation Department to negotiate what I would like to call a win-win on CAFE and tailpipe standards with California. That means the Trump administration's policy must be to leave the endangerment finding alone because the endangerment finding is what gives EPA and California the authority to write the tailpipe greenhouse gas rules in the first place.

But Administrator Pruitt has repeatedly refused to say this clearly. For example, last July, he told Reuters that there might be a legal basis to overturn the EPA's endangerment finding decision. When I asked him in late January not to overturn it for as long as he is Administrator, he refused to make that commitment.

In preparation for Mr. Wheeler's confirmation, I tried very hard to obtain some clarity about just what EPA plans to do with regard to the endangerment finding and the Agency's stated efforts to negotiate new greenhouse gas vehicle standards with California.

My staff and I talked to Bill Wehrum, who is the EPA Assistant Administer for air--an important job--and with Ryan Jackson, Administrator Pruitt's chief of staff. We spent several weeks exchanging drafts of a letter that EPA planned to send me that sought to do three things, to make clear three things.

First, the letter affirmed the legal authority EPA used to find that the greenhouse gas emissions were dangerous and set vehicle standards. That is No. 1.

Second, the letter affirmed California's Clean Air Act authority to set its own, more stringent, vehicle standards.

And third, the letter committed to negotiate in earnest with California using a process not unlike the one used in past efforts to preserve a single national set of vehicle standards that automakers in California could support--a true win-win.

We actually reached agreement on the text of that letter with those who were negotiating, including Mr. Wehrum, his team, folks from California, and others. I am told Administrator Pruitt initially agreed to let the letter be sent, but then, maybe a week or two ago, a woman named Samantha Dravis, a political appointee at EPA, who I think is from Oklahoma and who recently resigned after reports that she failed to come to work for some 3 months last year, apparently convinced the Administrator to renege on the deal and to not sign the letter.

Ultimately, a significant part of the reason I cannot support Mr. Wheeler is because the Agency refused to follow through on an agreement it made with me on issues that are really important to the country, the auto industry, and California.

The truth is, at this point in time, it is not the only reason we should not be moving forward with this vote. In the past several weeks, each day brings headline after headline. There they are again. This is just a handful of headlines. This is a target-rich environment in terms of headlines from Scott Pruitt. In the past couple of weeks, each day brings headline after headline, scandal after scandal, report after report about simply what I think is an unconscionably manner in which Mr. Pruitt is running the Agency, as I talked about earlier.

There have been dozens of calls for his resignation that have come from both parties here and in the House. Speculation about how long he will be able to remain in the job is at a very high pitch--very high pitch. It is entirely possible that Mr. Wheeler might be sworn in as Acting Administrator before he spends a single day on the job as Deputy Administrator. We will see.

The truth is, we have never really had the opportunity to ask Mr. Wheeler how he would remedy the reports of excessive spending out of EPA under Mr. Pruitt's leadership--inappropriate travel, retaliation against staff who dare to cross him, unlawful rule repeals, and the gross abuses of power Mr. Pruitt has inflicted on this country--if it were suddenly Mr. Wheeler's job to right those wrongs, which it will be if he is confirmed today.

Neither Mr. Wheeler nor members of the Environment and Public Works Committee were even aware of the extent of many of these problems and scandals when his confirmation hearing was held more than 5 months ago in the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Essentially, in my view, the Senate quite simply should not vote today on this confirmation until we know which job Mr. Wheeler will be filling at the Agency and until we know how he views and how he would remedy the overwhelming number of serious problems he will face when he arrives there.

Let me say one last thing, if I could. I am a big believer in win-win situations and win-win solutions. I think my colleague who is presiding at this moment is also. We partner on a variety of things, including trying to promote recycling, not just here in this body but all across this country, in ways that create jobs and create economic opportunity.

I focus a lot--and I think a lot of my colleagues do--on how do we create a more nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation. We don't create jobs here. Governments and Presidents don't create jobs. We try to help create a nurturing environment for job creation. One of the elements that is important for having that kind of nurturing environment for job creation, frankly, is clean air, clean water, and good public health. Another thing that is important is certain businesses like certainty and predictability.

It has been 10 years or more, but I will never forget when I was visited by a bunch of utility CEOs from all over the country. They had come to talk with me and my staff about clean air legislation covering four distinct pollutants. They included mercury, CO2, nitrogen oxide, and maybe one more--all types of legislation for polluters.

I had introduced legislation on the heels of President Bush's proposal. President Bush proposed multipollutant legislation that he called Clear Skies. The version I introduced, with a Republican colleague, was called Really Clear Skies. The four pollutants were VOC, NOC, mercury, and CO2. That is what it was.

We had these CEOs from utility companies across the country who came to see us. They wanted to talk about our legislation to, over time, ratchet down the emission of those pollutants from their utilities. We talked for about an hour. At the end of the hour, one of the CEOs of the utilities--I think he was from the southern part of the country-- said: Look, let me tell you, Senator, what you should do. Here is what you and your colleagues should do with respect to air emissions for utilities. He said: Tell us what the rules are going to be, give us some flexibility, a reasonable amount of time to meet those expectations, and get out of the way. That is what he said: Tell us what the rules are going to be, give us a reasonable amount of time to meet those expectations, some flexibility, and get out of the way.

With respect to CAFE, what we are doing with fuel efficiency requirements for cars, SUVs, and trucks--what we need to keep in mind is providing the same kind of certainty and predictability for the auto industry inside the country and outside of this country as we expect them to increase fuel efficiency over time for cars, trucks, and vans.

Under current law that we adopted, I want to say, about 10 years ago, we ramped up fuel efficiency requirements up through 2025. Between 2021 and 2025, the increases are pretty significant, pretty steep. The current administration wants to almost eliminate entirely those increases between 2021 and 2025 and be really silent on what happens after that.

I go to the Detroit auto show almost every year. In Delaware, until a couple of years ago, we built more cars, trucks, and vans per capita than any other State in the country. I got used to going to the Detroit auto show so often that I would know the people who ran Chrysler and GM so that if they ever thought about closing their plant in Delaware, we actually know whom to talk to. I still go to the Detroit auto show most years.

I went this time and met and talked with representatives from 10 auto companies from this country and around the world. We talked about CAFE and fuel efficiency requirements going forward. To a company, this is what they said to me in private conversation: We need some flexibility in the near term, between 2021 and 2025. In return for

that additional flexibility, we are willing to accept tougher goals extending out as long as 2030--near-term flexibility, longer term requirement for more rigorous standards. They said: Having said that, we don't want to be stuck in a situation where we have to go with one car with higher fuel efficiency requirements or see a model for a car, truck, or SUV with higher requirements for fuel efficiency for California and a different standard for the rest of the country. That just doesn't work for their business model. They need to be able to build one model, one set of standards for California and the other 49 States.

California, where they have had huge air pollution problems over the years, wants to have rigorous requirements.

I said this to the majority leader earlier this week; that there is a way to work through all of this with the auto industry, California, the other States, with EPA, and the Department of Transportation. There is a way to work through all of this that provides a real win-win, that preserves jobs in the auto industry--people building cars, trucks, and vans--and with respect to California's special concern, provides the certainty and predictability the industry needs and also ends up giving us more energy-efficient vehicles, cleaner air, and cleaner water-- especially cleaner air. That is a real win-win situation. That is a real win-win situation, and that is where we need to go. We need leadership at EPA, we need leadership from the administration, leadership here, and in States like California to get us there.

Wayne Gretzky is a great hockey player. I am not a huge hockey fan. I watch it a little bit. When Wayne Gretzky was playing, he was believed to be the best hockey player anybody had ever even seen, at least in this country. His nickname was ``The Great One.'' He took a lot of shots. He was not shy about shooting for a goal.

He was once asked: Mr. Gretzky, why do you take so many shots on goals? He said these words: I missed every shot I never took. I missed every shot I never took.

I like to take the shot in a lot of different respects. This is a shot we should take, and, if we do, we will do a lot more than score a goal. We will score a big win for our country. In the end, for people who are driving cars, trucks, and vans in the years to come, we will save them a lot of money, and we will have cleaner air and protect a lot of jobs that need to be protected and need to be preserved.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.