Floor Statements

Mr. President, I did not come to the floor to praise Senator Landrieu, but while I am at it, I would like to say a few words.

I have the privilege of chairing the committee on governmental affairs. Senator Landrieu chairs the appropriations subcommittee that deals with Homeland Security. She is also a member of the authorizing committee. So she works both vineyards. She is as tenacious and tireless in her defense of our country against cyber attacks, against terrorist attacks, against all kinds of ills that would otherwise be visited on our country. She still finds time as chairman of the energy committee to focus not only on issues that are important to her State-- and this is one of them--but also issues that are incredibly important to our country.

I said to my wife the other night--we were talking about Senator Landrieu and her tenacity. That word has been used tonight a couple times about her, as an unrelenting advocate for her State and the causes she believes in. Others have mentioned that she is a tireless advocate not only for Louisiana but for the causes that she sees that are just.

There is no quit in this one, as I said to my wife this week. She said, ``How is Mary?'' I would never want to run against this woman, and fortunately I would never have to. And for those who have to, good luck and God bless. But I am proud to be here with Mary, and with Senator Heidi Heitkamp as well.

The reason I come here tonight is to discuss a number of nominations that have been considered and approved by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that both Senator Landrieu and Senator Heitkamp and I serve on. Senator Coburn, our colleague from Oklahoma, is the ranking Republican on that committee, and we have worked tirelessly ourselves for the better part of the last 2 years to try to make sure there is a full complement of leadership in the Department of Homeland Security to provide the leadership for one of the most important agencies in our government. I have spoken with people on this floor and wherever else I could find a venue about the large and very troubling backlog of nominations in this Senate. I call it executive branch Swiss cheese. Executive branch Swiss cheese.

There are a couple of ways you can cripple an administration. No. 1, you can refuse to provide appropriations and funding. Another way to cripple an administration is to not approve the nominations of people who fill key leadership positions. The most important ingredient I found in any organization--I don't care if it is a legislative body such as this, a State such as Minnesota or Delaware or Louisiana or North Dakota--I don't care if it is a college or a business, a church. The most critical factor in all of those is leadership.

When we deny a President or a Governor or a mayor, for that matter, the ability to put his or her leadership team together--even when they are nominating well-qualified, competent people, people of integrity-- we do not do just a disservice to that person who has been nominated and has gone through the process, but to the State or the county or the country in which they have been nominated to serve.

I think it is every Senator's constitutional role to provide advice and consent on the President's nominations in a thorough and timely manner as part of the Senate confirmation process. I have exercised that constitutional role and our right and our obligation. I think we do our country no service and do ourselves no honor when we leave critical agencies--and Homeland Security is certainly one of those-- without proper leadership and leave honorable men and women who are willing to serve in the government twisting in the wind.

I am a big believer in the Golden Rule, as our Presiding Officer knows: treat other people the way we want to be treated. How would we like it if we were nominated, and we have a job--maybe it is an important job, maybe it is a job that pays a lot more than what they have been nominated to do in service to our country. All too often people are asked to put their lives and their family on hold. They don't know if they are going to be uprooted from wherever they are in the country to come here and live or for their spouse or father or mother to work. It is not fair.

In some cases, it is just to put people before committees and berate them

publicly for sins of omission or commission that may be fabricated. No wonder it is hard to get good people to serve.

In this case, I have several people that I will talk about tonight. These people deserve not just our consideration but our strong support.

During my 2 years as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I have made it one of my top priorities to work closely with our ranking Republican, Dr. Tom Coburn, who is a physician and also a Senator, and to vet the President's nominees that we have jurisdiction over and move them in a timely manner when they meet muster, scrub them good, make sure we have drilled down on what they believe in, their credentials and competency for serving, and when they do pass muster, try to move them along and bring them through our committee--almost every time--with a bipartisan vote and then bring the nomination to the floor.

Tom Coburn and I try to do that religiously with respect to our nominees. We try to do the same kind of bipartisan approach with our legislation. We have had a lot of success and we are grateful to our colleagues for supporting what we have done in our committee. We are grateful to Majority Leader Reid and Senator McConnell and their staffs. They have been valuable partners in this effort. Gary Myrick, who works on the floor for the Democratic side, and Laura Dove, who works on the Republican side for Senator McConnell, have been terrific to work with, and we thank them for their stewardship.

Just yesterday our committee reported out three more outstanding nominees, one of them, Sarah Saldana, to be head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security. It is a big job, it is an important job, and it is a tough job. Russell Deyo has been nominated to be the top management official at the Department of Homeland Security. Mickey Barnett has been nominated by the President to serve another term on the Postal Services Board of Governors.

I believe Ms. Saldana and Mr. Deyo will almost certainly be confirmed in short order. I urge my colleagues to review their qualifications and work with Dr. Coburn and me to fill these two vacancies at the Department of Homeland Security in the coming days.

I wish to spend a few minutes of my time tonight discussing the nomination of Mickey Barnett, who is already serving on the Postal Board of Governors. He is a Republican and nominated again by the President. I will then talk about a couple of lower profile nominees that I think we urgently need to confirm as quickly as we can-- certainly this year during this lameduck session.

Mickey Barnett is among a group of five partisan nominees to the Postal Board of Governors. His nomination was submitted by a Democratic President. Two of the nominees are Republicans, and Mickey is one of those, and three of them are Democrats.

If we don't confirm Mr. Barnett and his colleagues by December 8--a little more than 4 weeks from now--Mr. Barnett, who is currently the Board's chair, will be forced to leave the Board. If that happens, the Postal Board of Governors will no longer have enough members to achieve a quorum and will not be able to conduct business.

At a time when the Postal Service is struggling to address a number of financial challenges and adapt to the digital age and the Internet world we live in, being unable to conduct business would not be good for the Postal Service. In fact, it would be very bad. We need to avoid that from happening. I think if it does happen, we will be inviting a disaster.

Today, because of our inability in Congress to come to a consensus on postal reform legislation--and they are actually creeping closer--the good work by Dr. Coburn and a number of other people to actually develop a bipartisan consensus around the legislation that was reported out of our committee--I believe in a 9-to-1 vote earlier this year--the Postal Service will continue to twist in the wind, able to only do so much to address the financial challenges they face and to transfer themselves in a digital age. They need to figure out how to make themselves relevant--a 200-some-year-old establishment--in delivering that work that goes to every business and every residence in this country, for the most part, 6 days a week.

How do we enable the Postal Service to make money? They are figuring it out, and we can help them with our legislation.

Meanwhile, the customers of the Postal Service are left with uncertainty about what the future holds for the Postal Service. Are they going to be around? Are they going to be able to do the job? Are they ever going to modernize their fleet? Are they ever going to modernize their processing centers and the post offices themselves? We can answer that question and enable them to be financially viable once again. We would make that uncertainty that surrounds the Postal Service even worse if December 8 comes and goes and our five Postal Board nominees are still waiting for us to act.

The same goes for our nominees to fill vacancies, not on the Postal Board of Governors, but on something called the Postal Regulatory Commission. It is a five-member commission. It is the regulator, if you will, for the Postal Service. The two people who have been nominated by this President are Nanci Langley and Tony Hammond. They have been waiting since the spring of 2013 to be confirmed. As a result, the commission has been working with only three commissioners out of five. We need to do something about that as well, and waiting for another year--waiting for another month is foolhardy.

These people deserve a vote. We ought to vote them up or down. They have been unanimously approved and confirmed by our committee, and I think they need a vote. When they get a vote, I am sure they will be confirmed.

Also pending before the Senate are two nominations to the District of Columbia Superior Court, Judge William Nooter and Judge Steven Wellner. They are both well-qualified nominees who, like the Homeland Security and Postal nominees I have discussed, won bipartisan support in the committee and are needed to fill vacancies on the District of Columbia's very busy trial court.

Judge Nooter and Judge Wellner were reported out of our committee with unanimous bipartisan support months ago. In Judge Nooter's case, it was more than a year ago.

As I have discussed, these men are not alone in waiting so long for confirmation, but the problem is particularly unfair when it comes to the District of Columbia's court system. Earlier this fall during the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Hearing on DC statehood, the current vacancies on the DC Superior Court were included as just one of many injustices the District faces simply because it serves our Nation's capital.

The District of Columbia already suffers from not having control over its laws or even its own local dollars. The citizens of this city should not have to face a compromised legal system as well. While we in Congress may not be able to fix everything, I do think this is one of the few issues we can and must address now.

The DC Circuit Court is a local court. It hears primarily local matters. Most nominees are entirely uncontroversial and used to go through the Senate without a recorded floor vote. But because these local judges go through Senate confirmation, they have been caught up in a broader political stalemate of the Senate floor. I hope that is going to come to an end.

Meanwhile, no other local or State jurisdiction must have its non- Federal judges approved by the Congress. If we are talking about Federal District judges or Circuit Court of Appeal judges or Supreme Court Justices, of course they should come through and be debated and approved here. These are local judges, and it is only by a quirk in the law that they have to come here for a confirmation at all. They are local judges in the District of Columbia.

How would we like it if we had been nominated and held up for over a year--particularly in courts where there are huge backlogs. We are talking about caseloads of tens of thousands of people, and they don't have a full complement of judges because of us. How fair is that? Well, it is not.

No other local or State jurisdiction must have its non-Federal judges approved by Congress, and no other State

or locality is without a vote in the Senate to help push for action on nominations of concern to that community.

The DC Superior Court is operated by the Federal Government and its judges are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 15-year terms. It is important to note that although this court is operated by the Federal Government, it is separate from the Federal Government. Instead, the Superior Court is the local trial court for the District of Columbia. It handles matters such as local crime and domestic and civil disputes.

Nevertheless, because this court is operated by the Federal Government, the President nominates candidates for judicial vacancies from a slate prepared by a nonpartisan nomination commission and the Senate must confirm the nominees.

Currently, there are four vacancies on the Superior Court. Due to planned retirement and medical leave, this number will rise by the end of the year, and it is going to get worse. These vacancies hinder the Superior Court's ability to administer justice for DC residents. The Superior Court judges already carry, as I said earlier, enormous caseloads. The existing vacancies--the majority of which are in the family court division--threaten to undermine the judge's ability to give proper attention to each case, including those cases in family courts that affect the welfare of families, and particularly the welfare of children.

Recently the chief judge of the Superior Court and the Bar Association in the District of Columbia sent to both Senate leaders and Dr. Coburn and myself a letter raising these concerns and ultimately seeking a Senate vote on Judges Nooter and Wellner. They are preaching to the choir.

Judge Nooter is currently the presiding magistrate judge on the Superior Court and has served as a magistrate judge for the past 14 years. As presiding magistrate judge, he manages 23 fellow magistrate judges and serves on the leadership team of the chief judge of the Superior Court.

Meanwhile, Judge Wellner currently serves as an administrative law judge for the District of Columbia Office of Administrative Hearings. Since 2011, he has led the unemployment insurance division, and by all accounts skillfully coordinates a team of 10 administrative law judges and support staff to adjudicate over 3,000 unemployment insurance cases per year.

Given the caliber of these nominees, the lack of controversy over their nomination, and the unanimous bipartisan support they have received from the committee of jurisdiction, I urge--and I am sure I urge with the full support of Dr. Coburn, our ranking Republican member of the committee--this body to move their confirmations forward as soon as possible. Justice delayed is still justice denied. It has been that way for centuries and these delays are insufferable.

I will close by saying that what we are doing is not just bad judgment, it is not just bad form, I think it is shameful, and we need to fix it.

With that, I am finished, and I am looking around to see if there is anybody else seeking recognition. I don't see anyone, so with that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, as we finished the last series of votes we were talking about the range of difficult issues we face in this Congress and also in our country--a series of issues including what to do about ISIS and how to confront this latest threat, whether or not to provide aid to the moderate rebels in Syria and what form should that aid take, continued concerns that flow from Ukraine, and the areas there along the border with Russia, cyber attacks, data breaches, Ebola outbreaks, folks trying to get into our country from all different directions, especially from Central America. These are hard issues to deal with. Try though we may, it is hard to fix them.

As my colleague who serves with us on homeland security knows, it is a busy neighborhood where we have jurisdiction. It is not that the problems are intractable. They are just hard issues, and some of them may take years to fully resolve.

But I might say as well, the economic recovery has continued now for 5 years and it has been stop and go. Every now and then we have some great encouraging news, and sometimes it is less so. But today we have encouraging news.

I wish to talk a little bit about this as we talk about the economy and lead into a discussion of where the postal system of our country actually has played a role in strengthening our economic recovery.

Every Thursday, as my colleague knows, the Department of Labor puts out information. Among the things they promulgate on Thursdays is how many people filed for unemployment insurance in the last week. They do this every Thursday, except maybe on Thanksgiving or maybe on a Christmas.

On the Thursday of the week that Barack Obama and Joe Biden were sworn in as President and Vice President, they put out a number that said 628,000 people filed for unemployment insurance. Any time that number is above 400,000 people, we are losing jobs in this country, and any time it is under 400,000 people, we are adding jobs in this country. It was 628,000 that week 5\1/2\ years ago.

Slowly but surely, that number has dropped and has continued to drop. It bounces up and down a little bit. Since it may go up and down from week to week, we do a 4-week running average and that kind of balances out the blips.

Well, the number has dropped from 628,000 people 5\1/2\ ago to 400,000 people and to 300,000 people. We got the new report today from the Department of

Labor, and 280,000 people filed last week for unemployment insurance.

Why should we feel so good about that? Because that number is the lowest we have been below 400,000 since the year the recession actually began--certainly in the last 5\1/2\ years. That would suggest as kind of a forerunner what will come in for the job numbers for the month of September, which we will get at the beginning of October. I am encouraged by that.

There are a number of things we can do and ought to do to continue to strengthen the economic recovery. I won't go into all those, but one I want to mention deals with the U.S. Postal Service. Not everybody says the Postal Service has much to do with the economy, but it does. There are about 7 million or 8 million jobs in the United States that depend to one extent or the other on having an efficient, vibrant Postal Service.

For a number of years, the Postal Service has been struggling in some cases to survive. The Postal Service has cut, cut, cut in order to try to right-size their enterprise. In the last 10 or so years they have reduced their headcount from almost 900,000 to about 500,000--so almost in half. They have reduced the number of processing centers across the country from about 600 or 700 mail processing centers to actually less than half that, a little over 300. We have close to 35,000 to 40,000 post offices across the country, and over 10,000 of those today--they haven't really closed post offices, but what they did is a bunch of offices that didn't do much business, those post offices are still open in many cases, but they are open 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours a day rather than 8 hours a day with a fully paid postmaster. So they have found a way to not close a lot of post offices but to reduce their costs there, and they are still struggling. Every 3 months they put out their financial reports, and the financial reports indicate they are either losing money or may be close to breaking even.

As the Presiding Officer knows, this is an issue I think about a whole lot. He does, too. The Senator from Alaska cares a lot about the needs of the Postal Service. The need for a strong and vibrant Postal Service in Alaska is probably greater than in any State in the country. He has done a great job, along with his colleague from Alaska, to try to make sure that we are mindful in the Senate of the importance of the Postal Service to Alaska.

I have a glass of water here which one of our pages was good enough to bring to me. Look at this glass of water. It is not really clear. Is this glass half full or half empty? Most people thinking about the Postal Service in the last several years would say this glass of water is half empty. As time goes by, I am starting to think maybe that is the wrong approach, that is the wrong opinion. I think this glass of water might actually be half full. The more I learn about the Postal Service's operations and the opportunities they face, I am even more convinced the opportunity here is a glass-half-full situation.

We have had over the years probably a dozen or more hearings in the Senate on the Postal Service. The real challenge is: How do we take a 200-plus-year-old legacy organization, legacy distribution network that takes the Postal Service to every mailbox in the country 5 or 6 days a week? How do we take that legacy distribution network and enable the Postal Service, empower the Postal Service to make money and be profitable in the 21st century?

As we know, we don't communicate like we used to in this country. We have the Internet, we have Skype, we have Twitter, we have cell phones. There are a lot of different ways to communicate that we didn't have even 12 or 15 years ago. Folks used to send birthday cards, Christmas cards, that sort of thing. Now they send email cards, if they send anything at all. People used to write letters and notes. My parents during World War II wrote to each other almost every day. Folks in Afghanistan have email, they have Skype, and they have cell phones. They still send some mail, but it is not like it used to be. A lot of businesses that used the mail to do billings for people to send in remittances don't do that anymore.

First-class mail in this country is where the Postal Service has made their money for many years. That is where the most profitable source of income is--first-class mail. Since the great recession started in 2007, we have seen first-class mail drop by almost half, and that has caused huge problems for the Postal Service going forward.

While the Internet and the digital age has taken away a lot of the Postal Service's business, as it has turned out, it has also given them some pretty good opportunities. As we know, not everybody goes to a department store these days to buy things, to a hardware store or to a bookstore. Not every day, but a lot of times we will buy things over the Internet. Those items, whether gifts or things we might want for ourselves, they have somehow to get from the manufacturer's or retailer's distribution center to the customer. Somebody has to deliver it. As it turns out, that somebody could be FedEx, it could be UPS or in many cases it could be the Postal Service.

So I wish to take a few minutes and speak this evening about how I really do think the Postal Service could be a glass-half-full situation. Part of our responsibility here in the Senate is to make sure they are able to seize this opportunity and not let it pass by.

The Postal Service has been calling for us to do a number of things to help them--not to give them money but to do a number of things to help them. I will mention a few of them.

The Postal Service has overpaid by $2.5 billion what they owe into the Federal Employee Retirement System. Given the formula used, which is not taking into account that postal employees are older and die sooner than other Federal employees, the Postal Service is going to continue to overpay monies. So they are owed a $2.5 billion refund, and if we don't do something, they are going to continue to overpay. We should first get them the $2.5 billion refund. The second thing we should do is change the formula so it reflects the demographics of the Postal Service versus the rest of the Federal workforce.

Among the other things we ought to do is to integrate, if you will, Medicare--better integrate Medicare with the cost of health care for postal employees.

My wife turned 65 early this summer. When she did, the company where she worked for 27 years, DuPont, mailed her something and said: We still love you. You are retired, you are 65, and we want you to sign up for Medicare Part A, Medicare Part B, and Medicare Part D. We will in turn provide wrap-around or fill-the-gap health care coverage for you. They do that for all the retirees when they reach 65. And it is not just DuPont. It is thousands of companies all over the country. When their retirees reach the age of 65, for the most part they say to the retirees: You are eligible for Medicare Part A, Part B, Part D. We want you to sign up, and we will provide wrap-around coverage for you.

FedEx, I believe, does that. UPS, I believe, does that. The Postal Service--which competes in the same business as both FedEx, UPS, and some of these other companies--doesn't do that. As it turns out, the Postal Service pays more money into Medicare than any employer in the country. They do not get the full value for the dollars they have invested.

One of the things the Postal Service has asked us to do as simply a matter of equity is to allow them to do what so many other companies do, including some of the companies they compete directly with--FedEx and UPS. We ought to do that. That is one of the things they are asking us to do.

Another thing, under the current law, from time to time, if there is something that happens in the economy or there is a disaster and the Postal Service needs to raise rates on kind of an emergency basis, called an exigent basis, they can apply to the Postal Regulatory Commission and ask to do that. The Postal Regulatory Commission can say yes or they can say no.

Last year, the Postal Service went to the Postal Regulatory Commission and said: We suffered terribly because of the loss of first- class mail that flowed from the worst recession since the Great Depression. We would like to have something above and beyond a CPI increase, a cost of living increase, for our rates. What did the Postal Regulatory Commission do? They agreed to raise the rates and let the post office raise the rates.

So what did the Postal Regulatory Commission do? They agreed to let the Postal Service raise the rates, which works out to a 4.3-percent increase. It is not permanent, but it is for a period of maybe a year. The Postal Service is asking us to make that 4.3-percent increase their new permanent revenue baseline.

What does that mean for mailers if we make it permanent? For folks who are nonprofit--we always get mail from nonprofit organizations. That is part of the way they provide services to all kinds of folks. But the cost of a nonprofit letter under this action--the 4.3-percent increase--has gone up from 10 cents a letter to 11 cents. It has gone up by one penny. I believe the cost of mailing a magazine has also gone up by one or two pennies, from approximately 25 to 27 cents. The cost of mailing a catalog has gone up by one or two cents, from approximately 45 cents to 47 cents, and that is with the 4.3-percent increase.

The Postal Service has said to the Congress: Allow that temporary 4.3-percent increase to remain and to become part of our revenue baseline.

I think we should do that. I know a number of my colleagues do as well.

That is one of the things they are asking us to do. Among the other things they are asking us to do is they want to actually deliver items they haven't been able to deliver before, including wine, beer, and spirits. FedEx and UPS can do that, and postal services in many other countries can do that. Our Postal Service cannot do that. It is not to balance their budget for them, but it would make a big difference. I believe it could be worth a couple million dollars a year in profitability. That is something they would like to be able to do.

FedEx is not interested in being Google or Apple or any company like that--part of the digital economy--but there are a couple things they can do and would like to do that would work into the digital economy. They are not big deals, but they make sense with respect to the Postal Service and their capabilities and would actually enable them over time to make some revenues as well.

The Postal Service delivers ballots, initially in Oregon, later in Washington State, and this year in Colorado. People can file their vote--get absentee ballots and vote by mail in Oregon. They do it in Washington State. This year they are starting to do it in Colorado.

What we have learned from experience is that folks who vote by mail vote more often, more frequently, and what we hear from States that do this is that it is actually a cost-effective way to run elections. The Postal Service would like to do more of that, and we should encourage that as well.

Another area where the Postal Service might have some opportunities is they would like to collocate more operations with State and local governments in small communities where they have space at the post office and get State and local folks to locate some activities there.

One great idea they had in some of the bigger, more densely populated places around the country is that the Postal Service has opened up large facilities--not like a regular post office--where people can go get passports. There is a facility on the outskirts of L.A. where over the course of the day hundreds--maybe even 1,000 people or more--can come and get their passports. It is a service that is provided. The Postal Service makes some revenue from doing that.

If we ever pass comprehensive immigration reform and we have 10 million or so people in this country who are here undocumented--and immigration reform doesn't give them the right to citizenship, it doesn't make them a citizen, but I think if the Senate passed an immigration reform bill, it would offer an opportunity for people to have some kind of legal status. How are they going to get that? Where are they going to get that?

If we passed immigration reform, there would be an opportunity for the Postal Service, which is in every community in our Nation and which already does a passport business for a lot of people, to help meet that need, and my hope is they will have that opportunity.

Those are some things they are asking us to do. In short, what they are asking us to do is to give them the ability to generate revenues and to be able to meet their capital needs.

The Postal Service needs to be capitalized. They need new vehicles. They have 190,000 vehicles.

We have this chart. This is 2014, and down here is about 10 years down the road. What we are looking for is to provide money over this 10-year period of time. The Postal Service is saying they need about $30 billion to recapitalize the Postal Service to make them competitive. One of the ways to make them competitive is with respect to vehicles. They have 190,000 vehicles. The average age is 22 years.

I have a 13-year-old Chrysler Town and Country minivan. Yesterday I drove it down here from Wilmington, DE. I usually take the train. The train was down 2 days ago. I drove home last night, and it just went over 377,000 miles. Most Postal Service vehicles are not 13 years old like my minivan; they are almost twice as old and easily have twice as much mileage as my minivan. My wife thinks I ought to trade in my minivan, and some day I will.

We should give the Postal Service the wherewithal to trade up--not just to get new, more energy-efficient vehicles that may have twice the fuel economy and reduce emissions but also vehicles that are sized for the products the Postal Service is delivering. In this digital economy, it is an opportunity for the Postal Service to deliver a lot more packages and parcels of all kinds. They are delivering groceries in a number of places around the country, and they need vehicles that are sized differently and that are more ergonomically appropriate for the folks who are driving the vehicles.

There is new technology. Anybody buying a new car lately knows the technologies that are in vehicles. It is amazing what we can do. I wouldn't know that, given the age of my vehicle, but my friends tell me about the amazing things they can do with theirs. When you have a vehicle that is 22 years old, there are not many gee-whiz technology items on those vehicles, but there could be. As an example, let's say my desk here defines a rural area for delivery for a letter carrier someplace around the country. It could be Alaska; it could be Delaware. As the rural letter carrier covers this area, the technology is available so that the residents somewhere along there could pick up a package here or leave a package at the general store. They could communicate with their customers in any number of ways and provide better customer service.

Additionally, when you walk into a post office these days, for the most part they look similar today to what they did 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago almost without exception. There are so many things we can do in terms of technology to provide better services at post offices that we are not doing.

We can provide better, more efficient services and friendlier services as well. We have 25 mail-processing centers in the country. I visited one of them with Senator Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota about 3 or 4 months ago. We visited this small mail-processing center in her beautiful State. We went into the back operating area of the mail- processing center, and there was a fellow there who was about 50 years old. He was lugging around these big boxes that somebody was mailing. He was carrying them around and trying to get them over to a barcode reader, and he was putting them in a huge pouch so they could be mailed.

There is equipment that could readily process big boxes like that, smaller packages, and parcels. We don't have equipment like that in most of our mail-processing centers. If we did, we could offer better, faster, timelier, more cost-effective service.

So if we were to capitalize the Postal Service, among the things the Postal Service could do if they had $30 billion over the next 10 years is replace their fleet of 190,000 vehicles with more energy-efficient vehicles that are appropriately sized for the kinds of packages they deliver. The approximately 300 mail-processing centers could be retooled with mail-processing equipment that actually reflects what the mail service delivers in the 21st century. The post offices themselves could have the kinds of upgrades and technology investments that would enable better service as well. That is what the Postal Service could do if they had the money.

Sometimes when people think of the Postal Service they think the Postal Service is not really innovative; they don't come up with a bunch of ideas. It turns out that they are even more innovative than I and a lot of other people thought they were.

I want to mention a couple of things they have begun doing that I think are noteworthy. They ought to be able to do more. If they could, they actually could make money and have the money to make capital investments and not be a burden to taxpayers of this country.

This morning in San Francisco, CA, at around 3 a.m., in 32 ZIP Codes, the U.S. Postal Service delivered groceries to people. They delivered them to homes, in some cases to businesses, to apartments, to high- rises. They delivered groceries. They also delivered the mail later in the day, but from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. the Postal Service in 32 ZIP Codes delivered groceries. They have been doing it for over a month, and I understand they are doing it for Amazon. I understand Amazon is pleased and the Postal Service is pleased with it. Amazon customers like it, and the Postal Service can do this and make money. They are not doing anything else with the trucks from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., and it just works. It just works.

The Postal Service is doing this for Amazon, but they are reaching out to 100 grocery chains across the country and saying: This is what we do for Amazon in San Francisco. How would you like us to do this for you?

My guess is this will turn into a good piece of business, but they need the vehicles to enable them to do this, and they need money for capital investment.

Some people think the only thing the Postal Service has done creatively in years is flat-rate boxes. You know, if it fits, it ships. It is a great product. It is still growing. It has grown by around 4 or 5 percent a year. But there are a bunch of other things they can do and want to do. They need money for capital investment.

About a year ago they started delivering for Amazon--not everywhere but in a couple hundred ZIP Codes--on Sundays. It worked pretty well. And this past Sunday they delivered packages and parcels through Amazon--not to 200 ZIP Codes but I think to over 5,000 across the country. It enables them to do next-day delivery that includes Sunday. It is a nice piece of business and it is growing, but in order to continue to grow it, the Postal Service needs vehicles that are right- sized for that sort of business and a lot of them--potentially a lot of them.

Another thing the Postal Service is doing--and this is a product which I have used and a product which I think is going to have growing utilization across the country. It is called Priority Mail Express.

I went to a post office in Delaware not long ago. I wanted to send my sister a Mother's Day gift.

I said: I want this to get there in 2 days.

They asked: Do you want it insured?

I said: Not really.

They said: Well, if you send it by Priority Mail Express, we can guarantee delivery in 2 days, we can guarantee delivery in 1 day, or we can guarantee delivery in 3 days. We can track it for you for free.

And I think they said the first $100 of insurance is free.

I said: This is great. I will take 2 days. The insurance is fine.

As it turns out, I am not the only person who is using Priority Mail Express. It is available not just 2 or 3 days a week, it is available for delivery 7 days a week. If somebody has something they want to mail this Saturday and have it delivered on Sunday, they can do so with Priority Mail Express. They can do it and get next-day delivery. They can do it and get free tracking. They can do it and get insurance up to $50 or $100 on whatever is being mailed. That is going to be a great product. I think it is going to make flat-rate boxes--well, not look like a second-class citizen, but it is going to make flat-rate boxes look modest by comparison.

These are the sorts of things our folks at the Postal Service would like to do--to deliver not only mail but to deliver groceries, to be able to deliver tomorrow, deliver on Sunday. And it is ironic that in a day and age that we worry about postal service going from 6 days a week to 5, that right now they are a 7-day-a-week operation. I think there is reason to believe they will grow even more.

There are some who say that rather than passing the sort of legislation the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee reported out on a bipartisan vote earlier this year, there is some alternative legislation. We should simply say to the Postal Service: You cannot close any more mail-processing centers for another year.

As it turns out, that is not going to give the Postal Service the money to do this, or, frankly, the money to invest in any other number of new products that have the great potential of generating revenues and enabling them not just to be open or remain alive but to actually become vibrant and to be part of our growing economy in this country.

I wish to close by saying that I am more hopeful about the Postal Service than I have been in all the years I have worked on this as an issue. As I talked to my colleagues, I am encouraged to hear from Democrats and Republicans that they want to be part of the solution, and they realize the idea of just leaving the Postal Service twisting in the wind for another year is not a good thing.

If the Postal Service has a choice to say don't close these 60 or 70 or 80 mail processing centers, that is not what they need. They need to not necessarily unleash them--better ensure that they have the resources they need to not just right-size the organization but to modernize and recapitalize the organization and enable them to do things in the 21st century that will actually build off their age-old delivery network and find new ways to make money doing so.

As we close here today--a lot of people are scattering to head back to their home States in anticipation of elections and that sort of thing, and to do other things--I wanted to mention on a more hopeful note, and I say to the members of our committee, and especially to the Presiding Officer, thanks for trying to make sure the Postal Service continues to be a linchpin within our economy, whether it happens to be Alaska, Delaware, or even South Dakota.

Senator Thune is waiting for me to stop talking.

They have the opportunity to be a big, important part of our economy going forward, and my hope and prayer is that is exactly what we will enable them to do.

With that, I will yield the floor. I don't know if the Senator from South Dakota would like to take the floor, but if he wants to, it is his.

Madam President, I wish to express my bitter disappointment in the Senate for refusing to move forward with the President's request for emergency funding to deal with the humanitarian crisis we are facing on our southern border with Texas.

Ordinary working people do not close up shop with urgent work still undone, and neither should we. There is plenty of blame to go around; as I speak, there is a strong chance the House will leave town without taking action on this crisis either. The administration has asked for money, but has yet to speak clearly on what changes it needs in the law governing how we handle child migrants at the border.

As we all know, over the past several months, our Nation has experienced an unprecedented surge in migration from three countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. People from these countries are fleeing desperate, violent conditions and a large number of them are families, and unaccompanied children--some as young as 4 years old.

The President and Department of Homeland Secretary, DHS, Johnson responded with an all-hands-on-deck effort. The Federal Emergency Management Administration, FEMA, is coordinating the response to the problem. The Department of Defense is providing emergency beds for unaccompanied minors. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has greatly expanded its ability to detain and remove families. We have surged Border Patrol agents, immigration judges, and other personnel to the border to help process people.

These measures have been working. For example, the amount of time people are detained before they are removed has decreased from over a month to as little as 4 days in recent weeks. Migrant children who were languishing in crowded border patrol stations are being screened and relocated more quickly. But these emergency measures are expensive, and none of the Federal agencies involved have the money they need to sustain the aggressive steps they are taking to deal with this situation. In fact, many agencies have indicated that they will run out of money in a matter of weeks without action--some even in a few days.

So last week, Senator Mikulski introduced a bill that would provide $2.7 billion in order to address the situation and ensure that the agencies charged with securing our borders do not run out of money this summer. More importantly, it would also address some of the underlying root causes of the problem we face.

But here we are, the day before Congress leaves town, and what have we done to address this crisis? The answer is nothing.

The consequences of our inaction will be severe. Let me give you some examples of what will happen if Congress continues to do nothing.

Families apprehended at the border will be released. Why? Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not have the money to add the 3,000 detention beds it needs to house families until they can be returned to their countries;

Undocumented migrants scheduled to be deported will stay here. Why? Because ICE won't have the money for transportation.

People currently being detained will have to be released. Why? Because ICE will have to reduce its detention population.

Undocumented immigrants waiting for their immigration court cases to be heard will have to wait longer. Why? Because we are not adding the 40 immigration court judges that the administration requested.

We also will not be able to hire the 82 immigration prosecutors and 100 repatriation personnel that DHS was planning to hire in August. Why? Because we will not be able to afford them.

Health and Human Services will have to cut back on the number of children it can house. This means that children will have to stay at Border Patrol stations longer and agents will be forced to care for children instead of patrolling the border. Why? Because Health and Human Services will not have the money it needs.

I am frankly stunned that we here in Congress do not have a sense of urgency to pass this bill and make sure that this does not happen. I guess my colleagues believe that we can just move money around in order to patch the holes in these agencies' budgets. We are robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Because of Congress' inaction, the administration will be forced to ask for an emergency reprogramming to get the agencies through August. But this reprogramming will also have severe consequences--consequences that I do not think many of our colleagues seem to understand.

Our border security will be reduced. Why? Because CBP will have to cut back on aerial support for Border Patrol agents on the border. When I was in Texas and Arizona last year, I heard frontline agents say again and again that aerial support was the single most important force multiplier that they had available to help them secure the border.

People and commerce trying to get into this country will be forced to longer delays and intrusive screenings at our ports of entry. Why? Because CBP will have to take money that was going to be used to fund sophisticated scanning equipment to pay for caring for unaccompanied children at the border.

The Coast Guard will have to stop doing maintenance on many of our Coast Guard vessels. Why? Because the Coast Guard's funds will be shifted.

FEMA will have less money for disaster response just as folks in coastal states, like Delaware, are gearing up for the height of hurricane season. Why? Because DHS will have to raid its Disaster Relief Fund in order to make ends meet.

This is no way to respond to a crisis--a crisis--that we have been talking and talking and talking about here in the Senate for months!

Finally--and in my mind, most incredibly--we will leave here without doing anything to address the underlying factors that explain why this surge is happening in the first place. The President and Senator Mikulski included $300 million in the supplemental package to address what I believe to be the root causes of this surge: the lack of economic opportunities, jobs, and hope in Central America, combined with increasing violence and insecurity in the region. Make no mistake about it, these funds are an emergency.

I am not suggesting that any of this will be a quick or easy fix. It will require a sustained investment--and focus--on the region by the U.S. and also by a number of others. But if we turn our backs on these countries now, I am convinced that we will be back here again 10 years from now dealing with another expensive humanitarian crisis on our border.

But today, we are left empty-handed, and all by our own doing. Again, we have been seeing this humanitarian crisis play out for months now. We have heard the heartbreaking stories of the Central American children and families arriving at our borders.

I believe that we have a moral imperative here to address this crisis with a humane response and one that honors our obligations under U.S. and international law--and is consistent with the

admonition that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves while taking care of the least of these in society.

We have not even come close to meeting the moral imperative and I am deeply disappointed.

Over the next few weeks and into September, I urge my colleagues in both Chambers to think about ``the least of these'' that we have left behind today and to work harder to come together and find a compromise to this challenge. I also urge the administration to speak more clearly about what it needs, and to work with us to find a path to get it done.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that once I finish speaking--I will talk for less than 10 minutes, and I ask that the senior Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, be recognized next.

Madam President, I would like to say to the Senator from Utah, who is a dear friend and the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, that something magical happened here about 48 hours ago right here in this Chamber. What happened is we saw the Senate evolve in a very good way. We saw Senators bringing amendments to the floor, Democratic

and Republican. We saw them having a chance to offer amendments, debate the amendments, and get votes on the amendments. And it was on an important issue. The issue was how we were going to provide and fund the transportation system for our country, which includes roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, transit systems, and more.

At the end of the day, 79 Senators, Democratic and Republican, a majority of Republicans and Democrats, voted to say we would like to make sure we don't run out of money in the Federal transportation trust fund this year. We are going to replenish that trust fund but not for a year or a year and a half but for a relatively short period of time-- until the end of the year, really until the end of December. Why would we stop there? It is because we believe that if we keep on going--for example, one of the proposals coming over from the House was to fund the transportation program until maybe next May or next June. Our fear and the fear of 79 Senators who voted--I think with their conscience-- our fear was that we will get to next May 31 and say: Well, we can't make these votes. It is too tough to pass a 6-year transportation program for our country. Let's just cobble together enough revenues from disparate sources that have nothing to do with transportation, do what my friend Senator Bob Corker calls generational theft and steal 10 years' of revenues and use it to fix highways and bridge problems for 3 or 4 or 5 months. That is what we have been doing for the last 5 years. We have done it 11 times.

What we have done is we said to Governors and State departments of transportation and others who are trying to build highways, roads, and transportation highway systems: We are going to give you a little bit of money, and you can count on it for a couple of months. If it runs out, we will try to do it some more.

Stop and go. It is hugely inefficient. It is hugely inefficient. I speak as on old Governor--not that old--as a recovering Governor, a former Governor, and have some idea of all the work put into these projects. Take, for example, when you plan your highway, bridge, or transit system. You have to plan the project, you have to fund the project, you have to contract the project, and you have to get permits for the project. It takes years. And providing that we have the revenues--or won't we--will the Federal Government be there as a partner? The kind of system we have is wasteful--or at least the kind of system we have shown in recent years.

A bunch of us say: Why don't we Senators--Democratic and Republican-- do our job and fund a 6-year transportation program for our country?

For the most part, I think for myself and for many, why don't we stop using sources of revenue that have absolutely nothing to do with transportation? Why don't we just stop taking money from the general fund, which borrows money from China and all kinds of other places around the world? Why don't we fund it ourselves? For projects that are worth having, we ought to pay for them.

Last Tuesday night, 2 nights ago, this Senate worked, and it was a joy to behold. At the end of the day we passed and sent over to the House of Representatives legislation that said we are going to not let the transportation trust fund run out of money this year. We are not going to kick the can down the road. We will keep this on a short leash and make sure that when we come back after the election, we will be likely to actually fund a 6-year transportation program.

It is a smart approach and a principled approach.

I want to say a big thank-you to a couple of people. I want to say to Senator Bob Corker, the Republican from Tennessee, and Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat from California, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee on which I serve as the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, I thank you for your leadership. Thank you for standing up for doing the right thing.

Andrew Jackson used to say, ``One man with courage makes a majority.'' Mr. Jackson, I would like to say said one woman with courage makes a majority. But in this case we had a courageous Republican from Tennessee and a courageous Democrat from California, and they let me draft it. The three of us put together this proposal. We worked with Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Finance Committee. We appreciate very much his support for our proposal as well.

At the end of the day, 79 Senators said it was the right thing to do. It went over to the House. The House, to my disappointment--not to my surprise but to my disappointment--said: No, we are going to strip off what the Senate has done in a bipartisan way, and we are just going to go back to what we sent to you some time ago--which, I must say, is not likely to get a 6-year transportation program funded anytime soon--not this year and probably not anytime soon. They said that to us.

But there is good news. There is good news. Seventy-nine Senators-- again, over half of the Republicans and almost all the Democrats--said: We want to do our job and we want to do it this year. We want to fully fund the transportation plan for the next 6 years.

That is what the people want us to do. That is what State and local governments want us to do, what mayors and Governors want us to do. People who work and build roads, highways, bridges, transit systems-- that is what they want us to do. Contractors, the business community, labor unions--that is what they want us to do. Do our job. And we are prepared to do it.

The good news out of all of this is 79 of us are prepared to do that, and I suspect some others who may have voted the other way Tuesday night are prepared as well.

I thank Bob Corker and Barbara Boxer and Ron Wyden and others who are part of this vote of 79 for the leadership they provided.

I want to say to my friend Senator Orrin Hatch, whom I love and love working with and with whom I am pleased to serve on the Finance Committee--I have admired him forever--that when we come back into session after the election, the lameduck session, my hope and prayer is that we will all be able to work together and get this job done. I know Senator Hatch, and I think he is the kind of person who will help get it done.

Let me close with this thought, if I could, and then I will yield to the Senator from Utah. To my pleasure, one of the things that happened during the last several weeks and months was the establishment of a broad-based coalition of business, labor, State and local governments, all kinds of organizations and people who came together and said: Do the right thing. They told us to do the right thing. They have been terrific supporters and have encouraged our colleagues, Democratic and Republican, to join with Senators Corker, Boxer, Wyden, and me to do what we did Tuesday night.

That coalition is not going away. They worked the House of Representatives very hard in the last 2 days,--the last 48 hours--and they are not going away. When we come back here after the election, they will come back strong, and we will too. We are not going to go away on this issue.

One of the most important things we do as Senators and Representatives is to provide a transportation system that is worthy of this country. It helps with the movement of people and goods that we need to be a strong and efficient economy and nation.

I will close with the words of Mark Twain. I used them the other night, and Senator Hatch has heard these words before. The words of Mark Twain all those years ago: When in doubt, do what is right. You will confound your enemies and astound your friends.

Seventy-nine of us the other night did what we thought was right and what I am sure was right, and we are going to come back in a couple of months and we will have a chance to have our colleagues join us and really, as a whole body--hopefully with the House of Representatives and the President too--do our job, make sure we have the roads, highways, bridges, and transportation systems we need in this country.

Again, my thanks to the Senator from Utah for letting me ramble on a bit, and I want to express once again my admiration for him. I look forward to working with him not just on this issue but on many others in the years to come.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Would the chairman tell us again the name of the ambassador nominated by the President to be Ambassador to Guatemala?

I would say to my colleagues, as chairman of the homeland security committee, I have been down to a number of Central American countries--Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador. If there is anybody that needs a U.S. ambassador down there, it is Guatemala. We see all these young people, not so young people, coming to this country, trying to get in this country. The reason they are coming up here is there is no hope--no economic hope, crime, lack of opportunity--and we have no ambassador there. We haven't had an ambassador there for months.

I would just make a plea for the chairman to make a unanimous consent if only for the Ambassador to Guatemala. And I would just plead with my colleague, my friend from Wyoming, not to object.

I would ask, would the Senator one more time make the unanimous consent request for Todd Robinson.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that our amendment, the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment 3582, be made pending and that it be reported by number at this time.

The clerk will report.

Mr. President, I will make some comments to lead off and then will yield to Senator Corker and back to Senator Boxer, and we have others who would like to speak on behalf of this amendment.

I wish to start off by saying to the Senator from Tennessee who is here with us, the lead Republican on the amendment, how grateful I am to have this opportunity to work with you on an important issue. Thank you for your courage. One of the definitions of leadership is the courage to stay out of step when everyone else is marching to the wrong tune. In this case, not everyone else is marching to the wrong tune, but a few people are. I thank you for showing that courage and standing up to do what we believe is the right thing to do.

I would like to give a big shout-out to Senator Boxer. She chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee on which I serve as the subcommittee chair for transportation and infrastructure. She and Senator Vitter and Senator Barrasso and I worked to fashion a 6-year transportation plan for our country that is a very well thought out, excellent roadmap for the future of transportation in America, and what we now need to do is to fund it. It is great to have a plan. How about some money to make it happen? That is what this is all about.

This is the question: At the end of the day, how do we best ensure that we actually fund the 6-year plan Senator Boxer and others helped us develop?

I thank not just Senators Corker and Boxer for their great support and for their leadership, I also thank the Democrats and Republicans and even an Independent or two for their support of our amendment.

I will yield the time now to Senator Corker and Senator Boxer, and I will take some time out. Senator King is welcome to speak as well.

Unanimous Consent Request

Madam President, I understand in the unanimous consent agreement I have 5 minutes.

I yield 1 minute of that to Senator King. Oh, great, he has 5 minutes. I would like to have 4 of his minutes.

I will start by saying my thanks to Senator Wyden for his leadership as well. I am pleased to be able to support his amendment. I am grateful he is supporting ours.

I say to some of our Republican colleagues, I have talked to most of you in the last several weeks about this approach that Senator Boxer and Senator Corker and I are proposing; that is, to lower from $11 billion to $8 billion the amount of money that would go into the transportation trust fund. That would force us to come back and make a decision by the end of this calendar year. That would force us to do something real, do our job during the lameduck session.

One of the reasons Republicans have said to me is: We can't do that because then that would force the bill to go back to the House from which it has emanated. Well, let me just say the bill is going back to the House. The Wyden amendment is going to pass. So get over it. The bill is going to go back to the House. It is not going to die there. They will do something with it. They may send it back to us in that same form or some different form. But for Republicans who have said: I understand the importance of doing something in a lameduck session, and we know we need to be compelled to do that but I just can't do it, well, you can.

For the folks, our Republican friends who say: I don't like that pension smoothing at all, the idea of mucking with people's pensions in order to fund something entirely unrelated--and that is building roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems--well, you do not have to do that. You can use an honest pay-for, an honest set-aside, and feel good about doing that.

We are going to be here, maybe, Friday night, December 19, and if we have provided $11 billion to carry us to fund programs through the end of next May, I promise you, if we have not worked out a 6-year transportation funding plan by December 19, that Friday night, we are going to be gathered right here and people will say: What are we doing here? It is almost Christmas. I want to go home or go somewhere to be with my family. We have money to run these programs until the end of May, so let's just kick the can down the road and come back a little bit before May and we will do it then.

One problem with that: We did something like that 5 years ago, and we did it again and again and again and again--11 times. This will be the 12th time we do it.

Why am I concerned we will do it again?

I say to Senator Durbin, let me ask, what did Albert Einstein say about the definition of ``insanity''? He said: It is the notion that we are going to do things the same way we have always done them and we get a better result or a different result. We will not. We will do it again.

All over this country, State and local governments, mayors, Governors, people who build roads, people who run contracting companies, the truckers,

all kinds of people are saying to us one message: Do your job. Our job is to provide transportation infrastructure. Do it in a time- responsible way so that States and local governments that have these programs, that have them on the drawing boards can build them or the ones that are underway, they want to complete them.

We can help them do that. We can do that by voting for the Carper- Corker-Boxer amendment.

Let me close with another great quote from another great guy who used to criticize this place, Mark Twain. He was always saying bad things about the Congress, even then when he was around. But one of the things he said is relevant today. Here is what he said: When in doubt, do what is right. You will confound your enemies and amaze your friends.

I will just say to my Republican colleagues, especially: We love you. We want you to join us in doing what is right, and you will confound your enemies and you will amaze your friends, and not only that, you will do the right thing for our country, strengthen our economic recovery, do what we are supposed to do, providing strong transportation infrastructure for this Nation.

The people of this country are counting on us. Let's not let them down.

I yield back my time.

Madam President, let me say to our Republican colleagues, this bill is going back to the House. We can send it back to the House correcting what I think is a misguided approach on pension smoothing. We can knock out that $3 billion pension smoothing. We can set a dynamic that will ensure we do something this year--that we do our jobs this year and get it done.

Across the country, AAA, American Trucking Associations, Governors, Senators, want us to do our job and finish it this year. Let's vote yes on the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment and do our job this year.

I yield for the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. President, first let me express my thanks to Senator Grassley for letting me step ahead of him and I thank the Senator as well for a number of courageous votes today. I also express my gratitude to him and to the Presiding Officer.

I understand earlier on the vote on final passage of the transportation funding legislation 79 Senators voted for the bill as amended. That is a resounding majority of Democrats and Republicans.

The year when Senator Grassley--longer ago than the Presiding Officer and I combined--came here, the idea was for Democrats and Republicans to work together to try to find the middle, to find principled compromises. It has been a while since the Senate actually did that. I feel as though today we were the Senate again. It is gratifying to me, and I just want to thank everyone who voted for the Corker-Boxer-Carper amendment, for Senator Wyden's support, for everybody who helped to make that amendment part of the bill and supported it in final passage. I hope it sends a message to our friends in the House that will not be lost on them. I hope before they just reject it out of order they will sleep on it and when they wake up in the morning maybe we can have a good conversation. That is not why I rose tonight, but I wanted to get that off my chest and appreciate the chance to do that.

I rise this evening in support of the emergency supplemental appropriations bill introduced, I believe, last week by Senator Mikulski.

The bill as you will recall will provide some $2.7 billion in order to address the humanitarian challenge that is playing out in recent weeks on our southern border with Mexico. This money will ensure that the agencies charged with securing our borders don't run out of money this summer. More importantly, it will address some of the underlying root causes of the problems we face along our southern border.

As we all know, we are facing an unprecedented surge in migration from three countries. They are El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. A large number of migrants from these countries are families. Some of them are unaccompanied children. Some of those unaccompanied children are as young as 4, 5 and 6 years old. Let me be clear. These children and these families are not slipping past our borders unprotected. They are being apprehended in large numbers by the Border Patrol almost as soon as they touch U.S. soil. Some of them, many of them actually, turn themselves in voluntarily to our Border Patrol.

Although the influx has slowed in recent weeks, the sheer number of children and families coming across our southern border in South Texas earlier this summer overwhelmed the Border Patrol--overwhelmed Health and Human Services and other Federal agencies. The administration and Secretary Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, have responded to this situation with what I will describe as an ``all hands on deck'' approach.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is coordinating the DHS-wide response to the problem. The Department of Defense has provided space on some of its military installations to house unaccompanied minors until Health and Human Services can find a placement for them. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has greatly expanded its ability to detain and remove families, and we have surged Border Patrol agents, immigration judges, and other personnel to the border to help process these people.

These measures have been working. For example, the amount of time people are detained before they are removed has decreased significantly in recent weeks, but these emergency measures are expensive and none of the Federal agencies involved have the money they need to sustain the aggressive steps they are taking to deal with this situation.

The consequences of not moving forward with this legislation are severe. Let me give some examples of what failing to act will mean. Without this emergency funding, Immigration and Customs Enforcement could be forced to release thousands of people currently being detained and to stop operating repatriation flights. Health and Human Services could be forced to cut back on the number of children it can care for. Children would be forced to stay longer at Border Patrol stations and Border Patrol agents would spend more of their time taking care of children and less time pursuing the smuggling networks operating along our borders.

Some of my colleagues are suggesting that we will not be able to pass this supplemental until September and that the administration can just move money around until then to make up for the shortfall. That may have been more feasible earlier in the fiscal year, but doing so now will likely have some significant unintended consequences. For example, it would impair our border security because DHS may have to reduce aerial support for the Border Patrol or stop replacing the badly needed x-ray machines at our ports of entry. Our ability to respond to natural disasters could also be harmed.

I also understand my colleagues in the House introduced a bill today that would provide $659 million to deal with this crisis. That is roughly one-quarter of what Senator Mikulski has introduced, and $659 million is just a drop in the bucket from what is needed. Incredibly our friends in the House are offsetting this funding by raiding other critical operations which is what Senator Mikulski's bill is trying to avoid.

Failing to move an emergency supplemental this week would be in my view unconscionable. I urge all my colleagues to do the right thing and make sure we deal with this before we leave for 5 weeks.

Dealing with the challenge we are facing on the border is, rightly, our main focus right now. However, we cannot lose sight of the root causes that are driving the surge in migration in the first place. In this country all too often we focus so much of our attention on dealing with symptoms of problems and not enough attention on addressing the underlying causes. This is particularly true on our borders. Listen to this. Since 2003 we have spent $223 billion--that is almost one-quarter of a trillion dollars--enforcing our immigration and customs laws, strengthening our borders, strengthening the security of our borders-- almost one-quarter of a trillion dollars. We have spent a small fraction of this--a very small fraction--actually less than 1 percent helping El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras improve conditions for their citizens.

I commend the President and Chairman Mikulski for including $300 million in this emergency supplemental request aimed at addressing what I am convinced are the root causes of this problem. What are they? The lack of economic hope, lack of jobs in Central America, combined with increasing violence and insecurity in the region. I know. I have been there. I have been to two of those three countries, Guatemala and El Salvador. This year down to Mexico, down to Colombia, which 20 years ago was just about a failed nation. Remember in Columbia roughly 20 years ago when a bunch of gunmen rounded up the Supreme Court judges in the country and took them out and shot them to death? That was Colombia 20 years ago. They are no longer a failed nation. They came back from the brink. They are a strong partner of ours, along with Mexico, to turn this situation around in these three Central American countries which are the source of all this migration to our country.

Based on my recent conversation with Central American leaders as recently as last week, the Ambassadors of these three small countries as well as the Ambassador to Mexico, and based on trips to the region, I believe one of the critical needs is to foster economic growth and create jobs. How might we do that? One, by helping restore their rule of law. In those countries we have police who don't police. We have prosecutors who don't prosecute and we have judges who don't adjudicate. We have prisons that either don't rehabilitate or punish. We have kidnappings and extortions. We have people who are scared to stay there and live there and they are bailing. They are voting with their feet. We need to help them restore the rule of law, much as we helped other countries such as Colombia from the last two decades.

Their energy costs are roughly three times what they ought to be. Most of their energy from the electricity grid comes from petroleum. They could use natural gas and spend half of what they spend for energy. They need to improve their education and workforce skills and access to capital. Those are some of the ways to strengthen their economy.

I am not suggesting any of this will be quick or easy to do. It will require a sustained investment and focus on the region by the United States and also by a number of others. This is not our job alone. This is a shared responsibility, and we need to keep that in mind. But it can be done. In fact, we have already done it with two of our most important allies in Latin America, as I mentioned Colombia and more recently with Mexico, where the economic situation was so bad that more than 1 million Mexicans were traveling across our borders every year-- more than 1 million. Today both countries have vibrant democracies and vibrant economies and their citizens have hope for their future. Now there are more Mexicans leaving this country going back to Mexico than are coming this way.

I will say again what I just said. We cannot and we should not do this alone. This is not all on America. This needs to be a shared responsibility with the governments of these three countries, with all the partners in the region, including Mexico and Colombia, with all the private sector nonprofits and institutions of faith. Three hundred million dollars as an emergency supplemental is a downpayment on what will need to be a long-term commitment to our neighbors in the region. This cannot be one and done. If we are serious about addressing the surge, we will need to do more, and frankly so will others--and I would underline ``so will others.''

Based on what I have seen, this crisis requires a holistic approach and one that tackles the underlying causes that are pushing people out of Central America and the factors that are pulling them to our borders.

If we turn our backs on these countries I am convinced we will be back 10 years from now dealing with another expensive humanitarian crisis on our border. We don't need that in any of these countries.

I urge all my colleagues to put politics aside and pass this emergency supplemental.

I yield the floor. Thank you so much.

Madam President, I urge my colleagues to vote to confirm Julia Clark to a second term as general counsel of the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

The Federal Labor Relations Authority oversees the program in place at the Federal Government to maintain fair and efficient labor- management relations at agencies across the government. The general counsel fulfills key responsibilities in these efforts, including investigating and prosecuting allegations of unfair labor practices.

Ms. Clark has served in this position for almost five years, and has fulfilled her responsibilities effectively and with distinction.

However, her term expires on August 7--just 15 days from today. If the Senate allows her term to lapse without reconfirming her, the position will become vacant and, by law, no one else can fulfill the functions of her office. Our inaction will cause a backlog of complaints and appeals to form.

This has happened before, and Ms. Clark spent much of her first year as general counsel clearing a backlog that developed because of a previous vacancy.

Ms. Clark is highly qualified, and we must fulfill our constitutional duty and confirm Ms. Clark today in order to allow her to continue doing her job.

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

Madam President, I rise to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission Report.

As the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--a committee on which I proudly serve with the Presiding Officer--I can tell my colleagues that this report has been and continues to be incredibly important to the work we do in the committee that Dr. Coburn and I are privileged to lead in this Congress.

Nearly 13 years ago, as we will recall, our Nation suffered the most devastating attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. Almost every American alive will remember where they were on the day the Twin Towers collapsed, when the Pentagon was hit, and when they saw the wreckage in the fields of Shanksville, PA.

We asked ourselves at that time, Why would anybody want to do this? How did this happen? What could have been done to prevent this tragedy?

In the months after this horrific attack, Congress and the President endeavored to answer these questions. Together they established an entity we call the 9/11 Commission.

Led by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean--our neighbor across the Delaware River--a Republican, and by former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat--one of my mentors in the House of Representatives--the Commission was charged with preparing a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding these horrific attacks and recommending ways to make our Nation more secure.

This proved to be no small task. The Commission interviewed more than 1,200 people in 10 countries, including every single relevant senior national security official from not one but two administrations, and reviewed more than 2.5 million pages of documents. Despite the political tensions and partisan climate that engulfed our Nation at the time, the Commission put aside their own political differences and issued their final report 10 years ago today.

The 592-page report contained a full accounting of what happened before and after the attacks and included no less than 41 recommendations on how we could prevent another tragedy such as the one visited upon us on September 11. The report went on to sell more than 1 million copies and it was at the top of the national best seller list-- numerous national best seller lists. Imagine that, a report--a Federal report--a best seller. It was a remarkable achievement, not only because of the depth and breadth of the Commissioners' findings but because all 10 Commissioners--5 Democrats and 5 Republicans--came to agreement on every single word of this report. Around here some days we can't agree if it is Wednesday, much less agree on every single word of a 592-page report.

In the months and years following the report's release, Democrats and Republicans in Congress worked together with the Bush administration to enact not one but two major laws to implement the report's recommendations. These laws were championed in part by our good friends Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine, both of whom served as chair and as ranking member of the committee I now chair.

Among other things, these two historic bills created a new Director of National Intelligence to coordinate and oversee all information sharing and intelligence activities. These laws implemented a passenger prescreening system that has helped to ensure that terrorists aren't able to fly on aircraft, while also establishing a fully staffed Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

When we think about all of these accomplishments and more, I think it is safe to say that the 9/11 Commission report has proven to be one of the most important and influential efforts of its kind in recent history. We as a nation owe a real debt of gratitude to the Commissioners for their determined and clear-eyed approach to improving the security of our Nation.

We might ask ourselves: How did they do this? The Commission's leadership--Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton--wrote in their own words on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks about why the Commission was so special and so effective. Here is what they had to say:

First, because of the great damage and trauma the 9/11

attacks produced, the American public demanded action and had

high expectations for measures and reforms that would improve

the nation's security.

Importantly, the statutory mandate for the Commission was

limited, precise, and clear--the Commission was authorized to

investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the

attacks and to make recommendations to keep our country safe;

The Commission had an extraordinary non-partisan staff--

They truly did have an excellent staff--

the members of which possessed deep expertise and conducted

their work with thoroughness and professionalism; the

Commissioners--

Many of them I am privileged to know--

had deep experience in government and political credibility

with different constituencies;

The final report was unanimous and bipartisan; families of

the victims of 9/11 provided solid and sophisticated support

throughout the life of the Commission and in the years since;

and following the Commission, the Commissioners and staff

continued to work closely with Congress and the executive

branch to implement and monitor reform.

That is what they had to say.

In other words, they had the will to act. They had the authority and the responsibility to act. They had the support of great staff and of the Americans most directly affected by the tragedy; that is, the families who were affected. They had extraordinary leadership from Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, both of whom put aside partisan differences and built a trusting relationship for the betterment of our Nation.

Once, after having a hearing in Dirkson 342, where our committee meets now and where they were testifying before us, the Chair and Vice

Chair, Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, and I asked them: In a day and age when it is hard for us to agree on much of anything around here, how were you able to agree, the two of you and your Commission, on the entire almost 600 pages of this report?

I will never forget what they both said.

They said: Well, we didn't really know each other, but we were thrust into this and asked to serve in this capacity, and we got to know each other.

They said: We got to know each other very well, and out of all the time we spent together grew a trust that was almost without bounds and a very strong friendship--a real bond.

Sometimes we think about why we are so dysfunctional here. That is, in my judgment, a very big part of what is missing--a lack of trust and understanding of one another and having those kinds of personal friendships that go across all kinds of boundaries.

After 10 years, I still marvel at the trust developed between the Commissioners, and especially the Chairman and Vice Chairman. Perhaps most importantly, no other large-scale, 9/11-type attack on U.S. soil has occurred over these past 13 years. The improvements made to our intelligence, our law enforcement, and our security agencies as a result of the 9/11 Commission's work have undoubtedly contributed to that good fortune.

The response to the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013--just last year--was a shining example of how the investments we have made as a nation in training and equipment for our first responders have made us more capable, more resilient, and more secure than ever. But that attack itself showed us we cannot grow complacent. We must maintain our resolve and our commitment to the security of our Nation.

The Boston bombing, new threats to aviation, foreign fighters in Syria coming home--these are all stark reminders that we continue to face persistent and evolving terrorist threats.

Of course, one of the biggest threats our country faces is in cyberspace. That is why Dr. Coburn, our staffs, members of our committee, and I worked so hard to move three bipartisan cyber bills out of the committee this year and they now await action by the full Senate in this Chamber. These are just a few of the challenges our Nation continues to face.

We know there is still work to be done to fully implement the Commission's recommendations. So today, as we commemorate the release of this report, I think we would be wise to revisit and attempt to recapture the spirit of unity that made this bipartisan achievement possible by the 9/11 Commission.

As we seek to confront and to overcome the challenges before us on this day, we would be wise to consider again the example set by Governor Kean, Congressman Lee Hamilton, and the other eight Commissioners, and we should be inspired by their example.

The people we are privileged to represent across the Nation are pleading with us to set aside what separates us--pleading with us-- remembering what binds us together and do the hard work we need to do to keep our homeland secure in an evermore turbulent world.

Let me close by thanking once again the 9/11 Commissioners not only for their important work that they did all those years ago but for the enduring example they set for us a decade ago. Let's be inspired by them. Our country and its people are counting on us on so many different fronts. Let's not let them down.

I note the absence of a quorum. Thanks so much.

Mr. President, before the Senator from Tennessee leaves, I wish to thank him very much for joining Senator Boxer and me in this Senate to create a dynamic that will enable us to do our job. He shows time and again the courage to keep out of step when everybody else is marching to the wrong tune. So does Barbara Boxer. She has shown extraordinary leadership in the Environment and Public Works Committee, on which I serve. I serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure. She and Senator Vitter and Senator Barrasso, with a little help from me, were able to guide through committee and report a secure transportation bill--a plan for the transportation for our country, including roads, highways, bridges, transit systems--and report it out of committee without amendment, without a dissenting vote, and bring it to the floor of the Senate.

If it were that easy, we wouldn't all be here tonight. There is other legislation, companion legislation that came out of the commerce committee for, among other things, freight railroads, passenger railroads. They have jurisdiction over aviation as well. The banking committee has jurisdiction over transit systems. So there is a shared responsibility here, and there is a shared responsibility to figure out how to pay for all of this. How do we pay for this?

We are spending somewhere around $17 billion, $18 billion a year for the Federal share for transportation projects. That is roughly about half of what we are spending if we add in State and local monies during the course of the year. We have run out of money. We literally run out of money next month for the Federal Government to do its share.

So what do we do? Well, I will tell my colleagues what we do. We are not going to continue to put it on our credit card, and we are not going to keep turning to countries such as China and saying: How about loaning us some more money so we can replenish the general fund, which will replenish the transportation trust fund.

Why do we want to be beholden to China? I don't think we want to be in that situation.

What we need to do is summon the courage to do what people sent us to do, and that is to make tough decisions.

Senator Corker is--I call him a recovering mayor from Chattanooga. I was the Governor for some years in Delaware. We are a bunch of former Governors and mayors here and some county executives, and we bring those experiences with us. When we are in our State or our city or our county and we are trying to plan and fund and permit contracts for roads, highways, and bridges or transit projects, it takes a long time. People are watching and wondering, why do we need a 6-year bill or why do we need predictability and certainty that the money is going to be there for these projects? It is because they take a long time. It is not uncommon to spend years planning a project.

The problem is, as the Senator from Tennessee said, five times we have done stop-and-go. I think it has actually been 11 times in the last 5 years that we have done stop-and-go funding and we haven't provided the certainty and predictability that State and local governments are begging for and that transportation authorities around the country are pleading for. The road contractors and folks who build these systems and transit systems, the folks who work on them, the labor unions--everybody is pleading with us to do our job. And what we have done--the House, God bless them, reported out a bill that was, unfortunately, a straight party-line vote. They reported out a bill that funds the transportation trust fund to allow projects to be built through May 31 of next year.

Some people say: Well, that is fine.

That is not fine. It is not 6 years, and, frankly, Senator Boxer called it kicking the can down the road. We have done that again and again--11 times over the last 5 years. There is a good chance that when we get to next

May 31, we will say: Well, it is too hard to make these tough decisions as to how we are going to pay for this stuff, and we will kick the can down the road again, providing more uncertainty, more unpredictability.

It is wasteful. It is inefficient. It is foolish. We look impotent. It is not the way for us to do business.

What Senator Corker and I and a number of others who are going to be joining us in this cause will call for doing is pretty simple. Instead of providing $11 billion for the transportation trust fund from what I will call a bunch of different sources of revenue--some of them more equal than others but some of them pretty questionable; but in some cases we are stealing revenues over the next 10 years for stuff that has nothing to do with transportation projects and using that money to fund transportation projects for, I don't know, 7, 8, 9, 10 months instead of actually doing what we have done for years--have a user-pay system where those who use our roads, highways, and transit systems pay for them. That is what we ought to be doing. But the problem with what the House has suggested we do is we will never--maybe never--get back to providing the certainty and predictability we need. We continue to drive up costs and say to all of the folks who are ordering us to do our job: Well, we don't have the courage to do it now. Maybe we will have it next year.

I think that will be a huge mistake.

I like to think of our Nation's economy as a car at the bottom of a steep hill, and 5 years ago our Nation's economy was at the bottom of the steep hill. We could have literally dropped off a cliff. Between July 1 and December 31, 2008, we lost 2.5 million jobs. In the first 6 months of 2009 we lost 2.5 million jobs. Literally the week Barack Obama and Joe Biden were sworn in as President and Vice President, we had 628,000 people file for unemployment insurance. In 1 week 628,000 filed for unemployment insurance. We know that anytime that number is over 400,000 people filing for unemployment insurance in a week, we are losing jobs in the economy. And that number stayed over 600,000 for too long. But it started to drop, and it dropped down to 550,000, then 500,000, eventually 450,000, and then 400,000, and a year or so ago we got under 400,000, and that number now is about 300,000. We are adding jobs.

Some would say: Well, they are not the kinds of jobs we want or need. But some are--a lot of them. Almost any job is better than nothing. And some of these jobs are very good and pay a fair amount of money. Here is where we were.

We were that car at the bottom of a very steep hill 5 years ago and trying to climb up the hill. It was slow going. We kept going. We kept going. We have added jobs; sometimes, some months, 50,000, some months 100,000. Now we are up to over 250,000 new jobs a month. But that car-- if you will, we are that car--is climbing that hill. We are making it to the top. We are at the crest of the hill. As we look at it we can say it is downhill now.

As we add more and more jobs every month, we have the option of doing two things: One, we can mash down on the accelerator, kick it into high gear, kick this economy into high gear, where it needs to go or we can start tapping on the brakes--start tapping on the brakes, slow things down, introduce uncertainty, lack of predictability. What we offer in our amendment, Senator Corker and Senator Boxer and myself and others, is a better likelihood that we are going to be pushing down on the accelerator next year.

We are not going to just put hundreds of thousands of people to work across our country building roads, highways, bridges and transit centers, but we are actually going to make our transportation system more efficient, which in the long haul is most important, to move product, whether it is from one coast to the other, north to south or just around our States. That is the key. How do we do this in a more efficient way? How do we make our economy work better? So this works at couple of different levels.

If we say we are going to kick the can down the road into next year and we will fund these programs until May 31, I do not know what is going to give us the courage next May 31 to fund a 6-year transportation program. As Senator Corker said, we have seven or eight people who are leaving at the end of this year. They are not running for reelection. They are retiring. They want to leave, saying: We did this on our watch. It was our job to get this done and we did. That is exactly why people send us in the first place, to make those kinds of decisions.

This is not something Democrats can do by ourselves. This is not something Republicans can do by themselves. What I am very proud of, in both committees, is that the Democrats and Republicans voted for it-- the Finance Committee voted for a similar proposal, not quite a majority but a very respectable showing. We have been working and gaining support literally by the day for what we are going to do.

Senator Boxer ran through some of the folks, some of the organizations that are supporting this, a lot of State and local governments, State departments of transportation, folks who build roads, folks who run the roadbuilding companies, folks who do the actual labor for these projects, the American Trucking Associations, AAA, you name it. There is a huge bunch of people out there who want us to do our job. They do not want us to wait until some other time. They want us to do it now. We can do that.

We are not here tonight to say this is how we are going to fund a 6- year plan. There are a lot of good ideas, and Senator Boxer ran through some of those. The idea is to create a situation where we are going to be compelled and we will actually figure out, of all those options--and there may be some other ones--how do we get this done. The idea that we continue to borrow money, to borrow money over the next 10 years-- revenue streams have nothing to do with transportation, nothing to do with transportation. If we pretend that is going to fund our transportation budget for 5 or 6 months, that is just laughing stock. We look so foolish doing that. It is also highly inefficient, as I said.

I wish I could remember exactly what Mark Twain once said--maybe the Presiding Officer can help me on this later--but he once said something like this: Do the right thing. You will please your friends and amaze your enemies--something along those lines. For the record we will correct it. But please your friends and amaze or confound your enemies. Why do we not try that for a change. That would be a great way to finish this year.

I again thank Senator Boxer. I thank Senator Corker for joining me in what I think is a noble mission. I never take anything for granted, but I think if we work it hard enough, we may surprise some people in a good way.

I see my friend from Texas--whose mother was born in Wilmington, DE, 1 of 17 children--is rising for recognition.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, the committee which I am privileged to chair, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and on which Senator Portman serves is responsible for working with the administration and others to help make sure that Federal agencies work better and more efficiently with the resources we entrust to them.

During my years of public service, I have learned that an essential ingredient in enabling organizations of any type to work well is leadership. It is what they say about integrity: If you have it, nothing else matters; if you don't have it, nothing else matters. In an organization, if you have great leadership, that is most important.

That is the case both in government and the private sector and in organizations large and small. Part of our responsibility here is ensuring that we have effective leaders in place across our Federal Government.

It is every Senator's constitutional role to provide advice and consent on the President's nominations in a thorough and timely manner as part of the Senate's confirmation process.

Today we have an important nomination before us. It is the nomination of Shaun Donovan to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I wish to express my sincere gratitude, not just to Secretary Donovan for his willingness to take on this critical role, but also I wish to thank his wife. I would like to thank his two boys who joined him at a hearing, and I want to say if my son were that age, there is no way he could sit through that: attentive, listening, thoughtful. What a tribute to their dad. It is all well and good what the rest of us think, but to have that kind of show of support from teenagers is pretty amazing these days.

While Shaun has very large shoes to fill left by Sylvia Mathews Burwell, I believe he is up to the task and, maybe more importantly, she believes he is up to the task. Sylvia is somebody who we admire deeply around here. She did a great job as OMB Director. She is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

She has known Shaun Donovan since they were undergraduates together at Harvard. She knows what he is made of, she knows his values, she knows just how smart, how bright, and also just how hard-working he is, and she has known him for a long, long time.

Secretary Donovan's nomination was successfully reported out of both the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. I am hopeful that we will be able to do our part today and vote to fill this key vacancy.

We know that Secretary Donovan is a strong leader who can take on and solve tough problems. As Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the past 5 years, he has guided our Nation through one of the worst housing crises in our lifetime.

We also know that Secretary Donovan is someone who can cut through red tape and work together with agencies more effectively. That is precisely why the President asked him to chair the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force--and boy did he do a job.

He has also had high-level experience in local government, as commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and has worked in the private sector and the nonprofit sector. He knows this job. He knows his governing responsibilities from all angles. He knows how the Federal budget is impacted not only by Federal agencies but communities, businesses, and individual Americans and their families.

I believe he has the diverse experience, strong work ethic, and leadership skills to get the job done and successfully continue his public service as Director of OMB.

As Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Secretary Donovan will be faced with helping to lead our country back to a more fiscally sustainable path. Let me just say, 5 years ago when this administration took office, they inherited a deficit that was $1 trillion. After the stimulus package, it was $1.4 trillion. This year we expect it to have been reduced by two-thirds. Is that good enough? Should we be satisfied and pat ourselves on the back? No, but we are headed in the right direction. Under Shaun's stewardship we will continue to do just that.

I believe that the grand budget compromise that we need, though, must have three essential ingredients:

No. 1, we need entitlement reform that saves money, saves those programs for our children and grandchildren, and does not savage old people or poor people.

No. 2, we need tax reform, and not only to lower--in my view--the corporate rates to be competitive with the rest of the world. We can forget all this inversions mess--the nonsense that is going on. We need to do that but also do tax reform and do it in a way that actually generates some additional revenues, and then we use those revenues for deficit reduction.

No. 3, we need to look at everything we do in government and ask this question: How do we get a better result for less money--everything we do from A to Z--and act accordingly.

OMB is critically involved in all three of those approaches, whether it is entitlement reform that is consistent with the values for the least of these in our society or tax reform that generates some additional revenues and lowers corporate rates. We are actually getting more for our money in everything we do.

OMB is essential and critical, and the OMB Director is going to be the point person for making sure we continue to make progress in each of those three areas.

I know from my own conversations with Shaun Donovan--which now stretch over 5 years--he will be a strong voice for fiscal responsibility and effective government management.

As Senator Collins and I pointed out in introducing Secretary Donovan before our committee just a couple of weeks ago, he is known for using rigorous data analysis to demand better results from government programs and to save taxpayer money. She also pointed out he will be a leader of integrity and intelligence in a critical job.

I mentioned the word ``integrity'' before, and I will say it again: Integrity, if you have it, nothing else matters; if you don't have it, nothing else matters.

He has integrity. He is a bright guy, a very smart guy, hard-working, a wonderful family, and a great track record--not just in government but in the private sector, nonprofits, local, State, and Federal governments.

He has demonstrated what he can do leading a big agency such as Housing and Urban Development and how he can lead in a cross-agency way when we were suffering under Superstorm Sandy, which came right through our part of the country.

I think he is well qualified for the position for which he is nominated. I am pleased the President nominated him, and I am pleased Sylvia Mathews Burwell is still around over at HHS.

Sean has done a wonderful job at HUD, and he will do a great job at OMB. I am pleased to support his nomination, and I hope all my colleagues will as well.

I ask unanimous consent that the vote on confirmation of the Donovan nomination occur at 2:05 p.m. and that Senator Murray be in control of the final 2 minutes prior to the votes.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Texas for his thoughtful comments.

When I was Governor, and long before that, and certainly in the Senate, I have liked to focus on underlying causes, not just the symptoms or problems but how do we solve the underlying challenge that is before us.

In this case we focus so much on the border and what we are doing on the border. We have tens of thousands of men and women arrayed there, drones, all kinds of technology to stop people from coming in. It is important for us to defend and secure our borders. The Senator from Texas has been a champion for that, and I would like to think I have as well, also, having been to Guatemala and El Salvador in the last couple of months, and Mexico and Colombia, trying to understand what is the underlying cause here.

As the Senator from Texas knows probably better than most of us, a big part of the underlying cause is the lives the folks are being forced to live in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. As we squeeze that bubble in northern Mexico to try to go after the narco drug lords, we squeeze that bubble and they go somewhere else--they head south. They have made life miserable in those countries for a lot of people.

So as we secure our borders and do all the work there, sending a strong, clear message, as Secretary Johnson has said, to those parents of those in Guatemala and El Salvador, it is also important to figure out how we partner with Colombia and those folks in Mexico and Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, to improve the hellacious lives many are living, with a lack of hope, lack of safety, lack of jobs, lack of opportunity, lack of education. We can do that. We can do that while at the same time securing our borders. We have to do both. And the underlying cause is important.

I have no questions, but I want to thank the Senator for his thoughts this evening, for yielding, and for giving me a chance to join him.

Mr. President, while Senator McConnell is still here in the Senate Chamber, I wish to follow up on his comments about the loss of Christopher Stout.

My wife and I have a son of our own named Christopher. He is roughly 10 years younger than Christopher Stout at his death. So as soon as Senator McConnell began talking about the loss of his life, it resonated with me as a father. It also resonated with me as a former commander chief in the National Guard for 8 years and as a Navy veteran who served three tours in Southeast Asia in the Vietnam war.

Sometimes we don't focus enough on what is being accomplished by our service men and women such as Christopher Stout and their service to our country in Afghanistan and our purpose there. Our role has been to go into a place in which 9/11 attacks were conceived and guided, killing thousands of Americans. Our purpose is, as we draw down on our troops there at the end of this year, to be down to about 9,800 troops, roughly half a year from now, and even fewer in the years to come. But our goal is threefold; that is, when we leave, we leave behind not only a place that is less likely to foment and launch attacks against this country or any other country, but also we leave behind a country that can feed itself, defend itself, and govern itself.

The Presiding Officer was adjutant general for the State of Montana, and he understands full well, having served in combat and for a long period of time, the importance of the role the Christopher Stouts have played and the reverence we hold for them and for their service in life and beyond.

I also hasten to add in following up on the minority leader's comments, there are some things we had in the military. I served 5 years Active Duty, 18 years Reserve as a P-3 aircraft naval flight officer and later as a mission commander. There are some things we had in the military that frankly a lot of people in this country haven't had for too many years. Until last year about 40 million people in this country did not have health care. They did not have access to health care, and we have changed that. We have changed that dramatically.

Does everybody have access to affordable health care today? No, but we no longer have 40 million people anxious to get access to health care. That has been cut by roughly one-quarter. We will reduce it again this year and again next year, but among the things we had in the military is an annual physical. The idea is that you actually get an annual physical in your birthday month. My birthday month is January. I got my first annual physical, I think, when I was 17 from a Navy doctor, and I got them for years and years after that.

A lot of people in this country, including people on Medicare--they could have lived to be 105--and until about 3 years ago with the option of the Affordable Care Act they got one annual physical paid for by Medicare when they turned 65 and joined Medicare. That was it. It was called the Welcome to Medicare physical. If they could have lived another 40 years, they would have gotten another one paid for by Medicare.

The reason the military provides annual physicals for its members, Active Duty and Reserve, is in order to catch health care problems when they are small, when they can be treated, and we do this to save money. I served in the military and in and out of military bases all over the country, all over the world, and in almost every one of them there was not just a doctor, a Navy corpsman and so forth, but there was a place to go--if you had a problem and needed medical attention, you could get it--a clinic. Today we have thousands and thousands of clinics all over this country where people, whether they have 5 cents or $5 or $50 to their name, have health care coverage. They can go get primary health care. They can get primary health care. We have grown dramatically access to primary health care in places all over America, not just Delaware but all the other 49 States as well.

There has been a lot of attention on the VA, some of the very disappointing circumstances that are going on in Phoenix and other places such as that in terms of waiting lists, and they need to be aggressive and they will be, but one of the great innovations the VA came up with 15 or more years ago was electronic health care records.

When I was in the Navy and on Active Duty, and the Presiding Officer may remember, we used to carry around with us--roughly this size--a brown manila folder, and it included my medical records for years, from the time I got my first physical as a 17-year-old Navy midshipman until my last one. People on Active Duty don't carry these around anymore. We have electronic health records pioneered by the VA and now we have them in the Department of Defense. The reason we have them is because it enables us to better coordinate delivery of health care to people who otherwise may not have it. The Affordable Care Act actually introduces for the first time for millions of people electronic health care records, not for them to carry around or access necessarily--although, in some cases they can--but so the people providing care for them can do it in a better coordinated and smarter way and a more cost-effective way, providing better results for less money.

The other thing we had in the military was the medicine. If someone needed to take medicine, prescription medicines or that sort of thing, they could actually get a medicine that was going to help them, keep them well or help them stay well, be productive. We adopted about 7 or 8 years ago the primary Medicare Part D prescription drug program in Medicare which has turned out to be a great success, although they had a big problem with it when people would fall into the doughnut hole. A lot of folks who got pretty good coverage for maybe the first half of the year would lose their coverage and have to pay. They didn't get any help from Medicare Part D. We started fixing--filling the doughnut hole--with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and over the next 6 or 7 years we will complete fixing that doughnut hole and people will not fall off the cliff, the Medicare Part D participants, as they have been, because of what is in the Affordable Care Act. Do you know who pays for that? The pharmaceutical companies pay for that, not the taxpayers. The pharmaceutical companies pay for that expansion, making Medicare Part D a good program, cost-effective, under budget, and 85 percent of the people who use it like it. All of those things coincide with the benefits we enjoyed in the military, and they are made available in part and parcel for more people through the adoption of the Affordable Care Act.

Are there problems with the Affordable Care Act? Sure there are. Are there things we need to fix? Sure we should. Will Sylvia Mathews Burwell help us fix those? She will provide great leadership. She and I, interestingly, have our lives intertwined in a strange way. We found out when I first met her. I called Erskine Bowles. I learned over 1 year ago the President had nominated Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be President Obama's OMB Director. I noticed she had worked in the Clinton White House with Erskine Bowles when he was Chief of Staff to President Clinton the second term.

So I called Erskine, and I said: Tell me about Sylvia Mathews Burwell.

He said: I will tell you about Sylvia Mathews Burwell. I have known people as smart as Sylvia. I have known people who are as good at working with other people as Sylvia is. I have known people as good as Sylvia at getting things done. I have not known one person who does all three of those things as well as she does.

He told me a story when she was working as Bob Rubin's right-hand person, top assistant. Bob Rubin was then the Secretary of the Treasury. President Clinton was meeting with Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, Bob Rubin, the

Secretary of the Treasury. Bob Rubin had one of his top aides with him, Sylvia Burwell. Erskine recounted the story of how the President was grilling Treasury Secretary Rubin on a particular issue and Secretary Rubin was kind of struggling to respond in an appropriate way to the President's inquiries. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the assistant, wrote a note, and when the President was not looking, handed it discreetly to advise Bob Rubin, who glanced at the note and then reengaged the President on the issue, and the President said: That is a brilliant insight. That is really a brilliant insight, Bob.

Erskine Bowles, not to be deterred, said to the President: Mr. President, Sylvia wrote a note and gave it to him. That is how he was able to give you that answer.

If I had people as smart as Sylvia on my staff, I would look a lot smarter too. But she covered herself with glory in those years at the White House. She finished up. This is a gal who grew up in Hinton, WV, a little coal mining town on the New River where I lived when I was 4 years old. Her husband Stephen proposed to her at the Blue Stone Dam on the New River where my grandfather and father used to take me as a little boy to fish.

She later graduated from Hinton High School, a public high school, a little coal mining town. Where did she go to school? She went to Harvard. After that where did she go to school? She was a Rhodes Scholar. She went to Oxford, and she came out and she went to work for a great consulting company, McKinsey & Company, and started working in the White House doing all kinds of things during the Clinton administration, higher and higher responsibilities, ending up as OMB Deputy Director the last part of the year, when we actually had four balanced budgets in a row, if you will recall.

She knows how to manage. She knows how to manage people, she knows how to manage financial resources, and she is terrific working with people. That is why Senator Tom Coburn, my wingman in terms of leadership on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, actually came along with Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia, actually came, a Republican and a Democrat, to introduce her for her confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, on which I served, to endorse her candidacy. I thank Dr. Coburn for doing that. One would expect Senator Rockefeller to do that. He has been a longstanding huge fan, but Senator Coburn and I have only gotten to know her for the last year and a half and have loved working with her and think she has done a terrific job at OMB and that she will do a terrific job at the Department of Health and Human Services.

I wish to say a special thank-you to her parents who are still alive and who still live in Hinton, WV, a real thank-you for raising not one but two young women, including Sylvia's younger sister Stephanie, for instilling the kind of values and the kind of education in them that has enabled them both to go on and do extraordinary things with their life.

I say thank you to Stephen, who proposed marriage to then-Sylvia Mathews at that Blue Stone Dam on the New River all those years ago. I thank him for sharing his wife with our country. These are tough jobs, demanding jobs, and in some cases thankless jobs, and he is willing to take on some extra responsibility as a dad in helping to raise their children, both under the age of 10. I think Helene is about 6 and I think the younger daughter is maybe 4 years old. They know their mom is changing jobs. They know she still has a job. If we confirm her today, it is a huge job.

Is there work to do? Sure, there is. Is there work to do in implementing the Affordable Care Act? Sure, there is. Is there work to do in tweaking it and making it better? Sure, there is.

I will close with this for my Republican friends--and I love them all. For my Republican friends who moan and groan about the enormous burden the Affordable Care Act is putting on the American people, let me say this: I have a friend who if you ask him: How are you doing, says: Compared to what?

If things are so bad now with the Affordable Care Act, let's just say: Compared to what?

Here is where we were 3 or 4 years ago. The country of Japan spends 8 percent of their GDP on health care. We spent 18 percent, until recently, with the Affordable Care Act. They get better results, higher rates of longevity, lower rates of infant mortality, arguably better results than we did until at least a couple of years ago, and in Japan they cover everybody. Until this year we had about 40 million people who went to bed at night who did not have health care coverage.

I regret that anybody who is inconvenienced or disadvantaged all because of the adoption of the Affordable Care Act. I regret it for every one of those people, but you know what. I regret that all those folks in this country, tens of millions of them, didn't have access to health care. I regret the fact that all those people on Medicare never got a second physical, and if they had gotten one, they would have a much better life. I regret that all the folks in the Medicare prescription drug program--millions of senior citizens--fell into the doughnut hole and stopped taking their medicines and got sick, had to be hospitalized, and ended up in nursing homes. It cost a lot of money and they died with not a happy life. I feel badly for them.

My dad used to say to us, rather than moan about our problems, fix them--fix them. There are plenty of things we can do to make the Affordable Care Act better. I know what they are. But the idea about going back to where we were? That dog doesn't hunt. It is not a good thing in Delaware and I don't think it is a good thing in Kentucky, where Gov. Steven Beshear has led, provided great leadership in his State to make sure the hundreds of thousands of people who needed health care have it today who didn't have it before.

We want to make sure the opportunity they have realized in Kentucky and those States that don't have that opportunity, that have no exchange to sign up in--they have no expansion of the Medicaid Program--my hope is they will look to Kentucky as an example and to Delaware as an example, to see what we can do for our people.

Last point. Most of the people who serve here are people of faith-- some are Protestant, some are Catholic, some are Jewish, different religions. Most people here are people of faith. Most of our sacred Scriptures have a couple things in common. One of the things they have in common is the Golden Rule. Chaplain Barry Black, who gives the opening prayer most days the Senate is in session, likes to say that the Golden Rule is: Treat other people the way you want to be treated, love thy neighbor as thyself. He says those are the CliffsNotes of the New Testament. As it turns out, the Golden Rule is the CliffsNotes of every major religion in the world. I don't care if you are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, almost all of them have something like the Golden Rule in their sacred Scriptures.

In the New Testament, in the Book of Matthew, Matthew 25, there is something we have all heard. Not everybody knows where it came from or even that it is in the Bible, but it is. The Scripture talks about, when I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me to drink? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was sick and in prison, did you come to see me?

Matthew 25 doesn't say anything about when I had no health care, and when I had to depend on the emergency room for health care when I got very sick and ran up a big tab that somebody else had to pay for because I was hospitalized for a while--a long while. It doesn't say that in Matthew 25, but the intent is the same.

Where were you? We were here, and we voted to try to do something about it, to make sure people did have better access to health care, and we can improve on what we have done and we need to do that. We have a moral imperative to the least of these in our society to look out for them, to help them look out for themselves as well. We also have the fiscal imperative given our budget constraints to meet that moral imperative in a fiscally responsible way. Sylvia Mathews Burwell understands that as well as anybody I know. She has demonstrated that in her leadership in OMB. She will demonstrate that if we confirm her today to be the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services.

I hope my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, will follow the leadership of Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, and his wingman Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, in supporting this nomination.

With that, I yield back the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to commend my colleagues in the Senate and House for coming together last month to pass the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, which is known as the DATA Act. The measure enjoyed near unanimous support in both bodies, and I expect President Obama to sign the DATA Act into law shortly.

This legislation seeks to ensure that Federal agencies have a framework in place to standardize their financial data, and will better ensure that expenditure data for all of our agencies is accessible to taxpayers and Congress. This will represent an important step toward a more transparent and responsive government.

Passage of the DATA Act, though, is merely the first step towards improving transparency into how the Federal Government spends taxpayer dollars. Now comes the hard part--implementation. I know that Federal agencies and the Office of Management and Budget will face challenges in implementing the bill. To that effect, I have received a letter from Beth Cobert, the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, expressing concern about implementing the bill without additional resources.

As with any legislation, our job does not end when the President signs the bill. I believe that those of us here in Congress have the responsibility to work with the administration to ensure that laws-- such as the DATA Act--that we enact have the support they need to be implemented. That is why I will work with my colleagues on the Appropriations committees to help make sure Federal agencies have the resources they need to meet the requirements of the bill. I invite my colleagues who worked so hard to pass this legislation to join me in this continuing effort.

With that being said, I ask unanimous consent that Ms. Cobert's letter be printed in the Record in its entirety.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back.