Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would just remind my colleagues that a lot of folks in my State and people I talk to around the country believe it is outrageous that the last President nominated a candidate for the Supreme Court for almost a year--a full 10 months--before stepping down before his term ended, and that nominee never got a hearing.

We had a National Prayer Breakfast this morning, as our Presiding Officer knows. One of the occurring themes of the speakers at the Prayer Breakfast was the Golden Rule, the obligation to treat other people the way we want to be treated. I think that should apply to this nominee from this President. I also believe it should have applied to the last nominee from the last President. I think the way Merrick Garland was treated was outrageous, and he was roundly praised by Democrats and Republican, Members of this body, alike. The fact that he never got a vote I think is appalling. It runs against everything I was taught to believe.

Perhaps the Presiding Officer's parents raised him the same way. My parents raised us to believe that two wrongs don't make a right. Two wrongs don't make a right. Folks on our side believe--although deeply troubled by the way the last nominee for the last administration was treated--this nominee deserves a hearing. My hope is that he gets one and there is time set aside to prepare for that hearing. My hope is that he will take the time to come and meet with us, particularly those of us who have concerns about his nomination.

I think he should be subject to the same 60-vote margin the last several Supreme Court nominees were subjected to and passed; I think in one case it was 62 votes, and in another case, 63 votes.

I just want to let my friends on the other side--and they are my friends--know that we and, frankly, a lot of people in this country are still troubled, looking back. We are going to look forward with the Golden Rule in mind. My hope is that our colleagues will do the same in the future.

Mr. President, I rise on a subject that some of my colleagues have talked about here today. It is one that we have been discussing for almost the last 24 hours. It is a Congressional Review Act resolution to disapprove the stream protection rule.

People may wonder, What does this mean? There once was a Senator from Nevada named Harry Reid. He once wrote a law that said: If Congress doesn't like a particular rule that has been approved and has gone through the process--drafting, all the approval processes--published in the Federal Register, and something like 60 days on the legislative calendar have run, then that rule is official; it is in full effect. However, if a Member of this body or the House wants to use the Congressional Review Act authored by Senator Harry Reid, they can repeal a rule for which the 60-day legislative clock has not run since that rule or regulation was published in the Federal Register.

In this case, 60 legislative days have not passed since the stream protection rule was promulgated, printed in the Federal Register, and one or more of our colleagues has said: Let's use the CRA-- Congressional Review Act--to see if we can block or repeal it.

I spoke on this yesterday, and I am happy to have a chance to talk a little bit about it again today.

A prevailing argument in favor of this resolution to kill the rule is the significant negative economic implications of managing mining operations and site reclamation in such a way that life and economy continue along with and after extraction ends.

Let's take a few minutes to reflect on the other side of the coin. I can assure you that hunters, fishermen, birdwatchers, and recreation enthusiasts of all ages, sorts, and varieties in my home State of Delaware--and I am sure in every State in our Nation--value an environment that supports the places they treasure and the species they seek. That is not the legacy of mining.

Because of historically weak reclamation and restoration requirements, Appalachia now has more than a million acres of economically unproductive grasslands that cannot support farming, ranching, or the hardwood forest products sectors. That is one of the reasons for and one of the many strengths of this rule: to focus on post-mining economic uses of land, which could include ranching, forestry, tourism, birdwatching, hunting, fishing, and the list goes on.

In America today, there are 47 million men, women, and children who hunt and fish. We all represent them. According to a 2014 report from the National Wildlife Federation, these activities deliver an astonishing $200 billion to the country's economy, and they support one and a half million jobs.

I wish to also point out that mining impacts on headwaters are particularly important, as they represent the very foundation of our water system that supports all these activities and generates all of these benefits. Just to illustrate this point, Appalachia--a region in which I grew up--is the world's leading hotspot of aquatic biodiversity. I was born in Beckley, WV, and we lived there for 6 years or so after I was born and I came back a whole lot over the years to hunt and fish with my grandfather, but I had no idea there was this kind of biodiversity in that region.

There are more species of freshwater fish in one river system in Tennessee than in all of Europe. Think about that--more species of freshwater fish in one river system in Tennessee than all of Europe. Yet surface coal mining has destroyed more than 2,000 miles of streams in this region alone. Cutting the heart out of our ecosystems is no way to do business.

The question is, Would mining companies respect and consider these values and benefits as part of their operations and reclamation efforts without surface mining and clean water laws and the effective protections provided by the stream protection rule? I would say probably not. It is no surprise, then, that conservation and fishermen's organizations, such as Trout Unlimited, the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, the Izaak Walton League of America, and Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, so strongly support this rule and robust implementation of the Clean Water Act. In fact, 82 percent--over 8 out of 10--of America's hunters and anglers feel that we can protect water quality and also have a strong economy and good jobs at the same time. It is a false choice to say we can't have both at the same time.

The stream protection rule would protect and restore an estimated 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forest over two decades-- areas important for hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation.

All these activities would provide local citizens and communities with economic opportunity to replace or build upon what often are one- industry regions. They, in turn, support local economies and create accessible work opportunities for residents, many of whom would otherwise struggle to make ends meet, care for their health, and support their families. In the end, this is a much more valuable and sustainable future for everybody concerned.

These truths hold in their unique ways in mining States across our country, whether they involve ensuring salmon runs in Alaska or ranching in Wyoming.

I will close by repeating a point I made previously in support of this stream protection rule. This past year, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and the Fish and Wildlife Service completed consultation under the Endangered Species Act, resulting in what is known as the 2016 Biological Opinion. This new Biological Opinion smooths the way for more efficient Endangered Species Act compliance and provides some important protections to industry and State regulators regarding possible impacts of mining operations on protected species.

I think it is important to note that if we kill this rule--and I hope we will not--that protection for industry and State regulators will go away, and those players will have to resort to a more cumbersome case- by-case review under the Endangered Species Act for all activities that might affect protected species. That would be a shame.

That would be a shame, especially for a struggling industry.

For this and for so many other reasons, this is a job-creating, economy-expanding rule. Why wouldn't we support it? Once again, I urge a ``no'' vote on this resolution.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this effort under the Congressional Review Act to block implementation of the stream protection rule.

CRA offers Congress an important tool, as we know, to consider potentially egregious rules that are promulgated usually at the end of Presidential terms. The stream protection rule, which we are considering this evening, is not one of those.

I live in a State--Delaware--whose citizens can be adversely affected by the upstream actions of others and border States whose citizens could be compromised by the things we do.

I take it as a matter of faith that we should treat other people the way we want to be treated. We call that the Golden Rule, and I know that not everyone shares my passion for the Golden Rule, even though it appears not just in my faith, those who happen to be Catholic or Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist--it appears in all faiths, the idea that we ought to treat other people the way we want to be treated.

I also believe the Federal Government should act to protect citizens from the harm of the actions that other citizens would do to them. This stream protection rule is, I believe, one of those actions.

I am a native West Virginian. I was born in Beckley, WV, a coal mining town in South Central West Virginia. I understand well the role coal mining has played in supporting families in my native State and communities there for longer than any of us can personally remember.

I also know that mining operations have had a devastating impact on the lives of those who have endured compromised drinking water and destroyed natural habitat, with a loss of the fish and wildlife that define the fabric of my native State and all other States.

This rule has been a long time coming, as we have heard this evening. Indeed, we are living with rules governing mining conduct that go back, I believe, as far as 30 years. It is time for an upgrade, and I think the rule before us is a sound, responsible, and carefully developed answer to that need.

In what is becoming an art form in this country, there are myths-- some call them alternative facts--that are swirling around this rule. As ranking member and the senior Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, I want to address a couple of them.

Some would attack this rule's provisions as redundant and inconsistent with State obligations under the Clean Water Act. I am also a former Governor and am keenly aware of the problems of inefficient governance and avoided at all costs conflicts between State agencies. It wasn't always easy, but we didn't need Federal actions to compound those frictions. I am happy to say that the drafters of this rule heard those concerns, and this rule promotes collaboration and coordination between mining and environmental agencies and clarifies their roles, preserving their authorities under the surface mining and clean water laws.

Both the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers concurred with the final rules, and in doing so, EPA said: ``We have concluded that nothing in the Stream Protection Rule is inconsistent with the provisions of the Clean Water Act and that the final rule does not inhibit the EPA's Clean Water Act authority to require that surface mining activities comply with all applicable provisions of the Clean Water Act, particularly those provisions related to water quality.''

The EPA goes on to say: ``The final Stream Protection Rule incorporates measures to limit duplication and avoid inconsistency in the implementation of Surface Mining and Reclamation Act and Clean Water Act programs, while supporting complementary, comprehensive, and effective environmental reviews of proposed surface coal mining operations.''

Some would say that the stream protection rule allows the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to veto Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act permits. That is not true. It is true that section 7 of the Endangered Species Act does require the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement of the Department of the Interior to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service if any action ``may affect'' listed terrestrial and freshwater species.

The stream protection rule allows permit applicants and regulatory authorities to achieve ESA compliance in a variety of ways but does not provide the Fish and Wildlife Service any veto authority over permits. Indeed, this past year, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and the Fish and Wildlife Service completed consultation under the Endangered Species Act, resulting in what is known as the 2016 Biological Opinion. This new Biological Opinion smooths the way for more efficient Endangered Species Act compliance, while providing important protections to industry and State regulators regarding possible impacts of mining operations on protected species.

I think it is important to note that if we kill this rule, that protection for industry and State regulators will go away. Let me repeat that. I think it is important to note that if we kill this rule, that protection for industry and State regulators will go away, and those players will have to resort to a more cumbersome case-by-case review under the Endangered Species Act for all activities that might affect protected species. That would be a shame for a struggling industry.

For those and a host of other reasons my colleagues will offer today, I urge a ``no'' vote on this resolution.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield back my time.

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

Mr. President, I come to the floor with a lot of other folks to talk about the health care in this country. I think one of the goals we all share--and maybe we are not sure how to get there--is how to make sure that everybody who needs access to health care has it, that it is affordable, and that they get reasonably good quality, whoever they are and wherever they come from.

When I was a naval flight officer, we used to fly a lot of missions out of Japan during the Cold War. I have a special interest in Japan, and I like the folks there. They are pretty remarkable in what they have achieved over the years. One of the things they have achieved over the years is providing pretty good health care for a fairly modest amount of money.

We started working on the Affordable Care Act 7 or 8 years ago. One of the things I learned about Japan was that they were spending 8 percent of their gross domestic product for health care in their country. We were spending 18 percent. As it turns out, they were getting better results. They had lower rates of infant mortality and higher rates of longevity. People lived longer. Newborns died less frequently than we did. On top of all that, in Japan they covered everybody. Everybody was covered for health care. We had about 40 million people--over 40 million people at the time--whose health care coverage was to get into an emergency room of a hospital, try to get in line, and get someone's attention.

I know how smart the Japanese are, but I don't think they can be that smart and we can be that dumb. That is sort of where we were 6, 7 years ago. So we said: What are we going to do about it?

I think almost every President--maybe since Truman--had a goal of making sure everybody in this country had access to health care. A lot of folks talked about it and maybe tried to do something. The first time we had a serious effort to do that was during the Clinton administration, not led by President Bill Clinton but led by First Lady Hillary Clinton. What she came up with and worked on was something called HillaryCare.

The Republicans came up with an alternative to HillaryCare introduced by the Republican Senator from Rhode Island, John Chafee--a really good guy, a very able guy. I actually served with his son Lincoln in the Senate. But in 1993, 1994, when most people focused on HillaryCare, John Chafee introduced legislation with 20 or so Republican cosponsors. A couple of them are still here, I think. Senator Orrin Hatch was one of them, and Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa was one of them--maybe a couple of Democrats, as well. But 20 to 25 Senators, mostly Republican, cosponsored the Chafee legislation.

This chart mentions the Chafee bill and what was included in the Chafee legislation. One of the things included was the individual mandate--basically, that everybody had to get coverage.

Second was the employer mandate, which basically said that employers had to provide health care coverage for their employees--maybe not for everyone, maybe not for the smallest businesses--but getting employers to meet what Senator Chafee and other Senators thought were the employers' obligations, their responsibilities.

In the Chafee legislation there was a ban on preexisting conditions.

In the Chafee legislation there were subsidies for purchasing insurance. Purchasing it where? Purchasing it in State exchanges. The idea of creating large purchasing pools--there were folks who didn't have health care coverage who could get their health care coverage in a large purchasing pool. If their income was low or relatively low, they would be eligible for tax credits to buy down the cost of their health care coverage. They would get theirs from the exchanges and the purchasing pools.

Those were all ideas in Senator Chafee's legislation in 1993. Do you know what? I am a Democrat and probably shouldn't say this, but I thought they all made sense.

The legislation didn't go anywhere. In the end, HillaryCare didn't go anywhere. But long before we had serious debate on the Affordable Care Act, people were talking about the same thing.

You go over here--RomneyCare in 2006. Individual mandate: Got it. Employer mandate: Got it. Ban on preexisting conditions? Yes. Subsidies for purchasing insurance? Yes. Establish State purchasing groups? Yes. Those are all in RomneyCare.

I have always given Governor Romney credit for the idea of the individual mandate, but apparently that was wrong. It was in Senator Chafee's legislation as well. Governor Romney took the handoff, if you will, from Senator John Chafee and introduced what they call RomneyCare in Massachusetts. It was introduced in 2006.

When it first was introduced, they had real good success in getting people covered. It was successful in terms of getting people covered. Where they were not so successful initially was affordability. They had to work on affordability. Part of the problem there was it took a while for the healthier, younger people who did not think they needed health care coverage because they were young and invincible. It took a while for them to start.

They said: The fine keeps going up year after year after year. Maybe I should get some health care coverage and not pay the fine. Ultimately, I think RomneyCare did a much better job on affordability.

If you take those five key provisions, the individual mandate, employer mandate, ban on preexisting conditions, subsidies for purchasing insurance, and establishing the State exchanges--key provisions in the Chafee bill--they are in RomneyCare. Believe it or not, they are in the Affordable Care Act.

I know some of our Republican friends think that nobody listened to them when we wrote the Affordable Care Act. Actually, these are your ideas. These are your ideas. Some of the provisions or aspects of the Affordable Care Act that our friends across the aisle have been most critical of are things that were originally their idea--originally their idea.

Then we changed this thing. Senator Sanders who has joined us on the floor. We added to that. We expanded Medicaid. We said to States--we didn't make them expand Medicaid, but we said: If you do, the Federal Government will pay the lion's share of the increased costs in Medicaid. I think initially maybe 24 States signed up and said: We will do that, including the District of Columbia. Later on, another seven or so, eight States--I think Indiana is one of those that decided, under then-Governor Pence, to expand Medicaid up to about roughly 135 percent of poverty from maybe closer to 100 percent of poverty for most States.

That is a little bit of a good history lesson. I think we have another chart we can look at. It is a pie chart. Sylvia Matthews Burwell came by--the Secretary of Health and Human Services came by a month or two ago and talked to our Democratic Senate caucus. One of the things she said to us that I thought was especially informative was she talked about this pie chart.

What she said is: Think of this pie chart. It includes about 300 million Americans who get health care, at least those who get some kind of health care other than emergency room. She told us that roughly half of the people, a little bit more than half of the 300 million people among the Americans who are getting health care--a little over half, 57 percent--get their coverage through employer coverage. The employers provide that as a condition of employment. Another roughly 22 percent-- that is this area, sort of the brown area--is Medicaid and

the S-CHIP program, the Children's Health Insurance Program, a bipartisan idea. Bill Roth worked on that, the Clintons, and others. I even worked on it as Governor. About 15 percent--this area right here, the green--is Medicare. Then down here you have the individual markets, the marketplaces, and so forth.

There are roughly 5 or 6 percent down here where people are getting their coverage. A lot of the attention, a lot of the criticism of the delivery of health care in the last 6 or 7 years by our friends on the other side has been down here with the marketplaces, the exchanges. Those were their ideas.

One of the nice things the Affordable Care Act has done--not many people know this--but the Medicare trust fund, which is in danger of running out of money, the life of that trust fund has been extended by 12 years because of the Affordable Care Act. The Medicaid pieces have been--the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, has negotiated with a number of Governors to try to give them the opportunity to sort of customize their Medicaid programs.

I think maybe in Indiana they wanted to have a small copay for the people who participated in Medicare. That is what they got. So it is not all one size fits all, but there is some differentiation between Medicaid. Now we have roughly two-thirds of the States that have signed up for Medicaid expansion.

So that is just a little visual. Do we have another chart here? The question is, Who gets hurt by repealing the Affordable Care Act? If we just repeal the Affordable Care Act, and we don't replace it at the same time we repeal it or change it, a lot of people will get hurt, including a lot of people who are in the exchanges and getting health care coverage maybe for the first time in a long time, and actually folks who are not in the exchanges, people who get their health care coverage in all kinds of ways, including employer provided, Medicare, and Medicaid, or privately purchased.

We don't need the kind of uncertainty, the lack of predictability that would be created by repeal without having a very clear picture of what we are going to replace it with at the same time--not a year from now, not 2 years, not 3 years, not 4 years from now but at the same time. That is what we ought to do.

I will close with this. I note one of my colleagues from a big State up to the northeast of us has a few things he wants to say. I welcome hearing him.

My dad used to say to my sister and me when we were kids growing up, a little younger than our pages--we would do some bone-headed stunt, and he would say to my sister and me: Just use some common sense. That is what he would say. Just use some common sense. He said it a lot. We must not have had much.

Well, just repealing the Affordable Care Act and not having something to replace it with immediately that provides coverage just as good-- affordable, comprehensive coverage--that would not be very good common sense. We can do better than that. We can do better.

I hope our Republican friends, with this rush to judgment to repeal and replace 2 or 3 or 4 years down the line, can come around and say: No, that does not make much sense. I hope they will listen to some of their colleagues and some of the rest of us who say: If we are going to repeal the Affordable Care Act, let's know what we are going to replace it with, and make sure we do that on day one.

With that, I am happy to yield the floor to my friend from Vermont.

Mr. President, how am I recorded?

On behalf of the people--

--in the State of Delaware, I vote no.

Will the Senator yield?

It is great to see my friend from Kansas on the floor and looking forward to serving the next 6 years.

One of the things I focused on as a member of the Finance Committee on the Affordable Care Act was the idea that we have doctors, hospitals, and nurses who in some cases provide entirely too many tests and procedures and so forth that are needed to treat somebody just in order to cover--as Naval aviation used to say--our 6 o'clock. You didn't want to have somebody come up from behind you to shoot you down. So we talked about covering our 6 o'clock. Doctors, hospitals, and nurses spend a lot of time covering the 6 o'clock, as my friend knows.

I am an Ohio State boy. I am going to say something nice about Michigan, which is really out of character here. In Michigan, the University of Michigan Medical School and hospital came up with a policy called Sorry Works. If a doctor, hospital, or nurse made a mistake that adversely affected a patient, they apologized. The idea was to apologize, make up for it, make them whole, help them get well, cover their financial costs and so forth. It is called Sorry Works. It is a good idea.

I met a guy who is a doctor and a lawyer--a Republican--from Illinois who took the idea of Sorry Works and he put it on steroids and they called it Seven Pillars. It has been a great example of what actually works to reduce the incidents of medical mistakes in hospitals and nursing homes and also to get better health care outcomes. You reduce medical malpractice costs, and you also get more satisfaction from the patient side.

We have taken that idea in Delaware--Seven Pillars--at Christiana Care, which is the big health care delivery system in our State. We have taken that and have begun to incorporate it in the way they work. If I am your doctor and you are my patient and I perform a procedure on you, if you are harmed or hurt--not your fault, my fault--the idea is I apologize. I meet with you privately--no lawyers--and apologize for what has happened and try to make you whole. If you lost wages, if you have pain and suffering, they pay your health care costs and make you whole. Don't hide it. Don't put it under the rug but take full acceptance, responsibility. That is one of the approaches being used to try to deal with medical malpractice costs. I think it is a good one. It is not the only good one, but it is one.

I happened to be walking through the Chamber and heard my friend speaking, and I thought I would share that with you, with everyone.

When I was Governor of Delaware, we used to meet with my Cabinet. We would be talking about a particular problem or challenge we faced in Delaware. I would say to my Cabinet: Some other State or some other Governor has actually addressed this issue. They figured out how to deal with this this. Our challenge is to find out what works and do more of that and to see if it can be transferred to Delaware.

Sorry Works is a Michigan idea. It morphed into Seven Pillars in Illinois, and now it is being incorporated in my own little State in our big health care delivery system. It is something that works. I am not sorry that it works. I am glad that it works, and I am happy to share it with my friend from Kansas and whoever else might be interested.

I yield.

Madam President, if I could speak through the Chair.

I failed to mention one thing about Sorry Works, Seven Pillars, and what we are doing in Delaware. If we have that meeting between the patient who had been harmed, the physician and provider, and they have the need where there is an apology and an offer to try to make the patient whole--no attorneys involved--if the patient says no, I am not interested in doing that, nothing that is said in that conversation between the two of them can be used in a court of law, which I think is an interesting approach. We are anxious to see how it works over the next couple of years.

Ironically, I was probably the only Democrat--maybe the only member of the Finance Committee--who was trying to get included in the Affordable Care Act provisions dealing with medical malpractice. I had this idea--not to let a thousand flowers bloom or ideas like that--to figure out five or six good ideas and put them on steroids to see if they actually work on a larger scale. I could not get a cosponsor on the other side of the aisle, which blew my mind. It still does. I could never understand that. In the meantime, the ideas are starting to crop up and flourish, and, hopefully, we can find out what works and do more of that.

Thank you.

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

Mr. President, in 3\1/2\ days, the Department of Homeland Security may well shut down. I speak as the senior Democrat on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for the last 2 years and, along with Dr. Tom Coburn, our former colleague from Oklahoma, chaired that committee that he and I led.

But in 3\1/2\ days, if Congress fails to act responsibly--78 hours, I think, from right now--the Department of Homeland Security may shut down. I have spoken on the floor a number of times in recent weeks about the complex, consistent, and very real threats that our country faces. We are familiar with a lot of them--maybe not all.

But over the past several months we have seen horrific images of beheadings, of mass murders, brutal executions at the hands of the Islamic State. Some of our Nation's largest companies and Federal agencies have been victims of massive cyber attacks. They continue to this day.

This weekend another terrorist group, the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Somalia called al-Shabaab, vowed they would seek revenge against the United States. They cited the Mall of America in Minnesota as a potential target. It is not just these groups or the lone wolf terrorists they inspire that we need to worry about.

Last fall, Ebola ravaged several nations in western Africa and even came to our shores as well. Threats from Mother Nature persist too. Communities and cities in some parts of our country are trying to get through a winter that has already broken snowfall records, and more records are likely to fall. Yet today, here in the Congress, there are some who are questioning whether even to fund the very agencies charged with keeping us safe from these and other evolving threats. That goes beyond being irresponsible. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson nailed it recently when he said what it was. Here is what he said: ``It is bizarre and absurd that we are even having this discussion.'' I could not agree more. Is this really the message we want to be sending to all those folks across the world who wish us harm? God, I hope not.

Here we are, days before this key agency could be forced to shut down preparing for the worst. Some of our colleagues have said that it is not a big deal if the Department shuts down. I could not disagree more strongly, and here is why. If we continue this behavior and fail to pass a clean Department of Homeland Security funding bill by midnight on Friday, this is what will happen at the Department of Homeland Security: Much of the Department's workforce, up to 200,000 people, will be expected to show up for work but work without pay.

That includes Border Patrol agents who protect our borders. That includes Coast Guard crews who patrol our waters. That includes the TSA employees who keep our skies safe and make it safe to fly on airplanes and get in and out of our airports. Many of these courageous men and women put their lives in harm's way every day. We expect them to continue doing that. We just are not going to pay them.

That is right. We want you to keep doing your job of protecting our Nation. Eventually, those in Congress will get around to doing our job. When we do, you will get paid. Let me ask: How would we like to be treated that way? How would we like to be treated that way? Well, we would not. I think it is shameful that we would even contemplate treating some of our bravest fellow employees like that.

It is shameful. Even worse, treating our people like this does not make America any safer. In fact, it makes us less safe in the end. Even if we did avoid a shutdown, we would keep the Department running on a stopgap continuing resolution. We would prevent the men and women who work there from doing their jobs as efficiently and as effectively as they could be, should be, and would like to be.

Secretary Johnson described that putting the Department on another continuing resolution--these are his words--``is a little like trying to drive

cross-country with no more than five gallons of gas [in the tank] at a time and you don't know when the next gas station is. You can't plan except days and weeks at a time.''

For example, if we pass another stopgap continuing resolution, the Department will not be able to replace obsolete surveillance technology along high-risk areas of our border. We need to replace that. In addition, our Nation will have significantly fewer resources to respond to any future surges of unaccompanied minors along our southwest border. Moreover, we will put construction of a badly needed national security cutter for the Coast Guard on hold. Why does that matter? It matters because our Coast Guard fleet is aging and needs to be modernized. These ships are essential to stopping illegal trafficking off our coasts, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, and illegal immigration--some of it in vessels that travel at speeds of greater than 50 knots.

If that is not enough, try this: It is widely known that employee morale at the Department of Homeland Security is the lowest of all major Federal agencies. Passing yet another continuing resolution I promise you will not make it any better--quite the opposite. Morale will only get worse, and in doing so threaten to degrade the performance of the people we rely on, perhaps more than any other, to keep Americans safe.

So let me say it again. This is not the way we should be treating the public servants who in many cases risk their lives to keep our Nation and all Americans safe. This is no way to run a key national agency. Furthermore, as we have learned over the years, this kind of crisis budgeting costs taxpayers millions of dollars in lost productivity, in hiring freezes, in contracts that will have to be renegotiated--not at a lower cost to taxpayers--at higher costs.

Now, I understand why some of our colleagues are concerned about the policies and procedures set forth in the President's Executive action on immigration. I get it. They have every right to express those concerns. But the budget of the Department of Homeland Security is not the place to have that debate. A Federal district court in South Texas recently examined what the President put forward and blocked its implementation. Why cannot we just let the judicial process play out and meanwhile do our job by funding the Department of Homeland Security for the balance of this fiscal year?

Some of our Republican colleagues agree with this approach. One of our colleagues, Lindsey Graham, said earlier this week: ``I hope Republicans will come together and back the court case, file a friend of the court brief with the court and fund DHS.''

He added:

I am willing and ready to pass a DHS funding bill and let

this play out in court. The worst possible outcome for this

nation is to defund the Department of Homeland Security given

the multiple threats we face to our homeland.

Our friend, Lindsey's friend, John McCain, also said recently--these are his words, not mine:

It's not a good idea to shut down the Department of

Homeland Security. . . . Now we have the perfect reason to

not shut it down because the courts have decided, at least

initially, in our favor.

``Our favor'' is that of the Republican Governors who filed the lawsuit in the South Texas district court. I want to urge my Republican colleagues to go ahead and pursue this potential judicial remedy to address the concerns they have. But while they are doing that, for God's sake, let's bring a clean, fiscal year 2015 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security--the same bill that both Democrats and Republicans agreed to last December--let's bring it to the floor so we can give the Department the funding and the certainty that it desperately needs.

Regardless of what happens in the courts, at the end of the day comprehensive immigration reform is the only way we can fix our broken immigration system for the long term. It is the only way we can address the issues the President was trying to resolve in his Executive action in a straightforward way, as we did in the last Congress when we passed by a big bipartisan vote right on this floor--by a 2-to-1 margin-- comprehensive immigration reform.

We owe the American people an honest and thorough debate on immigration reform. But let's do it the right way. We have shown that we can do that. We did it a year and a half ago. Let's do it again. Let's do it this year after approving a clean, full-year funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

I might just add this. The comprehensive immigration reform that we passed here by a 2-to-1 margin a year and a half ago was priced out by the Congressional Budget Office, which is not Democratic or Republican. They looked at it and did all the numbers and everything. They concluded that rather than increasing the budget deficit, that comprehensive immigration reform bill reduced the budget deficit for the next 10 years by $200 billion. Further, for the second 10 years, it reduced our budget deficit by $700 billion.

A different study further suggested that the impact on our Nation's economy and on our gross domestic product by the implementation of that same comprehensive immigration reform was that it would not diminish the growth to our economy. It would actually increase it by 5 percent-- 5-percent GDP growth over a two-decade period of time.

Those of us who are privileged to serve in the Senate were sent here by our constituents with a critical responsibility: to work together and pass laws that help our Nation and help our economy to grow and to thrive.

This debate--or any debate, for that matter--should not be about one political party winning or losing, because the only people who are losing are the constituents we are supposed to serve. As long as we continue to spend our time debating these manufactured funding crises, our constituents--American taxpayers from coast to coast--are going to continue to lose. We as a Congress, I think, lose as well.

I believe American voters made it clear in last fall's election. They are tired of all of this kind of behavior. I do not blame them either. But it is simple. They want us to do our job. They want us to work together across these aisles. They want us to get things done that need to get done. They want us to find ways to strengthen the----

I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

In closing, let me just note that I am encouraged to hear that Senate Majority Leader McConnell now seems to be moving toward allowing a vote on a clean bill. I hope this change of course is the beginning of the end of this crisis for the Department of Homeland Security and for our country. Whatever we do, it is critical that we consider and pass a clean Department of Homeland Security funding bill first. At this point, every hour that goes by without one creates more uncertainty and more waste.

After we do that, let's roll up our sleeves and let's get back to work on a thoughtful, 21st century immigration reform policy for our country, a policy that is fair, a policy that will significantly reduce our Nation's budget deficit, and a policy that will strengthen the economic recovery now underway.

I want to thank my friend from Iowa for the kindness in allowing me to proceed for an extra few minutes.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, here in Congress, as the Presiding Officer knows, we do a lot of oversight. Oversight is focused on what is going right as well as what is going wrong in our government. There is a lot of each, actually. That oversight is critically important work. It is sometimes overlooked, but critically important.

I think it is also important to stop and recognize where things are going right from time to time and the people who are doing the right thing. Following in the footsteps of one of our former colleagues here--I don't think the Presiding Officer ever had a chance to work with him, but Ted Kaufman was a Senator who served here for 2 years. He succeeded Joe Biden who went off to do some other job--Vice President, maybe that is what it is. And then, before Senator Chris Coons was elected 2 years later, Ted Kaufman was our Senator, a great guy. He used to be Senator Biden's chief of staff for 20 years or so.

Ted used to come to the floor pretty regularly and talk about different Federal employees who are doing exemplary work; people who had gone above and beyond to achieve the mission of solving problems and giving the U.S. taxpayer something to be proud of.

When somebody has a good idea, I like to steal it, and I think Ted Kaufman had a great idea. I have not really stolen it, but we have taken an idea and we have focused it a little bit, to focus on some of the people the Presiding Officer and I, along with Senator Ron Johnson, met with this last weekend on the U.S. border with Mexico. I have decided to take the Ted Kaufman idea and focus it, put a spotlight on a number of employees within the Department of Homeland Security.

As many of us know, the Department of Homeland Security, which does important work--sometimes heroic work, dangerous work--they suffer from low morale, but it is filled with men and women who, frankly, deserve, I think, in many cases, a lot more credit than they receive.

Today I wish to speak for the next several minutes about one of the people we met, a fellow whose name I think the Presiding Officer will probably remember. His name is Ramiro Garza, Jr., and he goes by Ram. I think he has probably gone by Ram all his life. I will always remember him as Ram. He is an outstanding Border Patrol officer whom we met last week in McAllen, TX, while we were visiting the Mexican border in South Texas--the three of us, the Presiding Officer, Senator Ron Johnson, and yours truly.

This is Ram. Some of my colleagues may remember the pictures last summer, when an unprecedented surge of Central American children and families arrived at our Texas border. They are the kind of pictures that really burn into our memories for a lot of us. The pictures we are more used to seeing may be from war zones than to see here in our own country, with hundreds upon hundreds of unaccompanied minors and a lot of mothers with young children in search of protection, literally turning themselves in to our Border Patrol agents; not running away from them, but turning themselves in and asking for asylum.

The Rio Grande Valley in South Texas is where Agent Ram Garza works. Ram is the acting patrol agent in charge of the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol. The Rio Grande Valley where Ram works is the epicenter of that humanitarian crisis we witnessed last year. That is because most of the migrants were from the northern triangle of Central America, and they were fleeing violence, fleeing economic desperation, and fleeing a sense of hopelessness in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

These migrants had to travel some 1,500 miles through Mexico, risking life and limb to get to the United States. The shortest route--though by no means an easy one--runs up the east side of Mexico from Central America to the South Texas border, and many of the people who are making that 1,500 mile trek did it on top of a train. In fact, they did it on a series of trains--freight trains, not passenger trains--where people actually get on top of the trains and try to hold on for a 1,500 mile trip. Some of them succeeded and some of them didn't. Some of them fell down between the trains and cars and lost their lives. Some made it to the border. Some fell off the train. Some got hurt. Some got on another train. Some didn't make it. But many of them rode on top of those trains to get here, and they suffered violence. If they made it safely on the train, a lot of them suffered violence at the hands of predatory gangs along the way.

When these children showed up in South Texas, they literally overwhelmed the Border Patrol stations along the border. These stations are only supposed to hold detained migrants for a short period of time as they are processed for removal back to where they came from, or for detention. Usually along the border, they deal with the young men. However, last year stations were packed with mothers and young children who were trapped there for days as our government struggled to find suitable shelters and decide what to do with them. There were no adequate meals, no clothing, no diapers. There is literally no room at times for someone to lie down, either.

Faced with this human crisis, Customs and Border Protection agents sprang to action. Among their leaders was our agent here today whom I especially want to put a spotlight on: Ramiro Garza. With the help of his colleagues, Ram went above and beyond to process the arrivals, according to the law, while also responding to the human needs of these people. Agent Garza helped create an emergency operations center to manage the crisis and worked to transfer unaccompanied children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Perhaps most impressive, though, he worked with his colleagues to convert an enormous abandoned warehouse that we visited in McAllen, TX. I will not soon forget that. It is just a few miles from our border with Mexico. He turned it into a processing center for detained migrants and they did it in 18 days. They looked at a place--and they described what it was like before they started working on it, and then what they did in 19 days, they did pretty remarkable stuff. And Ram, whom we honor especially here today, and those who worked with him deserve our recognition.

This processing center helped greatly relieve the crowded and inadequate conditions in multiple Border Patrol stations along the border. When Senator Ron Johnson, our Presiding Officer, Senator Sasse, and I visited this past weekend the extraordinary processing center that Agent Garza helped set up, we were amazed to see a cavernous, orderly center equipped with the humanitarian necessities needed for hundreds of children and their parents. The center also had space for Central American officials to work with Customs and Border Protection in order to properly identify migrants and arrange for speedier repatriations, in many cases to their home countries, where appropriate.

Agent Garza was instrumental in designing the processing facility and getting it up and running quickly. Today he is in charge of that facility.

This is just the latest achievement in Agent Garza's career with the Border Patrol. As I said, known most of his life as Ram, he grew up in the Rio Grande Valley. There he attended high school and the University of Texas-Pan American. He joined the Border Patrol in 1996. His first assignment was to the Brownsville station in the Rio Grande sector. In 2004, he was promoted to supervisory Border Patrol agent at the Rio Grande City station. That was followed by tours at the Rio Grande sector's intelligence office and at Harlingen station.

Agent Garza also worked on detail here in Washington, DC, where his duties included supporting the agency's efforts in biometric collection--something we think is very important. While he is helping to humanely process migrants apprehended at the border, Agent Garza also cares for his own family--his wife and their own two children. We thank them for sharing with us their husband and their dad--a very good man.

The Department of Homeland Security and our Nation are truly blessed by Ram's exemplary service.

Agent Garza, if you are out there listening, we want to thank you for what you do each and every day for all of us. We thank you for your tireless service to our Nation for all of these years.

As the Presiding Officer, along with Senator Johnson and myself, met the men and women of the Border Patrol last weekend, including Agent Garza, we heard about their work, and it is hard to ignore the fact that they might not know if they will be getting a paycheck next month when the continuing resolution which funds the Department of Homeland Security expires in actually about 2 weeks, on February 27.

Many of them don't know if they will be able to obtain the technology or supplies they need to do the jobs as effectively as possible either. This is not the way we would want to be treated if we were in their shoes, but it is how I think we are treating the men and women who work around the clock to protect our borders and to keep our Nation safe and secure. Those of us here in Congress can change that, and I think we should.

Two of our colleagues--Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland--have introduced a clean appropriations bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security for the balance of the fiscal year, up through the end of September. Overall, the funding provisions in their bill, S. 272, which I understand both Democrats and Republicans on the Appropriations Committee agreed to in December--just 2 months ago--provide just under $40 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of the fiscal year. I think that is an increase from year to year of about $400 million. It sounds like a lot money. It is about a 1-percent increase above 2014 funding. This bill would ensure that Department employees get their paychecks on time and have the resources they need to best meet the Department's critical mission and the security needs of our Nation.

The clean bill put forward by Senators Shaheen and Mikulski would

take additional measures to secure order and enforce our immigration laws--something that I know is a priority to me and I know to our colleagues on both sides of the aisle. In fact, most of the funding increase in the Shaheen-Mikulski bill would go to border security and immigration enforcement.

The bill our colleagues have put forward contains a little more than $10 million for Customs and Border Protection--an increase of approximately $118 million above last year's enacted level. This funding level would support the largest operational force levels for the agency in its history--a total of more than 21,000 Border Patrol agents and nearly 24,000 enforcement officers.

But if the Department of Homeland Security remains on a continuing resolution--or worse, shuts down--we just won't be as effective as we ought to be in securing our Nation's borders. If Congress forces a shutdown of the Department--I hope we won't--frontline personnel would be asked to continue to work without pay. We met some of them just a few days ago when we were on the border. They don't look like fast boats, but they move pretty good. We went zipping up and down the Rio Grande River looking for people trying to slip across the border, looking for folks who were trying to bring contraband--drugs, illegal drugs--across the border.

There are some 40,000 Customs and Border Protection officers who are needed to keep our borders secure. If we allow the funding for the Department to lapse on February 27, we are going to expect these guys and gals to still come to work. We are not going to pay them, at least not in a timely way.

If Congress continues to keep the Department on a continuing resolution, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will see a shortfall--I am told a little over half a billion dollars--to respond to unaccompanied minors and families with children.

In addition, Customs and Border Protection won't be able replace or upgrade border surveillance technology, including upgrades to obsolete remote and mobile video surveillance systems in the high-risk area of the Rio Grande Valley.

The drone is a pilotless aircraft. We fly aircraft similar to these all over the planet. We fly a number of them along the border of our country with Mexico in an effort to try to see, visualize, and detect people making their way to our border, maybe just to come across, maybe to flee a bad situation in their own country. Maybe it is to bring drugs or other things that are illegal into our country. We are not going to be able to replace or upgrade this kind of technology and bring it to high-risk areas along the Rio Grande Valley.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson recently said-- I want to quote Secretary Johnson just briefly. He said, ``Border security is not free. The men and women of [the Department of Homeland Security] need a partner in Congress to fund their efforts.'' He added, ``Time is running out.'' Those were his words. I couldn't agree with him more.

In the next week or so, I pray that those of us in Congress will come together and will do what I believe is the right thing; that is, support the passage of a clean full-year appropriations bill for the remainder of this fiscal year for the Department of Homeland Security and do it by February 27.

After we have done that, for God's sake, let's get to work on crafting thoughtful, comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform law for our country, one that better secures our borders, one that strengthens our economy, and one that reduces our budget deficit over the next two decades by hundreds of billions of dollars. That is what we ought to do. I would pledge here today to my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, one or two Independents, and our Presiding Officer, that we will meet you in the middle and do our dead level best to make sure we meet our responsibilities.

With that, I am looking for others on the floor who may want to speak. I don't see anybody.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, last weekend--this past weekend--I was privileged to visit our Nation's border with Mexico. Not my first visit but maybe the most productive, most informative visit I have had. I had the opportunity, as a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, on which the Presiding Officer serves, to visit our Nation's border with Mexico from--really from California, from the Pacific all of the way across the southern part of our country, almost to the Gulf of Mexico.

I did not cover every square inch of it or every mile of that border, but we had a chance to look up close and personal, if you will, to see what we are doing and what we have been doing in California, in parts of Arizona, in parts of Texas. As we all know, those are some big States. But we have been there enough, talked to enough smart people, went with our colleagues, this time with the chairman of our committee now, Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, and with Ben Sasse, the new Member from Nebraska. I am grateful to them for including a former chairman of the committee and my staff. I thought it was very productive. I learned a lot. I thought I already knew a lot going down there, but I came back even better informed. I hope they felt that way as well.

We had some discussions going and coming about the President's Executive orders with respect to the status of some of the undocumented folks in our country. I know there is a fair amount of heartburn on the part of our Republican colleagues that the President may have acted inappropriately. We understand that unhappiness. My hope is that we will not take that unhappiness out on the Department of Homeland Security whose employees are working hard to try to do their jobs, to protect us from all kinds of dangers, not just on the borders of our country with Mexico or Canada but all kinds of threats around the world.

My hope is that at the end of the day we will use this dustup, if you will, this disagreement with the President's actions to provide a sense of urgency to take up and debate again comprehensive immigration reform--not next year but this year, not this fall, not this summer but the beginning of this year, now or very close to now.

One of the things we have learned in terms of our own work on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is immigration reform done well--and I do not know how the Presiding Officer voted. I voted for it. I was not crazy about it. My guess is she probably voted for it as well. But was it perfect? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. Was it better than nothing? It sure was. Are there some things I would like to change? You bet there are.

My hope is that we do immigration reform again, hopefully soon, and that we will have the opportunity to keep what is good and valuable in that legislation and change the things that are not. But among the things on the positive side that came out of that legislation is, one, the bill, supported by two-thirds of the Senate a year and a half ago, does a couple of things.

How does it affect gross domestic product? How does it affect our economy? It grows it by about 5 percent over the next 20 years. That is a pretty good little stimulus to help make sure the economic recovery continues. So that is something to have us keep in mind.

The other immigration reform question a lot of people back home in Delaware asked me was, Immigration reform, isn't that going to cost us a lot? Isn't it going to make the budget deficit bigger?

The Congressional Budget Office, which is neither Democratic nor Republican, has actually studied that, drilled down on that, and here is what they have concluded. The immigration reform, imperfect though it was, that we passed a year and a half ago with strong bipartisan support, would actually reduce our budget deficit over the next 10 years by $200 billion and further reduce our budget deficit over the next 10 years after that by $700 billion. Add those together, it is $900 billion in deficit reduction.

We are at a time when, as our Presiding Officer knows, we still have all the deficits down by two-thirds from where it was 5 or 6 years ago. It is still higher than we want it to be. There are actually a number of things we can do to continue to drive it down closer to zero, where we would like it to be. I know I would like that. I know the Presiding Officer feels that way too.

One of the things we had in the immigration reform bill, as I recall, was some provisions dealing with guest worker programs. What I have heard in my visits to Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, my visit to the border, a lot of the people--it is primarily those three countries from which the greatest numbers of people are coming across the border in South Texas--that is where they are coming from. Are there still Mexicans who come into the United States? Yes. Legally and illegally? Yes.

Last year I am told almost as many Mexicans were going back into Mexico from the United States as are coming into the United States from Mexico. The origin of the illegal immigration is Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. People say: Why would anybody allow their 7-, 8-, 9-, 10-year-old daughter or son to literally leave in the arms of a coyote on a train--not on a passenger train but on the top of a train--and try to travel 1,500 miles with all kinds of threats to their life and limb? Why would anybody do that?

Having been in those countries--Honduras is the murder capital of the world, and I have seen in that country and in Guatemala and El Salvador police who do not police, prosecutors who do not prosecute, judges who do not administer justice, correctional systems that do not try to correct the behavior.

The school system in Honduras is a great example. Kids in Honduras go from--I know the Presiding Officer has young children. Our boys are through school out into the world. But in schools in Honduras, public schools, they go from grade 1 to grade 6. About half the kids actually make it to grade 6. Of the ones who make it to grade 6, only about half of them can read at grade 6 level. As to the ones who actually make it through grade 6, only 5 percent of them can do sixth grade math. That is a problem.

Several years ago when Hurricane Richard came through Honduras, it wiped out half of their secondary roads. In that country, they have electricity costs which are two or three times what they are in the countries to the south of them and to the north of them. Most of the electricity is created by petroleum. It is expensive. What they need to do is use natural gas, bring it down from Mexico, be able to convert that into electricity and build a grid that helps distribute that electricity.

The other thing they need in that part of the world--as a former attorney general, our Presiding Officer knows well how important this is--is to restore the rule of law. In visiting the three countries-- Honduras, I will use again as an example. Until last year, I think their murder rate was about 95 per 100,000 people. That was their murder rate. It was the murder capital of the world.

A number of businesses were shut down by extortion because small business people in Honduras got tired of

being extorted basically from gangs who said: Give me money. If not, I will kill you. Small business owners gave up--15,000 of them. Fifteen thousand small businesses that were there 3, 4, 5 years ago closed.

The conscription of gang members--the Presiding Officer I think has heard me tell this story. But we heard this from one of the folks in Catholic Charities in Southern Delaware, in Sussex County, Georgetown, where we have some Guatemalan population from way back--they worked in the poultry industry, some of them--and some of the unaccompanied minors who have come to Southern Delaware, not thousands of them but maybe 100 or more.

One of the stories was told to us by the folks who are trying to provide some help for those young kids. There is a story. It is from Honduras. A 15-year-old boy was conscripted to join a gang. He was told by the gangs: We want you to join the gang.

He said: I don't want to join the gang.

A week or two later they came back and said: We want you to join our gang.

He said: I'm not interested in joining the gang.

A little bit later they came back and said: If you don't join this gang, our gang, we're going to kill somebody in your family.

He joined the gang, and later on he found out about his initiation and what he would have to do as part of his initiation into the gang that he did not want to join.

Part of the initiation was--he had a 13-year-old sister--he had to rape his 13-year-old sister. Within a week or two that 15-year-old boy and 13-year-old sister were on their way north with a coyote to get out of that country and ultimately ended up in the southern part of our State.

People say to me: Well, why would all those people risk their lives? Can you imagine letting your kids go or my kids go? I cannot imagine that, what has happened, again and again and again. Part of what was reiterated to me on this trip is it is all well and good that we continue to strengthen our borders. We spent a fortune, one-quarter of a trillion dollars in the last 10 years to strengthen our borders with Mexico. Are they stronger? You bet they are. Are they totally impervious? No, they are not. Are there things we could do to make them stronger, more stalwart? Of course there are.

One of the great things about the codel that I was privileged to join Chairman Johnson and Senator Sasse on is we basically learned--had reinforced to us those things that were working. Let's find out what is working, do more of that, and find out what is not working and do less of that.

One of the things we have to do is not just continue to address the symptoms of the problem--people trying to come across the border. God knows we need to do that. We can. We can do it more smartly, more cost- effectively. The other thing we need to do is to get at the underlying root causes. The reason people are coming up, risking life and limb to get through Mexico to get to the United States, is because of the lack of hope, lack of economic opportunity, the corruption they faced in their lives for a number of years.

What are some of the things we learned that are working? The Department of Homeland Security folks with whom we met at the border, folks working at the border, Border Patrol, people in aircrafts, helicopters, Homeland Security folks on watercraft, and the people who are running the centers for minors, people who have been detained and are being held--and some will be returned; most of the adults will be returned; for folks with criminal records, almost all of them will be returned to their native countries--but I saw some remarkable work. We saw remarkable work being done by employees at the Department of Homeland Security. Coast Guard people are doing it. All kinds of folks are involved in it--ICE, Border Patrol, folks who are working at these very busy land crossings where we have billions of dollars' worth of commerce going through these borders from the United States into Mexico. We have a bunch of them across the southern part of our Nation. Mexico is a huge trading partner with us and we with them. One of my takeaways is, How do we continue to move that commerce, move that commerce to benefit us, create jobs here and frankly in Mexico as well? How do we do that in a way that makes sure we are doing a good job stopping the human trafficking from coming across our borders, and at the same time make sure the illegal drugs, not just marijuana but especially the cocaine and the heroin that folks are trying to get across our borders by water, by air, by land gets stopped.

There is a real tension here, and I thought we came back with great ideas of how to do a better job of meeting both responsibilities--the stuff we want to keep out of our country, including people out of the country who are illegal. We can do that. We need to do a better job--I think we are doing a better job--and also at the same time make sure the flow of commerce continues unimpeded.

The legislation that was passed about 18 months or so ago with strong bipartisan support sought to double, I believe, as I recall, the number of people who work in the Border Patrol doing some of the border security work. We already have about 20,000 people there. I think we have another maybe 20,000 or so who are working the ports of entry to try to make sure we are stopping bad people, bad things, including diseases, insects, and all kinds of things that hurt our agriculture economy to try to stop that from getting through.

The bill we had said we ought to basically double the number of people who are working on the border for security. Do we need some more people? Yes, we especially need them at the ports of entry.

What we truly need though is some technology. I call them force multipliers. I am a big believer in drones. I spent a lot of time in my life in Navy P-3 aircraft. One of the joys of the weekend for me was to be on a Navy P-3 aircraft--the kinds of airplanes I flew on as a mission commander, a naval flight officer on Active Duty, and later as a reservist. I retired as a Navy captain, I think in 1991, but to actually be on a P-3 aircraft again and to take an aircraft that is much older than you and not as old as I, to see that aircraft reconfigured--actually the wings and insides are new as well, the avionics up front--and to see the changes in the equipment that we have, there is better radar, and there is an ability to put that aircraft out over water and to pick up the bad guys whether they are in cigarette boats or a submersible with a periscope poking out of the water.

There are also helicopters to see what we can do as we patrol the Rio Grande River--very low altitudes, twisting and turning and actually finding some people trying to get across.

To look at the drugs and try to understand what our capabilities are with the drones, I think they are terrific. Are we getting full bang for our bucks? No, we are not. The inspector general from the Department of Homeland Security has issued--not that long ago--a finding that was very critical of the effectiveness of the drones.

I am convinced there is a great potential there. I am determined. I am sure working with Democrats and Republicans and our committee in the Senate and hopefully the House and certainly with the administration. We need to make sure we are getting full value for everything we are putting into the drone technology, in the deployment of drones.

If we are going to spend more money on drones, I want to make sure we get our entire money's worth. I am sure the taxpayers feel that way as well.

One of my thoughts, aside from the technology, I wish to work with the Presiding Officer, with the Republicans, and I want to work with the Democrats on comprehensive immigration reform. I want us to finish the work we started, and I want us to do it sooner than later. I hope the money we have to spend in that bill to strengthen our borders, we spend it in a smart way.

I have mentioned a couple of those ways too. One of those is the drones, to make sure we take into account the investigation by the inspector general and his folks and make sure they are being honest and straightforward with us. I am sure they wouldn't deliberately mislead us, but I want to make sure we are getting our value.

I want to mention a couple of other things. I spent a little bit of my life in an airplane, some of my time in the

Navy in a P-3. During the Vietnam war, we flew a lot of missions off the coast of Vietnam and Cambodia. Our job was to pick up little infiltrator trawlers trying to resupply the Viet Cong and turn them over when we found them, track them to the coast, and turn them over to swift boats and the Coast Guard. That was our job.

We also did an area of surveillance of shipping traffic going into Haiphong Harbor. The capital of North Vietnam, Hanoi, was there. We were trying to make sure we knew what was going in and out of that country.

When we were doing those kinds of missions, largely what we did was we did ocean surveillance, subsurface ocean surveillance. We tracked a lot of Soviet nuclear submarines, diesel submarines, to make sure we knew where they were and what they were up to.

The other thing we did from time to time, we would be called on for our Navy P-3 assets to do a search and rescue. As we have seen from the Malaysian aircraft that disappeared a number of months ago and the Indonesian aircraft that disappeared a number of months ago, we put the P-3 airplane up there to help search for them. We put them out across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean with, in many cases, binoculars, but radar was running as well and we were trying to listen to see if there were any radio signals coming out.

We also came out with binoculars. I am going to tell you, looking for people in a boat, looking for wreckage with binoculars from an aircraft out of the ocean at 1,000 feet, 5,000 feet or 10,000 feet, that is very hard to do and not very fruitful.

We have these fixed-wing aircraft that the Homeland Security owns. They are called Cessna 206. They are a single engine and they fly for maybe 5 or 6 hours. They are actually a pretty good platform, but we essentially use them--if we use them at all--with binoculars, looking for people coming to our border from Mexico or trying to get across our border.

That isn't very smart. There is a system called VADER and the VADER system is a highly advanced, sophisticated system that enables us to see from 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 feet, day or night, what is coming through our borders, in some cases even in inclement weather.

For us to fly aircraft, whether they are drones, fixed-wing aircraft, whatever, and not use that technology is not very smart. If we have something that is that good--as I have seen with my own eyes, even on this trip--what an advantage that gives us for being able to detect people coming to our border, across our border or over our border. That is hugely helpful information. We can deploy our forces by helicopter, by vehicle or by foot or by horse.

The Presiding Officer has been to Afghanistan a time or two. I have been there a couple of times myself. I had a chance to see the tethered dirigibles--lighter than air--that were used in Afghanistan, Kabul and other places, to enable us to surveil through cameras and other assistive devices, surveil what is going on in Afghanistan and in Kabul, for example. They are very helpful.

It seemed to me the first time I was there--the first couple of times I was at the border--the first thing I asked was why do we use that technology? Why don't we use that technology, tethered lighter-than-air dirigibles that can go up to 1,000 feet, 2,500 feet, 5,000, 10,000--why don't we use them along the borders, particularly as we are bringing that equipment technology back from Afghanistan?

Well, we are starting to do that. One of the things we did, we actually were at the tethered dirigible site on the border by the Rio Grande River, and we had the opportunity, with the tethered dirigible up and operating, to actually be in the shack, if you will--there is actually a modern shack right at the base of the dirigible--and see people coming through Mexico--about a half dozen or so--approaching our border and waiting for sundown or dusk to be able to come across the Rio Grande River.

It gave us the opportunity to know they were coming, to marshal our forces, and to have them positioned appropriately, if these folks came across, to take them into custody. If they were folks who were not coming here lawfully or for asylum or just looking for an opportunity for a better life or a better economic life or if they were bringing bad stuff--drugs, and a bunch of them do--then we were in a position to deal with that.

But the technology, the tethered dirigible, the technology we can put on those--cameras, radar, great stuff--we ought to be doing more of that. Again, I like to find out what works and do more of that. But that is a great force multiplier and not the only one.

We also have towers. These are towers that are not tethered dirigibles. These are towers that are maybe 100, 200 feet in the air. They don't allow someone, as the dirigible does, to look over the horizon, but they can certainly give a good idea of what is going on for several miles, either way, maybe 2 or 3 miles in radius. The dirigibles go up 10, 15 miles in radius to see what is going on and inform us--in all kinds of weather. But the towers that are on the ground are fine.

Airboats, one of the exciting things we did was add boats, fast boats. We have gone up and down the Rio Grande River--gosh, maybe a mile away. The fellow who was running our boat--I might be getting confused with our helicopter--but in any event, as we were doing helicopter runs up and down the river and airboats up and down the river--I think the pilot actually saw something in our helicopter about a mile up going around the bend. He actually picked up visually at least one or two people who were approaching the banks of the river on the Mexican side. Sure enough, we ran in on them, and they had a raft there and several people who were apparently trying to come across the river.

But we have some parts of the Rio Grande River--the kind of watercraft we were in works just fine, but there were other parts of the river where we needed airboats because the water was very shallow, and the boats we were in would run aground. So one of the other takeaways in terms of force multiplier is to make sure we have boats, technology that is appropriate, also making sure we have the communications equipment we need but also making sure we are using things such as airboats when we need them.

The other thing I was saying--I hadn't thought about this until right now--but one of the things that is very important for us to better secure our borders is for Mexico to better secure their borders. For Mexico, when folks are trying to get across from these three Central American countries and they are coming toward the southern border of Mexico, Mexico needs to realize they have a dog in this fight. If we stop them at our border, that means all these immigrants are going to be in Mexico. It will provide challenges, some problems, if you will, for the Mexican people in some cases.

Just as a refugee needs a place, needs work or needs food or shelter, it is all of those challenges with movement of population such as this. In some cases they are criminals. In most cases they are not, but in some cases they are criminals. Does the Mexican Government want all of those problems? No, they don't. They are finally awakening to that and they are doing a much better job, particularly with their multi-layer approach on their southern border to slow and stop--to some extent--the flow of illegal immigrants coming from the three Central American countries I have mentioned.

The other thing that Mexico can be very helpful with is shutting down train service. I say that with tongue in cheek. There is a train called ``The Beast''--in fact, several of them. They emanate from southern Mexico. They run the full length of the country, about 1,500 miles. People are able to climb--until at least recently--on top of these freight trains and hold on for dear life or maybe get into the rail car and hunker down, travel the length of the country, and get off as the trains approach the border with the United States.

It is sort of like riding the Amtrak train from Delaware to New Orleans or from Delaware to Chicago and basically not having a ticket, just traveling along, a free rider.

I have said to the Mexican Government: Why do you do this? Why do you allow them to do this? We would never let people ride our free trains like this and come down to your country. Why do you allow this?

God bless them. They finally said: Well, we are going to stop that. Instead of having maybe a couple thousand people on ``The Beast,'' this train--this freight train with people on top of the freight cars holding on for dear life--now we have a handful--maybe a handful--of people allowed to do this, which is helpful.

The other thing Mexico can be helpful in--and they are doing I think a better job--is sharing information with us, the sharing of information. They have an idea of who is coming through their country, who is bringing them, and we need that information. We actually need some more information from Honduras and Guatemala.

We are getting reasonably good information, intelligence from the Mexicans and the other countries, and we need it to be better. To the extent that we get that better information, it enables us to be better positioned to respond with human assets and with some of these force multipliers that I have been talking about.

I wish to mention--if I could again go back to the border crossings. When we think of a border crossing, we think of a road maybe or something, maybe it is a bridge. These are unbelievable. Some of them are huge and unbelievable infrastructures that have been constructed with multiple lanes of traffic going each way. Traffic is backed up in some cases for hours trying to get from the United States into Mexico. Maybe they are taking parts down for auto assembly and then coming back with finished products.

But there is a huge flow of trade which benefits Mexico and frankly benefits us as well. There is an old saying: Time is money. To the extent that folks in a just-in-time economy are trying to move products, trying to move goods, to have to wait for those lengths of time is not good.

We can do a better job. We need to do a better job in terms of the people whom we have working there at the border for us and in terms of the kind of technology we are using.

I wish to use as an example one piece of technology that I saw, something just a little bit bigger than my handheld device here. A woman who is working the border at the crossing for all the trucks trying to come and go--she showed me her handheld device. She said: These are the next six or so trucks lined up to come through from northern Mexico.

I said: Really? Do you know anything about any of them?

She clicked on one of the trucks. It had the history of the truck coming across our border this year--maybe even before this year--and the driver information, about who is the driver, how often has he or she been coming across our border. It is very good stuff.

We have the ability to detect radiation, the ability to detect shipments of guns, and the ability to detect people who are in vehicles. That is all well and good, but we need to continue to update and modernize that technology at the border and frankly put more money into the infrastructure so that flow of commerce is not impeded to the extent it is today.

I think that is it, pretty much. I always think, when I go through a long ramble such as this, I should come back at the end and try to point out a couple of points and repeat what I really want to convey.

I am really glad we went to the border. I have learned a lot each time I have gone. I certainly learned a lot this weekend. One of the things that gives me special joy is that it helped me identify and reinforce items such as the tethered dirigible--the kind of technology we can hang on to and deploy across the border in all kinds of locations. How important that technology is.

The other item that came home to me was that we spend a huge amount of money on these measures--one-quarter of a trillion dollars in the last 10 years on securing our borders. We spent less than 1 percent of that trying to help--along with Mexico, Colombia, and the Inter- American Development Bank--the countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala to become less places of desolation and fear. We want to help them. It is not for us to do this by ourselves. It is not our job. What do they say at Home Depot? You can do it; we can help. In this case it would be like Colombia. In Colombia, 20-some years ago, what happened was a bunch of gunmen rounded up their supreme court justices, took them into a room and shot them to death--11 justices of their supreme court. Colombia was oppressed on the one hand by leftist guerillas and on the other hand by narco drug lords. A lot of people said they were going down. But they made it, in part with our help and Plan Colombia.

The folks who--the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have come up, with our encouragement, with their own Plan Colombia to focus on, among other things, restoring the rule of law, going after corruption, making sure police police, prosecutors prosecute, judges administer justice, and correctional systems prisons actually correct behavior.

They are looking at the schools. Kids are finishing up after grade 6 and, frankly, without the skills they need to do much of anything. So they are looking to make sure those schools are producing students better equipped and prepared to be gainfully employed.

Also, as I said, half of the secondary roads in Honduras were wiped out after Hurricane Mitch. Half of them were wiped out, and there is a need for them, with maybe some help from a bunch of us--Mexico, Colombia, NGOs, and nonprofits--to work on that.

The other thing is the energy piece. If they are going to have jobs down there, they need to have affordable energy, and it is not going to be from the continued use of electricity through the use of petroleum but through low-priced natural gas and by strengthening their grid-- really, to build and rebuild their electric grid.

So those are some of my take-aways. I wanted to share some of those with my colleagues.

I hope we don't shut down the Department of Homeland Security. They do important work for us, and we need them to be on the job. Frankly, we don't need a continuing resolution because that just hampers their ability to move assets around to meet one challenge that is greater than another. Hopefully, we will not have the kind of flood events we had last summer. Hopefully, we won't.

We are doing some smart messaging campaigns down in those three Central American countries, and with the cooperation of the governments, we are saying: Look, this is really what you are going to find when you try to come through Mexico and this Texas border. This is what the real truth is, and this is what you are going to run into when you get into the United States. It is the kind of truth campaign we are delivering with the help of those governments to try to reduce the attraction for coming.

But I came away more hopeful than maybe I was when I went down. There is reason for hope, but there is plenty to do--plenty to do.

If we can somehow put our political differences aside, I hope we will continue to fund the Department of Homeland Security so they can do their jobs. There are a lot of good people working for us around the world, and we don't need to hamper them further.

Finally, let's work on immigration. Let's roll up our sleeves and do this year a better job than what we tried to do 2 years ago--a better job. The American people sent us here to do that.

With that, I conclude my remarks. I thank you for your patience and attention.

I saw one of my colleagues walk on the floor. He is a Senator from another small but mighty State, the State of Rhode Island, and I am happy to yield for Senator Whitehouse to make whatever remarks he wishes to make.

Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that I speak on behalf of the Delaware Delegation to honor the exemplary service of the president and CEO of Christiana Health Care System, Dr. Robert ``Bob'' Laskowski. He served in this position since 2003, and during that time he transformed the largest not-for-profit health care system in Delaware into an award-winning hospital organization with a national reputation of patient quality and innovation. Bob is now retiring after more than two decades of serving Christiana Care. He is a tremendous leader and true advocate for the patient and health-care worker, as well as a devoted husband to his wife, Kathy, and loving father to their children and grandchildren. His hard work, leadership and willingness to work together on transforming the health care system in Delaware and the Nation will truly be missed.

Bob used his leadership role at Christiana to cultivate philanthropic endeavors in the community. He lives ``The Christiana Care Way'' of serving our neighbors as respectful, expert, caring partners in their health. Under his leadership, Christiana Care has given back millions of dollars to the Delaware community.

Bob is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine with a master's degree in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. He is a board- certified internist specializing in geriatric medicine who understands the needs and priorities of health care professionals, as well as the business of running a health care system.

Bob's reach extends far beyond Delaware's borders. He is nationally recognized for his work on health care transformation. He fearlessly took on the challenge of making Christiana Care Health System a model for other hospital systems around the country. Bob's notable accomplishments include expanding the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute to a 200,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility that serves the majority of cancer patients in Delaware. This National Cancer Institute selected Community Cancer Center is a national model for care and a leader in enrolling patients in clinical trials. He also led Christiana Care in earning recognition by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program as 1 of only 37 hospitals in the Nation achieving ``meritorious'' outcomes for surgical patient care in 9 clinical areas. His expertise is sought out throughout the country as he serves on the board of directors of the Association of American Medical Colleges and on its finance and executive compensation committees. He serves

on the American Medical Association Section on Medical Schools, and is a former member of the American Hospital Association Section for Health Care Systems Governing Council and the Health Management Academy Chief Executive Officers Forum.

Apart from his work in the health care field, Bob is an excellent cook, honing his skills in his own kitchen and cooking for colleagues and guests. He also spends his time playing piano, violin, the accordion, and is currently learning Spanish.

On behalf of Senator Chris Coons and Congressman John Carney, I wholeheartedly thank Dr. Bob Laskowski for his service to Christiana Care and our State. His model leadership and dedication has improved the quality of life for not only Delawareans, but patients and health care workers around the Nation. We offer our sincere congratulations on a job well done and wish him many happy, healthy, and successful years to come.

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

Mr. President, earlier this week we learned about the young Jordanian pilot who was horrifically burned alive in a cage at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL. This is the same group that haunts us with images of beheadings and mass murders week after week and enslaves women into servitude. It is the same group that recently declared it is determined to ``reach America.''

My friends, we live in a world that is scary. And it is not just ISIL. It is the lone wolves who gather ammunition and equipment and carefully draft plans to attack us where we work, such as the attack we saw last year in Ottawa and last month in Paris, as well as the individual from Ohio who was planning to attack the Capitol right here in Washington, DC.

It is pandemics such as Ebola. It is the criminals trying to traffic illegal drugs and human beings across our borders and through our ports of entry. It is those individuals trying to sabotage our airplanes and our trains. It is those people trying to attack our computer networks and critical infrastructure.

But thanks in large part to the work of the Department of Homeland Security and its employees, Americans are safe--at least a lot safer than we otherwise would be. Our airplanes and our airports are protected 24/7. Our borders and our ports throughout our country are secure. Trafficking of illegal drugs and human beings is better controlled, and our critical infrastructure networks are better protected.

For anybody who thinks it makes sense to put the Department of Homeland Security out of business, to put it on the sidelines at this point in time in this world in which we live, I ask: Have we lost our minds? I hope not. I hope not. Yet today, here in the Congress, we are locked in a political debate about whether we fund that very agency that is charged with keeping Americans safe--those who live here with us--from the Islamic State and any other number of additional threats. That is irresponsible and shameful behavior. In order for the Department of Homeland Security to officially and effectively carry out its critical role in combating the multiple and ever-changing threats our country faces, the Department needs fiscal certainty and the full support of this Congress.

Throughout this week I joined nearly half of my Senate colleagues to reject the House funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, H.R. 240, which contains riders that block the President's recent immigration actions. Many of our colleagues on both

sides of the aisle have significant concerns with these amendments, and the President has promised he would veto this bill if these amendments were not stripped from it.

My colleagues' insistence that we accept these House amendments is jeopardizing timely enactment of a vital and bipartisan Homeland Security funding bill and threatens to prolong the crippling budget uncertainty the Department of Homeland Security has been operating under since last year.

On top of that, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, this House bill with the amendments would increase deficits over the next 10 years by a total of $7.5 billion. Instead of helping our Nation move forward with our economic recovery and our deficit reduction, this bill would move us backwards.

I understand why some of our colleagues are upset about the President's immigration policies. We can and we should have a debate about those concerns. We started the process just yesterday in the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where I serve as ranking member.

Let me remind my colleagues that we wouldn't even be here having this conversation today or at that hearing yesterday if Congress had finished the job we began some 2 years ago in the Senate, right here on this floor. As most of my colleagues in this Chamber will recall, two- thirds of the Senate came together in 2013. We passed by a wide margin a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Was it perfect? No, but we took significant steps to fix our badly broken and outdated immigration system and to enhance the security of our borders.

At the same time, the bill would have reduced our budget deficit by nearly $1 trillion--$1 trillion--over the next 20 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Let me repeat that. Comprehensive immigration reform adopted here by a two-thirds vote would reduce our deficit by nearly $1 trillion over the next 20 years. We demonstrated almost 2 years ago that we can debate our Nation's immigration policies in a thoughtful way in the Senate, and, I think, over in the House. There is no reason why we can't do it again. We need to have this debate on the Senate floor as we did last Congress.

We need to have this debate in committees as we did in the last Congress. We need to have this debate in our towns and States across America as we did in the last Congress. But we should not have this debate while we are deciding the fate of the budget of the Nation's most critical national security agency, the Department of Homeland Security.

I am not the only one who thinks so. All three former Department of Homeland Security Secretaries--Republicans Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff and Democrat Janet Napolitano--wrote to the Republican leadership last week and this is what they said:

We do not question your desire to have a larger debate

about the Nation's immigration laws. However, we cannot

emphasize enough that the DHS's responsibilities are much

broader than its responsibility to oversee the federal

immigration agencies and to protect our borders. . . . And

funding for the entire agency should not be put in jeopardy

by the debate about immigration.

The Washington Post's editorial board has also weighed in. Last week, here is what they wrote:

If congressional Republicans want to attack those--

Talking about immigration--

actions responsibly, with discrete legislation, they are free

to try. . . . However, it is another thing to wield their

frustration over immigration as a cudgel, holding hostage an

entire department of government that is critical to the

nation's security. That is as irresponsible as it is

politically ill-advised.

I could not agree more. We need to focus now on doing the job we were sent here to do--to provide the funding necessary to keep America safe in an ever more dangerous world. Once we have done that, we should engage in an urgent debate on how to amend America's immigration policies for the 21st century.

If we choose instead to continue down this irresponsible path toward a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, we will actually put America at greater risk. Why would we do that? Why would we do that?

If we allow the Department of Homeland Security to shut down, here is what is going to happen--a few things that will happen. First of all, over 50,000 TSA security screeners keeping terrorists off of airplanes are going to go without pay. We want them to do their jobs, but we are just not going to pay them for it. Over 40,000 Customs and Border Protection officers needed to keep our borders secure are going to go without pay, too. We want them to do their jobs. We are not going to pay them, either.

In addition, over 13,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, enforcing our immigration laws and combatting human and drug trafficking, are going to go without pay too. We want them to do their jobs. We are not going to pay them, either. Essentially, a large part of our Federal homeland security personnel would be working on an IOU. Now you say: How is that fair? How is that fair? Well, it is not. Even if we avoid a shutdown but continue to keep the Department on a continuing resolution, we prevent the men and women who work there from doing their jobs as effectively and as efficiently as they can.

For example, we will not be able to replace obsolete surveillance technology along the high-risk areas of our border with Mexico. Our Nation will have significantly fewer resources to respond to any future surges of unaccompanied minors along the Southwest border. Morale will continue to degrade at the Department, which already ranks dead last for morale among other major Federal agencies. This is not how we want to be treated. It is no way for us to treat the men and women who are working around the clock to keep us safe.

It is also an egregious waste of money. As we have learned over the years, crisis budgeting costs taxpayers millions of dollars. This latest situation is no exception. Employee hiring and research efforts at the Department would come to a halt. The contracts for a variety of security projects would be stalled and would need to be renegotiated, in all likelihood at a higher cost to taxpayers.

For example, a continuing resolution would delay a $600 million contract to build a national security cutter that the Coast Guard urgently needs--keep it from being awarded. This cutter is critical to stopping the illegal trafficking off of our shores and ports of entry, including illegal immigration and drug and human trafficking. That is just one example.

As any business owner would tell us, this is not the way to run a business. It is certainly no way to run a vital national security agency of the United States.

So how are we going to remedy this situation? Fortunately, we have a solution sitting right in front of us, the bill that Senators Mikulski and Shaheen have introduced. It is S. 272. It is a clean fiscal year 2015 appropriations bill, which both Democrats and Republicans agreed to just this past December, 2 months ago. This measure provides the stable full-year funding that the Department of Homeland Security and our national security need without demanding a ransom.

In closing, I want to urge, as strongly as I can, my colleagues in this Chamber, in this body, to join me in doing the right thing. Support passage of this clean full-year appropriations legislation for the Department of Homeland Security. Reject the amendments approved by the House. Once we have done that, let's begin a fulsome and badly needed debate that will enable us to hammer out a thoughtful, 21st century immigration policy for America, a policy that is fair, a policy that will significantly reduce our Nation's budget deficit, and a policy that will strengthen the economic recovery in this country that is now underway.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Susan Corbin, Jill Mueller, Paul Babiarz, and Charles Carithers, detailees to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, be granted the privileges of the floor for the remainder of the first session of the 114th Congress.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with Senator Wyden.

Mr. President, I rise for the purpose of entering into a colloquy with the senior senator from Oregon and ranking member of the Finance Committee in regards to the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

As the senior senator from Oregon knows, the Land and Water Conservation Fund was created in a bipartisan manner to help safeguard national parks, rivers, lakes and critical habitats for wildlife in all fifty States. Over the years, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has helped protect some of our Nation's most treasured places. Two such places are located in Delaware. They are the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge and the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Now that Delaware has a new national park--the First State National Historical Park--the State has even more opportunities to take advantage of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

As you know, every year, some of the royalties from drilling for oil and gas on public lands are paid into the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Despite over $900 million coming into the fund every year, only about one-third of that amount actually goes toward conservation. The funding is diverted elsewhere, despite the huge unmet need across our country to safeguard national parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges, rivers, lakes, and critical wildlife habitat.

Two weeks ago, I sought to bring an amendment up for a vote on S. 1, the Keystone XL Pipeline Act, in an effort to address some of the Land and Water Conservation Fund funding issues. Critical habitats are impacted every year by the building of pipelines like the Keystone pipeline. Therefore, increasing funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund to help counter these impacts seemed like a relevant issue to debate and vote on. Unfortunately, my amendment was tabled, along with other Democratic amendments, and we were not able to have that debate and vote. Although I am disappointed we were not able to address this issue on this piece of legislation, I am determined to continue to work on this issue.

Let me say to my colleague, our ranking member, I know you have been a long-time champion for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I would welcome the opportunity to work with you and your staff on legislation that not only reauthorizes the program, but also better ensures that the revenues credited to the Land and Water Conservation Fund each year are no longer diverted, but are used instead to meet more of our Nation's critical conservation needs. Would the Senator be willing to work with my staff and me?

I thank the Senator.