Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have a request for one committee to meet during today's session of the Senate. It has 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 is authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Subcommittee on National Parks The Subcommittee on National Parks of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 15, 2018, at 4 p.m. to hold a hearing.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk for a few minutes about the principal work that we will be starting this week and, I would hope, be completing next week--certainly completing before we move on to other work. I want to highlight the critical work of the National Defense Appropriations Act and the decision just made by the body that will allow us to go to that bill and to the Labor, Health and Human Services bill this week. On Monday, the President signed the authorizing bill for fiscal year 2019, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. This bill provides important authorizations for a number of programs. By the way, in its title, it also recognizes the extraordinary courage and service of our friend and colleague John McCain. On more than one occasion, I know Senator McCain has said that chairing that committee has been the most important public service he has ever been allowed to do. So to have this bill named for him is something that I appreciate and that I know the Presiding Officer does too. I commend my colleagues for the work they have done and for completing that work, the defense authorization bill, in the fastest time in 20 years. This bill has been signed into law by the President. Now we get to take a step further and do the second thing that Congress is responsible for, not just for authorizing and setting out a blueprint for how we defend the country but for providing the funding with which to do that. Over the years, I have seen that many of our colleagues have forever been prepared to debate with regard to how we need to spend more money on defense until it comes time to vote on a bill that includes more money for defense. This bill does that. Frankly, I think it is the most important of our responsibilities--the defense of the country. The Federal Government's principal role is only ensured when we provide the money to do that. We need to be sure that we provide for those who serve in uniform--those who serve us--and for what they need to carry out their missions. I believe the bill we will debate in the later part of this week and all of next week--and as long as it takes to get it done--does that. As a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, I was pleased to vote for this bill. I was pleased to vote for it as a member of the full Appropriations Committee, and I look forward to voting for it as the debate ends. I also look forward to the full debate. One of the things we have done this year that has not been done in recent years is to bring these appropriations bills to the floor in a way that not just the two dozen or so Senators who serve on Appropriations get to amend and debate and argue in public about what should be in the bill but to do this in a way that every Senator can come to the floor and offer an amendment and that every Senator can debate that amendment if it is germane to the bill and if it meets the standards of the bill. Everybody who is willing to find the money somewhere in that bill to pay for what one would rather do rather than what the bill does gets a chance to do that, and that is a good process. This defense funding bill provides a $20 billion increase for defense, and it supports the largest pay increase in over a decade for those who serve and defend us. This bill prioritizes resources for equipment and training to ensure that our troops have every possible advantage on the battlefield. I have said before on this floor and at this podium that we never want our troops to be involved in a fair fight. We want them to be involved in a fight where they have every possible advantage over their adversary, and this bill takes steps to do that. Missouri has a number of military installations. Those installations and people who work at those installations, civilian and military, really provide a great part of our Nation's defense--Whiteman Air Force Base, Rosecrans Air National Guard facility, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri National Guard units, the AVCRAD--the repair center in Springfield, MO, my hometown. People who work there have a big stake in our country, and we have a big stake in them, as we do in bases all over the United States. The chairman, Senator Shelby, and Senator Durbin, the ranking member of the Defense Subcommittee, have crafted a bill that really makes crucial investments across the board, from Army end-strength increases to important investments in the B-2, the A-10, the B-21, the C-130 programs, and others that are essential to the infrastructure of the military and the very infrastructure itself. The defense facilities and the Army ammunition plants that haven't been changed very much since World War II have some update potential in this bill. This bill is good news for those who serve at Missouri military bases. It is good news for those who work as civilians at those bases. It is also good news for the many Missourians who are part of the defense industry. We have people who work at businesses, large and small, who are contractors and subcontractors to those contractors, facilities I have visited in our State where the initial facility was a converted dairy barn but then added on as they got better and better and got more subcontracts. Those people are all part of this system. This bill includes multiyear procurement authority for the F/A-18 Super Hornets. These are manufactured in St. Louis. Year after year, the Navy has had the Super Hornets included at the top of the unfunded requirement list, I assume hoping that we in Congress would first look at that list once we decide what else we could do. On the committee, this is something that Senator Durbin from Illinois, who is right across the river from the Boeing facility, and I have worked on to ensure that this unfunded request was usually met. Because the Navy has asked for it as part of their long-term structure, what this bill does, for the first time in some time, is make multiyear commitments to this plane, which is an important part of many flying packages that we have. Additionally, the bill provides research funding that is badly needed to counter threats from China and Russia--huge investments on their part, using at least some of the things they have taken from us. They have taken intellectual property we have designed in our aircraft and other things, and then they have taken their money to see how far they can get ahead of us, using our technology, in some cases, as the foundation for what they are trying to do and making major efforts to try to get ahead of us in things like hypersonics, directed energy, artificial intelligence, and cyber infiltration, and cyber warfare. This bill looks at all of those and says that we are not going to let other countries that are adversaries of ours in the fight for freedom around the world have the advantage. We are going to continue to do everything we can to maintain the advantage. We have to have technological superiority. It has been one of the great things we have been able to do for those willing to serve, but we have to be sure that our servicemembers have the training, the equipment, and the support they need to carry out their mission. That is my top priority. I think it is the top priority of the Federal Government. Over the next few days, we will have a chance to debate that top priority. There are different ways to do this. There is nothing wrong with people having different opinions, particularly if they can get a majority of the Senate to agree with that opinion. I think this is a bill that is going to stand the test of that debate. We will find a few ways to improve it as we move forward. This is a bill in which we demonstrate our gratitude to those who serve. We demonstrate our commitment to the defense of freedom and democracy, both in the debate and in the bill. If we don't fund the decisions we have made in the Defense Authorization Act, we really haven't made those decisions; we will have talked about what we might like to do rather than what we are determined to do. This Defense appropriations bill decides what we are determined to do, willing to do and to establish as a priority. I look forward to the entire Senate being able to debate that bill and hopefully send that bill to a conference with the House and to the President's desk. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the disposition of the Richardson nomination, the Senate proceed to legislative session and the consideration of H.R. 6157; further, that for the purpose of rule XVI, in relation to substitute amendment No. 3695, the text of H.R. 6157 serve as the basis for defense of germaneness for division A of the amendment and the text of H.R. 6470, as reported by the House Appropriations Committee, serve as the basis for defense of germaneness for division B of the amendment.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today the Senate overwhelmingly supported the conference report for the 2019 John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. That bill is now on the way to the President's desk. Many Americans have bravely fought to uphold the values that our country holds dear. There are many people in the Senate who have been stalwart supporters of the military during their time here, but the legislation we passed today is named for one of those Senators, our colleague from Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, John McCain. Senator McCain not only has given much of his life in military service, but he has given tirelessly in service to the country in so many ways, including service here. He has been an incredibly effective advocate for the men and women who serve in uniform and defend us. There is no Member of the Senate for whom my admiration and appreciation has increased more during the time I have had the opportunity to serve with him. As a House Member, I knew Senator McCain, but I knew him only in the kind of passing that occurs when the House and Senate are trying to work out an issue or deal with a specific problem. I didn't really get to know John McCain until I came to the Senate. That daily contact with him made a real difference in the way I felt about him. His courage, his sometimes seemingly short fuse, but always his desire to do the right thing as he saw the right thing have continued to make him an important advocate here. Even in recent days, when he couldn't attend the Senate, he was the first to let his views be known. Certainly, Senator McCain and I didn't agree on everything. We still don't agree on everything. We don't make any particular pretense that we agree on everything. There has been more than one occasion when he expressed to me his absolute dismay that I voted the way I voted on a certain issue, but that is when I began to think that maybe we really had a relationship I could treasure--and I do treasure it. I am pleased that we named this bill after our friend Senator McCain. One of the principal responsibilities we have is to defend the country. It is the one job the Federal Government does that almost no American will argue that somebody else could do better, either personally or at a different level of government. It is the No. 1 priority, I think, of the Federal Government. This bill addresses that priority. In our State, we have Whiteman Air Force Base, Fort Leonard Wood, Rosecrans Air National Guard Base, where people from all over the world come to train on how to use the C-130s. We have the AVCRAD facility, a National Guard facility in Springfield, MI, that repairs helicopters for the armed services and saves a lot of money doing that. We are the home of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's western headquarters, and we are proud to be. Missourians serve in uniform and are proud to serve. Missourians serve in many ways, including all of those organizations I just mentioned, and they are proud to do that. The people who serve in the military and the people who serve in the intelligence branch of our government are increasingly challenged. I think the missions we have around the world, the challenges we have around the world, the national security threats we have around the world--as the Presiding Officer knows from his job as Foreign Affairs chairman--are as complex and complicated and multifaceted as they have ever been. Some have said that there are more threats from more directions in more ways than at any other time. I think this bill begins to recognize that--tries to recognize that-- and understands that to remain successful, America has to have a military that creates a military advantage. It has to be able to counter the potential that our adversaries have. We have to be able to defend international order and protect ourselves and those who rely on us in their defense of freedom. To that end, Secretary Mattis and the senior leaders throughout the Department of Justice put together the plan and the thought that really is the backbone for how this legislation has been crafted. This National Defense Authorization Act authorizes the necessary investments and establishes the policies to carry out our national defense strategy. First and foremost, President Trump and his administration have prioritized rebuilding the military. This bill, with a total of $716 billion in authorization, provides the resources, the equipment, and the training necessary to do so. For 2 years in a row, we authorized a substantial increase in defense spending. We will have a chance, when we get back in a week or so, to bring the defense appropriating bill to the floor, which hopefully will be the second year in a row that our defense spending has matched the plan that has been authorized. The National Defense Authorization Act provides our servicemembers with a pay raise of 2.6 percent, the biggest pay raise in 10 years. Our troops and their families make a tremendous sacrifice to serve. They move often on a minute's notice, but in the last year's legislation, we gave more flexibility to families on that topic. Still, when you are in the military, you know you are not likely to be wherever you are for very long. That increase in pay is something we should be pleased about as a country. This bill authorizes critical multiyear procurement authority. Why does that matter? That doesn't sound very exciting--multiyear procurement authority--but it allows people in the military to plan not only what they are getting this year but how that gives them the ability to build on that next year. We have been using the Super Hornets, for instance, which are made in St. Louis, MO, at a high volume with desert warfare. The desert is harder on our equipment than other places might be. There is a serious shortfall of fighter aircraft in the Navy. All of those things are taken into consideration as this bill moves forward. It is a bill that recognizes the importance of readiness issues. We had more people die in training accidents last year--by a substantial number--than were killed in combat. That means we hadn't been providing the kind of training or the kind of equipment needed because we had budgets that didn't allow for that. These budgets that we voted on in the last few months, hopefully, will get us back to where we are going to close that readiness gap. We are going to be able to say to those who serve and to their families that we are providing the best equipment, the best training, and an adequate amount of time to fly a helicopter or fly an airplane to try to see what you would do in adverse conditions, which, frankly, we just have not been able to do. This takes into account actions to really address specific threats from countries that have actively worked to undermine our economic interests and our national security interests. According to the national defense strategy, China is using what it refers to as an ``all-of-nation long-term strategy''--all of the resources of the nation of China, according to that blueprint, in a long-term strategy of leveraging military modernization, influencing operations, and predatory economic efforts in order to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the structure of the Indo-Pacific region to its advantage. It is not to our advantage or to the world's advantage for China to restructure that part of the world to its advantage. It also classifies China as a strategic competitor that seeks to shape the world toward its authoritarian model through destabilizing activities that threaten the security of the United States and its allies. To counter China and reassure our allies and partners, this bill takes action to prohibit telecom companies with links to the Chinese Communist Party's intelligence apparatus from doing business with the U.S. Government. Many of us on the Intelligence Committee think we could have gone a step further than that, but at least we are now prohibiting those organizations from being government contractors. We need to continue to be vigilant so as to be sure that their presence in our other systems doesn't also jeopardize us. This bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, contains modernization language for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in its effort to look at what national security issue may be at risk when a foreign company is able to buy a company or the technology of an American company. The national defense strategy, in addition to China, also says that Russia seeks to ``shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor,'' which is also not to our advantage or to the advantage of those in the world who would be affected by it. Russia has violated key arms control treaties. It has expanded and modernized its nuclear arsenal--sometimes outside agreements that have been made. It has tested counterspace weapons. It has used emerging technologies to undermine our election process. It has infiltrated the way that we communicate with each other on social media. It has confronted the elections of our NATO allies and others. I think this bill shows not only a firm commitment to NATO but a firm commitment to article 5, which means that any NATO country, when attacked, will have the other NATO countries come to its help and aid. Additionally, this bill authorizes important resources and policies to counter North Korea, Iran, ISIS, al-Qaida, Syria, and others that we should be concerned about as they oppress the people of their countries and try to expand their oppressive governments to other places. This bill recognizes the critical importance of our allies and our partners around the globe so that we can be willing to stand together and to advance shared values and goals. The men and women who serve us in uniform, the men and women who serve us in the intelligence agencies, and the civilian employees who come every day to be part of a defense and intelligence structure work hard for America. This bill shows that we appreciate that work. In the Senate today, the overwhelming vote on this bill verifies that, and the President's signature soon to follow will set a blueprint that will allow us to do the No. 1 job of the Federal Government--to defend the United States of America. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank my friend, the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 772, which was received from the House. I ask unanimous consent that the Blunt substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to and that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, in 2010, legislation passed that mandated national calorie menu labeling standards for chain restaurants and similar retail food locations, like grocery stores. Many of us know that there are many different ways that foods are prepared and sold to customers. We can see all kinds of examples by walking around the Capitol Complex itself, let alone through one's neighborhood grocery store. As a result, it would be almost impossible to have a one-size- fits-all rule. Before I mention what the Blunt-Alexander-King substitute amendment would have done, to which the Senator from Washington State has objected, let me, first of all, address the House-passed bipartisan bill that has been pending on the Senate's calendar. Senator King joined me in introducing the bipartisan Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act here in the Senate--the same bill that has already passed in the House. The bill is not just bicameral but bipartisan, meaning Democrats and Republicans have sponsored legislation in the Senate and Democrats and Republicans have passed the same legislation in the House. My Democratic colleague from Missouri cosponsored the initial bill. The House-passed bill would not exempt pizza delivery and it wouldn't exempt supermarkets or grocery stores or convenience stores or others from menu labeling requirements. There are always all kinds of things that are talked about here. What the House bill and what the Blunt-Alexander-King bill would do, which is pending in the Senate, is recognize that there are unique differences in business types and product offerings to allow for more flexibility in different kinds of business models providing their customers with calorie information. This would still happen under our bill, but it would happen in a more effective way so that it meets the customers' needs. The goal here should be the customers' receiving the information rather than exactly where the information is placed in a one-size-fits-all or in a one-location-fits-all kind of format. The campaign on this issue of misinformation has run pretty wild. There is a group saying that what we are trying to do is exempt restaurants and others from menu labeling. They clearly haven't read the bill that Senator Alexander and I and Senator King have introduced. I would like to go on record as saying what the amendment does. First and foremost, it does not impact the delay of that menu labeling final rule that went into effect this year. Again, it does not impact the delay or stop the menu labeling final rule. The Blunt- Alexander-King amendment provides those who have to implement the rule with the regulatory flexibility to implement the rule and provide the information to their customers in the most useful manner. The amendment also provides protection against frivolous lawsuits. That is really all it does. Those are two big things, but they are two not very complicated things. I have been working on this issue for a number of years. I am disappointed that we have been unable to move a commonsense measure here in the Senate. I thank Senator King for working with me on this issue, and I thank Senators McCaskill, Heitkamp, and Donnelly--all Democrats--along with Senator King, for joining me as bipartisan cosponsors. I also thank Chairman Alexander, who is the chair of the authorizing committee, who has joined with me and others in finding a commonsense path forward to ensure we provide the information to consumers in the most effective way, while providing the flexibility in implementation and protection from lawsuits, not only on the information but on some highly technical piece of the rule that really wouldn't have an impact if anybody were to have the information or not. Senator Alexander has been a leader on this. I know he is as disappointed as I am that we can't move forward with the House-passed bill, for I spent a lot of time on it. I turn now to my friend Senator Alexander, the chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, to make whatever comments he wants to make.

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

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, it is always an honor to follow the President pro tempore of the Senate on the Senate floor. I am here to talk about the work we are working through and what--for decades would actually be an understatement--for a couple of centuries was the principal work of the Congress, which was to set our priorities by how we spend the money people have entrusted us with. Today I want to talk specifically about the importance of transportation, and the ag bill is in here, too--the agricultural bill. Certainly, those things come together in a way that allows us to be competitive or don't come together in a way that doesn't allow us to be as competitive as we would like to be. There is no question that our Nation's infrastructure is not what it should be. The Interstate Highway System, built under the leadership of President Eisenhower, some of it is now over seven decades old, a lot of it over five decades old. It is not where it should be. It has outlived the projected life, and that is a good thing. The construction and repair are better than thought to be at the time, but they are not the kinds of things that are going to last forever. It has been reported that we have a backlog of at least $836 billion in highway and bridge infrastructure, just that part of our infrastructure. I am the chairman of the Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Aviation. The Chair and I serve on that committee, and on that committee, we believe there is at least $100 billion in airport infrastructure projects. There are all kinds of airports all over the world that you can fly into or fly out of, and as you come back into the United States, you realize how far we are behind. Location is important to us. In fact, Winston Churchill said at one time, talking about the United States, that the United States of America was the best located country in the world. We have the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. We have neighbors north and south whom we have learned to cooperate with and live with. We could turn to the Pacific, if that is where the opportunities were. We could turn to the Atlantic. Winston Churchill pointed out that the Mississippi River, which runs through the center of our country, is maybe the greatest waterway in the world, in terms of the system that created transportation from the very start. The Mississippi River and all the tributary valleys there were incredibly well located. But all of these things can benefit us if we make the most of them, but it is possible to make the least of them. If you get to the water or if you get to the river and you get on it and you can use it and it becomes an avenue of commerce, it is an opportunity. If you get to the water and you can't get on it, it is an obstacle. That is sort of what all these things are when we talk about transportation. Are we going to talk about obstacles or opportunities? What are we going to do with inadequate and deficient infrastructure that really does impact whether local communities can compete or not? Back to the thoughts about the map of America and where our State is located, Missouri is really at the hub of where a lot of the natural infrastructure of the country come together, and also the No. 2 and No. 3 biggest rail yards in America are in our State. No. 2 is in Kansas City, and No. 3 is in St. Louis. The interstate highways come together there. Chairman Collins and her committee worked on this part of the bill--a bill where all four committees have brought a product to the floor that we can vote for and that we get a chance to amend. We get a chance to talk about how this could have been made better and maybe find a way to make it better or maybe find a way to realize that, now that I understand the arguments, it is a better bill than I thought. That is the importance of getting that to the floor. The bill provides $1 billion for BUILD Grants. Those were previously known as TIGER grants. At least 30 percent of that billion dollars is to benefit rural areas. This is particularly the kind of program we had benefited from. The program funded the Champ Clark Bridge over the Mississippi River in Louisiana, MO, and the bridge over the Missouri River at Washington, MO. They all benefited from TIGER Grants. There is another $49.3 billion for critical highway infrastructure. That is an increase of $3 billion over the authorized level. This program will provide our State with $79 million more in Federal funding increases for roads, bridges, and freight programs. Highways and roads are generally still largely a State problem. This bill encourages States to do things that they might not quite be able to do otherwise. We have 3,000 bridges in our State deemed structurally deficient. I think it is the highest number of bridges anywhere because we have more than 3,000 bridges that are structurally deficient and there are thousands of bridges more than that. The bill provides $175 million in discretionary spending, combined with $140 million in mandatory spending to support Essential Air Service communities. Those communities can almost support their own commercial system, but not quite, and still have an argument that they need it. In Missouri, Joplin, Cape Girardeau, and Kirksville all benefit from that Essential Air Service Program. The airport in Columbia is benefiting right now with rehabilitating runways from that program. The bill provides some capital investment grants that allow some help with transit projects. As far as ag infrastructure is concerned, we have the chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee on the floor right now. For ag to work, you have to have an infrastructure that works. The world price of grain is the world price of grain less what it costs you to get it there. The way you win that competition is to have a transportation network that works in a way that allows you to be more competitive than anyone else. If you could arrive with a quality product and get it there cheaper than anybody else can, you get that marketplace. We don't want to forget broadband. As we think about rural America today, broadband is as important as the telephone was 70 years ago. We figured out how to get telephones to people that were a long way from the nearest telephone, or until they got a telephone, a long way from the nearest telephone pole. We figured that out, and we need to figure out rural broadband just as well. If you can't get the high-speed information you need, you may be doing something that you don't have to go to an office to do, like commodity trading, but you do have to have instantaneous information to do it effectively. As for rural Missourians, we have 3 percent of the rural population in our State, and half of that population doesn't have access to high- speed internet. That is behind the rest of the country, and our State is trying to catch up. If we can take advantage of these broadband pilot grants that encourage everybody to catch up, we will catch up faster than we would otherwise. This bill provides distance learning and telemedicine grants as part of our rural community development, and there are rural development community facilities grants in here. We are benefiting from that, and we hope to see that program continue. We received rural development community facilities grants for things like police facilities, road construction equipment, and healthcare facilities in Dent County, Scotland County, Livingston County, Grundy County, and Schuyler County. All of those kinds of things would still be out there to compete for if we pass this bill. It includes $1.25 billion for the Rural Development Water and Waste Disposal Program to be developed in rural Missouri. We have eight communities right now benefitting from that. Every level of government--local, State, and Federal--as well as the private sector, really has to continue to recognize the importance of infrastructure-- the infrastructure we see on top of the ground, the infrastructure we don't see below the ground, and the broadband infrastructure that some people have and other people don't. That is how we compete. This bill largely is a bill about competition. Certainly, the transportation and ag parts of this bill are about competition. We need to do what we can to strengthen our overall infrastructure and our transportation network, to boost economic growth, to create jobs, and to be sure that we are more competitive where I live and where you live and all over our country. That is what this bill is about. I am really pleased that, for the first time in a long time, every Member of the Senate has a right to come to the floor and say: Here is how we can spend this money better. Our goal should be to take what we have been entrusted with and spend it in the way that benefits the country in the most effective way. I think this bill goes a long way in the right direction to do that. I am certainly looking forward to supporting it when it comes to final passage and looking carefully at every amendment anybody offers to see if that is not a better idea than those of us on the Appropriations Committee had. I see that my friend from West Virginia is here. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am here today to remember the 17 victims who lost their lives last week in the tragic boat accident on Table Rock Lake in Missouri. At one time, I lived in Branson. Our home is now in Springfield, MO. It is a community that I represented in the Congress for 14 years before having the chance to represent them in the Senate. Of course, the community has responded. But one of the reasons the community has responded in the way that it has is the truly tragic loss of life. There were 31 people on the boat that was overwhelmed by the water. Of those 31 people, 17 died. Of the 17 that died, 9 of the victims were members of the Coleman family from Indianapolis, IN. Tia Coleman lost her husband, Glenn, and all three of their children. On Saturday, Tia asked that her family members be remembered as they were. She said that her daughter, 1-year-old Arya, was a little fireball with 1,000 different personalities. Her 7-year-old son, Evan, according to his mom, was a great brother who was extremely smart and witty and loved life. Her 9-year-old son Reese, according to his mom, was the happiest little boy and made every day worth living. Tia's nephew, Donovan Hall, who was the other surviving member of that family, lost his mother Angela and his brother Maxwell. Tia described her sister-in-law Angela as a loving mother who would do anything for her family, and 2-year-old Max loved big hugs. Tia was laughing through her tears as she remembered her Uncle Ray as a man who liked to laugh and have a good time. Tia's father-in-law, Horace ``Butch'' Coleman, is being remembered in Indianapolis as a legend in the community, having volunteered for more than four decades as a youth football coach. He and his wife, Belinda Coleman, were involved in the community. Belinda was described as a loving mom, a loving grandmother, and as a leader in their church. Tia asked that all of us keep the Coleman family in our prayers as they adjust to this terrible tragedy. Rosemarie Hamann and William Asher, from the St. Louis area, had just celebrated Rosemarie's 68th birthday. Their friends say they loved to dance and live life to the fullest. They both gave back to their community through local veterans organizations. William and Janice Bright, from Higginsville, MO, were in Branson celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary. They are survived by their 3 children and 16 grandchildren, with another grandchild on the way, who will never get a chance to see their grandparents. The Smith family of Osceola, AR, is mourning the loss of 53-year-old Steve Smith, a retired educator, and his 15-year-old son Lance. The Smiths were very active in their church. Steve was a deacon and Lance felt the call to the ministry at 15. He had just recently delivered his first sermon. Leslie Dennison from Illinois died a hero. This 64-year-old grandmother pushed her 12-year-old granddaughter to the surface of the water, helping save that girl's life before she was overwhelmed by the water. Former church pastor Bob Williams, who was driving the boat, was remembered by the Branson mayor, Karen Best, as ``a great ambassador for Branson'' and an active member of the community. Certainly in the coming days we will learn more about these men and women and children and the lives they led and the lives that were ended tragically. We will also learn about the accident itself. Senator McCaskill and I were both there on the day after the accident as Federal officials arrived--the Coast Guard, responsible for certifying equipment like the boat that sank, and the National Travel Safety Board, which has the responsibility to investigate the accident and tell us what happened. Senator McCaskill met with them early in the day. I met with them exactly 24 hours after the boat sank. As we were finished with that meeting and looking out at the placid Table Rock Lake, it was impossible to imagine that was the same lake that was in videos of what had happened the day before. Certainly Senator McCaskill and I were also thinking of the first responders, the medical staff, looking at what mental health care was available not only for people who survived the accident but also for the people who responded. There were people who were on a nearby showboat, the Branson Belle, who dove off the boat and immediately swam out to do what they could to help the people who were trying to save their own lives. One boat dock sent three or four different boats with basically high school guys who are working at that boat dock in the summer. I am sure if you are a 16, 17, 18-year-old young man, you think everything is OK, but we were both insistent that they try to have the kind of mental health counseling they needed, along with the families and the survivors who were there, and certainly the community, with services that reacted in the right way. It is unfortunate that we don't think as much as we should about the NTSB and their efforts. One of the things that certainly they will be looking at is their investigation of a similar accident almost 20 years ago in Arkansas on Lake Hamilton. The questions would be, I think, Did the Coast Guard do what they were supposed to do? Did the operators do what they were supposed to do? Did the equipment do what it was supposed to do? Certainly we will be looking carefully at the report to decide what needs to happen as a result of that report. Certainly this is an accident we wouldn't want to see happen ever again. Since its inception, the NTSB has investigated thousands of aviation and surface transportation accidents. They are busy right now investigating what happened in Branson, MO. Other examples are the Southwest Airlines engine incident in April, the autonomous vehicle crash in Tempe, AZ, and the collision of the Amtrak train and the CSX freight train in South Carolina. That is what they do. Its staff and leadership are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Unfortunately, we have had two nominees for the National Transportation Safety Board who have been pending for consideration for many months--one a Democrat, another a Republican. The confirmation of those two people would ensure that the NTSB has a full board to fulfill its critical mission. I have been assured that we are going to move forward with those confirmations later today. I can also assure my colleagues that Senator McCaskill and I and Congressman Long will be closely monitoring the investigation as we learn what happened and do what we need to do to make sure it never happens again. So with gratitude to the first responders, the medical staff, and the members of the Branson community who stepped forward to assist in this tragedy, I close my remarks and turn to Senator McCaskill for whatever she may have to say about this event.

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, last night, the Major League Baseball All- Star Game was hosted in Washington. In conjunction with that game, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum hosted an event to honor the Homestead Grays, which was one of the teams from that league. There were great teams in that league. The Homestead Grays had won the Negro League World Series in 1943, which was 75 years ago. They had a great exhibit here in town about that team and about the history of that league. The museum, which was founded in 1990, is located in Kansas City, MO. It is dedicated to highlighting and preserving that important part of our sports history--the history of African-American baseball. Bob Kendrick runs that museum, and it is a museum I would encourage all of my colleagues to visit as the All-Star Game was in Kansas City a few years ago, and it was one of the venues for Major League Baseball. When people are in Kansas City, playing the Royals, managers and coaches often take their players there--players who haven't been there before and players who want to go back--just for them to have a sense of what it was like when there was the segregation of baseball and also some of the great players who played there. The chairman of the board, Stewart Myers, was here yesterday, and the vice chairman, Adam Sachs, was here yesterday. The museum is actually expanding and building the Buck O'Neil Research and Education Center on the Paseo in Kansas City. Buck O'Neil was a great Kansas Citian, but he had also been a great part of Negro Leagues Baseball. In June of this year, vandals broke into the YMCA, on which a lot of money had already been spent. It was where that part of the museum, the research center, was going to be housed. The vandals did more damage than they should have been able to do, and, unfortunately, there was some water damage in the building. Yet that effort continues. The Negro National League was created there in 1920 at that Paseo YMCA. There was an owners meeting, and the owners decided, It is time we really put more of a structure into this league. So they established a league. Before 1920, these African-American teams barnstormed around the country and played whomever they could play. After 1920, they could still barnstorm, but there was a league, there was a league championship, and there was a structure they had not had before. In 1947, as every baseball fan knows, the Brooklyn Dodgers decided to integrate baseball, and Jackie Robinson, who had played for the Kansas City Monarchs, was the first player to step into that challenge of integrated baseball. The league lasted another 13 years or so. I think the last team finally folded in the early 1960s. Some of the greatest baseball and the most exciting baseball ever played was played in this particular league--names like Satchel Paige, who said about himself that he was so fast he could turn off the light in the bedroom and be in bed before it got dark. He was a great pitcher, and he was a great runner. Buck O'Neil, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Jackie Robinson, and 100 other names in that last 3 years of the 1940s who joined the Major Leagues are all part of that story. Missouri teams were an important part of that story. The Monarchs played for 37 seasons, and I already mentioned that Jackie Robinson played briefly for the Monarchs before he went to the Dodgers. They won a dozen league championships. They sent more players than any other team to the Major Leagues. The St. Louis Stars, who were on the other side of our State--originally the St. Louis Giants--played 12 seasons. They won the league championship in 1928, in 1930, and in 1931. The real focus of the exhibit here this week was on the Homestead Grays. Now, where did the Homestead Grays come from? I think I already mentioned they were celebrating the 75th anniversary of winning the Negro League World Series in 1943. The Homestead Grays were originally based in Homestead, PA, just outside of Pittsburgh. In 1940, in 1941, and in 1942, they played at least half of their games here in Washington. When the Washington Senators were traveling, the ballpark would be available, and the Homestead Grays would play games there. By 1943, they were playing about two-thirds of their games in Washington and generally had more people at their games than the Washington Senators had at their games. They won nine consecutive league pennants from 1937 through 1945. There was even an effort, when the Nationals team was brought here, to call the Nationals the Washington Grays because of that tremendous team that had played here. The team owners chose the Nationals because it was one of the Washington Senators' official nicknames. That is an important part of our history right there, and we are going to be celebrating the 100th anniversary of that league in 2020. I and Congressman Cleaver, who is on the other side of this building, are looking at ways to draw more attention to this great part of our story. It is sad because of the segregated elements of it, but it is a great story because of the entrepreneurship and the sportsmanship and the competitive nature of that league.

Mr. BLUNT. I am looking forward, along with others, to celebrating that century of history. It is an important part of the story to be told, and I am glad the Senator has helped add to it here today.

Mr. BLUNT. I can tell the Senator is interested. I am pleased to yield.

Mr. BLUNT. Right.

Mr. BLUNT. I think that is an important part of the history. There were a couple of players there last night who had played in the league, and of course there are fewer of those players all the time. I have had a chance, as you have had, to meet and talk to them over the years--to talk about the excitement of that kind of baseball and their ability to entertain both with their sportsmanship as well as just with their talent as sportsmen. I think it was a great league, and it is a great story. I don't know if the Senator has had a chance to go to the museum in Kansas City, but as a guy who knew those players and appreciates what that league was all about, I would certainly love to go there with the Senator sometime.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I definitely agree with one thing that my friend from Connecticut just said, which is that there is a long record here on the President's nominee. It is a record I want to look at. It is a record I want to be sure that I talk about to the people I work for as we go through this process. In this process, we will have some time. My guess is it will take about the same amount of time that it has taken for the last two nominees, which means sometime in the month of September, in all likelihood, we will be on the floor, voting, and we will see where that vote takes us. A lot of people have jumped to a lot of conclusions here. It wasn't my friend Senator Blumenthal at all, but somebody had a news release yesterday at a news conference I was in. One of our fellow Senators had, apparently, gotten it out a little too quickly. The news release read that Supreme Court nominee XXX is the most extreme candidate that the President could have possibly picked. Another one of our colleagues said yesterday that he didn't care who the President nominated but that he wouldn't be voting for him. We are going to hear a lot of that over the next few weeks. At least going back to 1975, I think every single Republican nominee has supposedly been the nominee that would bring an end to so many things that people have tried to focus on when these nominations have come up. With Gerald Ford's nominee in 1975, who turned out to be Justice Stevens, these exact same things were said then. I don't know that it is what the President said during the campaign that matters as much as what the nominee will say during the next few days. I do know of the job the nominee currently has. I want to talk to him, and I want to look at the record. I want to visit with him about his philosophy personally before I reach a final conclusion. I do know the job that Judge Kavanaugh currently has is often cited as the second most significant court in the country, the DC Court of Appeals. I do know that his 100 most often cited opinions have been cited by more than 210 judges around the country. I do know that the Supreme Court has endorsed his opinions of the law at least a dozen times and has adopted them as the opinions of the Supreme Court. Remember the way this works with the job that Brett Kavanaugh currently has as a circuit judge with the court of appeals. Unlike all the others, it is the court that often has the real jurisdiction over a constitutional case. So there have been lots of cases, and we will be looking through the 12 years of what he has done as a judge. I know there are some requests to see every piece of paper that Brett Kavanaugh had in his hands when he was the Staff Secretary, the Assistant to the President, when George W. Bush was President. That would be every piece of paper that had gone to the White House. Yet the job of the Staff Secretary is not to have an opinion on those pieces of paper. In fact, he is probably the highest level official appointed by the President in the White House whose job it is not to have an opinion but to facilitate the work, to get the paper to whom it needs to go. I suppose we could get, virtually, every piece of paper from the National Archives and the George W. Bush Library. That is possible but not necessary and not justified. What is justified is to look at all of these opinions. What is justified is to look at the individual, to look at what he does on the court, to look at what he does in the community, to look at his opinions. These are, without any question, important responsibilities not just for the President but for the Senate. Once again, Americans are reminded that it matters who is in the Senate. It matters who composes a majority in the Senate. My guess would be, in 2\1/2\ months or so from now, that a majority of votes will be cast for Judge Kavanaugh, that they will be bipartisan in nature, and that he will go to the Court, probably, before its new term begins on October 1. In fact, that should be one of our goals here--to have a Justice in place by that time. Three of the current Justices on the Court, by the way, were put on the Court in an election year, in an off year--Justice Kagan in 2010. It was almost exactly analogous. A Democratic President and a Democratic Senate put a Democratic nominee on the Court who had, by the way, worked at the White House. The only difference was there was not as large a body of work to demonstrate the commitment we would hope to find to the Constitution and the law. In my mind and, I think, in the minds of a vast majority of the people I work for, the goal of a Federal judge and a Supreme Court Justice is to judge a case based on the law and the Constitution. It is to look and be sure that those match up and to be sure that the law is applied as it is written, not as a judge thinks it should have been written. It is to be sure the Constitution is applied as it is written, not as a judge thinks it should be amended. There is a way to pass a new law, and there is a way to amend the Constitution, but that is not to be done by the Court. It seems to me that in the Scalia tradition and in the Gorsuch nomination tradition, we have a judge here who appears to be committed in every way to looking at the law and enforcing the law. I think it was Judge Scalia who said and others who have said that good judges are often not happy with the opinions they have to render because the opinions they have to render are based on the facts of the cases and may not be the way they would have liked the cases to have worked out at all. It is not their job to decide how they would like the cases to work out. The job of a judge is to judge the application of the law and the application of the Constitution. Seven Justices, including our most recent nominee to the Court, Justice Gorsuch, served as law clerks on the Supreme Court. If he is confirmed, Judge Kavanaugh will be the eighth. His background, his training, and his work as a circuit judge appear to qualify him in a significant way. He was a Supreme Court clerk for Justice Kennedy. We ought to understand what is happening here. Justice Kennedy has been on the Court for 30 years. He filled a vacancy that was created in 1987. He served on the Court for 15 years after the person who nominated him to the Court had died. Talk about a long-term impact of both the President who nominates and the Senate that confirms. Three decades of impact on one of the branches of government is pretty substantial. In addition to being the clerk for Justice Kennedy, Judge Kavanaugh was, as I said, not only in the private sector but, for 5 years, served in the Bush administration. Probably the most important job he held in that administration was, simply, of seeing that things got done in an orderly way to produce a result. In 2006, President Bush nominated him to serve on the DC Court of Appeals. Twelve years later, we are here today. Judge Kavanaugh's opinions are cited by judges around the country. Again, the Supreme Court has endorsed his opinions at least a dozen times. He has written that the judge's job is to interpret the law, not to make the law or to make policy. It is to read the words of the statute as written and to read the text of the Constitution as written, being mindful of history and tradition--an important point. It is to be consistent with the law and the Constitution and to read the text of the Constitution as written while being mindful of history and tradition. Don't make up new constitutional rights that are not in the text of the Constitution. Don't shy away from enforcing constitutional rights that are in the text of the Constitution. That is in one of his many writings, and we have lots of things to look at here. Since 2009, he has been the Samuel Williston Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. In addition to being a brilliant legal mind, he is devoted to his community and, as we saw the other night, to his family and to his faith. He spends his time coaching youth basketball and serving as a church volunteer, as well as mentoring in local schools. His mom was a schoolteacher and went to law school while she was a schoolteacher and, eventually, became a judge. He takes these qualifications to the Court. I think this is an important part of our job--to advise and consent. Yet we have a lot of people who have rushed to a determination that they absolutely would not be for Judge Kavanaugh. I think a majority is likely to come to the determination that we should be for Judge Kavanaugh. I look forward to visiting with him over the next few days. I look forward to learning more about his philosophy as a judge and how he thinks the Supreme Court would be different and how his job there may or may not vary from being on that second-most important court in the country. My guess is he will say that it doesn't vary at all. The job of a Supreme Court judge, just like the job of a court of appeals judge, is to apply the Constitution, apply the law, and not try to make the law or to rewrite the Constitution. I look forward to that opportunity. I look forward to looking at many of the judge's opinions. I noticed two Pinocchios in the Washington Post today about one of the cases that has already been brought up--the determination of this argument about the right way to deal with a President while he is in office--certainly not a nuisance lawsuit. If the topic of a lawsuit is wrong, if it is the wrong thing for the President to do, there is clearly a way to remove the President. That is the point, I think, in what will be a much discussed law journal article that Judge Kavanaugh was making. He didn't suggest that the law now prohibited a President from being indicted. He just said that there is a constitutional way to return a President to the status of a private citizen, and then the President will have all of the same vulnerabilities that a private citizen would have if 200 Members of Congress filed a lawsuit. There is a place in the Constitution that says what 200 Members of the Congress should do if they think the President should be removed. That place in the Constitution does not say you should harass the President all you can about everything you can whenever you can. It is going to be an interesting debate for the American people. Once again, they are going to be reminded as to how important the courts are, as to the incredible impact of the appointing power and the nominating power to the Federal courts, and of the partnership responsibility and important impact that the U.S. Senate has. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, this week we are considering the bipartisan farm bill. The Senator from Mississippi who was just presiding, the Presiding Officer, and I were all raised on farms, so we have an immediate sense that this must be pretty important because of where we grew up and how we grew up. But I think people have less and less connection with what it really takes to grow the food and fiber we need in this country. The farm bill doesn't have quite the same resonance it used to have in terms of millions and millions and millions of families watching carefully to see what the Congress is going to do. In fact, the families who watch this most closely today may very well be the families who benefit from the nutrition parts of the farm bill. The vast majority of spending is in the nutrition parts of the farm bill. The truth is that if you don't have what people need to sustain themselves, nutrition policy really doesn't matter unless what we do in agriculture works. So a lot of the debate here is about that. In my State of Missouri, we have nearly 100,000 farms. The vast majority of those are family-owned and cover two-thirds of the total land of our State. The industry supports 400,000 jobs in a State of 6 million people, so it has a substantial impact on what we do. The Mississippi Valley, where the Presiding Officer and I are located, is the biggest piece of contiguous agricultural ground in the world, and we are in the middle of that. In terms of production in the United States, Missouri ranks second in the number of beef cows; fourth in rice; fifth in turkeys; sixth in soybeans; seventh in hogs; ninth in corn; and tenth in cotton. So there are a number of places in the farm bill that impact us, and those crops and others that we might not rank quite so high in are still an important part of our economy. World food demand is expected to double in the next 30 years or so. That is an easy thing to say and an easy thing to hear, but it is sort of a hard thing to think about. With all the time in which people have been trying to develop better and better agriculture--we think it took about 10,000 years to raise all the food we raise today--we have about 30 years to figure out how to raise twice as much food as we raise today, and we are likely to need to do that on no more land than we are doing it on now and with fewer inputs. We will need to do that in a way that probably uses not just less water per amount of food grown, but less water totally--not just less fertilizer per crop, but less fertilizer totally. So we will need a lot of science-based work to figure out how we meet this incredible opportunity and challenge of doubling all the food we grow. I saw some FFA students under a big shade tree looking back at the Capitol on two different days last week. Both times I said: I really can't think of any group I can talk to where I could say with such certainty that no matter what you do, understand that agriculture in the next 30 years as a part of our economy is going to be twice as big the day you retire from whatever you decide to do as it was the day you started. It would take a cataclysmic event for that not to be true. I said just a minute ago that world food demand will double in about 30 years. We think world food needs will double in 40 years. What is the difference? In 40 years, we will have to have that much food to feed all the people there are to feed. We think that in 30 years it will have to double to meet people's demands for the kinds of food they want to buy. No matter what, in 40 years, twice as much food as we have today will be needed. This farm bill gives us the chance to advance the kinds of policies that allow us to meet that challenge. It is a bipartisan bill. Chairman Roberts and Senator Stabenow, the top Democrat on the committee, have worked hard to produce this bill. Like all pieces of bipartisan legislation, it is not the bill either of them would have written on their own, but it is a bill that can and should pass. It makes difficult decisions on how to balance priorities and maintain budget discipline at the same time. It is logically connected with helping those who grow our food--the people who determine whether we have an affordable and dependable supply of food, fuel, and fiber. All of that is at stake in this legislation. The farm bill we are considering provides certainty for farmers. Like the farm bill we did 5 years ago, it takes a different course. It stays where we were. This is more evolutionary than a big revolutionary change. Five years ago, we went much more toward risk management, where the Federal Government basically helped put an insurance kind of component together to insure against the many things that happen in the life of a farm family and in the life of growing food. You don't control the weather. You don't control the prices. You don't control much of anything. You just hope that everything works out and allows you to continue to do something that in the case of almost all farm families in America, they love to do and that is why they do it. The bill makes forward-looking investments to help new and beginning farmers. The average age of farmers in America today is almost 60. That means half the farmers are over 60, and half the farmers are under 60. Obviously, we have to be concerned. We are concerned about pilots and say: Gee, we are running out of pilots because military-trained pilots are not going to be available to us. We are also about to run out of farmers. If half the farmers in the country today are over 60, we need to be looking for ways to allow beginning farmers to farm and to meet the needs as well as the opportunities of a growing world where, with fewer resources and the same amount of land, as I said before, we are going to have this great opportunity. Nobody in the world is better at this than we are, and nobody in the world is better positioned than we are to get ag products all over the world. This is a huge opportunity for our country. In my State--the one I know more about than any other State--we are home to world-class animal and plant scientists. There are more plant scientists within 100 miles of St. Louis, MO, than there are anywhere else in the world in the same amount of space. The farm bill will continue to allow those things to move forward and, again, try to do more with less and produce a better quality product with less input. As farmers deal with the unpredictability of the weather and the market, this is designed to help provide stability as that market grows. To go back to where I was a minute ago, I believe the biggest economic transactional group in America on any given day--people buying food, fuel, and fiber--relates to agriculture. That is going to double in less than one working lifetime. That is almost never going to work out exactly right. The weather will not be right; the world crops will not be what we thought they were going to be. We want to be sure people don't give up on this opportunity because it is also such a big challenge. How do you communicate in a world environment with this kind of challenge? The bill also makes investments in rural America to expand high-speed broadband and improve rural infrastructure, something the President, in every discussion I have heard on infrastructure, talks about 25 percent of this needing to go to rural infrastructure. But part of that infrastructure is wireless technology and wireless infrastructure. If you are going to have precision farming, if you are going to not put more cost into parts of your field than you should, you and your equipment need to know exactly where you are--I mean precisely where you are. You can't do that if you are not connected to broadband in some way. The GPS systems, the data centers, the automation systems just don't work without that. If you don't have high-speed internet, you don't have high-speed commodity trading capacity. So while somebody maybe 10 miles down the road from you has instantaneous ability to take advantage of a market to buy or sell, yours may be just slow enough that you miss the moment. So the ability to live in rural America, to thrive in rural America, and to farm as you are going to need to farm for the world we are about to get into is really important. This farm bill isn't just about economic security, although that is a big part of it. It is also about what it takes daily to sustain yourself and those you care about. As I said, the nutrition programs are now a significant majority of farm bill spending. We are going to debate how some of that money should be spent. But we are entering a time of great opportunity--a time where Americans, particularly in the middle of the country, are really good when you have an economy that is production-oriented, based on growing things and making things, and that growing-things economy is a lot bigger than just production agriculture. It is production agriculture; it is food processing; it is insuring what happens on the farm; it is transportation. We are one incident away from identifying where all that food has been all the time. I am glad we are getting to the farm bill as quickly as we are. I hope we can pass our bill, come to conference with the House, and put a bill on the President's desk as soon as possible, so with all of the other things that farmers and their families have to deal with, the one thing they will know with some certainty is what the Federal farm bill and what Federal nutrition programs are going to look like over the next handful of years. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. BLUNT

Mrs. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have 8 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, June 27, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Lieutenant General Stephen R. Lyons, USA, to be general and Commander, United States Transportation Command, Department of Defense. 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, June 27, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``How to Reduce Health Care Cost: Understanding the Cost of Health Care in America.'' Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Medicaid Fraud and Overpayments: Problems and Solutions.'' Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at 10:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``FAST-41 and the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council: Progress to date and Next Steps.'' Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Examining the Eligibility Requirements for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program to Ensure all Downwinders Receive Coverage.'' Committee on Veterans' Affairs The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Robert L. Wilkie, of North Carolina, to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a closed hearing. Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights The Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, June 27, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Protecting our Elections: Examining Shell Companies and Virtual Currencies as Avenues for Foreign Interference.''

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to join my friend, the Senator from Iowa, Senator Grassley, and talk about what has happened with the tax bill--the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, as the President insisted it be called because that is exactly what it was to do. It has been 6 months since it was signed into law, and it is clear that the country is thinking differently about the future. It is clear that there is more confidence in our economy than there has been in past years. It is also clear, frankly, that a lot of that confidence began after the last election and was reinforced by commonsense regulation instead of out-of-control regulation. The tax bill, on top of that, as it turns out, is doing the things those of us who voted for it said it would do and does not do the things people who were against it said were going to happen. I remember that nobody was going to get a tax cut--only to find out that 9 out of 10 people who paid income tax last year are paying less income tax this year. This week, the Gallup poll organization found that the percentage of Americans who are satisfied with the direction of the economy is the highest it has been in almost 15 years. In May, small business optimism increased among small business owners to the second highest level in the National Federation of Independent Business survey's 45-year history. In fact, there were several records that were broken in May. Compensation increases hit a 45-year high. Positive sales trends reached the highest level since 1995--over 20 years ago. Expansion plans were more robust than they had been at any time in the survey's history. That set a record as well. The combination of lower taxes and full expensing of new and used equipment has created an additional cash flow incentive that is making a difference. As of this month, 1 million new jobs have been created since the passage of the tax cut bill. In the last year, Missouri--my State-- added nearly 35,000 jobs, and more than 4,000 Missourians who were unemployed just found jobs. Nationwide there are more job openings than people looking for work. In the 20 years that those two things have been measured at the same time--how many people are looking for work and how many job openings there are--it is the first time in 20 years that there were more jobs available than people looking for work. I said a number of times on the floor as we debated the tax bill that there are two ways to increase people's take-home pay. One is to take less money out of the check they already get. Nine out of ten Americans who paid income taxes last year found that has happened for them. No. 2 is to be sure we have better jobs to start with, have an economy where people are competing to get workers and competing to keep workers. As businesses try to attract new employees, they are setting new, higher minimum entry-level skills and minimum job compensation than they have had before. The National Federation of Independent Business found that 35 percent of all small business owners reported increases in their labor compensation. One out of three NFIB employers says they are paying more now than they were 1 year ago. In addition, the report found that nearly 60 percent of respondents are hiring or trying to hire. When 60 percent of the respondents to a survey are trying to hire, that is pretty good news. It is good news for the economy, but it is also good news for people out there trying to get hired. If you are in an economy where lots of people are looking for workers, you are in a lot better place than if you are in an economy where only a few people are looking for workers. We need to make sure we have a skills and training match that gets people into those better jobs that are out there. I was all over our State a couple of weeks ago, in 10 different cities over 3 days attending business roundtables and going to manufacturing locations. In my hometown of Springfield, one manufacturing location had 20 available jobs right then. Other people were telling me that they have hired people back whom they had fired in the past, and the approach was: If you want a second chance, I know you know how to do what we do here. If you are ready to give it another try, I am ready to give it another try. That doesn't happen very often in very many economies. According to the survey the Association of General Contractors released this year, more than three-fourths of the people who responded to that survey said they couldn't find or they were having a hard time finding the qualified workers they need. In a bill that we will mark up in the Appropriations Committee next week, the subcommittee that I chair--the Labor, Education, Health and Human Services Subcommittee--we are going to continue to build this apprenticeship program in a bipartisan way that Congress has embraced. The President likes this program. We have had a 53-percent increase in just the last couple of years in the training money available for apprenticeships. Two hundred years ago, apprenticeships were the way everybody learned to do whatever it was they were going to do. If you were going to learn a skill, you were going to learn it as an apprentice. This is a program that really gives the employers the tools they need to develop the workforce they would like to have. It gives workers an opportunity to earn a salary while they are learning skills. It does that in a way that makes it possible for employers to do a couple things at the same time: prepare their own workforce, get people ready for work, and put people in a situation where they are suddenly showing up for work every day, learning skills while they are there, learning a lot of things that will get them ready for full-time employment. For the 9 out of 10 Americans who complete apprenticeship training programs and get a job--and again, 9 out of 10 people who go through those programs get a job, and the average starting salary for those jobs is $60,000 a year. These are not minimum wage jobs; these are significant opportunities to start at that level and work your way up. I hear from businesses and I hear from unions in Missouri all the time about the need for skilled workers and about the long-term careers that can result from meeting that skilled-worker need. As we continue to focus on training our 21st-century workforce, we know there are a lot of challenges we have to address. Next week, our subcommittee will consider our bill. Dedicating resources for programs geared toward better preparing and training the next generation of workers is one of our top priorities. I am pleased that the Trump administration has also taken important steps to strengthen apprenticeship programs. Last year, the administration issued an Executive order that doubled the amount the Federal Government spent on apprenticeship programs. In addition, the order shifted the role of developing government-funded workforce development programs from the Labor Department to private sector entities, such as trade groups, unions, and businesses, which, frankly, are much more likely to produce the workforce they know they need than a government program that is much more likely to produce the workforce we might have needed a couple of years ago. This is a program that is working. With an economy growing as fast as ours, we need to promote job skills and training that fit the jobs of the future. We need to ensure that opportunities are available for workers in rural areas, suburban areas, and urban areas alike. It is critical that we ensure that Federal programs are designed to continue to take advantage of the apprenticeship model that is working. Just a couple of years ago, I don't think people would have predicted where we would be with our economy today. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act had a lot to do with that--resetting the foundation of our economy, making it possible for us to compete around the world, going from the highest corporate rate in the world to a rate right in the middle. We are fine in the middle. Nobody is fine, if they are trying to compete, when they give themselves the biggest disadvantage in that field of competition. It has only been 6 months, but it has been a pretty good 6 months, and I think we will continue to see the good news we have been seeing as people develop more confidence in their ability to take care of their families and to take care of themselves, and more confidence in the economy is going to make that possible. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I begin today by congratulating my friend, the senior Senator from Kentucky, Mr. McConnell, on becoming the longest serving Republican leader in the history of the Senate. This is an institution where somebody once wisely, I think, observed that there are only really two rules. Unanimous consent and total exhaustion are the way the Senate has in the past reached conclusions. That would not be and is not an easy group to lead. But I think Senator McConnell, more than any other Member of the current Senate, appreciates and understands the institution in ways that very few people do. He used the skills of understanding the uniqueness of the Senate. There is no other legislative body designed, as this body was, to be sure that the minority is heard and to be sure that the time we take is adequate for points of view to be put out there. During that time, in the past year, Senator McConnell has led our conference and the Senate in delivering the biggest tax overhaul in three decades, confirming a record number of circuit court judges, and overturning unnecessary regulations that were holding the economy back, and that is not easy to do. Every Member of the Senate comes here on their own. They come here working for the people who elected them. In many ways, we have 100 independent contractors who understand their bosses--the people they work for--and the States they come from better than anybody else on the Senate floor does. Now, that is not a bad thing. That is an indication of bringing democracy to a place that has only 100 Members and always has almost 100 different points of view. Senator McConnell has earned the confidence of his colleagues. He has led the Senate in a good way. I am proud to call him my friend. He was the Senate whip when I was the majority whip in the House, and I am grateful for the 11 years, 5 months, and 11 days of steady leadership he has given. Now, Mr. President, with the Democratic and Republican leaders, the majority and minority leaders, both doing what they need to do, the work of the Senate continues. This is the 57th time the Senate has dealt with the National Defense Authorization Act. It is the only bill that we pass as an authorizing bill every single year, and I think that is highly appropriate. The No. 1 job of the Federal Government is to defend the country, and we give that issue a different level of time on the Senate floor every year than we do anything else. The national security threats facing the United States today are more complex and more diverse, certainly, than at any time since World War II and maybe at any time ever. The United States hasn't seen the kind of strategic competition we see from other places. We haven't seen the diversity of opposition that democracy faces today. Frankly, our competitive advantage is not what it once was. Our advantage on the battlefield is not what it once was. It is still better than anybody else but not as overwhelmingly better as we were at one time. For us to continue to be successful, we have to maintain that military advantage. We have to counter our potential adversaries. As Senator Rounds just mentioned, we have to look at the new potential of cyber warfare, being sure our cyber advantage, our technological advantage, can't be disrupted because someone else has developed a way to get into our systems better than we developed ways to defend them. That is not an acceptable conclusion. We need to work to defend an international order that has advanced our security, that has advanced our prosperity, and that our allies and partners are an intricate part of. This requires us to be sure we are always ready. Secretary of Defense Mattis and senior leaders of the Department of Defense have spent a lot of time crafting the national defense strategy. This bill makes it possible for us to pursue that strategy. This is not a bill where the Members of the Senate pretend to be the master strategists of our defense, but it is a bill that allows the Members of the Senate, with oversight, with responsibility to the people we work for, to be sure that plan not only makes sense but is supportive. In the National Defense Authorization Act, there is a total of $716 billion. Half of all the discretionary money we spend, we spend on this topic. This would be another time to repeat my observation earlier that this is our No. 1 priority as the Federal Government or we wouldn't be spending half of all the discretionary money we spend on this. We need to be sure we keep faith with those who are serving, to be sure they have the best resources, the best equipment, the best training that is possible. Importantly, the authorization bill provides our servicemembers with a pay raise, a 2.6-percent pay raise. That is the biggest pay increase in a decade, and it needs to happen. It authorizes crucial multiyear procurement authority to keep our lines of defense production open. You have to have more than a 12-month commitment to build things like the F/A-18 Super Hornets that are made in St. Louis. We have been using those aircraft at a high volume of use, part of flying package after flying package. The Middle East has impacted our use of those planes and others. This is a bill that says: OK. We need to be sure we are looking forward not just for 12 months but for a multiple series of months to allow that line and the great men and women who work on it to keep it going. The NDAA invests in emerging technology, and we do all we can to assure that our troops have what they need to make their mission successful. This bill makes significant investments in research and engineering to be sure that, again, we have the cutting-edge military technologies, and we have the cutting-edge ways to defend those military technologies. It is hard for me, when we come to this bill every year, not to make the point that we want to be sure Americans are never in a ``fair'' fight; we want to be sure they always have all the advantages anytime they engage to protect our freedoms. This bill recognizes the critical importance of our allies and our partners around the globe who fight together with us, who have shared responsibilities with us. This bill provides support to counter what we see the Chinese doing in the South China Sea or what we see the Russians doing as they look to--and obviously resent the success of NATO--both economic and defense of those NATO countries. It continues the fight against ISIS and terrorists in Afghanistan. We are hopeful--I am hopeful we have some language in this bill where, as opposed to an annual designation that recognizes those who have been wounded and injured in the service, we could make that an annual Silver Star Service Banner Day. I am grateful for the work those families do every year, and I hope we can continue to honor them in this bill. This would, frankly, be a perfect bill to honor families of those who have been injured and wounded in service, as it also recognizes the incredible service of John McCain. I can't think of anyone whose life of service to this country is more exemplary, is more determined, is more vigorous than his commitment to the people who serve but also to the taxpayers we work for. The John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act is named for the chairman. He has given so much of his life to our service. This is a bill that I hope appropriately honors his service, as I also hope it appropriately does what we need to do to honor our No. 1 priority--the defense of America. I yield back.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to honor Red Schoendienst, who in passing leaves behind a lifetime of commitment to baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the St. Louis community. Red Schoendienst began his major league career with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1945, after spending only 2 years with the Albany Cardinals, the franchise's minor league affiliate. His star rose quickly within the franchise and the league, winning the 1946 Home Run Derby and, in the same year, participating in the Cardinals' World Series victory over the Sox. In his 19 seasons as a player, Red compiled a storied list of accomplishments, including being named to 10 All Star teams, but his contributions to the sport did not end when he retired his bat. He would return to the Cardinals as a coach in 1964 and managed the team from 1965-1976. He led the team to multiple World Series victories and National League pennants, and he was named National League manager of the year in both 1967 and 1968. After 2 years coaching the Oakland Athletics, he returned to the Cardinals to coach from 1977-1995. For the next two decades, Schoendienst would wear the Cardinals ``Birds on the Bat'' before home games and in spring training as a special assistant to the general manager. Red Schoendienst was one of the greatest Cardinals of all time, having been a Red Bird as a player, coach, and manager. The Cardinals retired his No. 2 in 1996. St. Louis recognized him with his induction into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1998. His legacy was not only engrained in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989, but also in the memories of teammates, colleagues, and fans who had the privilege of seeing his accomplishments and his great smile. To quote the Schoendienst family upon his passing: ``He inspired all that knew him to always do their best. Red was a great ball player, but his legacy is that of a great gentleman who had respect for all. He loved his family, friends, teammates, the community and his country. He will be greatly missed.'' To Red Schoendienst's family, thank you for sharing him with the St. Louis Cardinals, St. Louis community, baseball, and baseball fans. Red Schoendienst was a great gentleman, a great sportsman, a great competitor, and he will be greatly missed.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk about the economy today, something that most of us are talking about when we are home, and for good reason. Yesterday the Labor Department announced that our economy hit a milestone that we never hit before in the time that we have been measuring these two things at the same time. There are now more jobs available in the United States than there are job seekers. When I was in Missouri last week, we did a number of events all over the State. At that time, I was confident that in the 12 States in the middle of the country, there were more jobs than people looking for jobs. That was news. But even bigger news is the news that was announced yesterday, that there are 6.7 million job openings and there aren't 6.7 million people on unemployment. In fact, the unemployment rate is 3.8 percent. It matches the lowest number we have seen in 50 years. The last time numbers were this low, in fact, was during the Vietnam war, when many young men were being drafted into the military. That was the last time we had an unemployment rate this low. Everybody understands--and they should understand--that the 6.7 million jobs don't necessarily have 6.7 million people ready for exactly the jobs that are out there. That should encourage us, among other things, to be thinking about what we need to be doing to make sure that people are either prepared for jobs or they have the skills to allow them quickly to become prepared for the jobs that are available. Two-thirds of Americans say it is a good time to find a job. That is 25 percent more than in the last administration who think it is a good time to find work. Working with the President, the Senate and the House have done what we could to fuel the economy. The House and Senate both have rolled back regulations that didn't meet the commonsense test and passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The President of the United States kept telling us: Don't call this tax reform. Who knows what that means or where it might wind up. What we want to do here is to cut people's taxes, increase their take-home pay, and do things that increase jobs. In the 10 cities I was in last week, I think I saw virtually every reporter in the State. At least every reporting agency had somebody at those events. We had roundtables with employers. We had meetings with people who were able to buy a house that they couldn't buy otherwise. We had people who really appreciated the extra $500 a year or the extra $152 a month or the extra $200 a month that they were seeing in their family budget, which last year would have been sent to Washington, DC. I said many times during that tax cut debate that there are two ways to increase people's pay. One is to take less money out of it. We said that if we passed that bill, 9 out of 10 people who paid taxes last year would pay fewer taxes this year. And the second way we increase people's take-home pay is to give them a better job, to start with. That is what happens in a growing economy. One of the things I thought was most surprising was how many employers stepped up, and in how many different ways, to say: We appreciate this economy and will reward our workforce like we, frankly, didn't know we could afford to do and knew we didn't have to do in a more stagnant economy in the past. Some companies gave bonuses. Some companies gave other benefits. There were several companies that increased their minimum level of pay, whatever that was. One major national retailer said they were going to increase their minimum wage to $11. Over the next specific number of months, they were going to increase that $11 minimum to a $14 minimum--not because the government told them they had to do that, but they wanted to be sure that in a growing economy they kept their employees. According to a recent National Federation of Independent Business survey, 76 percent of small business owners believe the current business climate is headed in the right direction. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, 86 percent of those manufacturers plan to increase investments thanks to tax reform, 77 percent say they are planning to increase hiring, and 72 percent said they plan to increase wages for their employees. That is the kind of thing that happens in a growing economy. I was at Gray Manufacturing in St. Joseph, MI, last week. The president of that company, Stet Schanze, said his company is among those feeling optimistic about the future. They are trying right now to find the 20 workers they need to fill the 20 jobs they have. In my hometown of Springfield, Mary Beth Hartman, the president of a local construction company, said she had been able not only to hand out employee bonuses but to buy new equipment. They could buy the new trucks they had been waiting for some time to buy until they were sure they moved from a time when you have to take what money you have and repair something to where you really can make the kind of long-term investment that, frankly, the tax bill encourages you to do. Also, if your business is doing as well as you did last year, you have more money than you had last year. You can take some of that money off the table and buy the equipment and replace the equipment that you had been hoping to do for a long time. Jamie Burger, the Scott County Presiding Commissioner, told me: Everywhere we go, hiring signs are up. That is new in our State. I think it is true all over the country. At least a million new jobs have been created since the Tax Code changes passed. I will be reminded by the President if I don't say it: It wasn't the Tax Code changes. It was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that the Congress and the President worked together to create. I met local officials and business owners who were located in opportunity zones. This is an idea that is in the tax bill. Senator Scott and others were really thinking about what we can do to encourage people to put money in those communities that aren't doing as well as others around them. So you take economically distressed areas and allow a new kind of investment to occur in those census areas. You take your capital gains profits, which you very likely made somewhere else, and you put them in real estate or in a business or you invest them in some other way in one of the opportunity zones. We have 161 in our State. When I was with Mayor Hark of Hannibal and local officials in Hannibal, they were certainly talking about what to do there in Kansas City. I was with the electric company, Kansas City Power and Light. They actually have based a new local access point in one of those opportunity zones near the historic 18th and Vine area, the jazz area in Kansas City. They were talking about that particular opportunity to talk about what the Tax Code changes have done and what the tax cuts bill has done. They are in the process of reducing electric bills for their customers by $100 billion because that is how many fewer tax dollars they are going to send to Washington than they did last year. By the way, every one of those tax dollars gets passed along to a rate payer, just like every one of those tax savings also gets passed along to a rate payer. The economy is moving again. The tsunami of redtape that we saw in the last few years, piling well over $100 billion of extra costs going to the government, is gone. By their own estimates, that number was up to $700 billion, when you project that number into the 10-year future. That is $700 billion of redtape. When the President took office, he was able to eliminate some things that hadn't gotten done yet. Congress was able to overturn 16 rules that had significant compliance cost savings under the Congressional Review Act. It had been used exactly one time in the history of the law until this Congress and this President were able to reverse rules that were slowing the economy down, like the clean power rule, which would have doubled utility bills in Missouri in a decade or so. The waters of the United States rule would have put the EPA in charge of things they shouldn't be in charge of. By the way, neither of those rules have been allowed to go into effect--not because of the calendar but because of the courts. In both cases, the courts said to the past administration: You can't do that. Instead of continuing to appeal the ``you can't do that'' decision by courts, the Trump administration reversed those policies. We still have lots of protections, but we don't have protections beyond what the government is legally allowed to do. By the way, those protections were just so-called protections. They definitely would have slowed the economy down. Whether they would have definitely added much to either our water or our power policies is a big debate. Keeping regulations where they need to be and working to confirm well-qualified nominees to both the courts and the administration are really important. We are going to be here in August this year. I wouldn't want to fall into the trap of suggesting that Congress isn't taking a vacation in August. What Congress isn't doing in August--at least the Senate is not able to do--is to be home doing the work we need to do at home. Part of the job as a Member of the House and Member of the Senate is to be talking to people where they work, talking to people they work for, seeing those problems firsthand, and being part of that discussion going on where they live. We are not doing that this August. Our leader said we are going to be here. Part of it is because the other side has just taken so much time to make it difficult for the President to get his team in place. We never had anything like this happen before in the history of the country for judges and U.S. attorneys to be confirmed. Senate Democrats have forced 100 cloture votes. What is a cloture vote? A cloture vote, really, is a demand that you have up to 30 hours of debate before someone is confirmed. Yesterday we had this long time set aside for debate. They insisted on it. There was, not so shockingly, no debate. The vote was almost unanimous, after hours of not being able to do anything but have the floor open for debate for someone who there was no debate about. That has happened 100 times in this Congress and Presidency. In the last 15 months, that has happened 100 times. In the previous six administrations, in the first full 2 years of all six of them combined, that happened 24 times. So we have gone from an average of 4 times per Presidency for the last six Presidencies to 100 times for this Presidency. That is not acceptable. The long-term solution to that, by the way, is not to be here in August. The long-term solution is to change that rule. That rule is being abused. It needs to be changed. The committee chair has voted that rules change out of the committee. When my colleagues get tired of the rules being abused, that is when we will be able to change the rules. At the same time, we confirmed a lot of judges. As a matter of fact, 18 percent--one out of eight--of all Federal court of appeals judges have been nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. Our friends on the other side say: Well, jeez, how can you be bragging about the President being able to get all of those judges confirmed and complaining about how much time it took? They know and I know and people watching the Senate know that we managed to get those judges confirmed, but the loss--and it was a devastating loss--was the ability to get on with other legislative work. We should be debating the appropriations bills one bill at a time. We ought to have an infrastructure bill on the floor. Today we should be debating the Defense Authorization Act. We have a lot of work to do, and our friends on the other side of the aisle know that every hour they force to be taken for something else-- and certainly a lifetime judicial appointment is important, but every hour they force to be needlessly taken for that is an hour that the Senate can't get to anything else. We are going to put a lot of those hours back on the table in August, and we are going to continue to do that work and hopefully do the work publicly and visibly and in a way where every Member is allowed to offer every amendment they want to, to debate how we spend people's money, to debate how we defend the country, and to debate how we try to do things that encourage us to be more competitive. We have a full agenda ahead of us. We are going to be here for the rest of the year working on that agenda. I look forward to that. Hopefully the economic news will continue. Even the New York Times--a group that has run out of words to use to praise the administration or the Congress--said last week that they had run out of words to talk about how good the job numbers were. When the New York Times runs out of words to talk about how good the economy is, the economy must be really good. It can be better. It needs to be better. We need to continue to see people not just with more take-home pay, but now our goal should be more take-home pay because they have better jobs, and people have better jobs in a stronger economy. We are headed in that direction. Let's be sure that we continue to head there. I suggest the absence of a quorum.