Floor Statements

Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill to assess the feasibility of establishing a National Heritage Area in the Great Dismal Swamp, as part of an effort to study, recognize, and preserve the historic and natural treasures within this region.

As we continue to celebrate Black History Month, this bill underscores the ties between the natural landmark and African American history. The Great Dismal Swamp contains one of the largest collections of artifacts from maroon colonies, and it served as both a home for early colonial Free People of Color as well as one of a few known water-based stops for freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad. The Great Dismal Swamp also encompasses historic and ancestral lands of Native American tribes such as the Nansemond Indian Nation and the Haliwa-Saponi and Meherrin Tribes.

Today, the Dismal Swamp offers unique educational opportunities, recreational adventures, and environmental benefits. It is an important wildlife refuge for an impressive and diverse list of animal, insect, and plant species. If designated as a National Heritage Area, local communities will have access to technical assistance and advice from the National Park Service while maintaining full ownership, authority over decision-making, and stewardship of the biodiverse land.

I am pleased to be joined by my colleague Senator Mark Warner on this bill, and I am thankful to Congressman Donald McEachin's leadership on this effort in the House with Representatives Bobby Scott, G.K. Butterfield, and Elaine Luria. There is great potential for community and economic development stemming from a National Heritage Area designation. I

look forward to such grassroots, community-driven development, and plan to personally contribute to the boosted tourism and recreation. As a student of history I am looking forward to learning more from the trove of culture and history the Dismal has to offer.

I encourage the Senate to consider this legislation to help highlight, study, and conserve the unique ecology and cultural history contained in the Great Dismal Swamp for generations to come.

Mr. President, 1 year ago, I said upon the conclusion of President Trump's first impeachment trial,``Unchallenged evil spreads like a virus,'' and that acquittal would lead to worse behavior. The events of January 6--seven dead, the first siege of our Capitol in over 200 years, the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power--are the direct result of that first acquittal. I voted to convict because seven needlessly died and hundreds were injured by a former President's egregious lies. So many risked all to protect us. The least we can do is protect them by voting to condemn and thus prevent behavior that should never be repeated.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about some friends of mine.

Roxie Raines Kornegay Allison. Roxie Raines Kornegay Allison, my across-the-street neighbor for nearly 30 years, died of COVID last Thursday night at 6 o'clock. Roxie has been kind of the matriarch and the pillar of our little four-block-long neighborhood.

We have the annual party in the median in October, and Roxie kind of presides. She has been sort of the caretaker, always taking care of a family member or a friend.

One of the first persons who reached out to me when Roxie passed was a city councilman in Pasadena, CA, who had heard instantaneously. He used to be the deputy police chief in Richmond. He said: When I moved to Richmond, I didn't know anybody. Roxie was the one who kind of adopted me and showed me the ropes in Richmond.

Roxie was a pioneer in Virginia government, making opportunities for African Americans to get hired in key positions--a civil rights leader in the State.

My wife and I and our whole neighborhood are just absolutely devastated by the loss. My wife and I were talking about: How old do you think Roxie is?

We always viewed her as sort of our age because she is so vigorous and fun and lively. She is 20 years older than my wife and me.

Three days before Roxie Raines Kornegay Allison died, another neighbor of mine, Sheila Mandt, who was 55 years old, died of COVID. Sheila was a dynamic activist in the Richmond community, with a real heart for nonprofit organizations that focused on the needs of survivors of domestic violence. She had done pioneering work in that area and worked with other organizations too, like the Salvation Army and others.

She was married for a long time to another friend, Chris Hilbert, who had been a member of the Richmond City Council.

Three days before Sheila Mandt died of COVID, Patsy Arsenault died of COVID in Richmond. Patsy is the mother of my parish priest, Father Jim Arsenault. It is a tiny little parish in Richmond, and Patsy has been very much a part of our parish community.

So in 8 days, three people that I know died of COVID. And this morning, I heard early in the morning that another dear friend--and I am not going to mention his name, but another dear friend of mine--is in the hospital with COVID and on a ventilator. He is somebody I know very, very well. I officiated at his wedding about 15 years ago, when I was Governor.

I am a healthy and wealthy and privileged person, so if this is happening to me in my network of friends and family, I know it is happening to others. I think this now makes nine people I know who have died of COVID.

I was on the phone yesterday with Taiwan's representative to the United States--representative is essentially their equivalent of the Ambassador. She told me that Taiwan has had nine COVID deaths--dozens of miles from China. They have had nine COVID deaths. I haven't gone back to check that, but my wife and I have nine friends and family, including the mother-in-law of my brother, who have died of COVID.

We had 3,406 deaths yesterday in the United States to COVID. Basically, beginning on about December 20, the daily death toll in the United States to COVID has virtually every day eclipsed the number of Americans who were killed on 9/11. We have now eclipsed 447,000 deaths to COVID.

So my own feelings of sadness about my friends are just shared in common with everybody. Everybody has been touched by this--knowing somebody who is ill, knowing somebody who has died, maybe having COVID themselves,

maybe having lost a job, maybe having lost a business, maybe having not been able to go see a parent or grandparent in a nursing home or not been able to travel to see a brandnew grandchild. This touches everyone. It doesn't touch everyone equally. Those getting COVID and those dying of COVID are predominantly minorities. Those losing jobs to COVID are predominantly minorities, young people working at the lowest end of the salary scale.

So why do I take the floor to talk about Roxie and Sheila and Patsy and my other friend who I just learned this morning is on a ventilator in the hospital? I take the floor because this, to me, is just evidence underlined with an exclamation point that we have to act promptly to provide a suffering nation more COVID relief, and we shouldn't be stingy about it. We have to be bold about it because the amount of suffering people in this country are undergoing is still so staggering, nearly unprecedented.

The scale of the problem is so big, the health scale of the problem-- that many deaths and millions having had COVID; the economic scale of the problem--we are still down 10 million jobs from where we were 1 year ago, and that is with some significant recovery occasioned by the investments that Congress has been willing to make in the first five bills that we passed. Even with those having had significant effect on our States and communities, we are still down 10 million jobs. And then we are also down in the intangibles. It is not just the number of cases, the number of deaths, the number of hospitalizations, the number of businesses that are closed, and the number of people who have lost jobs; it is the scale of sadness and unhappiness and the consequences that will go on for some significant period of time that we are still living under.

Here are two examples, and I could give 50, just as any Senator who stood on the floor could give 50 examples because we are all hearing this. The mental health needs of frontline healthcare workers--I had a Zoom session with doctors and nurses around the State not long ago, and the stories just break your heart.

One nurse said: You know, I am used to death. I mean, this is what I do. I have been a nurse for 20 years in this hospital, and I am sort of used to maybe one death per week on the shifts that I work. I am not used to three deaths on a shift day after day after day.

Another nurse jumped in from a different part of the State and said: That is right. Let me tell you what the hardest thing is for me.

The nurse said this: Maybe the most important thing I do as a healthcare provider is, when somebody is dying in the hospital, I escort their family into their room so that they can have some last moments together as a family sitting around the bedside and holding their hand or exchanging memories with their parent or their spouse or a child or a sibling. You can't do that now. People dying from COVID-- because of exposure risk, I can't make this place sort of a sacred place for family to say a last goodbye, so it is up to me to do it. I have to go in there, and I am wearing a mask; I can't even smile at the person. I am probably not even supposed to hold their hand, but I do anyway. And then what I do is I bring in my iPad, and I hold it a few inches from the dying person's face so that they can have an end-of- life discussion with family members who can't be there at their bedside and be there with them.

The nurses who told me this said this is really tough. It is tough to do it day after day after day and be the last person on Earth who so many people are seeing and trying to manage that really intimate and important sacred moment between a dying person and their family when they are gasping their last breath.

A third nurse then cut in and said: All those things are true. Let me tell you, for me, what is the hardest for my mental well-being in terms of doing this every day. I do what the other two have just described, and then I get done with the shift, and I am just beat, and I don't want to take that home to my family.

I don't want to take that frustration and depression home to my family, so I drive around for a while until I can kind of clear my head. Invariably, when I am driving around, I will go by someplace like a restaurant or a bar, and I will see a whole lot of people there with each other without masks on, people who think the mask thing is fake or it is a political thing, and they are making a statement by not wearing a mask and not following basic health guidelines.

After the day that I have gone through and the challenge to my own mental health in seeing this, I see that happening, and I am like: You are going to be in the hospital next week. Do you know what you are doing to yourself? Do you know what you are doing to your family? Do you know what you are doing to me? I am going to be having to hol that iPad in front of your face or maybe somebody else you are with as they talk to family.

The healthcare needs of our frontline healthcare workers who have been besieged by this pandemic--they are not going to go away the day we say we are past COVID. The challenges people have endured to be the heroes we claim them to be are not just going to immediately go away. Part of this COVID relief bill needs to be about keeping our own healers healthy.

A second example I will give quickly is housing. Thank goodness, in the COVID bills thus far, we have been able to find some bipartisan agreement to extend evictions--put a moratorium on evictions, put a moratorium on foreclosures for properties that have some Federal connection, financed through, you know, Fannie or Freddie, or FHA. If they have a Federal nexus, we provide an eviction moratorium.

OK, that is really important, but what about when we get to the end of the moratorium? Families have big obligations that are backed up. Maybe they lost jobs or lost income. Can they come current then on their obligations when we are done with the moratorium, or will they then face eviction? After they have gone through the unimaginable of COVID and now we are past it, will they then face eviction because their resources will not be sufficient to catch them up with their back-due obligations?

It is not just the residents. What about the landlords? So many landlords of rental properties are small business owners, and they provide housing to families, and they have to pay off mortgages too. We also want them to keep the properties up, to keep them safe, to keep them habitable, to keep them as dignified places where people can live, but if rent isn't coming in to them, how can they pay off their own obligations? How can they keep up the quality of housing where people live?

I could have talked about the needs of the unemployed or the needs of people who use childcare. At one point in the summer, 40 percent of childcare institutions in this country were closed down. That makes it so hard to open our businesses. I could have talked about the tremendous needs of small businesses. Thank goodness it has been a bipartisan priority in all the bills we did in 2019 to prioritize small business assistance. These needs are intense.

There are some positive signs. Hospitalizations and cases are starting to go down even though the death toll remains high, but this challenge--we are not done with it. We are not near done with it, and that is why we have to go big, in my view, and that is why we have to do it with a sense of urgency.

I want to conclude and just say that the budget reconciliation tool that was part of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 is about doing big things with a sense of urgency. I am getting asked sometimes by press, as I wander around: Should you use reconciliation, or should you try to be bipartisan?

I said: Hold on a second. Reconciliation isn't partisan. Reconciliation was a part of the Budget Control Act put in place 35 years ago, and budget reconciliation has been used for some of the most bipartisan, positive achievements of Congressmen in recent decades. CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program, was done with reconciliation. The earned income tax credit was done with reconciliation.

Reconciliation is a tool. You can use it in a bipartisan way or in a partisan way. It has also been used in a partisan way. The effort to undo the Affordable Care Act was done by reconciliation with no support on the Democratic side of the aisle. The tax cut bill in 2017 was done via reconciliation with no support

on the Democratic side of the aisle. But choosing the path of reconciliation is not the opposite of bipartisanship.

I so applaud President Biden and Vice President Harris for their earnest dialogue with our Republican colleagues, and I applaud my Republican colleagues for going to the White House and talking about what should be in this bill because as they share their priorities, they are going to shape this bill.

Without having seen the bill--I know no one has--I can make a guarantee about this bill, and I am 100 percent sure I am right about this. When this bill hits the table and the negotiation is done and before we have a final passage vote on it and we analyze what is in the bill, we are going to see so many priorities in this bill that are not just Democratic priorities but that are Republican priorities, too, things that were drawn from bills that Republicans introduced or that Republicans cosponsored with Democrats, things that were raised by Republican Senators in their dialogue with President Biden and with us. We are going to see a bill that meets the need of Americans who are suffering to do something big and to do something urgent and includes priorities that were Republican Senators' priorities, that are good for Republican voters, and that are good for all Americans.

So this is the second time I have done a floor speech where I have gone over the names of people whom I know who died of COVID. I don't want to do a third speech. I don't want to do a third speech. I think it is important to say people's names so we remember them and we honor them. But the best way we can honor them is not through a floor speech; the best way we can honor them is acting in a compassionate and prompt and significant way to ease the suffering of Americans during this most unprecedented time.

With that, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

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

Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing nominations.

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

Committee on Environment and Public Works

The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination.

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on a nomination.

Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a closed briefing.

Mr. President and my colleagues, I applaud the comments of my colleague from Georgia deeply.

My first job after school was in Macon, GA, working for a Federal judge, Lanier Anderson. I learned a lot about integrity and a lot about law from him. I also learned some sad lessons, that in the history of Georgia--and, indeed, Virginia and many States--so many people, especially people of color, had been disenfranchised over the course of our history. Our late friend, John Lewis, a Congressman from Georgia, was savagely beaten on Bloody Sunday just for marching for voting rights. That act of violence inspired this body, the U.S. Senate, to come together in March of 1965 and work to pass, in a bipartisan fashion, the Voting Rights Act.

We should be coming together today--after acts of violence--as a U.S. Senate, to affirm the votes of all who cast ballots in November. Instead, we are contemplating an unprecedented objection that would be a massive disenfranchisement of American voters.

The Georgia result was very clear: a 12,000-vote margin, 2 certifications by Republican officials, 4 separate recounts and canvases, 7 lawsuits, as in the other States. If we object to results like this, the message is so clear. We are saying to States: No matter how secure and accurate your elections are, we will gladly overthrow them if we don't like who you voted for. But, more importantly, what we will be saying--really, what we will be doing--is as the body that acted together to guarantee Americans the right to vote, we will become the agent of one of the most massive disenfranchisements in the history of this country.

So I urge all of my colleagues: Please oppose these objections.

Thank you.

I yield to my colleague from New Jersey.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Affordable Care Act and to discuss the devastating impact its potential elimination would have on rural families and rural communities.

My State, Virginia, has so many rural communities, and in that, I am with every other Member of this body, and I want to talk specifically about them.

The Trump administration has sought for years to end the Affordable Care Act using every tool available. They have worked on that task here in Congress to repeal it and sabotage it and even dismantle it in the court system. Today marks another milestone in that deeply troubling effort.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in a case that could strike down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. If the ACA were struck down, families and communities around the country would bear life-altering consequences, and the healthcare system would be thrown into chaos. Tens of millions of Americans would lose healthcare coverage and protections for preexisting conditions, among the countless other consumer protections that have been put in place by the ACA.

A number of my colleagues are going to be on the floor this afternoon speaking about particular aspects of this that trouble them. I want to focus on one in particular: how important the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion is to rural America and how much is at stake for those communities should the Affordable Care Act be eliminated.

Medicaid expansion enables low-income, rural residents to get affordable, quality health insurance so they can get the care they need. It is often the case that insurance companies do not compete with the same intensity in rural communities because there are just not enough patients. So it is common in rural America for somebody wanting to buy an insurance policy on the exchange, for example, to maybe have only one option. Medicaid expansion has turned out to be a huge benefit for many low-income people living in rural America. Many of those who are receiving insurance pursuant to Medicaid expansion were previously uninsured, and so for some, it is the first insurance they have had in their lives.

A particular impact of Medicaid expansion has not been on just individuals receiving that Medicaid but on the hospitals that are sort of the healthcare and even economic pillars in rural communities. Rural hospitals often have a difficult time making the finances work. Again, lower patient volumes make it difficult. Medicaid expansion has meant that the care they have been providing that in the past might not have been reimbursed at all--they are now able to at least get a Medicaid reimbursement, and that has been a significant financial benefit to these hospitals.

Mr. President, you understand this because your State is like mine, and there are a lot of rural communities. Rural hospitals are often the lifeblood of rural communities. They can be the largest employers in a town or a county. They often do a tremendous amount of outreach on healthcare and other philanthropic efforts not just within the hospital walls but outside the hospital walls--sponsoring the Little League teams and doing the things that make a community a community.

Residents of rural communities need access to healthcare, but they also need access to jobs and good healthcare information. Rural hospitals provide that.

I have seen the impact of rural hospital closures in Virginia firsthand. Two rural hospitals in Virginia closed in recent years because Virginia did not expand Medicaid initially. In the last year, Virginia has done Medicaid expansion, but before Medicaid expansion was done, we saw hospitals close in two communities in Virginia: Patrick County, which is a south side Virginia county that is on the border with North Carolina, and Lee County, which is a far southwestern Virginia county that is on the border with Kentucky and Tennessee. Two hospitals have closed in those communities.

I got a letter from a mother in Christiansburg, VA, which is actually up near Virginia Tech. Her name is Robin, and she wrote about the closure of the Pioneer Hospital in Patrick County in 2017.

She wrote this:

My mother who recently turned 70 still lives in the county,

and we are approaching a point of either moving back to

Patrick County or moving my mother to Christiansburg where we

currently live. My son has severe food allergies that could

lead to anaphylactic shock (which would require immediate

medical attention) so this variable also weighs very heavily

on my mind when considering the options of how to manage my

family's land and take care of my mom. I don't want to live

somewhere without access to emergency health care. It seems

inconceivable that this is the case in the era in which we

live now. . . . Please help get my home county back on the

medical map to give its economy and its people a fighting

chance.

Blacksburg is probably an hour and a half to 2 hours away. The mother is living in a county that now has no hospital--she has turned 70--so she doesn't have access to the care that she needs. The daughter is trying to decide: Do I move back? But I have a son who needs care because of allergies. Do I have to move my mother out of the home where she would rather stay?

Rural hospitals across the country are struggling to keep their doors open for a number of reasons, but here is an amazing set of statistics. Whether a State expands Medicaid pursuant to the ACA is a massively significant factor in rural hospitals' financial outlook and decisionmaking. Without Medicaid expansion, rural hospitals may be forced to cut vital services or even close. Here is the data point that really says it all: Since January 2010, 107 rural hospitals have closed in the United States, and 93 of those 107 hospitals were in States that had not expanded Medicaid at the time of the closure.

Hundreds more rural hospitals are at risk of closure. Rural hospital closures disproportionately occur in States that have not expanded Medicaid. The success of the Texas case would wipe out the ACA, including Medicaid expansion, and deeply penalize these rural hospitals.

A comprehensive 2018 study published in Health Affairs found that Medicaid expansion is directly associated with hospital financial performance and that expansion substantially reduces the risk of hospital closure, particularly in rural areas. The study also found that going back to pre-ACA eligibility for Medicaid would drive even more rural hospitals to closure.

So we think about Robin's dilemma of a mother living in a rural area where the hospital has closed. If the ACA is struck down and there is no Medicaid expansion, this is going to be faced by more and more rural communities across the country, and that means this is a dilemma individuals and their families will ultimately face.

Research from Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute indicates that the uninsured rate for low-income adults in rural communities fell three times as fast in States that expanded Medicaid as compared to States that did not expand. Turn that around.

States that expand Medicaid find that rural families have a dramatically higher likelihood of having insurance than those in rural areas where the States haven't expanded Medicaid.

As of now, 36 States, including Virginia, have expanded Medicaid and 14 have not. I am thrilled that earlier this year Virginia, after a multiyear battle, finally announced that Medicaid expansion was happening. In less than a year after expansion, nearly 293,000 adults are newly enrolled in Medicaid in Virginia, many of whom never had health insurance before in their lives--293,000 adults in a State where the population is about 8.5 million. That is a significant number of people who have received insurance through Medicaid expansion. They risk losing their eligibility if the administration is successful in its efforts to gut the ACA.

If we care about rural residents and rural communities, there are a number of things we can do.

First, we need to stand up against the administration's attempt to end the ACA, including its Medicaid expansion.

I have now been in public life for 25 years since I was elected to the Richmond City Council in May 1994. I will say that in all of the elections I have been in, up or down, and all the various legislative and other battles, the single most dramatic moment in my life as an elected official was standing on the floor of this body at 2 o'clock in the morning when Senator John McCain, fresh out of a hospital after being diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor, cast the deciding vote, and by one vote--one vote--we saved the Affordable Care Act. I have never in my life in the public realm experienced something that was so dramatic and so consequential.

We have to continue to stand up. I would have thought that vote might have moved us to a new chapter where we would be talking about fixing and improving rather than repealing, but that is not the case, as evidenced by the lawsuit today. But my hope is that we will resist efforts to sabotage and destroy and instead join together in efforts to improve. I have joined with my colleagues to cosponsor a resolution allowing Senate legal counsel to intervene in the lawsuit, to defend the Affordable Care Act.

The second thing we can do to help rural communities is focus on the 14 States that haven't yet expanded Medicaid and provide them a clearer path and encouragement to do so.

I am proud to be an original cosponsor of something called the SAME Act, which would extend the same level of Federal assistance to every State that chooses to expand Medicaid regardless of when the expansion occurs. I think that is important.

Let's use the original Medicaid Program as an example. It was passed in 1965. It was not a mandate; it was an option. The last State-- Arizona; State 50--that joined didn't join until 1982. There was a 17- year period between when the first State joined the then-voluntary Medicaid Program and when the last State joined.

Let's make sure that whenever States join, they are treated the same. If this bill passes, States that choose to expand now--these 14 States--we would make sure that they get the full Federal level of assistance as was available to those States that initially joined, and that should help remaining States get off the sidelines.

Finally, we need to stand up against administrative sabotage to the Affordable Care Act. We shouldn't promote skimpy insurance plans. We shouldn't slash funding for enrollment, outreach, or marketing. We should build on and improve and, yes, fix--because it is not perfect-- the ACA to extend its promise of affordable coverage to even more Americans.

That is why I have introduced Medicare-X legislation to establish a public insurance plan that could be offered on the ACA exchanges, beginning in rural areas. My bill would also make the ACA's tax credits more generous, expand tax credit eligibility to additional families, and allow for an enhanced reimbursement rate in rural communities where low patient volumes often pose financial challenges to healthcare providers.

In closing, the ACA has meant the difference between life and death for many families across the country, and I run into them every day.

I am going to be standing with some Senate colleagues on the steps of the Senate in a few minutes talking about a youngster from Winchester, VA, who has a series of significant healthcare challenges that would essentially in the past have made him uninsurable because of preexisting conditions but who now--because of that protection within the ACA, he and his family at least have the peace of mind of knowing that he can't be kicked off insurance or turned down for insurance because he happened to be born with a condition over which he had no control.

If the ACA were to be struck down, families and communities would suffer, and I think that in Virginia, that would particularly be the case in our rural communities.

Again, I am just going to hold up this issue of our rural hospitals. We need to protect rural hospitals not only because of the healthcare they provide but because they are employment centers and centers of community outreach. When we see the closure of rural hospitals overwhelmingly being in States that have not expanded Medicaid, that tells us how valuable that portion of the ACA has been to stabilize the provision of rural healthcare.

I will continue to fight to protect the ACA and the health of my rural communities in Virginia and elsewhere. I encourage my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today, I wish to discuss the importance of strengthening the defense industrial base, particularly as it relates to shipbuilding.

On July 21, 2017, the President signed Executive Order 13806, directing the Department of Defense to lead a whole of government assessment of the health of the manufacturing and defense industrial base of the United States. The report was released on October 5, 2018, and outlines current risks in the defense industrial base.

Within the military shipbuilding sector, concerns range from an overreliance on single and sole source suppliers, to a capacity shortfall for maintenance and modernization work, to insufficient competition and unstable demand.

The DoD report said: ``Industries involved in the manufacturing of shipbuilding components were among the hardest hit by the global shift in the industrial base over the last 20 years. Of the top ten highest grossing industries in Navy shipbuilding, six are in the manufacturing sector. Since 2000, these industries experienced a combined decline of over 20,500 establishments.''

We cannot afford to shrink our military shipbuilding industry any further.

These issues are particularly acute in my State of Virginia. Not only is Virginia home to Newport News Shipbuilding and Norfolk Naval Shipyard, we have hundreds of military shipbuilder suppliers, a number of which are considered by the Department of Defense to be fragile. These companies are essentially national treasures, from Hunt Valve out of Roanoke to Jo-Kell in Chesapeake, KITCO Fiber Optics in Virginia Beach, and Hampton Machine Shop in Newport News.

These companies want stability and predictability in funding; they want to be certain our Nation is serious about a 355-ship Navy.

These are issues that our committee has been working on for some time. In testimony last fall before the Seapower Subcommittee, the Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, James Geurts, told our committee that ``advanced funding and anything we can do to help the supplier base will drastically reduce risks going forward. What we are seeing in most of our construction programs as a key risk is supplier fragility, either single sources or single producers where we have to ramp up production.''

Chairman Inhofe has paid close attention to those concerns, and I very much appreciate how far this bill goes to address the issues outlined in the industrial base report.

This bill authorizes funds for the third year for the submarine supplier base initiative, which is helping critical suppliers across the Nation; authorizes additional funding along with incremental funding authority for both LPD 31 and LHA 9; accelerates the acquisition of LHA 9; adds funding for advance procurement for the DDG program; and requires DoD to assess the savings a multiyear procurement would yield in the LPD program, and the savings we could achieve through a block buy of two LHA's. The bill also reauthorizes CVN 75, the USS Harry S Truman. It leaves no room for indecision on the future of this asset.

It is critical that the DOD's current and prospective shipbuilding programs, the Virginia class and Columbia class submarine programs, the new Frigate program, destroyers, specifically take action to maintain the domestic supply base and not allow foreign sources to undercut the pricing of the domestic supply base.

We ask the administration to help us in every way to stay focused on helping our military shipbuilding industrial base meet the Navy the Nation Needs.

Madam President, I rise to speak in favor of the Udall amendment, a bipartisan amendment. I am a proud Virginian. The Commonwealth of Virginia is more connected to the Nation's military service by our map, by the installations in Virginia, and by personnel than any other State, and I am the proud father of a U.S. marine. I love serving with my colleagues on the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees.

Tomorrow we are going to vote on a question that cannot be more fundamental: Can President Trump take us to war with Iran without coming to Congress for authorization? That is the question. Can President Trump take us to war with Iran without coming to Congress for authorization? This is a matter of the utmost importance for this body, for the American public, and for our troops. Americans, especially those who have family serving in the military--and many of those families have seen their loved ones deployed multiple times since 2001--want to know what each Senator thinks about this important question.

The Udall amendment to the NDAA, which has bipartisan sponsorship, is very simple. It states that no funds will be expended in a war with Iran or on Iranian soil, except in self-defense, unless Congress takes the affirmative step of specifically authorizing those hostilities.

My colleague from Arkansas talked about lawyers dancing on the head of a pin, as he tried to suggest that ``self-defense'' was not a clearly defined term. I think most of my colleagues who read the language will believe it is incredibly clear; the President has the power to defend the Nation from an imminent attack or ongoing attack without asking anyone for permission. That is specifically stated in our resolution. There is no confusion about it. There is no attempt to limit a President's power to defend the Nation, but if the President decides that we need to go on an offensive war against a sovereign country, this amendment would suggest he could not do so unless he came to Congress.

Those voting for this amendment will say clearly that no war should be started unless Congress votes for it. Those

opposing the amendment will say clearly that it is OK for the President to go to war against Iran whenever and for whatever reason on his own.

Those who vote against this amendment, in my view, are essentially giving the President a green light to wage war anywhere, against anyone, on his own. That is not a power we should give to this President or any President. I believe, in my 6\1/2\ years in the Senate, there has only been one vote as serious as the vote we will cast tomorrow morning.

Why do I believe war should not be started without a vote of Congress? The Democratic leader outlined the clear constitutional history in this regard. It is Congress that declares war. The history and context of that provision in article I is very plain. At that time in the world, in 1787, war was for the Executive. It was for the King, the Emperor, the Monarch, the Sultan, the Pope, but the drafters of the American Constitution wanted to dramatically change history in this Nation and say that war for the United States of America should be a matter not for the Executive to declare but, instead, for the peoples' elected legislative body to declare.

Once declared, the President, as Commander in Chief, needs to be that commander. I agree with my colleague from Arkansas. You don't need 535 commanders, but it is not up to the President to initiate or declare war, constitutionally; it is clearly up to Congress.

The reason we should vote for this isn't just because of the constitutional provision. It is the value that underlies the constitutional provision. Why did the Framers put the question of war as a matter for the legislature? A congressional debate and vote is what is necessary for the American public and Congress to fully understand the stakes, to explain to the public and educate them why war is necessary--and especially, and most importantly, the debate and the vote by the legislative body is the evidence of support for the mission that American troops deserve if they are going to be sent into harm's way where they could be killed or injured or see their friends killed or injured.

I believe it is the height of public immorality. There could be nothing more immoral in the public space than to order our troops into harm's way, where they would risk injury and death if Congress is unwilling to consider and debate and vote on whether a war is in the national interest.

You have to go risk your life, you have to go be with others and potentially be injured or killed, but we don't want to have to vote on it. Could anything be more immoral than that? What this provision does is say that if we are going to be at war with Iran and, by example, with any nation, Congress should have the guts and backbone to come and cast a vote before we order our troops into harm's way.

Why is this debate important right now? We are in the middle of discussing the National Defense Authorizing Act, but I also want to point out two very important things, one an event and one a statement that may have occurred in the last week, since many of us took the floor last Wednesday.

On Thursday, a week ago today, President Trump ordered and then called off a missile strike against Iranian territory that would have been the start of a shooting war with Iran. It was a missile strike in the sovereign nation of Iran. Our military and all reasonable people understood that would have been responded to. So we were within 10 minutes. President Trump says he called off the strike on Iran with 10 minutes to spare.

We were within 10 minutes a week ago of being in a war.

The second thing that happened is, a few days ago, the President gave an exclusive interview to The Hill saying: ``I do not need congressional approval to strike Iran.''

Congress is irrelevant. I don't need to come to Congress.

The quote that the Democratic leader mentioned a few minutes earlier was that the President said: It is good to keep them abreast of the situation, but I am not legally required to do so.

How insulting for the President, who pledged at his inauguration to defend and support the Constitution, to not recognize that the article I branch--and we are the article I branch for a reason--must not be just consulted with but be on board with any wars expressed by their vote.

This President is holding the article I branch in contempt. Will we grovel and accept that monumental disrespect or will we insist that the President must follow the law?

For the record, I believe a war with Iran would be a colossal mistake. Its cause would be laid significantly at our feet by the United States and the Trump administration tearing up a diplomatic deal, tearing it up over the objections or over the recommendations of the then-Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, Joint Chiefs of Staff, tearing it up over the recommendations of our allies, tearing it up over the recommendations of the International Atomic Energy Agency. We tore up a diplomatic deal and raised the risk of an unnecessary war; that would be catastrophic.

After 18 years of two wars in the Middle East, where we still have troops deployed, we should not be fomenting, encouraging, blundering toward rushing into a third war in the Middle East. It would suck lives and resources away from more pressing priorities of our citizens. Bogging ourselves down in another war against a smaller, weaker, faraway nation would divert our attention from acting firmly to counter our chief competitor, China.

Furthermore, another war in the Middle East would represent another broken promise by this President. Just as he said that Mexico would pay for a border wall, just as he promised not to cut the Medicaid Program before supporting an effort to eliminate the Affordable Care Act and slash Medicaid, the President criticized the Iraq war as a candidate and said he would end wars in the Middle East, not expand or multiply them.

I will give my colleague from Arkansas credit for having the courage of his convictions to come and state what he has stated on the floor. There are some in this body and the administration who have argued that a war with Iran would be a good thing or a necessary thing. Some have even suggested it would be an easy win. Let them come to the floor of the Senate and make that argument in full view of the American public and let Congress debate and vote and then be held accountable for decisions we make about war.

As I conclude, I thank the majority leader for scheduling this vote, and I especially thank the Democratic leader for firmly insisting it must be held. Tomorrow we will all speak to a fundamental question about war but also about this institution: Can President Trump take us to war with Iran without even coming to Congress?

I hope my colleagues will stand for the Constitution. We must provide assurance to our citizens, and we especially must provide assurance to our troops, that war is not based on the whim of this President or the whim of any President, but it must be based instead on a clear vote, following public debate by the peoples' elected legislature.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I also rise today with my colleagues to talk about the rumors of war we have been hearing in this body and in the news. I want to advocate for a very simple amendment whose timing is, I think, propitious as we discuss the National Defense Authorization Act. Why wouldn't we discuss what we are hearing from the White House and others? Why wouldn't we discuss the events that are happening on the ground in the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East?

The amendment Senator Udall has prepared that is a bipartisan amendment that is before the body--and we hope for a vote early next week--is a straightforward one. No funds would be used to prosecute a war against Iran unless this Congress has a vote to authorize it, to authorize such a war. As my colleague from Oregon mentioned, that is what the Constitution suggests, and that is the debate we should be having.

Part of the reason I feel so strongly about this is because I am a Virginian. We are the most connected State to the military mission of the United States. All States are connected and all States are Patriotic, but if you just add up the kind of per capita in Virginia-- our Active Duty, our Guard, our Reserve, our DOD civilians, like the nurses who work at the Fort Belvoir Hospital, the DOD contractors like the shipbuilders in Newport News, our military families--we are the most connected to the Nation's military mission. I am personally connected to this with a son in the U.S. Marines. So as a Virginian I feel very strongly about this, and I also feel strongly about it because we are proud of the Virginians, Madison, Jefferson, and others, who are among the Founders who crafted the Constitution. They tried to do some things that were pretty revolutionary then, and they are still revolutionary. Some of our Constitution was a great borrowing exercise--taking wonderful ideas from other constitutions and laws and assembling them together in a wonderful document they put together in 1787, but there were a couple of ideas in the Constitution of 1787 that were not chosen from elsewhere, that were really unique to our country and are still unique. One of the unique ideas is this: War is not a matter for the Executive, the King, the Emperor, the Monarch, the Sultan, the Pope. No, war is a matter that needs to be declared by the people's elected legislative body.

That was revolutionary in 1787, and it is revolutionary today. The balance of power that was struck was that Congress would declare war, and then once declared, there would only be one Commander in Chief--535 Commanders in Chief would be a disaster. The decision to initiate war would be for Congress, and then the President, working in tandem with military leadership, would be the Commander in Chief to prosecute a war if declared, but there should be no shortcut and no substitute for the debate in this body before the initiation of war.

The amendment that will be on the table--and then hopefully we will receive a vote on--that is bipartisan in nature would prevent funding for a war against Iran unless there is a vote of Congress to authorize such a war.

The amendment does make clear that no previous congressional act--for example, the 2001 authorization--can be tortured and twisted and stretched and bootstrapped into a declaration of war against Iran. The administration has sort of been trying to lay that as a predicate, suggesting that an authorization that passed in 2001 that did not mention Iran would authorize war against Iran, when not a single person who voted for it in 2001 ever thought it was to be used in justification for war against Iran. The administration would like to try to use that as a justification, they have said, in testimony here on the Hill.

Think about this: If they are so afraid to come to Congress and ask for an authorization that they want to try to use something from 18 years ago, what does it tell us about their confidence that they have a good justification that we need to be in a war?

The amendment we have does not prevent the United States from defending itself from attack against Iran. The President has the power as Commander in Chief under Article II, and the War Powers Resolution specifies that power and doesn't codify it. It doesn't need to be codified, but it makes clear that power is always inherent in the Office of the President.

Our amendment doesn't suggest that Iran's behavior is acceptable or consistent with international norms. I have been part of many efforts over the course of my time in the Senate to impose sanctions on Iran if they violated, for example, ballistic missile protocols, U.N. sanctions, or rules, and if they engaged in human rights abuses. The purpose here is not to stand up and defend Iranian behavior, but it is to stand for the proposition that we shouldn't be committed to a war without a vote of Congress.

I will say that this administration's actions and rhetoric have been unnecessarily provocative. It was the United States that pulled out of a diplomatic deal that was working, not Iran. When President Trump pulled out of the diplomatic deal at the time he did, his then- Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson; his then-Secretary of Defense, James Mattis; his then-National Security Advisor, General McMaster; his then and current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford--all said that the Iran deal was working, that Iran was complying with it, and that the United States should stay in it. The President pulled out of the diplomatic deal nevertheless and in the year since has reimposed sanctions and taken a number of steps that are provocative toward Iran--diplomatic provocation, rhetorical provocation, economic provocation, and military provocation.

We have been having a set of briefings--some classified--from the administration on this. I am not going to get into classified material, but one thing I will acknowledge--and I am impressed by this--is the administration's intel experts, when they brief us on the situation-- even yesterday--they will state that Iran's activities are--and this is pretty much a direct quote--in response to the ``U.S. Maximum Pressure'' campaign.

The ``U.S. Maximum Pressure'' campaign that started with the United States backing out of the diplomatic deal is leading to Iran taking other actions that we don't like, but they are not taking those actions unprovoked. Their actions need to be understood as a response to the ``U.S. Maximum Pressure'' campaign.

Senator Merkley talked about it. We pulled out of the deal. We reimposed sanctions. We designated part of the Iranian Government as a foreign terrorist organization. We misrepresented routine military operations in the region. We moved more troops and Patriot missiles and aircraft carriers and other military material into Iran's region. This is not their moving material into our region; it is our moving material into their neighborhood.

Just this week, the administration announced the deployment of an additional 1,000 troops to the Middle East to counter Iran, and that is what this administration is doing--a ``U.S. Maximum Pressure'' campaign that tears up diplomacy and thus raises the risk of unnecessary war.

I will also point out that it is not just U.S. activity that is provoking Iran. When the United States allows Saudi Arabia to get missiles they shouldn't have and when the United States observes the Saudis building a missile program--by public reports, possibly with the support of China--that is viewed as very dangerous by Iran. When the United States transfers nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia--not even briefing Congress about it--and the Saudis say they would try to build up a nuclear arsenal to counter Iran, it is a provocation. So the maximum pressure by the United States and nations like Saudi Arabia are leading to an unnecessary escalation of tension in the region.

I want to conclude because my colleague from New Mexico, who is the author of this, also wants to speak about why we need to take it up, but let me just say this. I am going to state my position for the record.

I think another war in the Middle East now would be a disaster. I think it would be catastrophic for the United States to tear up a diplomatic deal and then look our troops in the face and say ``Because we tore up a diplomatic deal, you have to now go fight another war'' when we have been in the Middle East for 18 years. I think it would represent just about as catastrophic a failure of American foreign policy as you could imagine.

I think it would also have the disadvantage of taking our eye off the ball. I have always been taught to keep the main thing the main thing. I think the main thing right now in national security for the United States is to keep our eye on our principal competitor, which is China. When we take our eye off our principal competitor and we engage in wars we needn't be in, China will be the victor in that. That is a very dangerous thing for us.

So I think it would be catastrophic for the United States to be engaged in another war in the Middle East, particularly a war against Iran right now. But if the President feels differently about that; if some of his advisers think we ought to be about regime change in Iran, as they have said; if some of them think it would be easy to beat Iran in a war, as they have said; if some colleagues here on the floor think we should be in a war with Iran, as some have publicly urged, let them come to the floor of the Senate, in full view of the American people, and make that argument.

Let's have that argument right here in the greatest deliberative body in the world with the American public watching, and I will make my argument about why a new war in the Middle East would be catastrophic and see who wants to stand up and make the argument that a new war in the Middle East is something this great Nation should do. And if we then have that argument and cast a vote and I lose, I am going to be disappointed, but we will have done what the Constitution suggests that we must do.

Our failure to have that debate is so unfair to our troops. It is unfair to our troops to put them in harm's way with Congress hiding under their desk, not being willing to state yea or nay on whether we should be engaged in hostilities.

Let's honor the troops and the sacrifice we would ask them to make, follow the Constitution, and have this debate before the American public. That is what the amendment would essentially guarantee that this body would do, and that is why I so strongly support it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to echo the comments of my colleagues on these bills that are pending here in the Senate.

I hold up the Calendar of Business for the Senate for Wednesday, June 19, 2019, which is today. On page 15 of the calendar, item 29 is H.R. 8, ``An act to require a background check for every firearm sale.'' The status, which is listed in every Senate calendar, is ``Mar. 4, 2019.-- Read the second time and placed on the calendar.'' It is pending here before the Senate.

The next item, No. 30, is H.R. 1112, an act to amend chapter 44 of title 18, U.S. Code, to strengthen the background check procedures to be followed before a Federal firearms licensee may transfer a firearm. On March 5, 2019, it was read the second time and placed on the calendar.

In this body, we are not asking for something that isn't before us. No. The Senate calendar for today says these bills are before us. Yet one individual, the Senate majority leader, is keeping us from having a debate and a vote on these two matters. We could vote on it. Maybe we wouldn't have the votes, but we ought to be able to at least vote and be accountable to the American public for the positions on these issues.

I rise in the shadow of yet another tragedy in Virginia. Every Senator in this body has had tragedies like these. I know the Presiding Officer has suffered multiple tragedies in Orlando and Parkland. I was the mayor of Richmond when we had one of the highest homicide rates in the United States, which had been driven by gun violence. I was the Governor of Virginia when the shooting happened at Virginia Tech. I was in the U.S. Senate when two Virginia journalists were murdered on live television by a disgruntled ex-colleague. Then, three Fridays ago, on May 31, in Virginia Beach, just as I had left the city after giving a talk there to a local bar organization, the news came about the shooting of 12 innocent people--11 city employees and 1 contractor who was at the city just to get a building permit--who had been gunned down, in this case, by an individual who had used weapons that had massive magazines--the 30-round magazines. They were the kind of magazines that were also at issue in the shooting in Parkland. This is why I take to the floor today.

In thinking about these tragedies in Virginia and the repetitive nature of them, when the shooting happened at Virginia Tech when I was Governor, I had always hoped that it would have been the worst shooting in the history of the United States. It is a weird thing to say about your own State. What a bizarre thing to say about your own State--that this tragedy had happened on April 16, 2007, and that I had hoped it would have been the worst shooting in history whereby there had been 32 people killed. Yet, at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, 49 people were killed. In Las Vegas--and my colleague from Nevada is here--over 50 people were killed, and hundreds were injured.

There is an escalating nature to these. Our teachers now have to do live shooting drills because of school shootings. They didn't have to do that when they were going through ed schools 10 or 15 years ago. They have to hold practices with little elementary school students. A teacher was telling me the other day about what it is like at the beginning of the year to take a group of second graders into a restroom, which is their designated spot near their classroom. The teacher is then instructed to stand in front of the door so that if a shooter starts to shoot through the door, it will be the teacher who will be killed rather than the students.

The fact that we have normalized this and that we have practiced it is evidence of a sickness. Yet there are cures for sicknesses. These bills are cures for a sickness. We don't have complete cures, but they would make us safer.

As was indicated, the Federal background requirement has prevented 3 million people since 1994 from getting weapons that they shouldn't have had. Some of those individuals, no doubt, may have found weapons in other ways, but the moment people are turned away from getting weapons they can't have, society is safer on those days. Sometimes they are turned away, and they never get the weapons--3 million times. Yet, because of glitches and weaknesses in the background check system, too many people who have

been prohibited for decades from having weapons are still able to get them.

The New York Times recently did a study of 19 mass shootings in which the firearms that had been used had been bought legally after there having been Federal background checks--19 instances in which the firearms had been legally purchased after there having been background checks. It discovered, though, in looking at those 19 cases that at least 9 of the instances had been those in which the background check systems had had glitches and flaws so that the people were able to get the weapons even though they shouldn't have been able to. Let me give you just three powerful examples.

The young man who murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech was a student by the name of Seung-Hui Cho. He went to high school in Fairfax, which is not far from here. He had a serious mental illness. His counselors and teachers at his high school knew this young man. They knew his capacity and strengths, and they knew he had problems. They were able to wrap services around him so that he not only graduated but was a successful student.

Then he went on to a college campus that was 200 miles away, and all of that knowledge was locked up in his high school and didn't transfer to the college campus. He was then with a new group of 35,000 people. The folks didn't know him, and they didn't know of the challenges he had. They didn't know what it took for him to be successful, because he would have been able to have been successful if the right things had been done.

Over the course of his college career, he experienced increasing instances of mental illness and, at one point, was adjudicated by a local behavioral services board as being mentally ill and dangerous. That is one of the nine categories under Federal law. It is not just one's being mentally ill, because mentally ill people are, more often, the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators of violence. You have to be adjudicated mentally ill and likely be a danger to others. He was adjudicated in that way, and that prohibited him from getting a weapon.

The local court system failed to introduce the record into the national criminal background check system. So, a few months later, when he went to a federally licensed gun dealer in Roanoke to purchase the weapons that led to the mass atrocity, even though he was prohibited, the weakness in the background check system allowed him to get the weapons and carry out the murders.

I was able to fix some of this glitch by executive order when I was the Governor when what I really needed at the time from my legislature in Virginia was a commitment to universal background checks. The better the system, the safer we are. I could not get that from my legislature, but that was an instance in which, clearly, glitches in the background check system had led to this massive atrocity.

In Charleston, this deranged young man who had sat in on a Bible study, had worshiped with people who had prayed for him and who had later forgiven him, and had then used his weapon to murder nine people had acquired a weapon despite his having been prohibited. He had been prohibited under Federal law from having a weapon.

There is a part of the Federal law that is the subject of one of the two bills that is pending now before the Senate that says, if you are buying at a licensed gun dealer's and if the background check can't be completed within 72 hours, the dealer has to put the weapon in your hand even though you are prohibited from having the weapon.

In the case of Dylann Roof, they could not complete the background check within 3 days. The weapon was put in his hand, and he murdered these people as they were at a Bible study in the middle of the week. Again, there was a weakness in the background check system.

How sad they are, these shootings. They are sad however and wherever they occur--at a nightclub, at a school, at a corner in Richmond. We had the murder of a 9-year-old and the injury of an 11-year-old 2 weeks ago in a neighborhood park because of a driveby. Wherever it happens, it is horrible--but at synagogues and churches in Charleston?

You will remember the instance in Sutherland Springs, TX, in November 2017 when someone went into a church and killed 26 people. Again, there was a weakness in the background check system. The gunman had been in the Air Force. While in the Air Force, he had been convicted and sentenced to 12 months confinement and had had his rank reduced because he had assaulted his wife and had broken the skull of his infant child. He had had a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force.

With that adjudicated offense and with that discharge, he should have been prohibited from getting a weapon. Yet, in 2016 and 2017, he had purchased two firearms and had passed the Federal background check because the military adjudications had not been introduced into the system.

The two bills I mentioned that are on the floor would do two things. They would make the background check system universal. However a weapon is transferred--in a Federal gun licensing, in a gun show, or between relatives and whether for payment or as a gift--you must determine before the gun is placed in the hand of an individual whether that individual is allowed to have a weapon or is prohibited. That is the first bill.

The second one I mentioned would fix the Charleston loophole. It would establish that you don't just get the gun put in your hand if there is a glitch and it slows down the processing of your request. You have to be approved. There has to be a green light that says you are an allowed person before you get the weapon. To the extent that it might take longer than 3 days, it is in the interest of public safety to make sure that the person who is getting the weapon isn't prohibited.

These measures are effective. The States that have gone to universal background checks can compare data pre and post, and they can compare their data with that of their next-door neighbors. The States that have moved to universal background checks have seen a reduction in gun violence. It is not the complete elimination. We are not able to do that. We didn't completely eliminate auto deaths when we required that there be air bags, but we have made people a lot safer, and that should be the standard here too. These laws are effective, and they are popular. Overwhelmingly, Americans support background checks.

Finally, this is not even, really, a new law. The NRA used to take the position that it didn't want new laws but that it wanted to enforce existing laws. The background check bill isn't even a new law; it is just the enforcement of existing laws. If you have a group of people who are prohibited from having weapons but the only way to enforce that is through a comprehensive background check system, then the way to look at these two bills is that these are bills that are necessary to enforcing existing laws that have been on the books since 1968 and with a bipartisan consensus.

We deserve a vote. These matters shouldn't just sit here on the Senate calendar day after day, week after week, and month after month without there being the opportunity to have a vote.

As I conclude, there was a time in the Congress when there was something called the gag rule--for decades in the 1820s and 1830s. I think my timing is right. There was, essentially, something called the gag rule. Petitions with respect to the abolition of slavery were not able to be debated, and I fear that this is what we have come to in this body with respect to these issues. We haven't had a meaningful debate and vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate about the scourge of gun violence since the debate and vote in April of 2013, which was in the aftermath of the shooting in Sandy Hook. It has been more than 6 years, and I think it is time to do it. The bills are pending on the calendar. We should have that debate and have that vote.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President. When a U.S. servicemember gives their life in service to their Nation, they often leave behind family who we are equally indebted to. Ensuring that these survivors are provided every opportunity to succeed and get a quality education supports our values and upholds our promise to servicemembers and military families. Unfortunately, our ability to uphold our promise to dependents of servicemembers who were killed in action (KIA) in Iraq and Afghanistan following the attacks on September 11, 2001 has been affected.

As a result of sequestration, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) sent a letter to institutions requiring them to reduce the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant awards by about 6.2% or almost $400 per recipient for the 2018-2019 award year. These grants are critical for students to use for tuition, books, and room and board and any future cut would be significant for a young college student. Many children and dependents of servicemembers who were KIA in Iraq and Afghanistan are now reaching college age so more and more students will not be receiving as much in grants as they should be getting and rightfully deserve.

Today, I am pleased to introduce with my colleagues Senator Lankford, Senator Tester, and Senator Scott (from South Carolina) a bipartisan bill called the Protecting our Gold Star Families' Act of 2019. This legislation will move the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant program to the Pell Grant program to stabilize the funding source for these awards and ensure Gold Star families have access to the maximum Pell Grant funding available if they previously did not qualify for Pell Grants. Additionally the bill would align eligibility requirements under existing Department of Veterans Affairs grants such as the Fry Scholarship with ED and the Iraq and Afghanistan Service program to ensure that all Gold Star families are receiving the award.

While Virginia public universities already offer tuition assistance to dependents whose parents were killed in action or were permanently disabled under the state's Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program (VMSDEP), these funds could be used to offset tuition at private institutions and could also cover additional expenses, including room and board, books, and supplies. Over 500 Virginians have attended or are currently attending college at public universities with assistance through VMSDEP and would qualify for these Pell Grants as well.

Our Gold Star families have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Helping them afford college is the least we can do. We should give our servicemembers a peace of mind that if anything happens to them, the nation they served will look out for their children and help them access a high-quality education. As more of our post 9/11 Gold Star children are starting to reach college age, now is the right time to improve the program. I hope that my colleagues will incorporate this bipartisan bill in a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

Mr. President. When a U.S. servicemember gives their life in service to their Nation, they often leave behind family who we are equally indebted to. Ensuring that these survivors are provided every opportunity to succeed and get a quality education supports our values and upholds our promise to servicemembers and military families. Unfortunately, our ability to uphold our promise to dependents of servicemembers who were killed in action (KIA) in Iraq and Afghanistan following the attacks on September 11, 2001 has been affected.

As a result of sequestration, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) sent a letter to institutions requiring them to reduce the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant awards by about 6.2% or almost $400 per recipient for the 2018-2019 award year. These grants are critical for students to use for tuition, books, and room and board and any future cut would be significant for a young college student. Many children and dependents of servicemembers who were KIA in Iraq and Afghanistan are now reaching college age so more and more students will not be receiving as much in grants as they should be getting and rightfully deserve.

Today, I am pleased to introduce with my colleagues Senator Lankford, Senator Tester, and Senator Scott (from South Carolina) a bipartisan bill called the Protecting our Gold Star Families' Act of 2019. This legislation will move the Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grant program to the Pell Grant program to stabilize the funding source for these awards and ensure Gold Star families have access to the maximum Pell Grant funding available if they previously did not qualify for Pell Grants. Additionally the bill would align eligibility requirements under existing Department of Veterans Affairs grants such as the Fry Scholarship with ED and the Iraq and Afghanistan Service program to ensure that all Gold Star families are receiving the award.

While Virginia public universities already offer tuition assistance to dependents whose parents were killed in action or were permanently disabled under the state's Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program (VMSDEP), these funds could be used to offset tuition at private institutions and could also cover additional expenses, including room and board, books, and supplies. Over 500 Virginians have attended or are currently attending college at public universities with assistance through VMSDEP and would qualify for these Pell Grants as well.

Our Gold Star families have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Helping them afford college is the least we can do. We should give our servicemembers a peace of mind that if anything happens to them, the nation they served will look out for their children and help them access a high-quality education. As more of our post 9/11 Gold Star children are starting to reach college age, now is the right time to improve the program. I hope that my colleagues will incorporate this bipartisan bill in a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

Mr. President, I applaud my colleague for reaching out to see if we could work together on this important resolution--a resolution that, coming to the Senate in 2013, as did my colleague, neither of us believed we would need to stand on the floor of this body to introduce.

In August of 2017, students and their families had just arrived in the town of Charlottesville to move in at the University of Virginia. A close friend of mine, Rabbi Jake Rubin, is the Hillel rabbi at the University of Virginia. The students and their families, many of whom were coming to Charlottesville or to Virginia for the first time, excited to begin their college career, gathered with other Hillel students on campus on a Friday, together with members of the Charlottesville Jewish community, for fellowship and worship. Soon, they heard chants outside the place where they were worshipping, and they saw individuals dressed in a sort of uniform of khaki pants and white shirts, carrying torches and marching. They were marching at something that was a 2-day rally billed as a Unite the Right rally. But it was the words that were coming out of the marchers' mouths that terrified these worshippers and students because what they were chanting were slogans from Nazi youth rallies from the 1930s: ``Jews will not replace us,'' ``blood and soil,'' and other horrible and chilling statements terrified these young people and the adults who were with them.

The next day, this rally/riot continued--White supremacists, White nationalists, neo-Nazis, and neo-Confederates. An individual in a vehicle ran his car into a crowd, injuring many and killing Heather Heyer, a paralegal from the Charlottesville area.

Two State troopers, both of whom I knew because they were part of the Governor's security detail during my tenure as Governor and also the tenure of then-Governor McAuliffe, were patrolling in a helicopter to try to provide order in a difficult situation. Their helicopter went down, and both of them were killed, trying to protect public safety.

We didn't think that would happen in Virginia. We didn't think that would happen in the hometown of an archetypal American political leader who believed that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion was one of the most important things about our country--that you could worship as you like or not and not be preferred or punished for the choice that you make. Yet it did happen in Virginia. It did happen in our country.

As my colleague mentioned, this day was a day that extended a long history of anti-Semitism in the country: lynchings--the Leo Frank lynching in Atlanta, GA, in the early 1900s--Jews wrongly accused of crimes and then killed, crimes that they didn't commit; American boycotts of Jewish businesses in Michigan in the 1930s; restrictive covenants that prohibited Jews from moving into certain neighborhoods; restrictions on access to country clubs and educational institutions; bars that made it difficult to become members of certain professions; and even in addition to formal restrictions, a culture of intolerance, a culture of segregation that treated Jews as not fully equal in this land of equality. I had hoped that those days were behind us.

But it is not just Charlottesville. There is a Jewish day school, the Gesher Day School a few miles from here in Virginia, that experienced bomb threats in 2017 and 2018. The Jewish Community Center in Fairfax, VA, has been repeatedly defaced with Nazi graffiti and anti-Semitic graffiti. In a heartening sign, when that happens, the faith communities of Virginia--Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and Baha'i-- gather to scrub the graffiti off. Yet this hasn't happened just once; it happens over and over again.

The shootings at the synagogue in Pittsburgh; the shootings in California; the assassination of Jewish senior citizens at a senior center in Overland Park, KS, near where my parents live; the uptick in reported hate crimes against Jews, as my colleague mentioned--hate crimes directed against any religion in this country are often directed against Jewish Americans. So we stand at a time when, regardless of where it comes from and regardless of who perpetrates it, we have to acknowledge that it is real, that it is dangerous, and that it is growing. Those of us in leadership positions have to be able to stand against it as firmly as we can.

I applaud my colleague for reaching out to see if we could work on this together. This is a topic that could be used for partisanship and that one side could point at things folks on the other side have said that they didn't like. Senator Cruz and I talked about that, but what we realized is that this is just too important an issue to get bogged down in partisan politics, that the clear and present danger felt by members of the Jewish community and the escalating rhetoric against Jews in many parts of the country and around the world are things that call for a bipartisan response, a clear condemnation, and also a Senate commitment that, as a Senate, we will do all we can to combat anti- Semitism so that we can be true to the equality principle that is our Nation's North Star, so that

we can be true to the freedom of religious worship that is enshrined in the First Amendment. It is in the First Amendment for a very important reason.

I applaud my colleague, and I hope it is the pleasure of this body to accept the motion he will soon make by unanimous consent that we pass this strong statement of where the Senate is on this most important topic.

With that, I yield the floor back to my colleague from Texas.

Mr. President, Our Nation's public health system needs high quality, timely, and accurate data to protect the public from health threats like opioid overdoses, influenza, measles, and more. Effective prevention and response to health threats requires coordinated efforts between health care providers and public health officials across all levels of government.

Unfortunately, the public health data systems we rely on for our health and safety are antiquated and fragmented. Systems lack the interoperability needed to facilitate timely, secure information exchange. Too often, public health departments are forced to rely on systems with manual processes that are time consuming and error prone, such as paper records, faxes, and phone calls. Only two jurisdictions have begun the process to receive electronic case reports directly from health records, and only for a small number of diseases. Our public health data infrastructure lacks the automation, security, interoperability, and skilled workforce we need to confront the public health threats of today and tomorrow.

Today, I am pleased to introduce with my colleagues, Senator Isakson and Senator King, the Saving Lives Through Better Data Act to assist in building the 21st Century public health data infrastructure our Nation needs. The Saving Lives Through Better Data Act awards grants to State, local, Tribal, and territorial public health departments to improve data collection and analysis, simplify provider reporting, enhance interoperability, promote electronic case reporting, and support earlier disease detection and response. Grant recipients must support interoperability standards endorsed by the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology or those adopted by the HHS Secretary.

The Saving Lives Through Better Data Act also requires the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct activities to improve its public health data systems. The CDC must also develop and utilize public-private partnerships to support State, local, Tribal, and territorial public health departments in modernizing and expanding electronic case reporting and public health data systems. The legislation calls for reporting on barriers public health authorities may face in implementing electronic case reporting or interoperable public health data systems as well as an assessment of the potential public health impact of making such improvements. We make the necessary investment to improve our public health infrastructure by authorizing $100 million per year for each of fiscal years 2020-2024.

The Saving Lives Through Better Data Act will strengthen our public health data systems so we can be well-equipped to identify and respond to public health threats, which will save lives.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the Jobs and Childcare for Military Families Act, with my colleagues Senators Boozman and Tester. Enacting this bill would improve financial stability for Gold Star families across the Nation.

The families of America's servicemembers make sacrifices that often go unrecognized. Among them is packing up and moving frequently, with military spouses regularly having to quit stable employment to move to a new area and start over. This is compounded by the complex system of State licensing and certification requirements, which can limit these spouses' from taking jobs that utilize their expertise and experience. Because of this, military spouses have unemployment rates substantially higher than the national average, and are often underemployed when they do have jobs. Adding to the financial struggle that frequent periods of unemployment and underemployment cause, the rising cost of childcare puts a substantial burden on many military families.

The Jobs and Childcare for Military Families Act would help these families

in two ways. First, the bill makes military spouses an eligible population for the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. This tax credit has been proven effective in improving the employment prospects for other groups, and extending it to military spouses would help them find employment easier after moving to new areas. Second, the bill instructs the administration to implement dependent care flexible spending accounts for all servicemembers. These accounts would allow military families to contribute pre-tax dollars to accounts that they can then use to pay for childcare services, helping ease the financial burden of childcare.

I hope my colleagues will support this bill to help families who have made the greatest sacrifice for our Nation.