Floor Statements

Mr. President, I want to preface my remarks today by asking that you convey to your wingman, Senator John McCain, our colleague, our best wishes and our hope that he is on his way to a speedy recovery and will be back here because we need him. We need his wisdom.

I want to thank Tim Kaine for the leadership that he and Senator Shaheen are showing to help us try to stabilize the marketplaces. Senator Hassan and I have talked a lot about this.

What do we do now? I think this is an opportunity. This is an opportunity here. I realize there is a fair amount of confusion as to which path to take and which way to go. I hope we don't waste this opportunity.

I sent a message to the new chairman of the National Governors Association and to the new vice chairman of the National Governors Association. Brian Sandoval from Nevada is the new chair and the Governor from Nevada, previously the vice chair, and Steve Bullock from Montana is the vice chair. One is a Republican, and the other is a Democrat. I sent them a message this morning saying that it would be good to hear from the Governors. They have been working on a bipartisan letter--they have been working on it for a while--and this is really the time it could make a positive impact.

We have three people sitting here--four of us--who used to be part of the National Governors Association. I loved it, and I am sure Senator Kaine, Senator Hassan, and Senator Shaheen loved it as well. Here is what I suggested that the Governors may want to consider in their message:

No. 1, urge us to hit the pause button. Hit the pause button. Let's just stop in place for a moment.

No. 2, pivot soon--not in September, not in August, but now, like this week, pivot to stabilizing the exchanges.

No. 3, return to regular order. Senator Kaine has already mentioned this. When I talked with Senator McCain last week a couple of times briefly, we both talked about the need for regular order. People have good ideas on healthcare; introduce them. Committees with jurisdiction, hold hearings. Witnesses, including Governors, should come before the committees of jurisdiction--a couple of committees in the House and in the Senate--and let's hear from the experts, and let's certainly hear from the Governors, who have to run these Medicaid Programs and have a lot of expertise in this area to offer us.

Then I would say, after the August recess, if we can actually do something real in stabilizing the exchanges, what a confidence builder that would be among us and, I think, around the country. It would be a great confidence builder.

The other thing I would mention is that when we come back after the August recess, don't just muck around and wonder what we are going to do; we should pull together in a bipartisan way--something we talked about doing a lot, but we don't often do it--to really do maybe a couple of things.

Let's figure out what we need to fix in the Affordable Care Act. Republicans believe that Democrats feel it is perfect and nothing should be changed. Well, I don't feel that way. My guess is that most of our Democrats don't, either. No bill I have ever worked on was perfect. It can always be done better. The same is true with big programs like Medicare and Social Security, veterans programs, and so on. They can all be done better, and this is certainly the case as well. Let's fix the parts of the ACA that need to be fixed, and let's preserve the parts that ought to be preserved.

I would reiterate, speaking on behalf of some recovering Governors, including me, the Governors need to be heavily involved in this. I suspect that all of the former Governors who are on the floor with me today, when we were part of the NGA, we weren't on the floor--actually, I was on this floor any number of times because Governors had access to the floor--but we had many opportunities, many invitations to testify before Senate committees and House committees on a wide range of

issues. I think we brought value, and we need to hear from them today.

I want to go back and talk about how we go about stabilizing the exchanges. The first thing that would help would be for the administration to stop destabilizing them. That would be a big help.

Senator Kaine has led on legislation--and he has mentioned it, and I want to drill down on it just a little bit--that would provide reinsurance, much as we do in other ways in terms of the Medicare Part D drug program. Using reinsurance is a very common tool, and we can use it to help stabilize the exchanges.

How would it be used in our proposal? If this lady standing right in front of me were getting healthcare and her healthcare needs were expensive, under our reinsurance plan starting in 2018, 2019, 2020, the first $50,000 in her healthcare that she used in year one, 2018, the Federal Government--well, the insurance companies themselves actually would be on the hook for the first $50,000 of care she got. Between $50,000 and $500,000, under our proposal, the Federal Government would pay for 80 percent of that cost--80 percent of that cost. Between $50,000 and $500,000 would be on the Federal Government. Anything above $500,000 would be back on the insurance company. That is what we would do for the next 3 years.

Starting in 2021 and going forward, the first $100,000 would be on the insurance company for the costs borne--created by an individual, and then between $100,000 and $500,000, 80 percent of that would be on the Federal Government, and after that, the rest of it is back again on the insurance company to pay for.

That is our proposal. We have a bunch of cosponsors on it, and we need some Republican cosponsors as well. It is not a Democratic idea. It is not a Republican idea. It is just a good idea that deserves bipartisan support.

Another thing we ought to do to stabilize the exchanges is what Senator Shaheen has proposed; that is, we have these CSRs, cost-sharing reductions. I think of them as subsidies to help subsidize people whose income is under a certain level; I think it is 250 percent of poverty. Folks who are in the exchanges getting healthcare coverage and whose income is under 250 percent of poverty currently receive some subsidies to help buy down and reduce the cost of their copays and their deductibles. It is not really clear whether that is authorized. It is not really clear whether that is being funded, but it has been done for a number of years.

The current administration has been saying: Well, we don't know if we are going to continue to do that.

There have been some States that want to go to court and say: You can't do that.

We need to pass a law and say that we are going to have these cost- sharing reductions and that the subsidies will continue to be offered.

The last thing we need to do is to make clear that the individual mandate or something as good as or at least as effective as the individual mandate is going to be around. For the administration to say: Well, we don't know if we are going to enforce the individual mandate--it just encourages young, healthy people not to get coverage.

We have to make it clear that the individual mandate or something as good as--it could be a proxy for it or maybe several things that work together that could be as effective as the individual mandate. If they don't work, maybe we could just have a default position that would be the individual mandate again.

We ought to have hearings on these kinds of things and discuss them and hear from all kinds of folks.

The other thing I want to mention is just that when I go around my State, my Lord, I have never heard people so interested in encouraging us. I think I am regarded in my State--along with Senator Coons and our Congresswoman, Lisa Blunt Rochester--I think we are regarded as bipartisan people. We are Democrats and proud to be Democrats. We would like to work with Republicans, too, and I think that is part of being a recovering Governor. But on this subject, on healthcare reform, going forward, the people in my State don't want a Democratic victory. They don't want a Republican victory. Frankly, they don't want a Trump victory. They want a victory for our country. That is what they want. They want a victory for our country. And so do I, and I think so do most Democrats in this Chamber and most Republicans.

So let me say again, if I could make this suggestion, let's hit the pause button. Let's stop in place for right now. Let's pivot and figure out how we can stabilize the exchanges. Let's return to regular order. Let's hold bipartisan hearings, have expert witnesses, including folks from all walks of life who know about healthcare coverage, who know a lot about healthcare. After the August recess, let's launch a real, bipartisan effort to fix the things in the ACA that need to be fixed and retain, preserve those aspects that should be retained. As I said before, we need Governors at the table, not just recovering Governors. We need Governors at the table and a bunch of other folks as well who have a lot to contribute.

If we do those things, we will, in the words of--paraphrasing Mark Twain--Mark Twain used to say: When in doubt, tell the truth. You will confound your enemies and delight your friends. I think that is what he used to say. In this case, I would just say, paraphrasing Mark Twain, when in doubt, do what is right. When in doubt, do what is right. We will confound our enemies and delight our friends.

With that, I yield the floor.

I ask the Senator to withdraw that suggestion, please.

Mr. President, good to see you and our friend from Utah. I feel compelled to go back in time, if I could. This is a question a lot of people ask me back home and around the country: Where did ObamaCare come from? The part where most people think of ObamaCare is when they think of the exchanges that have been established in all 50 States, where people who don't have healthcare can get coverage as part of a large-group plan. That was an idea that came from RomneyCare.

In 2006 in Massachusetts, when Mitt Romney was the Governor and was running for President, they came up with a really smart idea: Governor Romney, you have a much better chance of being elected President if you have done what no other Governor has done; that is, to cover everybody in your State for healthcare.

Well, that is an interesting idea. They looked around for ideas, and what did they come up with? They came up with an idea that was actually suggested by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation found its way to this body in 1993 in legislation introduced by Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island that called for doing five things:

No. 1 was creating exchanges or marketplaces in every State, where people who didn't have coverage could be part of a large group and get coverage.

No. 2, folks who bought coverage on the exchange might be eligible for a sliding-scale tax credit. Lower-income people would get a better tax credit, reducing their premiums, than people whose income was higher.

No. 3 was the idea of an individual mandate. People had to get coverage. If they didn't, they would have to pay a fine. You can't force people to get coverage, but in Massachusetts they said: Well, at least we will fine them, and, eventually, maybe over time, the fine will go up and most people--including young, healthy people--will elect to get coverage and be part of a group that is actually insurable, as opposed to people who are just sick or who are anxious to get an operation or are needing to get an operation.

The fourth principle, which was the idea underlying the Chafee legislation, which would later become RomneyCare, was the idea that employers of a certain magnitude, or with a certain number of employees, had to cover their employees.

The fifth principle in that original idea was brought to us from the Heritage Foundation, by 23 Republican Senators in 1993--as an alternative, by the way, to HillaryCare--and later became RomneyCare. The fifth principle was the idea that if you are an insurance company and you want to deny coverage to people because they have a preexisting condition, you cannot do that.

That was it. When a number of us in this body worked on the Affordable Care Act, we took the Heritage Foundation idea, the idea from those 23 Republican Senators who introduced it, cosponsored it-- including Senator Hatch, including Senator Grassley. Some of the folks who are complaining the most about ObamaCare or the exchanges are the people who supported the original legislation introducing the idea. I don't know if that seems ironic to other people. It certainly does to me.

I spent part of Saturday--invited up to Providence, RI, to do something I used to do for 8 years--meeting with the National Governors Association. For 8 years, as Governor of Delaware, I was privileged to be a part of the National Governors Association, at one time vice chair and later on as the chairman of the group. They invited me to come back and talk about healthcare, healthcare reform, and what was going on here in the Senate. I was happy to do that, and we made it work on my schedule.

There, to speak on behalf of the administration, was the Vice President of the country, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the OMB Director, and the Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, explaining to the Governors why they should support the administration's position and why they should support the Republican position here in the Senate.

Today the Republicans sent out a strong letter--not just Republicans. Republican Governors and Democratic Governors sent out a joint letter, a bipartisan letter, saying to us, basically: Do these things.

Their advice to us was this: Hit the pause button; stop what we are doing. No. 2, pivot and stabilize. Stop destabilizing the exchanges.

This administration is trying to destabilize the exchanges, which were a Republican idea, and I think, actually, a good idea. But the administration has sought to destabilize the exchanges, through a variety of tricks that they are pulling.

The third thing we should do is to stabilize the exchanges. It is not all that hard. Make it clear that the individual mandate, or something very much like the individual mandate, is going to continue to be the law of the land so that we end up with young, healthy people in the exchanges and not just a lot of sick people and older people.

No. 2 is reinsurance. One of the keys to the success of Medicaid Part D, the drug insurance program for folks on Medicare, is reinsurance. A number of us, led by Senator Tim Kaine and myself and others, said: Why don't we take that tried-and-true idea and use it to help stabilize the exchanges? I spoke here earlier today on how that would actually work. It is not a Democratic or a Republican idea. It is just a good idea.

The third thing we need to do to stabilize the exchanges--an idea actually suggested by a number of Senators, including Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire--is to say that we are going to continue to fund and authorize something called CSRs, or cost-sharing reductions, which actually reduce the copays and the deductibles for lower income people who buy their coverage in the exchanges.

Those three things, we are told by health insurance companies, would reduce the cost of premiums in all the States by anywhere from 25 percent to 35 percent. It would stabilize the exchanges, and it would get other insurance companies to say: I don't know if I want to insure in Ohio, Delaware, or Utah. Insurance companies would say: Well, I think I can offer insurance products there and not lose my shirt. Then, they would get back into the exchange. They would offer coverage. Then, when more than one or two offer coverage, guess what happens. You have competition. And do you know what flows from competition? Better diversity of products to choose from and lower costs.

Those are three things we can do to stabilize the exchanges and, frankly, they are not all that hard.

The fourth thing the Governors suggested we do is, basically, regular order. Around here, regular order means that if people have a good idea, they introduce it. We turn it in up here at the front desk, and the legislative idea goes to the committee of jurisdiction. There is a discussion of whether there should be hearings about that particular bill. If it is a good bill, there may well be hearings. You have sponsors. It could be bipartisan. But, eventually, the idea will have a hearing in committee, and those who like that idea or those who don't like that idea show up in daylight, in the light of day, and say: Here is why I like it; here is why I don't like it. They let their voices be heard.

On issues as important as healthcare, why we are not fully involving the Governors is beyond me. I just don't get it. Who runs the Medicaid Programs? The Governors in their States. That is a big part of what we are debating in this battle.

I will close with this. I said it before earlier today, and I want to say it again. As I travel around Delaware, talking to people in my little State--we have a lot of Democrats, we have a lot of Republicans, and we have a lot of Independents--they speak to me with one voice, and here is what they say: Work together. Solve some problems together. Democrats and Republicans, take off your hats and work together. That is what they want us to do.

It is not just Delaware. A Kaiser Permanente national survey released last week said 71 percent of the people in this country surveyed said we ought to work together and get this done.

If we are smart, before we leave for the August recess, we will stabilize the exchanges with the three things I talked about. The administration just needs to stand down and just be quiet on this point. If they don't like this Republican idea of the exchanges, just be quiet. But we come back here in September, and we go to work, with regular order, hearings--bipartisan hearings--bipartisan roundtables, and the chance for us to debate legislation in committees in the House and in the Senate, and on this floor, and to debate amendments. That is the way we ought to do this.

Anytime in this country when we have done really big things--Social Security comes to mind, the GI bill comes to mind, and the 1986 tax reform comes to mind--we didn't do it with just Democratic votes or Republican votes. We did it together. If we do that, we will be stronger together.

I will close with an old African proverb. It goes something like this: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

We need to go far. If we do, we and the American people will get a lot further along toward the three things we have sought ever since Harry Truman was President: No. 1, cover everybody; No. 2, quality healthcare; and No. 3, affordable price. That is the ``holy grail,'' and we should strive to get there together.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to welcome our new pages. They have been here all of 24 hours or so. I talked to some of them earlier today. They come from all over this country, and we welcome each of them.

I understand they are with us for 3 weeks, and we wish it could be longer. Who knows? Maybe it will be. We will see.

Mr. President, I love what the Senator from Minnesota just said. I am a retired Navy captain. For years we had healthy competition among the different branches of our services. I salute the folks in the Army, the Marines, the Air Force, and Coast Guard. I always say: The Navy salutes you. Then I also say: a different uniform, the same team. To the extent that we wear different uniforms, we really are on the same team, and I think the American people are anxious for us to start acting that way.

What I hope we will do is to hit the pause button right now on the legislation that the Republicans have pulled off the floor and that we will use this time as an opportunity not to go to our separate corners and figure out how to do the other team in when we return here in 10 days. I hope we will, as some of our colleagues have suggested, explore some ideas where we can work together.

Some have talked about how to make the marketplaces work. It is not a Democratic idea. It is a Republican idea. There are the tax credits for the exchange, which is a Republican idea. The individual mandate and the idea that there cannot be prohibitions on insurers denying coverage are Republican ideas too. Those are all ideas from 1993, taken from Mitt Romney, who put them in RomneyCare in Massachusetts, and we put them in the Affordable Care Act.

We didn't just do this and shut out the Republicans. We had 80 days where we worked on the legislation. I was on the Finance Committee with Senator Schumer and others, and we had, I think, a dozen or more hearings and dozens of amendments--over 300 amendments in all. Some 160 Republican amendments were included in the bill. To somehow say that they were being shut out is nonsense. That is a reinvention of history.

Let's do it the right way. At the end of the day, we will do what President Trump has been calling for, for the last 5, 6, 7, 8 months, as I recall. He said: Why don't we cover everybody, why don't we provide better coverage, and why don't we do it in a more affordable way.

Unfortunately, what Republicans have offered and what they pulled off the floor doesn't do that. It provides less coverage for more money. It says to people--the least well off in our society: We are going to provide you less coverage in order to give folks who make a lot of money, and really don't need a tax break, a tax break.

That is not consistent with the Golden Rule. The Presiding Officer knows it well. We are supposed to treat other people the way we want to be treated. That is an example of a failure with respect to the Golden Rule.

I didn't come here to waste my time and other people's time. I came here to get things done. We tried hard to involve the Republicans 8 years ago. They may not acknowledge that. The people in this country still want us to really bear down and work together, and we can do that. At the end of the day, we will be better as a party, we will be better as a body, and we will be better as a country.

I want to thank Senator Warner for letting me speak before him. Thank you so much. I will say to Senator Kaine: Thank you for allowing me to be your partner on a great reinsurance plan that will help stabilize the exchanges. I am delighted to be your wingman. Thank you.

Will the Senator yield?

Senator Cardin and I serve together on the committee called Environment and Public Works in the Senate. One of the issues we deal with is clean air.

This conversation about predictability and uncertainty that businesses seek is not just in health insurance, it is in all kinds of businesses across the country.

I remember being in a conversation 8, 9 years ago with--I think Senator Alexander of Tennessee was with us. We met with the CEOs of a number of utilities across the country. Senator Alexander and I were pushing legislation in response to President George Bush's proposal called Clear Skies. It was designed to reduce the emission of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and CO2, carbon dioxide. We talked with these CEOs from across the country for an hour in my office. We had been talking about reductions of X percent and Y percent and so forth in the emissions from these harmful pollutants from primarily coal-fired utilities. At the end of the conversation, this one older fellow who was representing a utility in the southern part of our country--he was sort of a curmudgeon-like person--he said: Senator, this is what you need to do with respect to the restraint on emissions, reduction in emissions. Here is what you need to do. You need to tell us what the rules are going to be. You need to provide us some certainty and predictability and give us a reasonable amount of time to comply and then get out of the way.

I will never forget that conversation. Tell us what the rules are going to be, provide us with some certainty and predictability, a reasonable amount of time, and get out of the way.

It is not just utilities that want certainty and predictability, so do others, and particularly, as utilities are a regulated industry, so is insurance. They do like to have predictability and certainty.

We tend to focus just on the exchanges and the marketplaces in the 50 States, which provide health insurance for maybe 5, 6, 7 percent of Americans who get healthcare coverage. Most people get their healthcare coverage from employer-provided programs. Maybe 20, 25 percent get their coverage through Medicaid.

I used to think Medicaid was healthcare for poor women and children. When I was elected State treasurer, I used to think Medicaid was healthcare for poor women and children and not much else, and it turns out, it is a lot more than that today. Twenty, twenty-five percent of folks get their coverage there, another 15 percent or so in Medicare, and the rest are in the exchanges. Every State has an exchange. That is for folks who can't get coverage anywhere else. The idea is to have some opportunity to participate in a purchasing pool.

When we passed the Affordable Care Act, we made a promise that we would do the kinds of things that Senator Cardin is talking about to provide certainty and predictability for the health insurance companies when they insure in these exchanges. The health insurance companies were reluctant to provide coverage to the folks who were going to get coverage through the exchanges. As my friend will recall, some of these people hadn't had healthcare for months, years, maybe even decades, and maybe some never had healthcare in their lives, so nobody really knew how much healthcare they would need, except we knew and the insurance companies knew that these people would need a lot. As my friend said, we provided some ways of reducing that lack of predictability. It is like the comic strip ``Peanuts,'' with Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. When she pulls the football away, she always fools him. He still kicks and misses every time. We sort of did that with the insurance companies. We assured them we would help provide stability, and we took away the very mechanisms designed to do that.

I think what my friend is saying, we need to come back and provide maybe three ways to do it; one, with respect to reinsurance; two, cover the risk costs; and the third is to do something--if we don't continue with the individual mandate, we need to come up with something like the individual mandate, which is not as harmful as Republicans are suggesting. I don't think the a 6-month lockout is humane.

I will be happy to.

I was Governor from 1993 to 2001. We started in a recession and ended up with 6, 7 really strong years, as you recall, during the Clinton administration. We were able to balance our budget 8 years in a row, cut taxes 7 out of 8, pay down some debts, and get good credit ratings across the board.

The person who was my secretary of finance the last 4 years is now our Governor, John Carney. Ben knows him pretty well. He was a wonderful member of Congress and a wonderful Lieutenant Governor before that. He is looking at a budget of less than $4 billion. He is looking at a $400 million hole to fill. What is being proposed by our Republican colleagues on Medicaid would not make that $400 million hole any smaller. It would add anywhere from $100 to $200 million-- increasing it anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent. It is a killer. Our Governor and our legislature are struggling enough to try to fill a $400 million hole rather than trying to figure out how to deal with something as vibrant as $600 million. It would be a backbreaker. That is what we are looking at. I share that with everybody.

Going to my ``laboratory of democracy,'' some people would like to have Medicaid for all. Several of our colleagues are very much interested in a single-payer system. As an old Governor--someone who had the privilege leading the National Governors Association--I am a believer that States can be that laboratory of democracy. They can take ideas and show us it is a good idea for the country and other States or take ideas and prove they are bad ideas. We ought to enable them to do that.

I want to say a kind word about our Presiding Officer. He heard me say this before. I will say it again. He may recall having cosponsored legislation in 1993, offered by John Chafee and cosponsored by Orrin Hatch and others, that actually had a lot of good ideas in it. It had the idea of establishing exchanges in all 50 States. Having the sliding scale tax credit brought down the cost of healthcare insurance to lower income people in the exchanges with a bigger tax credit. It had the individual mandate in there to make sure young, healthy people got coverage too. We didn't leave health insurance coverages to a pool of unhealthy young people to try to insure.

We added employer mandates so a certain number of employers had to participate. There was prohibition against insurance companies denying coverage. I want to say, our Republican friends took that idea--and Mitt Romney used that idea to establish RomneyCare when he was Governor of Massachusetts. It worked there. It wasn't perfect. It took a while, but it worked. I would just say, we shouldn't give up on that idea. We should not give up on that idea. There are ways we can fix it. Senator Cardin talked about some of those ways, and I am sure Senator Wyden as well.

I just heard John Kasich on one of the shows on TV. He said he was with Governor Hickenlooper. We have to stop being Democrats on this or Republicans on this. Folks want us to be Americans on this and work together. That is what I would like to do. I think we can do that in a way that brings credit, not just to our party but really to our Country. It accomplishes the three things the President talked about for a while: coverage for everybody, better quality coverage for less money. There is no way Democrats by themselves or Republicans by themselves are going to do that. If we work together, all things are possible.

Mr. President, may I ask the Senator from Oregon to yield for about 30 seconds?

Mr. President, something the Senator from Washington said just reminded me--after we heard the news that Republicans are going to go back to the drawing board and see what they can come up with maybe during the Fourth of July recess, I did a radio interview with a station back in Delaware. One of the questions the interviewer asked me was: Well, the Republicans have a lot of money to play with; I hear a couple hundred billion dollars. Won't the Republican leaders just offer money to one Senator after the other after the other to find out what they need in order to get them to support this?

I said: I hope not. I hope that is not what happens. This is a time when we need to hit that pause button and, rather than dole out money to try to draw this Republican or that Republican to come into the fold, if you will, why don't we just spend some time in the rooms the Senator from Washington was talking about.

We spent all that time--a lot of time together, with Democrats and Republicans in hearings, public hearings, private meetings, roundtables, and so forth. That is the kind of thing we need to do over again. If we do that, we might be surprised. We might surprise the rest of the country about how well that would work out.

Thank you.

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

Mr. President, it is good to see you this afternoon.

I rise in support of the nomination of Kristine Svinicki to hold a third term as a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, known as the NRC. Many Senators heard from our chairman on the Environment and Public Works Committee in support of this nominee last week, just prior to our cloture vote. I want to add my voice in support of her nomination as well.

Since joining the Environment and Public Works Committee, I have worked closely with my colleagues to strengthen what we call the ``culture of safety'' within the U.S. nuclear energy industry. In part, due to our collective efforts and the NRC leadership and the Commission's dedicated staff, the NRC continues to be the world's gold standard for nuclear regulatory agencies. However, as I say time and again, that does not mean we can become complacent when it comes to nuclear safety and our NRC oversight responsibilities, a perspective that I am certain is shared by every Member of this body.

Ensuring that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission continues to have experienced and dedicated leadership is one of the most important things that our committee, the Committee on Environment and Public Works, and the Senate can do to maintain a high level of safety and excellence in our Nation's nuclear facilities.

I am quite impressed with our NRC Commissioners, and I am encouraged with their ability to work cooperatively with each other. Each Commissioner, including our current chair, Kristine Svinicki--let me say her name again: Svinicki. People have a hard time saying her name. It is Svinicki.

She brings a unique set of skills to the table--something that has served the Commission and our country well.

I continue to have ongoing discussions with our friend, the chairman of the committee, Senator John Barrasso, about the strong interest I and our minority members of the committee have with ensuring parity, as the Senate looks to confirm other nominees to the NRC. This is in order to ensure that we have a balance of Democratic and Republican members on the Commission for years to come. It continues to be a priority for me and our Democratic colleagues.

At this time, I support moving Chairman Svinicki through the confirmation process. I do so out of respect for her long service to the NRC and for the need to ensure certainty and predictability within the NRC and its leadership. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting her nomination.

Mr. President, as to this particular nominee, not everybody on the committee or probably in the Senate will support the nomination of Kristine Svinicki. They could have held her up. No one has, and she has moved through our committee expeditiously. She, in my view, should have moved through expeditiously and will be coming before us for an up-or- down vote in a few minutes.

Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to adjust the boundary of the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, CBRA, map unit for North Bethany Beach, Delaware. I am pleased to be working in this effort with the junior Senator from Delaware, Mr. Coons, who joins me as an original cosponsor.

This map change implements a recommendation made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Service discovered during its recent digital mapping pilot project that a portion of the North Bethany Beach unit encompassing the South Shore Marina development was included by mistake when the map was created in 1990. The Fish and Wildlife released a report to Congress in November of 2016 on the results of the mapping pilot project required by the 2006 Coastal Barrier Resources Reauthorization Act (PL 109-226). Delaware was part of the pilot project, and the report contains the recommendation for this map change.

This map change can occur only through an act of Congress.

CBRA is a map-based law enacted in 1982 recognizing that certain actions and programs of the Federal Government subsidize and encourage development on coastal barriers. This coastal building contributes to the loss of natural resources and threatens human life, health and property. The CBRA system currently contains 859 geographic units in 23 States and territories along the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico coasts. The CBRA units are depicted on a set of maps that is maintained by the Secretary of the Interior through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

While CBRA does not prohibit or regulate development, it removes the Federal incentives to build on these undeveloped, unstable and environmentally sensitive areas. CBRA seeks to save taxpayers' money, keep people out of harm's way, and conserve natural resources by restricting most new Federal expenditures and financial assistance (e.g., beach nourishment, disaster assistance, and flood insurance) in areas designated within the CBRA system. That is why Mr. President, it is important to make sure these maps are accurate and that they do not include previously developed property. This bill will achieve that objective for the North Bethany Beach area.

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 adjust the boundary of the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, CBRA, map unit for North Bethany Beach, Delaware. I am pleased to be working in this effort with the junior Senator from Delaware, Mr. Coons, who joins me as an original cosponsor.

This map change implements a recommendation made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Service discovered during its recent digital mapping pilot project that a portion of the North Bethany Beach unit encompassing the South Shore Marina development was included by mistake when the map was created in 1990. The Fish and Wildlife released a report to Congress in November of 2016 on the results of the mapping pilot project required by the 2006 Coastal Barrier Resources Reauthorization Act (PL 109-226). Delaware was part of the pilot project, and the report contains the recommendation for this map change.

This map change can occur only through an act of Congress.

CBRA is a map-based law enacted in 1982 recognizing that certain actions and programs of the Federal Government subsidize and encourage development on coastal barriers. This coastal building contributes to the loss of natural resources and threatens human life, health and property. The CBRA system currently contains 859 geographic units in 23 States and territories along the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico coasts. The CBRA units are depicted on a set of maps that is maintained by the Secretary of the Interior through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

While CBRA does not prohibit or regulate development, it removes the Federal incentives to build on these undeveloped, unstable and environmentally sensitive areas. CBRA seeks to save taxpayers' money, keep people out of harm's way, and conserve natural resources by restricting most new Federal expenditures and financial assistance (e.g., beach nourishment, disaster assistance, and flood insurance) in areas designated within the CBRA system. That is why Mr. President, it is important to make sure these maps are accurate and that they do not include previously developed property. This bill will achieve that objective for the North Bethany Beach area.

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

Mr. President, I thank my friend for yielding. I take the train back and forth from time to time to my home State. I am going to try to get on a train later tonight to go home. Thank you for letting me have a few minutes.

Mr. President, I thank my friend, my neighbor from Maryland, for inviting a number of us to come to the floor today, this afternoon, to talk a bit about the Affordable Care Act. I am really honored to stand next to him here as we do sit next to each other on the Finance Committee and on the Environment and Public Works Committee. He is a great leader on both of those committees.

Mr. President, Senator Cardin and I were on the floor earlier today, along with the Presiding Officer, and we voted on legislation that attempts to send a message to Iran.

By the way, it just had elections, gosh, not even a month ago, whereby the reformist President Rouhani was reelected by a big margin. Reformists-moderates were elected as the mayor of Tehran and in other municipalities across the country. There are a lot of young people in that country who want a better relationship with this country, and they actually had a chance to speak at the voting box. They elected a number of women to serve in positions of real responsibility, not just in their Parliament but as members, say, of Tehran's city council.

By the way, the Iranians are basically keeping their word with respect to the agreement between five nations, including the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France, and Germany. They are actually keeping their word with respect to complying with the nuclear agreement that was entered into, oh, gosh, 2 years ago. What they are doing and that we disagree with is they are testing ballistic missiles, and there is basically the U.N.'s strong message to Iran not to do that. ``If you do, we will sanction you in different ways,'' but they have continued to test ballistic missiles. They say it is for defensive purposes, but you cannot be sure so we strengthened those sanctions.

With those sanctions, we also included sanctions that basically say to Russia--and all 17 intelligence agencies say Russia intervened in our last election--no question. They intervened on behalf of one candidate, Mr. Trump. They wanted to elect him, and they wanted to make sure Hillary Clinton did not get elected. They succeeded. That is not just Democratic messaging. Every one of our 17 intelligence agencies has come to the same conclusion and has testified publicly to that effect.

As a result, this legislation was initially focused just on Iran, but it refocused and pivoted--maybe refocused even more--on Russia in order to sanction them for their misdeeds, which I think are, in many ways, more significant than what the Iranians have done and have been sanctioned for again.

Why do I go back to this legislation that we just debated and adopted here this morning?

Consistent with what Senator Cardin has talked about--and he is very much an architect involved right in the middle of the effort to bring that legislation to the floor. It came out of his committee. He is the senior Democrat, the ranking member. Bob Corker, of Tennessee, is the chair. A number of members--Democratic and Republican--on that committee worked together to fashion that legislation, to bring bipartisan legislation to the floor.

I say to my colleague Senator Cardin that I didn't know what the final vote count was. It was 98 to 2. That is what we can accomplish when we work together, and I think it is a great message as we pivot and talk about the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. President, it is nice to see the Presiding Officer again today--again and again. I don't know if I will be your last speaker, but I will try not to keep you here too long just in case.

I know the Presiding Officer has been through Delaware a time or two and the Senator from Louisiana has been through my State. I have been through theirs.

I am going to talk about a 14-year-old young man who lives in Delaware. I used to say to my friend from Louisiana: Thanks for working, trying to get us to pull together and do something across the aisle on healthcare. We will see how it turns out.

If you come up I-95 on your way to Philadelphia, PA, Trenton, NJ, New York City, Boston, or Maine, you pass through Delaware. As you cross from Maryland into Delaware heading north, you cross into Delaware and go through the toll plaza, and then almost immediately you are at the intersection of a road called State Route 896, a north-south highway.

If you happen to go north on 896, you go into Newark, DE, and you go right by the University of Delaware, which is there in Newark, DE. We don't pronounce it Newark. We pronounce it New-ark, as if it were two words--New-ark. Even though it is one word, we pronounce it as if it were two words, New-ark.

If you go north, you go on 896, you go right into the University of Delaware. I took that road over 40 years ago while I was still in the Navy and on leave with the Navy, trying to figure out where to go to graduate school. I went north on 896 and ended up falling in love with the University of Delaware and applied to graduate school there, and I made my life in Delaware.

If you go south on 896--when you intersect 896 and I-95, you don't go to the University of Delaware. You don't go to Newark. You go south to a town called Middletown. It is one word. There are some extraordinary athletes, high school athletes in Middletown.

For many years, their principal high school was Middletown High School. They have a couple of other schools there now, but one is Appoquinimink High School. In Middletown, they are the Cavaliers. The other is the Jaguars. The Jaguars have a new school; Appoquinimink is a newer school. Middletown has been around forever. They have a history of great athletes.

Year after year, they have won championships, including football-- State

football championships--and men's sports and women's sports. The key to their successes is that these kids grew up together, and they played sports when they were Peewees. They played sports when they were in middle school. By the time they got to high school, they had worked together, trained together, and knew each other, and they did well as a team.

I met another athlete from Middletown a couple of weeks ago. He came by my office with, I believe, his mom. I think it was his mom. We have a photograph of him right here. He is an unlikely athlete. He is 14 years old. He is from Middletown, DE. His mom's name is Jennifer.

They told me what it was like for Michael--Michael Davis--to grow up in and live with a disease called cystic fibrosis. Before we talked much about cystic fibrosis and his preexisting condition, we talked about something we have a passion about, and that is running.

I am all of 70 years old. I still work out every day. I have been doing this since I was a brandnew ensign in the Navy and on my way to Pensacola, FL, to become a naval flight officer and serve our country around the world.

I like to run every day. This guy does, too--almost every day. There is a difference. The difference is that he has cystic fibrosis. I will talk about what that means in a minute, but despite the lung condition he has, he has defied the odds to be alive today--and not just to be alive today, but to become quite an athlete.

I don't know how many people in the Chamber--I look at our new pages who are here, their first week on the job, and I don't know how many of them have run half marathons. I run have run quite a few in Delaware over the years, but I don't have cystic fibrosis. This guy can run a half marathon and beat me into the floor and beat me into the road, at least. I need to yield to him when he goes by.

We have been joined on the floor today by the majority leader. When he shows up, along with a guy who is a fast runner, I yield to them. I will yield to the leader so he can take care of business, and then I will pick up when he finishes.

Mr. President, earlier, just before the leader came to give his closing remarks for the day, I was talking about that Michael Davis is going to be a freshman at Middletown High School about 20 miles south of Newark where 896 intersects with I-95.

I was mentioning that Michael has succeeded in life as an athlete in ways that a lot of people think could just never happen. He has a disease called cystic fibrosis, and it was diagnosed very early in his life, but it is a genetic disease.

I talked with him and his mom Jennifer about that disease and how it affects our bodies. It is a disease that causes persistent lung infection. According to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the condition is caused apparently by a defective gene that causes a thick buildup of mucus in our lungs and in other organs; and that mucus can clog our airways and trap bacteria that leads to infection, can lead to extensive lung damage and, in worst cases, to respiratory failure and then possibly maybe even likely death.

This is a disease that 14-year-old Michael Davis lives with. I have heard, for somebody who has cystic fibrosis to run any distance at all, they--I ran this morning, and I felt like I had some kind of disease. It was humid out there. I think it was probably higher levels of ozone than I like to run in.

For folks with cystic fibrosis like Michael, breathing is like they are breathing through a straw. Imagine that, trying to run 5 kilometers or a half marathon, which is 13.1 miles, and to be able to breathe through a straw effectively and still run distances like that is truly, truly remarkable, but that is what he does.

Earlier this year, he completed, as I said, the New York City half marathon, and one of the people who ran with him was my son Christopher, who is a triathlete in his own right. He is 28 years old and a great runner. He, also like Michael, can run me into the ground, and I am proud of them both.

Michael was diagnosed during a screening, I think, just 3 weeks after he was born. He was 3 weeks old, and he was diagnosed with this disease. His mom said she was shocked. To her knowledge, there weren't any members of her family on her side or the father's side who had cystic fibrosis, but this was a diagnosis made 3 weeks into Michael's life--imagine that, 3 weeks.

After the diagnosis, his mom Jennifer faced some scary unknowns as she learned more about his condition, including average life expectancy for those who have cystic fibrosis.

She immediately sought care for Michael at the Children's Hospital that is up the road from us--I live in Wilmington, DE--but it is up the road 25 miles north of Wilmington. For the last 14 years, Michael has been treated at that hospital. Obviously, the fact that he can run a half marathon with cystic fibrosis suggests that he is getting exceptional care there.

Michael sees the doctor about every 8 weeks when he is feeling well. He sees a doctor more often when he is not feeling well, when he is feeling really sick.

He wakes up every morning at 4:30. I get up around 5:30, and he has already been up for an hour when I get up in Wilmington, DE. He does it to use a high-frequency chest wall oscillation device. They call it The Vest. What it does is, it helps break up the mucus in his lungs, and he continues to use The Vest several times throughout the day. He must also take over--are you ready for this--40 medications every day. So that is his regimen.

He gets up every day at 4:30, straps on The Vest, uses it several times throughout the day. The Vest shakes up his lungs and the mucus there so he can live, and he takes all his medications as well.

He told me, when we met with him and his mom a couple weeks ago, that cystic fibrosis is very frustrating, but he copes by trying to lead a healthy lifestyle. Just last week, Michael received national attention when he was named the Boomer Esiason Co-Athlete of the Year. Boomer was a great football quarterback, if I am not mistaken--I am tempted to say with the Cincinnati Bengals. I am looking for the pages to tell me whether I am right or wrong, but I think I am right. The Boomer Esiason Co-Athlete of the Year is Delaware's own Michael, and we are very proud of Michael, very proud of Michael.

The fact is, access to these treatments and medications are really a matter of life and death for people with cystic fibrosis. If something should happen and Michael and his family would lose healthcare, they would reach out and try to get coverage. Before we had the Affordable Care Act, there was a pretty good likelihood that finding that coverage would be very difficult, and it would be difficult because he has cystic fibrosis. He is not an inexpensive young man to take care of. To keep him alive and well and able to go to school and do the amazing regimen that he does takes money and resources, medicine and medical technology.

The way healthcare used to be provided in this country, when somebody had a preexisting condition like cystic fibrosis and they lost their healthcare--maybe a parent was working, had coverage, and lost the healthcare, lost the job--the person, in this case Michael, would have been out of luck because a lot of the health insurers used to say: Well, we don't want to cover this person because it is going to cost us a boatload of money.

I know there are problems with the Affordable Care Act. There are things I would like to change. What I hope we will do at the end of the day is not get rid of it and not just repeal it, but I hope we will retain that which is good and fix the things that ought to be fixed.

One of the things that needs to be retained is the idea that there should be a prohibition against insurance companies simply saying that if somebody has a preexisting condition and they lose coverage, they can continue to be denied coverage. They can get the coverage they need, and that is one of the very, very good things about the Affordable Care Act.

Our new pages here, you guys are about 2 years older than Michael Davis. Hopefully, you guys will live to be 100 or more. The only reason he is alive today is because he has access to the kind of healthcare we all want for our children and really for our parents.

I am a big believer--our pages hear me. I know they will only be here for 3 weeks, but they will probably hear me, when they come to the floor, talk about the Golden Rule. It is something that was impressed upon me at an early age, about the age of all of you. The Golden Rule goes something like this: Treat other people the way we want to be treated. It is pretty simple.

I grew up in a Protestant Church, but I don't care whether you are Protestant, Catholic, Jew, I don't care if you are Muslim, I don't care if you are Buddhist, Hindu--you name it--all of those religions, every one of them, has something in their Sacred Scriptures something like the Golden Rule: Treat other people the way you want to be treated.

I think we try to do that in the Affordable Care Act, imperfect as it is. I think one of the best examples of the Golden Rule in the legislation, in the law, is the idea that if somebody loses coverage and they have a preexisting condition, we don't just cast them aside and say: Well, that is too bad. We give them another shot to get the coverage they need.

In the case of Michael Davis, the coverage, the access to healthcare, keeps him alive and not just alive to mope around and feel sorry for himself but to go out and run circles around the rest of us. He is an inspiration to me, and I think he is an inspiration to all who know him.

Mr. President, I think I may possibly be the last speaker. I am going to bid you good night and see you next week.

Mr. President, I wanted to express my support for the Wildlife Innovation and Longevity Driver Act, also known as the WILD Act. I commend my Senate colleagues for passing this legislation last week.

I firmly believe that we have a moral duty to be good stewards of our planet, and that includes working together to conserve species and their habitat in the United States and around the world. We face many pressing wildlife management challenges; yet we have heard in the Environment and Public Works Committee that State and Federal agencies do not have adequate resources to face these troubling challenges. That is what makes innovation and collaboration so important, and the WILD Act inspires both.

The WILD Act incentivizes innovators by establishing cash-prize competitions for new technologies that prevent poaching, promote conservation, manage invasive species, protect endangered species, and use nonlethal methods to control wildlife. It directs Federal agencies to manage invasive species on public lands and reauthorizes effective government conservation programs, including those that protect some of our most loved species--elephants, great apes, tigers, rhinos, and marine turtles.

The WILD Act also reauthorizes the Department of Interior's Partnership for Fish and Wildlife Program, which leverages Federal funding by working with hard-working private landowners to restore and improve fish and wildlife habitats on their land.

Wildlife conservation is not a partisan issue, which is why I was so pleased to join with Chairman Barrasso and our colleagues on both sides of the aisle in support of this legislation.

The WILD Act has also been endorsed by a diverse group of stakeholders, including the World Wildlife Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited, and the Family Farm Alliance. I want to thank these organizations for their commitment to this issue and their interest in helping our challenged fisheries and threatened ecosystems, as well as internationally treasured rhinos and elephants.

I urge the House to pass the WILD Act and the President to sign it into law.

Thank you.

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

Mr. President, when I came onto the floor, you were not presiding; you were on the floor talking about the Visa Waiver Program. It is an agreement we have with almost 40 other nations that allows for the free flow of visitors from those countries to our country. It is viewed, in part, as a way to promote tourism and help grow that part of our economy and the economies of the other 38 or 39 nations with which we already have this agreement. Some people believe it is a gaping hole for fomenting terrorism and giving terrorists the ability to infiltrate our countries and do mischief here and other places around the world.

I applaud the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Missouri, for actually explaining how the system works. It is actually not just a way to enhance and promote tourism, which is important to all of our economies, it actually enhances our security if done well, done right, and done correctly. I say to the Presiding Officer, the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, I appreciate very much your making those comments today.

Resolution Condemning Recent Terrorist Attacks

I am going to do something today, Mr. President, that I have never done before. I have never come to the floor and actually read a resolution or a piece of legislation that we are going to be voting on later today. This is a resolution that came out of discussions yesterday as we were contemplating voting on additional sanctions with respect to Iran--sanctions not related to violations of the joint agreement on nuclear weapons. They appear to be in full compliance with what they professed to do, promised to do a year or two ago. There doesn't seem to be a question that they are doing what they promised to do, and that is good.

There is what we believe is an obvious violation of U.N. requirements that say the United Nations doesn't believe that Iran should be testing ballistic missile systems. Even though they have no nuclear weapons--we don't believe they are going to have them anytime soon; hopefully not, because that would help spark a nuclear arms race in that part of that world--we still have, along with the U.N., this prohibition against them developing and testing ballistic missiles. They have violated that a number of times, and a lot of other nations, including us, are concerned about that. We have before us this week and again next week legislation dealing with that.

My hope is that next week we will consider that legislation and have a chance to offer amendments to it. My strong hope is that we will not only be talking about our desire to see Iran fully comply with the U.N. guidelines but that we will also couple with that legislation sanctions dealing with Russia. This is a country that continues to make mischief in this country and countries around the world.

Today, a lot of attention was riveted on the testimony by former FBI Director Jim Comey on whether there was an attempt by the Russians to influence our Presidential election last year. All 17 intelligence agencies in this country have decided unanimously that the question is not only did they attempt or want to influence the outcome of the Presidential election--they all say yes. The answer is yes. All those intelligence agencies say yes. The second thing they said is that they feel the Russians succeeded in what they wanted to accomplish because the person they wanted to see defeated--Secretary Clinton--lost, and the person they wanted to see win--Donald Trump--won and now serves as President of the United States.

The issue that is going on right now in the hearings before the Intelligence Committee involve whether there was collusion between the Trump organization and the Russians during or prior to the time of the election. Ultimately, we will find out the truth, and we will let the chips fall where they may.

I think we make a mistake in simply going forward and admonishing the Iranians for testing ballistic missile weapons while at the same time this effort by the Russians to really make a mockery of our election system and change the governance of this country is a far greater threat.

My hope is that when we come back and take up these issues next week, that we will not address only the one involving Iran but that we will address in a thoughtful way the actions the Russians have taken and not let them get away with this. That is the debate for next week.

In Iran, actually 2 or 3 weeks ago, they had elections. I have spoken about this before on the Senate floor. The elections they had were Presidential elections. Here in this country, we have Presidential elections every 4 years. As it turns out, in Iran they have them every 4 years as well. In this country, most people age 18 and older are eligible to vote. The percentage of people among the electorate who actually vote is not great. Actually, for the longest living democracy in the history of the world, it is sometimes a bit disappointing. But the percentage of people who turned out to vote in the Presidential election in Iran a few weeks ago approached 75 percent, which is a good deal higher, I believe, than what we have accomplished in recent years. They have a lot of young people in that country, and the average age of the 80 million people who work there is under the age of 25. It turns out that the young people--not like the young people in Vietnam and a bunch of other countries--they like our country. They want a better relationship with our country, and the voting that occurred in Iran 2 or 3 weeks ago actually reflected that.

President Ruhani ran on a campaign that included better relations with,

among others, the United States. And I think the election of a lot of mayors in places like Tehran, the capital of Iran, which has changed from a hardliner who didn't agree with President Ruhani's views on this matter--they were turned out of office. That is all a very encouraging development.

There are still people in that country who don't like us, and they wish us harm, wish us ill, and they support terrorism. This is a source of concern. But, particularly with the younger people there, it is a new day there, and I think that is encouraging. We shouldn't be blind to the mischief that some in their country would create, but we also shouldn't be blind to the encouraging things happening among the young people, especially reflected in the voting. We congratulate them on actually having an election where that many people voted.

In some other countries around the world where Muslim is the principal faith, they don't allow women to vote. They don't allow women to participate in the elections, and they don't allow them to get elected. In Iran, the elections in I think Tehran, in the city council alone--women do vote in Iran. They get to run for office. I think in the city council in Tehran alone, six women were elected to serve on the city council. So that is a positive.

We commend them for having elections, and it is their job to figure out whom they are going to elect. I am personally encouraged by the turnout and the participation, especially of women, the election of women, and the President and a lot of young leaders in that country who have different view of us and their willingness to work with us and other like-minded nations in the future.

On the heels of the election, roughly 2 weeks later, there were terrorist attacks in London, in Britain, I think in Australia in the last couple of weeks, and, in the last few days, in Iran. Their Parliament was attacked. You can imagine terrorists coming in and attacking those of us who work in this building, whether they happen to be the pages or Senators or staff. That is what happened in Tehran a couple of days ago at 10 o'clock in the morning, with folks breaking into Parliament and trying to kill folks. They also attacked a sacred site--I think a mausoleum--in another part of the country. Close to 15 people were killed, and many times that number were wounded, some very seriously.

On the heels of that attack and on the heels of the election, on the heels of the attack by ISIS--in both of the attacks on Iran, the attacks were masterminded apparently by ISIS. We don't know for sure given that ISIS tries to take credit for attacks they had nothing to do with or little to do with. But there are people in Great Britain who have lost loved ones, family members, friends. They are suffering, they are hurting, and they are mourning today, and the same is true of Iran.

Great Britain is one of our two or three closest allies in the world. They are like brothers and sisters to us, and we feel a special kinship and extend our condolences to those whose lives have been ended, whose lives have been shattered, and whose lives will be forever changed.

While we do that with our friends and allies in Britain who suffered from these attacks by ISIS, on the heels of a different kind of election in Iran--an encouraging election in Iran--and similar attacks by ISIS on Iran--some suggest it is because they have a willingness to actually have a better relationship with us, and maybe that is what drew the attacks by ISIS. In any event, we certainly express our condolences to the good people in Iran who lost their brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, and sons, and we remember them today.

The resolution has been drafted by Senator Corker, the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and by Senator Cardin. It is a resolution that is not very long. I am going to read it. It is a resolution that dates to these attacks and mentions both countries I just mentioned-- Great Britain, our ally, and Iran, with which we have had difficulty for the last 30, 40 years but which is now interested in a new day with us. To the extent that we can find a way to work together, especially in commerce, the Iranians want to buy aircraft from us. They want to buy Boeing aircraft. They don't want military aircraft. They have an airline which is just awful. It is decrepit, old, aged, and they want to buy $10 to $12 billion worth of Boeing aircrafts, passenger airlines. I would say let's sell to them. The idea is, if we would do that, we would not just put 5 or 10,000 people to work, we would provide job employment opportunities for even more people than that in this country. Why wouldn't we be interested in that? I hope we will allow that to go forward. It would be good for us and also it would be good for them, and maybe it would provide a foundation for working more closely together. I don't know if we would have the kind of relationship that we have with Britain, but as a veteran of the Vietnam war, I can state that when I go for a run some mornings--when I stay down here and go for a run early in the morning, I run down to the Lincoln Memorial. I always run by the Vietnam Memorial. I take my fingers, and as I go along the wall, I let my fingers brush over the names of the people with whom I served, and there are 55,000 who died in that war. They were our friends, our colleagues, our family members, people we literally served with at that time, and they are gone. Yet somehow we have been able to let bygones be bygones and develop a close, august friendship with the Vietnamese. We are their strongest trading partner. They are buying a lot of aircraft from us these days, and we are now going to sell weaponry to them.

We are not going to do anything like that with Iran, certainly with respect to weaponry, but if we can get over finally our difficulties of war and hostilities and so forth with the Vietnamese, maybe we can someday, with a change in leadership with Iran, begin to look more toward a constructive relationship in the future.

The other thing I want to do is, I just want to take this resolution and actually read that which Senators Corker and Cardin and their staffs have worked on and thank them for their good work.

There will probably be a vote later this evening in wrapup, where there will be a unanimous consent request that this bipartisan resolution be approved. I think it is a good thing, it is the right thing, it is a fair thing. How would we want to be treated by other countries if ISIS attacks us and kills our people? We want them to be sympathetic and have some feeling for us and not be quiet about it. That is essentially what we want to do here.

The resolution goes something like this:

Condemning the recent terrorist attacks in the United

Kingdom, the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq, Australia,

and Iran.

It offers ``thoughts and prayers and sincere condolences to all of the victims, their families, and the people of their countries.''

Whereas since May 22, 2017, the Islamic State of Iraq and

Syria (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for multiple

terrorist attacks against civilians that have left more than

180 dead and many more wounded.

Whereas ISIS frequently claims attacks perpetrated by

individual actors or other groups for propaganda purposes.

Whereas the people of the United Kingdom are grieving

following two terrorist attacks claimed by ISIS in London on

June 4 and Manchester on May 22 that targeted and killed

innocent men, women, and children.

Whereas government forces in the Philippines are currently

fighting ISIS militants in Mindanao, including ISIS-

affiliated fighters from the Philippines, Indonesia,

Malaysia, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, who launched an

assault in Marawi City on May 23 in an apparent effort to

establish a caliphate in Southeast Asia.

Whereas ISIS has claimed responsibility for two explosions

in Jakarta, Indonesia, killing three policemen.

Whereas ISIS targeted Coptic Christians in Egypt during an

attack on a bus on May 26, killing 29 people.

Whereas 22 people were killed when ISIS detonated a car

bomb at a Baghdad ice cream parlor, killing Iraqi families

gathering with their children to break the Ramadan fast, and

then detonated a second bomb killing elderly Iraqis

collecting their pensions.

Whereas a terrorist attack claimed by ISIS killed one

person in Melbourne, Australia, and wounded three police

officers.

Whereas on June 7, in an attack claimed by ISIS, at least

12 people were killed when gunmen and suicide bombers

targeted Iran's parliament and a shrine--

I believe it was a mausoleum or where one of their earlier leaders was entombed, enshrined--

in two coordinated attacks across Tehran.

Whereas these reprehensible attacks have no place in a

peaceful world: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Senate--

(1) condemns ISIS' horrific terrorist attacks in the United

Kingdom, Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq, Australia, and

Iran;

(2) expresses its deepest condolences to the victims of

these attacks and their families;

(3) expresses solidarity with the people of the United

Kingdom, the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Iraq, Australia,

and Iran;

(4) recognizes the threat posed by ISIS and recommits to

U.S. leadership in the Global Coalition working to defeat