Floor Statements

Madam President, I rise to talk a little bit today about the Affordable Care Act and its benefit to America's women. I want to thank Senators Murphy, Boxer, and Whitehouse who have organized a few of us to come to the floor today. They will be on the floor later this afternoon.

But with so much discussion in the news about the recent completion of the March enrollment period--over 7 million people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act through the exchanges--I feel it is a good time to look at some of the benefits of the ACA, but also where there is more work to do.

I know the Presiding Officer has been very focused on ``where there is more work to do.'' I applaud the Presiding Officer for that. I will talk about some of those issues as well. But first, let me start with a couple of Virginia stories because we hear stories from our constituents about the Affordable Care Act.

There is a 27-year-old woman in Charlottesville who was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Before the ACA, her previous insurance plan refused to cover her surgery because cancer was a preexisting condition. She is now enrolled in a health plan under the ACA, and her doctor and hospital where she is planning the surgery were confirmed to be in the provider network.

In Alexandria, VA, there is a woman by the name of Aqualyn Laury. She is 43 years old. She suffered a stroke and a heart attack at a young age and had been on a preexisting condition insurance plan that was extremely expensive for some time. With her coverage scheduled to end, Aqualyn recently enrolled in coverage through the health insurance marketplace. She found a plan through the marketplace with a reputable company with a premium of approximately $245 a month, with copays and deductibles that were easy to understand.

Angelette Harrell from Norfolk was able to purchase a plan on the exchange. Now, she had a problem with ACA because she could not work the Web site. But she did not give up. She called the phone number. She was able to find a plan that is $85 a month with a tax credit. She works in a care facility for adults with autism. She says she could not afford a plan that would have been $280 a month without the tax credit. Because she is under 200 percent of the poverty level, she gets a credit, and she gets a plan for $85 a month. That makes her a more reliable employee. She said: ``It felt great. I finally got insured.''

She was able to enroll. I will tell a story about another great Virginia woman, my wife, and her experience with the Affordable Care Act. We had to buy insurance on the open market for the first time as a family in the summer of 2012. Like any good husband who wants to get something done right, I asked my wife to do it.

My wife comparison shopped with a couple of insurance companies. Two insurance companies told my wife: We can give you insurance, but we can only give you insurance for four of your five family members because of preexisting conditions--one because of me and one because of one of my kids. We have to be about the healthiest family in the United States. The only hospitalizations our family of five have ever had are the three times for child birth for my wife.

Yet insurance companies told her when she called in that we--boy, I tell you, do not tell my wife we can insure four of your five family members--an important safety tip. They told her that. She said: That is now against the law.

The company said: No, it is not. This is what we do.

Well, talk to your supervisor and call me back. It is against the law.

The company had to call back in both instances within a few hours and say: You are right. It is against the law. Here is a quote for your entire family.

The ACA is helping women and families in all circumstances, people who are working in low-income jobs and cannot afford insurance or people who are well off like me but need protection from the former practice of denying people for preexisting conditions.

Here are some ways the ACA works for women in particular. The law eliminates the ability of insurers to charge higher rates due to gender. Do you know that the unfair practice of charging women more, a gender rating system, was resulting in women in this country paying $1 billion more in annual premiums than men prior to the passing of the ACA. That is now illegal. Nearly 30 million women are receiving free coverage for comprehensive women's preventive services, including diabetes, cancer screening, contraception, and family planning. That is an important benefit for women.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, both women and men are free from lifetime annual limits on insurance coverage in 10 essential health benefits, like hospital visits and prescription drugs. It is not only about health, the ACA is also helping the financial health of women and families. Insurance companies under the ACA are now subject to a national rate review provision if they want to increase premiums higher than 10 percent. In 2012 alone, those rate reviews saved 6.8 million Americans an estimated $1.2 billion in premiums just in 1 year.

Insurance companies are also required to spend their premium dollars in a smart way. They have to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on patient care and quality improvement. That is at least 85 percent for large insurers. In 2013--just in calendar year 2013--8.5 million Americans received rebates averaging $100 per family because of this particular provision.

An estimated 3.1 million young Americans are able to stay on family policies--that is also affecting my family in a positive way--up until age 26. Families with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty line are eligible for tax credits. So as an example, a family of four in Virginia making $50,000 can access a health plan with premiums as low as $48 a month--health care for your family for less than your cell phone bill, for less than your cable bill. This is remarkable. Plans are required to limit family's out-of-pocket health care costs to less than $12,700 a year.

Like the Presiding Officer, I am a fixer; I am not a repealer. I think there are a lot of fixings that are still needed in the Affordable Care Act and, frankly, in our health care system generally, not just in the ACA. There is more that we can do to make the ACA work better for women and families.

Medicaid expansion is an example, a critical step that my State, Virginia, has yet to take. Without Medicaid expansion, uninsured women will face a coverage gap. With Medicaid expansion, over 400,000 Virginians will receive health care coverage. The ACA was designed to provide subsidies and tax credits to individuals and families who are making between 138 and 400 percent of the poverty level. But without Medicaid expansion, it is these families--working people--who remain uninsured.

We also have to work on some proposals to continue to improve affordability and choice for all consumers. The Presiding Officer has led an effort with others to put a number of positive reforms on the table. Let me mention a couple that I am very excited about: The Expanded Consumer Choice Act, S. 1729, would create a new tier of coverage, copper plans, and would give people shopping for health insurance more options to meet their family's needs.

Everybody's financial and health situation is different. So more options are great because that gives people more ability to meet their particular needs. That is a very important piece of legislation. The Presiding Officer played a leadership role in it.

I supported expanding the small business tax credit to incentivize more businesses to participate in the tax credit program, to make it easier to access and easier for the small businesses to use. One I am particularly focused on is that we need to close the family glitch loophole. That is not a technical term, the family glitch loophole. The Affordable Care Act says an employee is eligible for subsidized health coverage through the new exchanges if their employer does not offer ``affordable coverage'', which is defined as more than 9.5 percent of the employee's household income.

But the way the law is written, the affordability definition only applies to the price for the employee, not for the family coverage that an employer may offer. So if an employer does not offer affordable family coverage, there is no eligibility for a subsidy for that particular very important coverage, since most people's families are covered through their employer plan. I think that is an important thing we should fix.

So look. There are plenty of things to fix. There are plenty of things about our health care system outside of the Affordable Care Act that we ought to be focusing on and fixing. But repealing the Affordable Care Act, as some colleagues in this body and in the House continue to advocate, would mean turning back on all of these advances: Letting women be discriminated against because of gender, letting families be turned away because of preexisting conditions, saying to folks: Do not worry, you are not going to get a rebate; we can charge whatever premium we want.

The last thing we need to do is repeal the ACA or to go into the homes of nearly 10 million Americans who have received coverage and yank that coverage back from them and put them back out into the wilderness of the individual market where they were not protected before. What we need to do is to be embrace the good and embrace the fixes to make it better. That is what I certainly intend to do working with my colleagues.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to talk about a whole series of issues--including unemployment insurance and the minimum wage--that are designed to help Americans attain economic mobility and get a fair shot to move up in the way our economy is designed to work.

This morning the Budget Committee had a hearing entitled ``Opportunity, Mobility, and Inequality in Today's Economy.'' We heard from three very strong witnesses, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. We talked about important topics central to understanding the long-held American dream: If you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to support your family, provide an opportunity for your kids, and have a fair retirement. But for too many--as the Presiding Officer knows--opportunity and mobility are especially hard to find and income inequality is growing.

I am an optimist. I know the solutions are here if we work to find them, and I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about some of the solutions. First, let's try to put a human face on the problem of inequality in our economy.

Income inequality in the United States is at a record level. It is higher in the United States than virtually any other developed country. President Obama has called income equality the central challenge of our times. The Presiding Officer and I share a Roman Catholic background. Last week the President was talking to Pope Francis in the Vatican, and they talked about how this is not just an American challenge but a global challenge.

According to the CBO, the average income of a household in the richest 1 percent in this country was nearly 180 percent higher in 2010 than it was in 1979 in real dollars. By comparison, the average income for a household in the middle 20 percent of the income distribution had only grown by about 25 percent--about one in seven--of what the households in the highest income levels had grown.

Since 1979, the top 1 percent of our population's share of national income grew from 8.9 percent to 14.9 percent. So 1 percent has 15 percent of the national income by 2010, but at the same time the bottom 80 percent of our American population saw their share of national income significantly shrink.

For me the issue is not just inequality because there will always be some inequality. Fate, luck, and health will produce some unequal outcomes. But what I think is great about this country is that while we can see inequality and tolerate some degree of it, what we will not tolerate is people being locked into unequal situations.

We want to have a society where people may be born poor or may have an accident or a fate that will have them in a lower economic status but they can still raise their ceiling and achieve all they can. But in the case of social mobility, the United States is now one

of the poorest performing of the developed countries.

Today a child born into the bottom quintile in the American economic life only has a 7.5-percent chance of ever being in the top quintile. In a country such as Denmark in Europe--and we think of Europe as a more stratified society--that number is nearly double what the number is in the United States.

It is not just inequality, it is mobility. We are not giving people a fair shot, to use the words of the great American singer Curtis Mayfield, ``to move on up'' to their destination and that place where their dreams can take them if they work hard enough.

What we need to do is embrace strategies that let people move on up and have a fair shot to achieve. We don't only need to embrace strategies for success, we have to eliminate structures and eliminate barriers that lock people out of economic opportunities that they should be able to achieve similar to anyone else.

One solution is the minimum wage bill that we will start to talk about soon. It is about working Americans who are earning minimum wage or just above minimum wage and how this will affect them.

I think I can safely say the vast majority of Virginians would agree with this proposition: No one who works full time--8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year--should live in poverty. But today someone making the minimum wage earns about $15,000 a year, which is $3,000 below the poverty level for a family of three. If you are a single mom with a couple of kids--and so many people are raising children on their own--and work full time at the minimum wage, you are below the poverty level.

The minimum wage today is at a historic low. The minimum wage has lost 33 percent of its buying power since its peak in 1968. If the minimum wage in 1968 had just kept pace with inflation, it would be $10.71 per hour today and not in the $7 range.

Workers who regularly receive tips are treated even worse. They get paid a subminimum wage--what is called a tipped minimum wage--of $2.13 an hour. As long as you make $30 in tips a month, your company can pay you $2.13 an hour. Overwhelmingly these workers work in restaurants but not exclusively, and similar to other minimum wage workers they are predominately women.

Twenty-eight million Americans will receive an increase in pay if we raise the minimum wage under the bill that is currently before the Senate. It has been reported out of the HELP Committee, and we will take it up soon. More than half of those who will receive a raise are women. The vast majority are adult workers. Over 14 million American children have a parent who will receive a raise if we increase the minimum wage.

The Minimum Wage Fairness Act will boost the minimum wage to about $21,000, lifting families above the poverty line. In total--get this-- the bill we will hopefully debate and vote on soon is estimated to lift nearly 7 million Americans out of poverty and above the poverty level. What could we do, as we debate, that would have more effect on people's lives than lifting 7 million people above the poverty level, which we would do if we pass the bill.

Increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour will increase GDP by nearly $22 billion as workers spend their raises in local businesses and communities. In Virginia about 744,000 of my fellow citizens will receive a raise. For this reason, business owners whom I talk to--not all but a huge number and especially small business owners--know that the minimum wage increase makes good business sense.

Yesterday I visited a supermarket just across the Potomac in Alexandria. It is called MOM's Organic Market. They have 11 locations in the DC metropolitan area and Philadelphia. They are contemplating opening another store in New York City. I met with the owner Scott Nash, and I talked to his employees. I asked the employees: How long have you worked here? The answer I got back was 7 years, 8 years, 10 years. They made it their practice to pay their employees a $10 minimum wage now, and they are going to increase it. They fully support the bill currently pending before the Senate to increase the minimum wage.

Scott Nash is not alone. We are celebrating a very important centennial this year. It is a centennial of one of the smartest things an American employer ever did. I will read a quote.

After the success of the moving assembly line, Henry Ford had another transformative idea. In January of 1914, he startled the world by announcing that the Ford Motor Company would pay $5 a day to its workers. The pay increase would be accompanied with a shorter workday-- from 9 to 8 hours. While this rate did not automatically apply to every worker, it more than doubled the average autoworker's wage. While Henry's primary objective was to reduce worker attrition, newspapers from all over the world reported the story as an extraordinary gesture of good will.

Here is the important part:

Henry Ford had reasoned that since it was now possible to

build inexpensive cars in volume, more of them could be sold

if employees could afford to buy them. The $5 day helped

better the lot of all American workers and contributed to the

emergence of the American middle class. In the process, Henry

Ford had changed manufacturing forever.

This quote is not from some Democratic talking point. This quote is from the Web site of the Ford Motor Company--a press release they issued in January to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Henry Ford's novel decision.

There was an employer who knew the American economy was based on consumer demand and if workers could be paid more, they would buy more, it would help his company, and it would help America. The Senate can take action in this way, and the Senate can take action in other ways to give people a fair shot to move on up in American society.

In fact, we have already acted on a couple of bills I hope the House will pick up. We acted on immigration reform, which strengthens border security, creates a pathway to legal status and citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, and helps businesses and families. This eliminates a barrier that keeps people from moving up, and the CBO estimates it will significantly improve the American economy. Immigration reform is about a fair shot. Immigration reform is about moving up.

We also acted on ENDA, legislation to end discrimination in the workplace against folks based on sexual orientation. A person can't move on up and achieve their economic dreams if folks can fire someone at will if they don't like the kind of person someone is or who they love. So ENDA, which awaits action in the House, is also a bill about making sure people have a fair shot and can move on up.

We can act this week. We are now on the bill to provide unemployment insurance to those who are still struggling in the economy. Soon we will consider paycheck fairness for women. A person can't achieve all they can if they are going to be paid significantly less than their colleagues just because of gender.

In coming weeks we will also consider jobs skills and education legislation, which are real keys to economic opportunity for so many.

What we need to do is pretty simple. What the Presiding Officer did and what so many others in this Chamber did when we were Governors was to try to give individuals the tools to create their own opportunity, to create their own mobility, as well as to take the steps we could when there were barriers or structures in the way to move those out of the way so people had a fair shot to succeed.

With that, I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to voice my support for the people of Afghanistan who this week on Saturday will be in the midst of a Presidential election pursuing the first Democratic transfer of power in that nation's history. April 5 will be a momentous day, a Presidential election where millions of Afghans will head to the polls to determine their destiny by a peaceful means. As we know much is going on in the world in Ukraine, Syria, and Iran. It is easy to miss this milestone, but it is a milestone I think should have some significance to us as Americans.

Americans should be proud of the role we have played in bringing the Afghan people to this point, given the significant sacrifice members of our country have made. There have been nearly 2,300 servicemembers who have given their lives in Afghanistan--2,299. The United States has spent $600 billion in Afghanistan since September of 2011. While we cannot gloss over the challenges that remain in Afghanistan today and tomorrow, we should remember the progress that has been achieved in 13 years since the Taliban fell in October of 2001, progress that has been made possible because of the sacrifices of American service men and women, our diplomats, the American people, and the grit and determination of the Afghan people.

On April 5 Afghans will defy those who seek to intimidate them through violence and terrorism because it is a fundamental choice: Does Afghanistan want to move forward or go backward to horrific days. The ink-stained finger of an Afghan voter will send a far more powerful message than any terrorist gun or bomb. I think Afghan men and women will be thinking of their children as they vote on Saturday, the promise of the next generation as they head to the ballot box. An Afghan girl born in October of 2001 when the Taliban fell is now 13 years old. She has no doubt faced hardship and will continue to, but she now has before her unprecedented opportunities.

Sometimes we get into a little bit of a mode where we say things haven't gone well in Afghanistan or the investment of blood, treasure, and energy by the United States hasn't made a difference. I wish to put on the record 13 very real indicators of a transformation in an Afghan's life in the last 13 years.

No. 1, two-thirds of Afghans today have and are able to use cell phones compared to 5 percent before 2001. Before 2001 Taliban- controlled radio was the only news source in Afghanistan. Today Afghans can choose from 75 television stations and 170 radio stations.

The Afghan national gross domestic product has grown nearly tenfold since 2001. One in three Afghans has access to electricity. Kabul enjoys a power supply 24 hours a day.

In 2001 in Afghanistan there were only 30 miles of paved roads, which had a direct impact on their economy. Today nearly 10,000 miles of paved roads--nearly 300 times the amount in 2001. Over 50 percent of the population now has safe drinking water, nearly double from 2004.

The number of teachers in Afghanistan was only 20,000 in 2001. Today it is 175,000, 30 percent of whom are women. Three million Afghan girls are enrolled in schools compared to only 5,000 in 2001, a nearly 600- fold increase. Overall school enrollment in Afghanistan has increased to more than 8 million.

There are 168 female judges across Afghanistan and 68 women members of the National Assembly. Eighty-five percent of Afghans now live in districts with health care providers. Infant mortality has been reduced to 327 per 100,000 live births, which would still be high for the United States, but in 2002 that number was 1,600. So it has been reduced to one-quarter or one-fifth.

The number that is the most powerful is this: Afghan women now have access to more health care than before. Female life expectancy has increased since 2001 from 44 years to 64 years--from 44 years to 64 years. So just think about what 20 extra years of life is like for a woman and then multiply that by every woman and girl in Afghanistan. Male life expectancy has improved as well because of improvements in infant mortality. This is a significant change, a real transformation in Afghan life.

We cannot discount remaining challenges to combat corruption and strengthen civil society and to further advance women's rights. The recent attacks by the Taliban on the electoral process at an NGO guesthouse in Kabul at the Serena Hotel and over the weekend at the Afghan election commission remind us that security is a problem. Our condolences go out to the victims. The attacks show a cowardly desperation.

The ballot box represents the largest threat to the Taliban and any terrorist affiliate and they are resorting to indiscriminate attacks because they know a ballot box and electoral democracy will be their demise. By killing Afghans on the threshold of an election, the Taliban is only sowing the

seeds of their own demise. They recognize the tide of history is against them.

A word about the Afghan National Security Forces who are working together with the United States and other partners going forward, especially on these elections this week: More than 350,000 Afghan soldiers and policemen are the security lead now throughout the country. They bear the brunt of the casualties of these attacks. More than 13,000 Afghan security force members have been killed in the line of duty, but they are determined, with the support of our country and the training we have provided them and that others have provided them-- they are determined to protect their homeland and they have proven capable of securing their homeland. Our servicemembers and diplomats have for years trained and assisted, and that training is paying off as is shown every day. We also have numerous examples of Afghan interpreters who have assisted our servicemembers in that training, and we cannot forget them.

The Afghan forces will not face the challenges of this week, the electoral challenge, or the challenges beyond alone. The future of Afghanistan is not a military challenge alone. It rests upon security throughout civil society, and these elections are a pivotal moment but not the only pivotal moment.

The commitment of the United States to Afghanistan continues. In 2011 we signed a strategic partnership agreement. We designated Afghanistan as a major non-NATO ally of our country. There is a text that is complete of a bilateral security agreement outlining our willingness to train, advise, and assist in this mission beyond 2014. I am confident it will be signed once the new government takes place.

One of the reasons I am confident is that all of the candidates for the President of Afghanistan are engaged in a civil debate, and they are being asked what they think about the role of the United States, and they are all committed to the United States playing this new role as they transition their democracy with this peaceful transfer of power.

Finally, a word about what is at stake because it is not just about the statistic, it is also and most importantly about individual lives.

Just 3 months ago in January, Colonel Jamila Bayaz, a 55-year-old mother of five, became the first woman to be appointed a police chief in Afghanistan. At her promotion ceremony she said she would not have achieved her position but for the efforts of the United States and the international community.

In a letter that same month to President Obama, over three dozen civil society Afghan leaders stated as follows:

Over the coming years, Afghanistan will be completing its

political and security transitions as the foundation for the

future that we seek. It is our sincere hope that the people

of the United States, who were with us during difficult

years, will remain with us as we complete the challenging

transition period and become more self-reliant.

Hengama Anwari is the woman who is the current head of the Afghan human rights commission. Last week she stated: ``10 years is only a drop in the ocean in the process of changing a society.'' But Ms. Anwari is still hopeful about the future of her country and is relentless in her effort to advance women's rights.

When George Washington stepped down as President during America's first Democratic transition, it was a pivotal moment for our young Republic. This transition, the first peaceful transition in Afghanistan's history, is equally pivotal. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Afghans, but this is an Afghan moment. Every candidate, every soldier, every election monitor, every citizen must do their part to ensure the success of this transition.

Finally, as the Afghans transition, so do we--so do we. The congressional action that authorized our military presence in Afghanistan was passed in this body on September 14, 2001, nearly 13 years ago. With our combat mission in Afghanistan coming to an end with this election and a peaceful transition, with the transition of American military participation to a train, assist, and advise role, this 13-year effort is now transitioning to something new that will be the subject of that bilateral security agreement.

We haven't been able to have a welcome home party for all of our American service men and women who served in Afghanistan because the operation was ongoing. It is my hope this transition in Afghanistan, which will also transition our role, will enable us to have one of those pivotal expressions of American pride. We have all seen the pictures of V-E Day and V-J Day, when the American Republic celebrated the end of a period of sacrifice of our service men and women. This is a period of sacrifice that has been going on longer than any war in the history of this country. It is my hope that while we will continue to work together with the Afghans, we may reach a moment where we can celebrate, we can acknowledge this transition, and say welcome home and thank you to all the American service men and women who along with their families have given so much in the last 13 years.

With that, I yield the floor.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 31, 2014, at 3 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Management Matters: Creating a 21st Century Government--Part II, Outside Views.''

Mr. President, today, along with Senator Rubio, I am submitting a bipartisan resolution to coincide with the third anniversary of the Syria crisis.

We are witnessing one of history's greatest humanitarian catastrophes unfolding before our eyes. The numbers are staggering. Nearly 3 million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries. Syrians are about to pass Afghans as the world's biggest refugee population.

The UN released a report this week stating Syria has become the world's most dangerous place for children. This is truly heartbreaking. More than 5.5 million children are in need of desperate humanitarian assistance and three million are out of school. 40,000 babies have been born as refugees.

Conditions inside are even Syria worse. There are nearly 7 million internally displaced persons and over 9 million in need of humanitarian assistance. Nearly 250,000 remained besieged, mostly at the hands of the Assad regime, and are suffering from disease and starvation.

The Syria Humanitarian Resolution of 2014 strongly condemns the unlawful use of violence against civilians by all parties to the conflict in Syria, particularly the ongoing violence and widespread human rights violations perpetrated against the people of Syria by the Government of Syria.

The resolution urges all parties to the conflict to immediately halt indiscriminate attacks on civilians and to allow for immediate, unfettered access to humanitarian aid throughout the Syrian Arab Republic, respecting the safety, security, independence, and impartiality of humanitarian workers and ensuring freedom of movement to deliver aid. We call on the international community to assist the people of Syria, especially internally displaced persons and refugees, in meeting basic needs, including access to food, health care, shelter, and clean drinking water. Finally we call for the full implementation of UN Security Council 2139 and call on the President to submit to the appropriate committees of Congress within 90 days a strategy for United States engagement in addressing the Syrian humanitarian crisis, to include assistance and development, and protection of human rights inside Syria and in the region.

The solution to the Syrian conflict will be complicated. But the people of Syria should not continue to suffer in the interim. I refuse to accept that there is nothing more we can do to end the suffering. Humanitarian relief and access are fundamental principles all parties should adhere to. History will harshly judge those who do not.

Mr. President, I am pleased today the Senate will pass legislation I support, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act. This bipartisan legislation honors the memory of Gabriella Miller, a young girl from Leesburg, VA who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor at age 9.

In the face of her own diagnosis, Gabriella worked to help other children with pediatric diseases. She raised money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, spoke at local and national awareness events and authored a special writing in a children's book about cancer.

Gabriella and her family started the Smashing Walnuts Foundation, dedicated to finding a cure for childhood brain cancer. The organization was named for the walnut-sized tumor in her brain. Gabriella passed away last year, but her dedication to raising awareness and funding for pediatric disease research is part of her legacy.

The Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act will require the director of the National Institutes of Health to allocate $126 million--$12.6 million each year for 10 years--of appropriated funds for pediatric research. The money would be allocated into needed research grants for pediatric autism, cancer and other diseases.

The fight for funding pediatric research is far from over but this is a step in the right direction. As Gabriella said, ``You may have a bad day today, but there's always a bright shining star to look forward to tomorrow.'' It is my hope that this legislation will help fund research that leads to future treatments and cures.

I would like to thank Senator Mark Warner and Senator Orrin Hatch for supporting this legislation and Congressman Cantor for championing the bill through the House of Representatives.

This bipartisan effort is about making sure pediatric disease research is a high priority. I am proud we were able to pass legislation that honors Gabriella Miller, her family, and her inspiring work as an advocate for pediatric disease research.

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

I thank my colleagues for drawing attention to this critical issue and problem.

I want to start with the solution. The solution to climate change is American innovation. The solution to climate change is American innovation.

We have to get beyond the idea first that we need to choose between a clean environment and a strong economy. We all want cleaner air and water. We all want jobs. They don't have to contradict each other.

When we frame the debate as a conflict between an economy and the environment, we talk past one another and we are not realistic about our own history. This is, at the beginning, kind of a math problem. According to the EPA's annual inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. pumped about 6 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in 2005--6 billion tons.

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that putting this much pollution into the air is bad for the planet, bad for our kids, and bad for our grandkids. Most scientists tell us we need to reduce emissions about 17 percent from that peak by 2020 and over 80 percent by about 2050 in order to contain climate change to manageable levels.

So the question is this. How do we establish the appropriate incentives to get that number lower to produce energy more cleanly, at prices we can afford, in quantities that support modern life.

We have to reduce pollution. We need to create jobs. Instead of arguing which is more important, let's figure out how we can use American innovation to do both.

My colleague from Vermont has talked a lot about some of the evidence. It is important to pay attention to patterns. In Virginia, we have huge areas of risk of the negative impacts of climate change, especially sea-level rise, all effects that can be traced to carbon pollution.

The Hampton Roads area of Virginia is the second-most populous part of our State, 1.6 million people, and it is the second-most vulnerable community on the east coast after New Orleans, the eastern half of the United States, to sea-level rise.

Our second-largest area, which is the home of the largest concentration of naval power in the world, and critical to our defense, is deeply vulnerable to climate change.

In fact, I have friends who live in Hampton Roads in a historic neighborhood where homes have been occupied for 150 years. In the last 15 years, their home has become completely unable to be occupied. They cannot sell it. There is no way the bank will take it back, and there is no way anyone will issue insurance to them.

In addition to being vulnerable because of our coast, our largest industry in Virginia is agriculture and forestry. If we want to talk about an industry that is affected by climate, that is our industry, $70-plus billion a year of economic activity in our State--our largest industry affected by climate.

Tourism is big in Virginia industry--outdoor tourism. That is $20- plus billion a year. We are directly affected by climate, and we see extreme weather patterns. It is not only a Katrina, a Sandy or an Ike. It is the pattern of one after the next, droughts one after the next, fire damage one after the next.

To use a recent example, we are having to deal with this in these halls. We passed a flood insurance bill to delay sharp premium increases for flood insurance policies that are subsidized by the National Flood Insurance Program.

For those who weren't around when we had that debate, these increases in premiums were not because of new beach homes that millionaires are building on the flood plain out on the beach. No, these were policies for homes whose owners had lived in them for decades. They were never in flood plains before, but they are now in flood plains because of sea-level rise.

My Portsmouth friends are people who fit into that category, with a home that never had these challenges--that is now a home that they cannot sell because of the sea-level rise in that area.

The debate in the Chamber focused on what it would cost to delay premiums, how many people would be affected and impacted by the solvency of this national program. The larger point is this: Premiums are higher because flood risk is higher. When we see flood risk getting higher in every coastal area of the country, we have to pay attention to what the pattern tells us. If we don't, we are foolish.

Now, we have naysayers. There are two kinds of naysayers. There are science deniers and leadership deniers, and I want to talk for a minute about both. The first are a group of people who, despite the overwhelming scientific consensus, say: Oh no, there is no scientific evidence that humans affect climate change or that there is even any change in the climate going on at all, despite this overwhelming scientific consensus. The Senator from Vermont mentioned some quotes from Members in this body who deny science exists.

To science deniers, I am happy to say that Virginians are pro- science. We are pro-science. The quintessential Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, was the preeminent scientist of his day. You cannot be a proud Virginian and be anti-science. We accept the science in Virginia. In fact, the polling overwhelmingly, among the Virginia public--and we are not the bluest State in the country; we are a coal-producing State, which I will get to in a minute--even in coal-producing Virginia, the polling shows overwhelmingly that the Virginia public accepts that humans are affecting climate, causing bad things to our economy, and we have to do something about it.

Now, there is a second argument. It is not science denial; it is leadership denial. These folks may not deny the climate science, but they deny that the United States can or should be a leader in taking steps. They say: Look, even if we reduce U.S. emissions to zero, it wouldn't offset world emissions unless China or India did something, so let's just not do anything.

It is just not the American way, folks, for us not to lead on something as important as this. It is true that we need every country to reduce emissions in the long run, but that is not an argument for the United States to do nothing; that is an argument for the United States to step up and be leaders.

Part of leadership is sending the right signals into the market at the right time. That is one of the reasons I think it would be very good if the President rejected the proposal to expand use of tar sands oil in the Keystone Pipeline program. We ought to send the right message right now. That is one of the most powerful things we could do in our country and beyond to show we are going to be leaders.

It is very difficult to lead and impossible to get people to follow if you are not willing to take a step as the most powerful and innovative economy in the world. We are the largest economy in the world, and we have been since 1890. We are the global economic leader. We have a burden of leadership. And if we lead, we will succeed.

It is not too hard to reduce emissions. We can reduce them. In fact, we are already starting. The Senator from Vermont mentioned this. I mentioned that in 2005 the United States was putting 6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. That was our base year. We have now actually dipped down to 5.6 billion tons. We have reduced it since 2005 thanks to greater energy efficiency, natural gas, uptick in renewables, and better fuel standards in our vehicles. So we are already on a positive path. We are actually on the way to meeting our goal of reducing emissions 17 percent by the year 2020. We are on the right track; we just have to take more steps forward.

So what is the strategy we need? I hear the President sometimes and others--and I may even use these words on occasion--talk about an ``all of the above'' energy strategy, and I have decided I really don't like that phrase. When I hear somebody say ``all of the above,'' it is like when I ask one of my teenagers something and he says: ``Whatever.'' I don't like ``whatever'' as an answer because it kind of sounds indifferent and anything goes and who cares and what difference does it make. ``All of the above'' kind of has that attitude a little bit.

Now, sure, we should use all of our energy resources--I get that--in a comprehensive strategy, but what we really need is a comprehensive strategy that reduces CO2 emissions--that reduces CO2 emissions. Such a strategy to reduce emissions does mean everything: wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and advanced biofuels. I think it also means natural gas as bridge fuel to reduce our carbon footprint; nuclear, if we can reduce costs and resolve disposal issues; and, yes, coal, so long as we always work to make it burn cleaner.

This is my punch line of what we have to do: We have to do everything cleaner tomorrow than we are doing it today--everything cleaner tomorrow than we are doing it today.

We will have fossil fuels with us for some time, and we won't bring emissions to zero anytime soon. But just because we can't immediately go from 6 billion to zero tons of CO2, we can't rest in our effort to reduce our CO2 every day a little bit more. On fossil fuels, we have to take any progress we can that replaces dirty with less dirty even if it doesn't get us the whole way. Over time, the portion of our total energy footprint that is carbon based will get smaller as we develop more noncarbon alternatives, and it will also get cleaner as we reduce carbon-based energy emissions with better technology.

This is why I am against dirty fossil fuels, such as tar sands, which make us dirtier tomorrow than today. I want to be cleaner tomorrow than today. Tar sands oil is about 15 to 20 percent dirtier than conventional oil. Let's not be dirtier tomorrow than today. We have the trendline moving in the right direction. We are reducing CO2 emissions. Let's be cleaner tomorrow than today. Why would we embrace tar sands oil and backslide to be dirtier tomorrow? The bottom line is that we have to create energy cleaner tomorrow than today.

Remember, it is a math problem--6 billion tons a year. We have 6 more years to reduce it 17 percent, 36 years to reduce it by more than 80 percent. So we have our goal. We have our goal. We have to give innovators the tools they need to meet it. Since innovators will solve this problem, here is the really fundamental challenge. This is the fundamental challenge. Will Americans be the innovators? See, innovation will solve this problem. Will Americans be the innovators or will we bury our heads in the tar sands and let other nations' innovators be the ones who grab leadership in this new energy economy. I don't want to bury my head in the tar sands. I want us to be the leader. Will we create the new technologies and sell them to other nations or will we be late to the game and have to buy all the technologies from other nations?

The good news is, as I said, we are already on our way to the 2020 goal, so we don't have to make it all dire. Let's celebrate a little success and then figure out how to accelerate our success.

The transportation sector, the fuel economy standards for cars, changing to natural gas in power production--all these things have helped us move toward lesser emissions. Wind is the fastest growing source of new electricity capacity in the world and in the United States, even above natural gas, which is growing rapidly. In a few years Virginia will be contributing, with some of the first offshore wind turbines near Virginia Beach.

I would like to talk now for a second about a specific Virginia issue because I am not sure how many folks who are in this all-nighter speaking on this come from States that have coal and have produced coal, and Virginia does. I want to talk about coal for a second.

EPA is expected to issue standards later this year on reducing pollution from coal-fired powerplants, and, in fact, there is already talk on the other side of introducing a bill to repeal the regulation before the regulation has even come out. I am not exactly sure that is kosher, but I suspect we will be having that debate later.

There is a natural anxiety in a coal-producing region such as southwest Virginia. That is where my wife's family is from. It is five counties in southwest Virginia. They are hard-hit counties. Coal is a big part of their economy, and traditionally it has been. We mine as much coal today in Virginia as we did 50 years ago with one-tenth of the workers because it is a heavily mechanized industry, but there are jobs at stake. And it is not just jobs; coal has been traditionally low priced, and so the issue that is important--and even States that don't have any coal often use a lot of coal to produce power, and the low price has been helpful to consumers who rely on cheap and abundant electricity made possible by coal.

Coal has been hit hard in some recent years, but I disagree fundamentally

with the cynical argument that is made by some--mostly in the coal industry--who blame coal's woes on a regulatory ``war on coal.'' When I talk to folks in the industry, they are always talking about there is a Federal ``war on coal.''

I am going to tell you what is hurting coal. What is hurting coal is innovation and natural gas. Innovation in the natural gas industry has brought natural gas prices down, and utilities are deciding to use natural gas rather than coal. That is what is hurting coal these days, and we ought to take a lesson from that. Innovation is driving environmental cleanliness. Innovation is driving lower cost. The solution is not to stop innovation. The solution is not to shake your fist and blame regulation. The solution is to innovate.

Coal currently accounts for 37 percent of U.S. electricity generation and about the same percentage in Virginia. Today we don't have 37 percent of anything else that can step right in and replace coal, which means we need coal and we are going to be using it for a while.

Since we need to reduce emissions--do it cleaner tomorrow than today--and we are going to need coal for a while, the challenge is to convert coal to electricity more efficiently and with less pollution than we do today. We have to innovate to make coal cleaner for that portion of the pie chart. I learned this as Governor working to permit a state-of-the-art coal plant in Wise County, VA. It opened in 2012. It is designed in a way that dramatically reduces sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, mercury emissions, and water use. It was also a plant that was only permitted when the company that wanted it agreed to take a dirty coal plant--one that preexisted the Clean Air Act and was grandfathered in for all of its pollution--and to convert that to natural gas. That was innovative. The fuel mix of this plant needed to run the burners accommodates biomass and waste coal as well.

If we can use innovative practices to reduce these emissions, we can do the same with carbon emissions. But coal cannot stand still, let others innovate, and then complain if it is not competitive. Coal has to be as innovative as everything else, and we have to figure out ways to assist.

That is why I support Federal investments in advanced fossil energy research and development. Last fall the Energy Department made available $8 billion in advanced fossil energy loan guarantee authority for low carbon fossil technologies. I advocated for appropriations for fossil energy R&D, and there is a strong boost for those programs in the omnibus budget bill. There is a great Center for Coal & Energy Research at Virginia Tech that is doing some of this research that can help us take that portion of the pie chart, make it cleaner, and over time make it smaller as we expand noncarbon energy.

We have to make sure the upcoming standards the EPA will put out are ambitious and appropriate incentives to get cleaner and disincentives to get dirtier and at the same time avoid catastrophic disruptions in reliability or affordability.

I am going to come back and conclude where I started. Remember, when I started I said I am going to give a solution. The solution to climate change is American innovation, and I want to finish there.

Reducing CO2 emissions is a hard problem, maybe harder than any pollution problem we face because most pollutants tend to come from a particular economic sector, but CO2 comes from transportation and buildings and manufacturing and power production-- all sectors. So the solution won't be simple. But we do not have to accept the false choice of an environment against the economy. Instead, we just need to innovate to find the solution. That is the innovation challenge we have.

I make it a habit--apparently unlike some of my colleagues here--to never bet against American innovation. We are the Nation that said we would put a man on the Moon in a decade with computers that had less in them than your cell phones do, and we did it. We are the Nation that harnessed the power of the atom. We are the Nation that unwrapped the riddle of DNA and are now using that knowledge to cure disease. Nobody should ever bet against American innovation.

In fact, we have already shown it again and again, that innovation and regulation--smart regulation--can help us tackle pressing environmental problems.

When we were kids and my wife was growing up in Richmond, where we now live, nobody--and I mean nobody--fished or swam in the James River in downtown Richmond. You would be taking your life into your hands if you swam or if you ate fish you caught in that river because of ketone pollution, other industrial pollution, and poor treatment of municipal solid waste. But the Nation passed the Clean Water Act and we got serious about cleaning up our rivers.

Naysayers said: It will damage the economy. It will bring our economy to its knees.

But come and see what the Clean Water Act has meant to my hometown. You can swim or fish in the James River today, and you can eat the fish you catch. You can see herons and bald eagles there that were never there before. You can see residents and tourists who flock to the James River because they enjoy it.

It took a law, it took some tough regulations, it took American ingenuity in finding new ways to clean up industrial and municipal waste, but we did it, and our environment and economy are better off as a result.

When we needed to reduce nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide emissions because of acid rain, industry said that any new law would be a burdensome job killer, just as they are saying today. But President George H.W. Bush worked with Congress to pass a cap-and-trade law to bring down these emissions. After the new law, somebody invented the catalytic converter. After the new law, somebody invented the sulfur scrubber. Not only weren't they burdensome job killers, they improved air quality, and they created jobs for American companies that manufacture catalytic converters and sulfur scrubbers, and our economy and environment are better off as a result.

Not long ago we heard requiring automakers to make cars which got better gas mileage would be devastating to the American auto industry. But President Obama struck a deal with the industry, and guess what. The quest to build more fuel-efficient vehicles helped revitalize an American auto industry which was on its back. Plants operating with skeleton crews just sweeping the floors at night now have multiple shifts making better vehicles which save drivers more money every day. The skeptics were loud, but we moved ahead with smart regulation and American innovation, and our environment and economy are better off as a result.

It is the skeptics and the deniers who fight against these strategies who are actually naive, because again and again they always claim that taking steps to help the environment will hurt the economy, and again and again they have been proven wrong. Protecting the environment is good for the economy and good for the planet.

So I say to the skeptics of whatever variety, climate denier or leadership denier, don't underestimate American innovation. We can solve the problem of climate change for the good of the economy and the good of the planet. The story of American innovation is a story of solving the hard problems, and I know we can solve this one.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, may I inquire how much time remains for the Democrats during morning business?

I ask unanimous consent to use the remainder of the Democrats' time.

Mr. President, I rise this morning to speak about the widening dimensions of the slaughter in Syria. A country of 23 million people, a proud country, is being transformed before our eyes into skeletons, refugees, and ghosts.

Three million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries. That number will likely exceed 4 million by the end of the year. Nearly 7 million Syrians are refugees within their own country, driven from their homes by the atrocities of the Assad regime. More than 130,000 innocent people have lost their lives during the 3-year civil war. We are witnessing one of the greatest humanitarian crises since World War II, and it can be stopped.

Last summer my Committee on Armed Services colleague Senator Angus King of Maine and I visited Turkey and Jordan to explore the dimension of the refugee crisis in both of those nations. We visited refugee camps and talked to government leaders and NGOs about the damaged lives and the stressed communities that result from this unprecedented displacement of Syrians.

Last week the Senator from Maine and I visited Lebanon to see the scale of the Syrian crisis in that country. In a country of only slightly more than 4 million people, there are already over 1 million Syrian refugees who have fled into Lebanon over the last 3 years, one in four. Think of the scale of that refugee crisis. If we were to receive in the United States war refugees at that scale, it would be 75 to 80 million people, nearly one in four.

In Lebanon last week we met with government leaders, NGOs, and the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees. What we learned is staggering. The Lebanese people have been unbelievably resilient and welcoming, almost beyond the point of belief. The water and health infrastructure of that Nation is strained to the breaking point.

The Lebanese economy, already fragile, is teetering. Schools in Lebanon now operate on double shifts with Lebanese children in the morning and refugee children in the afternoon, accommodating tens of thousands of refugee children, with more coming every day.

The decision by the Lebanese terrorist militia Hezbollah to go all in to support the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has led to a wave of extremist bombings against Hezbollah-connected sites and leaders within Lebanon in which many civilians are casualties. Senator King and I witnessed a bombing in downtown Beirut while we were there, seeing it miles away. Many in our group saw the explosion, saw the smoke rise. We felt certain that our meetings would be canceled that day, but one of the most grim aspects of our trip is a bombing, a suicide bombing that killed 5 people and injured nearly 100, caused no one to change their daily routine. That is what life is in Lebanon largely because of the Syrian civil war.

The crisis extends beyond Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. Refugees are streaming into nearby Iraq by the thousands--30,000 in 1 day in August--exacerbating the deterioration of that country's stability and drawing it deeper into sectarian conflict.

This photo is on the Iraq border with Syria, and we see these refugees stretching into the distance in the hills beyond. This is what is happening with all of the neighboring countries to Syria.

The United States is the largest provider of assistance to the refugees who have fled outside of Syria. We have provided $1.3 billion in aid thus far, $340 million in Lebanon alone, but getting relief into Syria is the next challenge.

The conditions in Syria are even worse than the conditions I described in Lebanon. Nearly 7 million Syrians are displaced within their own country, more than 9 million Syrians need humanitarian aid, but they have not been able to receive basic humanitarian aid, food, and medicine due to the actions of the Bashar al-Assad regime and also due to the complicity of the regime's patron, Russia.

The denial of humanitarian aid is a war crime, pure and simple. Thousands are dying of starvation. Cases of tuberculosis, polio, typhoid, and other diseases are expanding at an exponential rate. None of this is an accident. The Assad regime is using forced starvation and forced sieges as a weapon to destroy the Syrian people.

Last month I met in the Senate with Syrians who had survived the chemical weapons attacks carried out by the Assad regime in August of 2013. They described in gruesome detail what they and their families, many young children, endured in August. But the most shocking moment of the interview came when a 22-year-old survivor, who had fled Syria through Lebanon, said if she had to pick, she would rather die a death because of chemical weapons than be hit by a barrel bomb or starved to death because death by chemical weapons would be quicker.

In recent weeks nothing has epitomized the brutality of the regime more than the use of these barrel bombs. The bombs are crude weapons. They are simple oil drums that are filled with shrapnel and explosives. Helicopters often deliver the weapons, and helicopters often hover over neighborhoods for minutes to just scare everyone who knows what is coming. The barrel bombs drop. They explode shrapnel and level neighborhoods.

This is an example of a neighborhood in Aleppo. At one point hundreds were killed when barrel bombs were dropped on Aleppo earlier this month. We see the size and scope of the devastation and see families and their children fleeing the area in the aftermath of a barrel bomb, and this is going on every day in Syria. Secretary Kerry has rightly called these barrel bomb attacks unacceptable and barbaric.

The primary architect of these crimes is Bashar Assad, but he has a patron who funds and supports what he does and who has the ability to stop the atrocities. Russia is Assad's principal support, and since the start of the Syrian civil war Russia has shown it is complicit in these war crimes. But it is also capable of stopping them.

In the United Nations Russia has used its veto power and threat of veto on the Security Council numerous times to block international action to help the Syrian people. Three of these vetoes were used to block basic humanitarian aid. What possible reason could any civilized nation have to deny war victims food and medical supplies?

But Russia has shown it can be persuaded or shamed into taking action to promote the basic safety of the Syrian citizens. In August, with the threat of U.S. military action to punish the Assad regime for use of chemical weapons against its own civilians, Russia realized it could no longer be the sole global apologist for this atrocity. So it persuaded Syria to admit to the crime, acknowledge the existence of a stockpile, and commit to the complete destruction of these inhumane weapons. While that process has been slow, the weaponry has not been used since Russia realized the world would not tolerate such a clear violation of international law.

Similarly, after repeatedly blocking U.N. action to deliver humanitarian aid in Syria, Russia decided, in the midst of the Sochi Olympics, it could

no longer stand in the way of basic humanitarian aid. The eyes of the world were on it and it knew it could no longer be seen as the sole obstacle blocking people from receiving food and medicine. So it finally agreed to U.N. Security Council Resolution 2139 calling for the provision of humanitarian aid inside Syria.

When Russia could no longer comfortably block progress, when the eyes of the world were on it in the middle of the Olympics last week, it finally joined with the rest of the world in calling on Syria to allow aid to its people. In the aftermath of that resolution, the real test lies ahead, because those were words on paper and now we must see whether the aid will be delivered.

This is the situation in Syria today. This is a recent photo from a suburb of Damascus that has been under siege by the Assad regime without access to food and basic medical care. Witness this photo. Look at the destruction; look at the rubble; look at the throng of hungry people stretching to oblivion in the distance. See the hunger in their faces and bodies, and look at the questions in their eyes. It is incumbent upon the Syrian regime to allow unhindered access of humanitarian aid to all Syrians. Opposition groups have that same obligation.

In conclusion, let me say a final word about Russian responsibility to respond to these poor Syrian people. When the Russian Government and its people see this picture, it should remind them of their own history. During the siege of Leningrad during World War II, the Nazis deliberately used these same techniques and tactics--forced starvation and siege--as a tactic of war to cause horrible deprivation to the Russian population of that city. Russians should look in the eyes of these victims of intentional starvation and grapple with their responsibility to them.

Russia can cause the Assad regime, just as it did in August, to open access so these people can have food and medicine. Russia has finally agreed to words on paper at the U.N., but the world will watch the actions of this nation.

One final thought. When Senator King and I were traveling last week in the Middle East, we went to other countries as well. In one country, where we are engaged in a back-and-forth over the provision of U.S. military assistance, where we are raising what we think are legitimate questions about some democracy reforms this nation needs to undertake if we are to be better and better partners, a leader of that nation said to me: If the United States won't provide assistance, then we will find a way to make Russia our partner.

Well, to anyone who thinks making Russia your partner is a good thing, you ought to look at this photo too, because this is what has become of Syria choosing Russia as its principal partner. Is this the kind of partner you want?

We must keep the spotlight on these atrocities; we must keep the spotlight on Assad's responsibility; we must keep the spotlight on Russia's complicity to bring an end to these atrocities and work with other nations to find a resolution to the Syrian civil war.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Basant Sanghera, a Brookings fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of today's session of the Senate.

Mr. President, today I am submitting a resolution with Senator Portman designating February as Career and Technical Education month.

The key to America's continued success lies in improving our Nation's educational system. In a National Association of Manufacturers report, 80 percent of respondents indicate a moderate to severe shortage of qualified skilled production employees, including frontline workers, like machinists, operators, craft workers, distributors, and technicians. If we are to win the race for talent, we need a long-term plan that produces the best workforce in the world.

Career and technical education is a proven solution for creating jobs, retraining workers with the skills they need to fill open positions in the job market, and ensuring students of all ages and all walks of life are career and college ready. Career and technical education will also help close the skills gap to meet the needs of high-growth, skill intensive industries. Approximately 30 percent of jobs by 2018 will require some college or a two-year associate degree, a need which can be met by improved access to career and technical education programs.

Senator Portman and I have also created the Senate Career and Technical Education Caucus, a bipartisan effort committed to strengthening access and improving career and technical education. Through these efforts, we will support students and grow our nation's workforce by ensuring our youth have access to high-quality, rigorous career and technical education that will prepare them for college and for their future careers.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona for pointing out to all in the Chamber my tardiness, and I should not have been tardy because I do not like to follow the Senator from Arizona. I would rather begin before him. But I want to thank him for his work with me, together, on this important issue and amplify on a few of the comments he has made.

Today, together, as cosponsors we are introducing the War Powers Consultation Act of 2014, which would repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution and replace it. I could not have a better cosponsor than Senator McCain and appreciate all the work he and his staff have done over the last months with us.

I gave a floor speech about this issue in this Chamber in July of 2013, almost to the day, 40 years after the Senate passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Many of you remember the context of that passage. When it was passed in the summer of 1973, it was in the midst of the end of the Vietnam war. President Nixon had expanded the Vietnam war into Cambodia and Laos without explicit congressional approval, and the Congress reacted very negatively and passed this act to try to curtail executive powers in terms of the initiation of military hostilities.

It was a very controversial bill. When it was passed, President Nixon vetoed it. Congress overrode the veto at the end of 1973. But as Senator McCain indicated, no President has conceded the constitutionality of the 1973 act, and most constitutional scholars who have written about the question have found at least a few of what they believe would be fatal infirmities in that 1973 resolution.

It was a hyperpartisan time, maybe not unlike some aspects of the present, and in trying to find that right balance in this critical question of when the Nation goes to war or initiates military action, Congress and the President did not reach an accord.

I came to the Senate with a number of passions and things I hoped to do. But I think I came with only one obsession, and this is that obsession. Virginia is a State that is most connected to the military of any State in the country. Our map is a map of American military history--from Yorktown, where the Revolutionary War ended, to Appomattox, where the Civil War ended, to the Pentagon, where 9/11 happened. That is who we are. One in nine Virginians is a veteran. If you add our Active Duty, our Guard and Reserve, our military families, our DOD civilians, our DOD contractors, you are basically talking about one in three Virginians. These issues of war and peace matter so deeply to us, as they do all Americans.

The particular passion I had in coming to this body around war powers was because of kind of a disturbing thought, which is, if the President and Congress do not work together and find consensus in matters around war, we might be asking our men and women to fight and potentially give their lives without a clear political consensus and agreement behind the mission.

I do not think there is anything more important that the Senate and the Congress can do than to be on board on decisions about whether we initiate military action, because if we do not, we are asking young men and women to fight and potentially give their lives, with us not having done the hard work of creating the political consensus to support them. That is why I have worked hard to bring this to the attention of this body with Senator McCain.

The Constitution actually sets up a fairly clear framework. The President is the Commander in Chief, not 535 commanders-in-chief, as Senator McCain indicated. But Congress is the body that has the power both to declare war and then to fund military action. In dividing the responsibilities in this way, the Framers were pretty clear. James Madison, who worked on the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson and said:

The constitution supposes, what the History of all

Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of

power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It

has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war

in the Legislature.

Despite that original constitutional understanding, our history has not matched the notion that Congress would always be the initiator of military action. Congress has only declared war five times in the history of the United States, while Presidents have initiated military action prior to any congressional approval more than 120 times.

In some of these instances where the President has initiated war, Congress has come back and either subsequently ratified Presidential action--sometimes by a formal approval or sometimes by informal approval such as budgetary allocation--but in other instances, including recently, Presidents have acted and committed American military forces to military action without any congressional approval. The Senator from Arizona mentioned the most recent one. President Obama committed military force to NATO, action against Libya in 2011, without any congressional approval, and he was formally censured by the House of Representatives for doing so.

The current context that requires a reanalysis of this thorny question, after 40 years of the War Powers Resolution, was well stated by the Senator from Arizona. Wars are different. They start differently. They are not necessarily nation state against nation state. They could be limited in time or, as of now, we are still pursuing a military force that was authorized on September 18, 2001, 12 or 13 years later. Wars are of different duration, different scope, different geography. Nation states are no longer the only entities that are engaged in war.

These new developments that are challenging--what do we do about drones in countries far afield from where battles were originally waged--raise the issue of the need to go back into this War Powers Resolution and update it for the current times.

As the Senator from Arizona mentioned, this has been a question that Members of Congress have grappled with and thought about, as have diplomats and scholars and administration officials and Members of Congress for some time.

In 2007, the Miller Center for the study of the presidency at the University of Virginia convened a National War Powers Commission under the chairmanships of two esteemable and bipartisan leaders--former Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and James Baker. The remaining members of the Commission were a complete A list of thinkers in this area--Slade Gorton, Abner Mikva, Ed Meese, Lee Hamilton. The Commission's historian was no less than Doris Kearns Goodwin, who looked at the entire scope of this problem in American history and what the role of Congress and the President should be.

The Commission issued a unanimous report, proposing an act to replace the War Powers Act of 1973, briefed Congress and incoming President Obama on the particular act in 2007 and 2008, but at that time, the time was not yet ripe for consideration of this bill.

But now that we are 40 years into an unworkable War Powers Resolution and now, as the Senator indicated, we have had a string of Presidents-- both Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents--who have maintained that the act is unconstitutional and now that we have had a 40-year history of Congress often exceeding to the claim of unconstitutionality by not following the War Powers Resolution itself, we do think it is time to revisit.

Let me just state two fundamental, substantive issues that this bill presents in the War Powers Consultation Act of 2014.

First, there is a set of definitions. What is war? The bill defines significant military action as any action where involvement of U.S. troops would be expected to be in combat for at least a week or longer. Under those circumstances, the provisions of the act would be triggered.

There are some exceptions in the act. The act would not cover defined covert action operations. But once a combat operation was expected to last for more than 7 days, the act would be triggered.

The act basically sets up two important substantive improvements on the War Powers Resolution.

First, a permanent consultation committee is established in Congress, with the majority and minority leaders of both Houses and the chairs and ranking members of the four key committees in both Houses that deal with war issues--Intel, Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Appropriations.

That permanent consultation committee is a venue for discussion between the executive and legislative branches--permanent and continuous--over matters in the world that may require the use of American military force.

Because the question comes up often: What did the President do to consult with Congress? Is it enough to call a few leaders or call a few committee chairs? This act would normalize and regularize what consultation with Congress means by establishing a permanent consultation committee and requiring ongoing dialogue between the Executive and that committee.

The second requirement of this bill is that once military action is commenced that would take more than 7 days, there is a requirement for a vote in both Houses of Congress. The consultation committee itself would put a resolution on the table in both Houses to approve or disapprove of military action. It would be a privileged motion with expedited requirements for debate, amendment, and vote, and that would ensure that we do not reach a situation where action is being taken at the instance of one branch with the other branch not in agreement, because to do that would put our men and women who are fighting and in harm's way at the risk of sacrificing their lives when we in the political leadership have not done the job of reaching a consensus behind the mission.

To conclude, I will acknowledge what the Senator from Arizona said. This is a very thorny and difficult question that has created challenges and differences of interpretation since the Constitution was written in 1787. Despite the fact that the Framers who wrote the Constitution actually had a pretty clear idea about how it should operate, it has never operated that way.

Forty years of a failed War Powers Resolution in today's dangerous world suggests that it is time now to get back in and to do some careful deliberation to update and normalize the appropriate level of consultation between a President and the legislature.

The recent events as cited by the Senator--whatever you think about the merits or the equities, whether it is Libya, whether it is Syria, whether it is the discussions we are having now with respect to Iran or any other of a number of potential spots around the world that could lead to conflict--suggest that while decisions about war and initiation of military action will never be easy, they get harder if we do not have an agreed-upon process for coming to understand each other's points of view and then acting in the best interest of the Nation to forge a consensus.

With that, I appreciate the opportunity to stand with my colleague, after a number of months of discussion, to introduce this bill, and I look forward to the opportunity to carry this dialogue forward with my colleagues in this body.

Thank you very much.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona for pointing out to all in the Chamber my tardiness, and I should not have been tardy because I do not like to follow the Senator from Arizona. I would rather begin before him. But I want to thank him for his work with me, together, on this important issue and amplify on a few of the comments he has made.

Today, together, as cosponsors we are introducing the War Powers Consultation Act of 2014, which would repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution and replace it. I could not have a better cosponsor than Senator McCain and appreciate all the work he and his staff have done over the last months with us.

I gave a floor speech about this issue in this Chamber in July of 2013, almost to the day, 40 years after the Senate passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Many of you remember the context of that passage. When it was passed in the summer of 1973, it was in the midst of the end of the Vietnam war. President Nixon had expanded the Vietnam war into Cambodia and Laos without explicit congressional approval, and the Congress reacted very negatively and passed this act to try to curtail executive powers in terms of the initiation of military hostilities.

It was a very controversial bill. When it was passed, President Nixon vetoed it. Congress overrode the veto at the end of 1973. But as Senator McCain indicated, no President has conceded the constitutionality of the 1973 act, and most constitutional scholars who have written about the question have found at least a few of what they believe would be fatal infirmities in that 1973 resolution.

It was a hyperpartisan time, maybe not unlike some aspects of the present, and in trying to find that right balance in this critical question of when the Nation goes to war or initiates military action, Congress and the President did not reach an accord.

I came to the Senate with a number of passions and things I hoped to do. But I think I came with only one obsession, and this is that obsession. Virginia is a State that is most connected to the military of any State in the country. Our map is a map of American military history--from Yorktown, where the Revolutionary War ended, to Appomattox, where the Civil War ended, to the Pentagon, where 9/11 happened. That is who we are. One in nine Virginians is a veteran. If you add our Active Duty, our Guard and Reserve, our military families, our DOD civilians, our DOD contractors, you are basically talking about one in three Virginians. These issues of war and peace matter so deeply to us, as they do all Americans.

The particular passion I had in coming to this body around war powers was because of kind of a disturbing thought, which is, if the President and Congress do not work together and find consensus in matters around war, we might be asking our men and women to fight and potentially give their lives without a clear political consensus and agreement behind the mission.

I do not think there is anything more important that the Senate and the Congress can do than to be on board on decisions about whether we initiate military action, because if we do not, we are asking young men and women to fight and potentially give their lives, with us not having done the hard work of creating the political consensus to support them. That is why I have worked hard to bring this to the attention of this body with Senator McCain.

The Constitution actually sets up a fairly clear framework. The President is the Commander in Chief, not 535 commanders-in-chief, as Senator McCain indicated. But Congress is the body that has the power both to declare war and then to fund military action. In dividing the responsibilities in this way, the Framers were pretty clear. James Madison, who worked on the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson and said:

The constitution supposes, what the History of all

Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of

power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It

has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war

in the Legislature.

Despite that original constitutional understanding, our history has not matched the notion that Congress would always be the initiator of military action. Congress has only declared war five times in the history of the United States, while Presidents have initiated military action prior to any congressional approval more than 120 times.

In some of these instances where the President has initiated war, Congress has come back and either subsequently ratified Presidential action--sometimes by a formal approval or sometimes by informal approval such as budgetary allocation--but in other instances, including recently, Presidents have acted and committed American military forces to military action without any congressional approval. The Senator from Arizona mentioned the most recent one. President Obama committed military force to NATO, action against Libya in 2011, without any congressional approval, and he was formally censured by the House of Representatives for doing so.

The current context that requires a reanalysis of this thorny question, after 40 years of the War Powers Resolution, was well stated by the Senator from Arizona. Wars are different. They start differently. They are not necessarily nation state against nation state. They could be limited in time or, as of now, we are still pursuing a military force that was authorized on September 18, 2001, 12 or 13 years later. Wars are of different duration, different scope, different geography. Nation states are no longer the only entities that are engaged in war.

These new developments that are challenging--what do we do about drones in countries far afield from where battles were originally waged--raise the issue of the need to go back into this War Powers Resolution and update it for the current times.

As the Senator from Arizona mentioned, this has been a question that Members of Congress have grappled with and thought about, as have diplomats and scholars and administration officials and Members of Congress for some time.

In 2007, the Miller Center for the study of the presidency at the University of Virginia convened a National War Powers Commission under the chairmanships of two esteemable and bipartisan leaders--former Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and James Baker. The remaining members of the Commission were a complete A list of thinkers in this area--Slade Gorton, Abner Mikva, Ed Meese, Lee Hamilton. The Commission's historian was no less than Doris Kearns Goodwin, who looked at the entire scope of this problem in American history and what the role of Congress and the President should be.

The Commission issued a unanimous report, proposing an act to replace the War Powers Act of 1973, briefed Congress and incoming President Obama on the particular act in 2007 and 2008, but at that time, the time was not yet ripe for consideration of this bill.

But now that we are 40 years into an unworkable War Powers Resolution and now, as the Senator indicated, we have had a string of Presidents-- both Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents--who have maintained that the act is unconstitutional and now that we have had a 40-year history of Congress often exceeding to the claim of unconstitutionality by not following the War Powers Resolution itself, we do think it is time to revisit.

Let me just state two fundamental, substantive issues that this bill presents in the War Powers Consultation Act of 2014.

First, there is a set of definitions. What is war? The bill defines significant military action as any action where involvement of U.S. troops would be expected to be in combat for at least a week or longer. Under those circumstances, the provisions of the act would be triggered.

There are some exceptions in the act. The act would not cover defined covert action operations. But once a combat operation was expected to last for more than 7 days, the act would be triggered.

The act basically sets up two important substantive improvements on the War Powers Resolution.

First, a permanent consultation committee is established in Congress, with the majority and minority leaders of both Houses and the chairs and ranking members of the four key committees in both Houses that deal with war issues--Intel, Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Appropriations.

That permanent consultation committee is a venue for discussion between the executive and legislative branches--permanent and continuous--over matters in the world that may require the use of American military force.

Because the question comes up often: What did the President do to consult with Congress? Is it enough to call a few leaders or call a few committee chairs? This act would normalize and regularize what consultation with Congress means by establishing a permanent consultation committee and requiring ongoing dialogue between the Executive and that committee.

The second requirement of this bill is that once military action is commenced that would take more than 7 days, there is a requirement for a vote in both Houses of Congress. The consultation committee itself would put a resolution on the table in both Houses to approve or disapprove of military action. It would be a privileged motion with expedited requirements for debate, amendment, and vote, and that would ensure that we do not reach a situation where action is being taken at the instance of one branch with the other branch not in agreement, because to do that would put our men and women who are fighting and in harm's way at the risk of sacrificing their lives when we in the political leadership have not done the job of reaching a consensus behind the mission.

To conclude, I will acknowledge what the Senator from Arizona said. This is a very thorny and difficult question that has created challenges and differences of interpretation since the Constitution was written in 1787. Despite the fact that the Framers who wrote the Constitution actually had a pretty clear idea about how it should operate, it has never operated that way.

Forty years of a failed War Powers Resolution in today's dangerous world suggests that it is time now to get back in and to do some careful deliberation to update and normalize the appropriate level of consultation between a President and the legislature.

The recent events as cited by the Senator--whatever you think about the merits or the equities, whether it is Libya, whether it is Syria, whether it is the discussions we are having now with respect to Iran or any other of a number of potential spots around the world that could lead to conflict--suggest that while decisions about war and initiation of military action will never be easy, they get harder if we do not have an agreed-upon process for coming to understand each other's points of view and then acting in the best interest of the Nation to forge a consensus.

With that, I appreciate the opportunity to stand with my colleague, after a number of months of discussion, to introduce this bill, and I look forward to the opportunity to carry this dialogue forward with my colleagues in this body.

Thank you very much.