Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I certainly appreciate the opportunity we have had to work on this. Senator Klobuchar and I work together on the Rules Committee, as well, where I am the chairman and she is the ranking member, and the daily activities of the Senate come to us often. This was an action that created an opportunity where we looked at the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995. As Senator Klobuchar has suggested, there are things that may have been well-intended at the time, but they really put too many obligations and too many restrictions, in our view, on victims. Those things are all eliminated. Members of Congress, if they are personally involved in harassment, will be personally liable for the compensatory damages of that. I think it puts the responsibility where the American people think it should be. Both of our leaders have been very supportive--both Senator Schumer and Senator McConnell. Many of our Members were involved in drafting this legislation, and there were many more who, after they had time to look at the final product, cosponsored the legislation. I think approximately one-third of the Senate by the time this bill came to the floor were cosponsors of the bill. We look forward to this bill further defining what we see as our responsibilities. I am pleased to see the action of the Senate today with the unanimous clearance of every Senator on both sides, which enabled this bill to come to the floor and now has been approved.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. BLUNT. Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to turn to my colleague, Senator Klobuchar. We have worked together on this bill. We are pleased to be able to bring it to the Senate floor today. We are pleased that all of our colleagues had time to see it, that it went through the process on both sides without objection, and that now it has been voted on by the Senate. Senator Klobuchar.

Mr. BLUNT. Section 111 of the bill includes a new requirement for Members to reimburse the Treasury in specific circumstances. The description of harassment in this section is only intended to be used during adjudicatory processes to determine whether a Member is required to reimburse the Treasury.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2952.

Mr. BLUNT. I know of no further debate on the bill.

Mr. BLUNT. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Georgia. I also join Senator Hoeven in mentioning the incredible leadership that Senator Isakson has shown for veterans and the way we deal with veterans' concerns. We honor their service. The Senator from North Dakota just mentioned that Monday, of course, is Memorial Day. On Memorial Day in 1983, President Reagan said: I don't have to tell you how fragile this precious gift of freedom is. Every time we hear, watch, or read the news, we are reminded that liberty is a rare commodity in this world. President Reagan's words from 35 years ago are every bit as significant today as they were then. The willingness to pay the price for freedom has been paid by every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine, and every person in the Coast Guard, the National Guard, and the Reserves. So on Memorial Day, we honor their willingness to do that. This is a good time also for us to discuss the things Congress has been doing to try to honor that service as we continue to look at the challenges that veterans face. I have spoken before about the HIRE Vets Act, which was signed into law last year. The bill established the HIRE Vets Program within the Department of Labor to provide tiered recognition of what employers do based on their contributions for veteran employment. Some of the criteria were things like these: What percentage of the new hires are veterans or what percentage of the overall workforce is veterans? What types of training and leadership development opportunities are made available that veterans have unique opportunities to take advantage of? What recognition is given to skills that veterans learn while serving? What other benefits and resources are offered to veterans--things like tuition assistance? Creating a national standard will help vets narrow down their employment options and focus on their job search efforts. The HIRE Vets Program is up and running. This year, over 300 employers have signed up to participate in the pilot program, and we will see how that pilot works. I hope it works as well as those of us who sponsored and voted for the legislation thought it would--as a way to begin to give the recognition to employers that they deserve when they go beyond saying: Of course, we like to hire vets. HIRE Vets shows just exactly how much you like to hire vets and what difference it makes when you hire those vets. The second program that is getting started this year is the Military Family Stability Act. It was signed into law last November. We have the most powerful military in the world, the most well-trained military in the world, and a military that we have invested money, training, and energy in like none other. But the real strength of the military, according to military leader after military leader, is military families. In the Military Family Stability Act, we have created a new opportunity for families, because of education reasons or work reasons, to leave earlier than the spouse who is serving has been assigned for or to stay a little later if school is going to start before you otherwise were going to get there or school is going to be out a couple of weeks or a couple of months after the serving spouse had to leave. We have given families that option for the first time, where the family residential support money stays, and I think lots of families are going to take advantage of that. Families in the past could do that if everybody up and down the chain of command agreed. Now families get to do that because they think it works for their families. Secretary Mattis and Chairman McCain are very supportive of this program, as was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford, and we are looking forward to seeing how families are able this year, for the first time, to look at that next assignment and decide when it is the right time for the family to move to that assignment. I have talked to lots of families, many of whom saw that moment as the moment they decided to leave the military or the moment they looked back and saw it as their most challenging time, when a spouse's job had to needlessly suffer or that last month of school couldn't be completed just because they didn't have that flexibility. Now, President Trump has just nominated Acting Secretary Robert Wilkie to head the VA. We look forward to his leadership there. The President and the acting head of the VA just signed a contract with Cerner, a Kansas City company that will modernize the VA's healthcare IT records, the records that healthcare providers in the whole system can access. Cerner was already in the process of coming up with a system that worked for the active Defense Department. So it only made sense for them to be the company that also makes that transition into the even bigger VA health system--a system that works. Almost 2 million veterans have used the Veterans Choice Program. Senator Isakson has talked about how the bill we will be voting on improves that program. The Senator from North Dakota just spoke about some of the obstacles that, frankly, the VA system had put in the way of veterans who wanted to take advantage of the program. I have had people from Missouri in our office lately who are looking at VA health. We had a great discussion with the hospital administrators in our State about how it not only helps them but particularly helps small community hospitals, if they can identify something that a community hospital does better than they do and they are able to assign that work to be done there. The bill expands, as Senator Hoeven just mentioned, the caregivers program and makes the eligibility for caregivers greater than it has been before. Senator Blumenthal and I had a bill that was incorporated into the program, the Veteran PEER Act, which just simply turns to peer group veterans and lets them become part of the emotional and mental support team for veterans who are being challenged. I am glad to see that legislation in the MISSION act that has gone through the process. Certainly, Senator Isakson and Senator Boozman and others on the Veterans Committee--the people who have served on that committee in many cases in the House and Senate--realize what needs to be done here. Nearly 40 veterans service organizations, like the VFW and the American Legion, support this legislation. Together with the VA MISSION Act, the electronic health records system contract that is now being performed by Cerner, the HIRE Vets Act, and the Military Family Stability Act, I think what we see here is that when we think we have done everything we need to do to honor our veterans and, then, we look more closely, we find that there are still things that we can do, that we will do, that we clearly are willing to do. We owe veterans that. We recognize veterans in many ways over the next few days, but the Veterans' Administration has a job to recognize veterans every day and fulfill our obligation to veterans every day. I look forward to seeing the implementation of this well-thought-out addition to the veterans health system. I see my friend from Arkansas, Senator Boozman, is here, and he is next on our list.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President there will be an organizational meeting of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library in S-219, U.S. Capitol, on Wednesday, May 16, 2018, at 3:45 P.M.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, there will be an organizational meeting of the Joint Committee on Printing in S-219, U.S. Capitol, on Wednesday, May 16, 2018, at 3:30 P.M. joint committee of congress on the library

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, across the country this week and as is evident in the Nation's Capital, people are honoring men and women who serve in law enforcement. If you are visiting the Capitol this week, you will see more law enforcement officers in many different uniforms than you would have expected to see, unless you are already here for law enforcement week. When the Presiding Officer and I came to the Senate, Senator Coons from Delaware came at the same time. We started the bipartisan Senate Law Enforcement Caucus. It is a privilege for me to speak during law enforcement week as we honor those in law enforcement and to speak on behalf of Senator Coons and myself at a time when we think it is particularly important to recognize what law enforcement officers do. I want to talk a little bit about the law enforcement officers who lost their lives this year in the line of duty. Too many law enforcement officers around the country have lost their lives or have been fatally injured in the line of duty. Three law enforcement officers in Missouri were killed in the line of duty in the past year. The Clinton Police Department lost two of those officers--Officers Gary Lee Michael, Jr., and Christopher Ryan Morton. Miller County Deputy Sheriff Casey Shoemate also lost his life. Deputy Shoemate was killed last month while responding to a structure fire. He was in a fatal car accident. He served at the Miller County Sheriff's Office for 1 year. He is survived by his two children, his fiancee, and his parents and siblings. In March, Clinton, MO, Police Officer Christopher Ryan Morton was shot and killed when he and two other officers responded to an unknown situation as the result of a 9-1-1 call. As Officer Morton and his colleagues arrived at the scene, the subject opened fire. The officers returned fire. They entered the home in an attempt to take the man into custody. The man continued firing and wounded all three of the officers. Officer Morton's colleagues survived their injuries, but Officer Morton's wounds turned out to be fatal. He served the Clinton Police Department for 3 years. Prior to joining law enforcement, he had served in the Missouri Army National Guard, and he deployed to Kosovo and Afghanistan. But it was at home in Clinton, MO, where he lost his life serving others. He is survived by his parents and his siblings. In August of last year, another officer, Gary Michael, was shot and killed during a traffic stop. Officer Michael had stopped a vehicle for a suspected registration violation, and the driver exited the vehicle and immediately opened fire. Even though he was mortally wounded, Officer Michael was able to return fire and wound the subject, who was later apprehended. He had been with the Clinton Police Department for only 1 year. He was an Army veteran. He left behind his wife, his three children, and a grandchild. In April, the Clinton Police Department placed a tribute to the two fallen officers in the station. The plaque quotes John 15:13: ``Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.'' Officers leave their homes every day likely to face more difficult situations than most of us face. The families of officers always have in the back of their minds thoughts about what is going to happen to the person they love when that person is out there defending us. When officers put on their uniforms, say goodbye to the people they love, and walk out the door, they put their lives on the line to try to keep others safe. We are forever indebted to them. We are indebted to their families. This debt becomes a responsibility for the sacrifices they make and the trauma some families face every day. When we see more police officers ambushed, when we see officers becoming targets more frequently than they used to be, this is the debt we owe to them and their families. Every year in conjunction with National Police Week, the names of fallen officers like the three I just mentioned are added to the wall of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. There are more than 21,000 names on that wall, dating back to the first law enforcement death in 1791. This week, Senator Coons and I will be introducing the National Law Enforcement Museum Commemorative Coin Act. That bill authorizes the Treasury Department to mint coins to commemorate the opening of the National Law Enforcement Museum located in Washington, DC. The museum is scheduled to open later this year and is dedicated to highlighting and honoring the work of law enforcement past and present. After the government is reimbursed for costs associated with producing the coin, proceeds will support the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's educational and outreach programs. I certainly hope our colleagues will join Senator Coons and me--as 15 Members already have-- as we circulate the request to have a coin minted and used in that way. Men and women of State and local law enforcement put themselves in harm's way every day to protect our communities. The Federal Government shares the responsibility of ensuring that they have the training, equipment, and support they need to do their jobs. We benefit every day from the people who are law enforcement officers in and around this building. One of the things they do is obviously keep the people safe who work here, but they also make the U.S. Capitol the most open and accessible Capitol in the world. People come here every day and walk through this building where history has been made and where the work of democracy still goes on. It wouldn't be possible for them to do that if it weren't for the police officers who serve and protect the Capitol and the places around the Capitol where people who want to see democracy in action come. The stress and fatigue that law enforcement officers face in the line of duty can take a heavy toll and can lead to behavioral health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. They have the stress that wherever they are can become the frontline when working in law enforcement. I was proud that the Senate passed by unanimous consent the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act during Police Week just 1 year ago. This bill, which I cosponsored, will help law enforcement agencies better understand and address the behavioral health needs of their officers. On that topic, too often in the last decade, we have expected police officers to generally be the frontlines of behavioral health delivery. This is not a job that is best done by police officers and emergency rooms, but too much of it is still being done that way. Police departments all over the country have turned into crisis intervention teams, where they prepare officers--in some cases, every officer in a department is prepared to be a crisis intervention officer. They must not only be a law enforcement officer but also the on-site person who must recognize a mental health problem and deal with that issue differently than they might if it were another kind of problem. Recently, I cosponsored the Probation Officer Protection Act, which would allow Federal probation officers to protect themselves and enhance their ability to do their job by giving them the authority to arrest third parties who are interfering with their doing their job as they try to secure a person who has violated their probation. Currently, probation officers don't have the authority to arrest a third party who forcibly interferes with the officer's performance of his or her official duties. We recently had Jim Goehring from the Eastern District of Missouri in our office for a couple of weeks to advise us on this and other issues, to be our policy adviser on Federal probation issues. I know he and the people he works with would like to see that bill passed this year. There are a few things we can do and are doing to honor the men and women in law enforcement and to help them better meet the real challenges of their job. They are our first responders. They run toward danger when others are able to run away. All of us in this Chamber have an obligation to honor their service not just today, not just during Police Week, but every day and every week. This is a week set aside for that, as we see officers here in Washington and at home. It is a good week to say thank you. Whether it is here or where we live, reaching out and saying thank you to those who serve us is the right thing to do. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have just seen the rarest of occurrences in the so-called debate on these nominees on the floor. We actually had an explanation of the nominee we would be voting on. The fact that the Senate's time is taken in a way that it never has been before to process the President's nominations is outrageous. There is a view that we need more time to think about the nominee. There is plenty of time to do that. It is called the committee process. It is called a vetting process that also may very well take too long now, but there is plenty of time for these circuit court nominees we are voting on this week to be vetted. There is plenty of time to ask them questions. There is plenty of time to look into their backgrounds. The only reason, in my view, that we take the time we are taking to do six votes on six judges in a week--that is six 15-minute votes. If we were efficient enough to do that, it would take an hour and half to vote on these six judges, and the final vote on none of them would be different than taking 5 days. So why do we take 5 days? We take 5 days because that means we can't get to anything else. That means the President's ability to populate the government, as people elected him to do, is diminished. It also eliminates the time we have to do the other work the Senate is designed to do. The Senate is in, as the majority leader likes to describe it, the personnel business, but that is not supposed to be the only business of the Senate. I think we have now had over 90 of these cloture motions on nominees that the President has made. What does that mean? In the first 2 years of each of the previous six administrations, there were a total of 24 cloture motions--24 times in six Presidencies in 2 years did we do what we are doing right now. That is an average of 4 times--we are certainly going to be up to 104 times well before the end of 2 years-- the floor was abused in this way, an average of 4 times there was reason to have a debate. I haven't looked back at those debates. I guess I should. Wouldn't it be shocking if those debates were actual debates? Wouldn't it be stunning if all four of those times in each of those six Presidencies, when the cloture motion was required and using the maximum time available was insisted on--or at least a substantial portion of the maximum time available was insisted on--wouldn't it be something if we looked back and found that there really was a reason to debate those nominees? There might have been someone who was rejected, as John Tower was to be Secretary of Defense. If you were going to reject one of your colleagues in the Senate, that was probably a pretty debatable moment, and maybe it very well justified 20 or 30 hours, the maximum that could be insisted on. Now that is initially insisted on for everyone. Some of them take that time. Many of them take a portion of that time. What is really lost is the other work that could happen in the course of the week. That is why in 2013 and 2014, when Democrats were in control of the Senate, a bipartisan group of Senators got together and said: Let's eliminate a lot of these confirmations that aren't worthy of Senate time. Let's take people who, when there were only one or two of them in the whole government in 1882, might have been worthy of a Senate debate and Senate vote-- let's take them off the list now that there are 210 of them to be confirmed. Let's take them off the list. Of course, neither of those numbers are numbers from the debate, but that is what we did. Then let's put a whole other group on the list so that if no one demands a vote, they can be confirmed if the committee recommends they should be confirmed without a vote. We tried to eliminate the process so that we could focus in on that rare occasion when there really should be a debate on the Senate floor about these nominees. At the end of this week, I will look to see how many minutes were actually taken talking about these six nominees. It doesn't mean that the six nominees shouldn't be talked about. It doesn't mean, when you are going to put someone on a court of appeals for life, that the Congress shouldn't look carefully at them, but that has already happened. In some cases, it happened months ago, and in other cases, weeks ago. That has already happened. This is just a matter of whether we are going to vote or not. No votes will be persuaded by running the clock. No votes will be changed by running the clock. Of course, the power to put people on a Federal bench for life is an important power given in the Constitution to the President for the Supreme Court and such other courts as Congress may determine the country needs. It is not something to be taken lightly, but it is also not something to be abused. It is not a process where the protection you might use 4 times in 2 years is suddenly used 90 times in 15 months. Something is wrong when that has happened to the process. At the end of the day, the Senate is a place where the minority deserves to be heard. The Senate is a place where the rights of the minority--it makes it a unique legislative body, just like electing only one-third of the Senate every 2 years makes it a unique legislative body. It takes a long time to change the entire Senate. It has always been one of the purposes of the Senate is to be sure the minority had a chance to be heard, and the minority is always able to hold on to that right until the minority decides they are going to abuse that right. When a right becomes an entitled, ``Oh, it says we can have up to 30 hours of debate so we are going to insist on it every single time,'' that is when that right is in jeopardy. That is when you run the risk of losing that right.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, on May 5, 1984, former President Ronald Reagan issued a proclamation designating the first week in May as National Correctional Officers Week. He did so ``in recognition of the contributions of correctional officers to our Nation.'' I believe it is important to continue to recognize the contributions and critical work that correctional officers engage in on a daily basis, often risking their own safety in the course of carrying out their duties. Correctional officers are tasked with keeping inmates safe, as well as the thousands of staff supporting the operation of correctional facilities. Our Nation's correctional officers are not only an integral part of the criminal justice system, but they play a key role in helping maintain public safety. Correctional officers are also placed in a unique position to have meaningful interactions with incarcerated individuals. It is not uncommon for correctional officers to provide the prisoner population with the support and resources they need to succeed after their release so that inmates are able to become productive members of society. During National Correctional Officers Week, we are reminded of the service and sacrifice of correctional officers. I wish to take this opportunity to thank the over 400,000 correctional officers in the United States for the often thankless job that they do. I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring these key public servants.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly agree with and really understand and appreciate all the comments the chairman just made about Matt Pollard. He was the person I worked most closely with in the intel community. He served his country his whole adult life. He loved his country. He loved his work. He understood the importance of protecting, advancing, and defending who we are. The chairman pointed out his real dedication to his son. Often, Matt would come over to my office for a topline indication of what we were going to be doing when we got to the Intel Committee. Since you really can't talk about that until you get to the Intel Committee, a sure way to get a good conversation going was to say: Tell me about that son of yours. He would have chapter and verse of what had happened in the last few days of the things he was doing with Brad. He was really appreciated by his coworkers. I talked to the Chaplain yesterday. He went to see our Intel team moments after they found out about the loss of Matt Pollard, and the Chaplain was impressed by the emotional sense of loss this whole team felt. He knew more about his area of expertise than anybody on our staff. We will miss that, but we will mostly miss him. We are grateful for his service, grateful for his dedication to his country and his son and the future of both his country and his family. I yield back to the chairman.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise to join the Presiding Officer and others who have been on the floor hoping that we will move this week to support the confirmation of Mike Pompeo, who has been nominated to be the Secretary of State. It is a critically important time for the country. I think we heard this morning in a joint meeting from the President of France the importance of our country and those who agree with our defense of freedom and security to stand up for that. There are threats all over the globe, and certainly everybody realizes that Mike Pompeo, the current Director of the CIA, would have the knowledge he needs to do the job. He clearly has the experience he needs to do the job, and he has the support of the President, whom he would be representing. Historically, this body, until recent years, always dealt with foreign policy as if we were sure that bipartisanship starts at the water's edge and partisanship ends at the water's edge. That long tradition was always evident, particularly in the Secretary of State's job and confirming people to important positions that relate to our national security. John Kerry was confirmed as Secretary of State by a vote of 94 to 3. Hillary Clinton was confirmed by a vote of 94 to 2, Condoleeza Rice received 85 votes when she was confirmed, and Colin Powell was confirmed unanimously. That is the tradition the country has always set for this job. My colleague from New York Senator Schumer said in 2013--and this is an exact quote: ``Who in America doesn't think a President, Democrat or Republican, deserves his or her picks for who should run these agencies? Nobody.'' That is end of that quote. That is the answer to his own question. Apparently, that is no longer the answer to that question on the part of Senator Schumer and others. Senator Kerry, and later Secretary of State Kerry, said in 2009: It is essential that we provide the President with the tools and resources he needs to effect change. That starts by making sure he has the national security team he has chosen in place as soon as possible. Secretary Kerry and Secretary Clinton were not confirmed because Republicans agreed with every single one of their policy positions. They weren't confirmed because their colleagues in the Senate agreed with every one of their votes. They were confirmed because they were qualified to do the job, and the President, who had nominated them, deserved to have his team in place to carry out the policies he had been elected to carry out. Now the same standard should be extended to Director Pompeo, who is eminently qualified for the job. Director Pompeo graduated first in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1986, and he served as a cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall. After leaving Active Duty, Director Pompeo graduated from Harvard Law School where he edited the Harvard Law Review. This is a man of great accomplishment before he entered politics. In addition to those things, he also ran two successful businesses before he was elected to the House of Representatives in 2010. He served in the House from 2010 to 2017. He was a member of the Intelligence Committee. In that role, he was at the forefront of information that is important to national security, ranging from the Iran nuclear accord to the PATRIOT Act. He understands these issues. He is a person of significant capacity. Again, maybe most important of all the qualifications, he was picked by the President of the United States who, after this time of working together with Director Pompeo as the Director of the CIA, the President should know exactly what he is getting, and, frankly, we should too. President Trump decided to not only nominate Director Pompeo to be the Director of National Security, but when he was sworn in--when he was confirmed, before he was sworn in, 66 to 32 was the vote. Fourteen Senate Democrats, most of them still here--if not, they may all still be here--voted for Mike Pompeo to be the Director of the CIA. I would say he is more qualified today to be Secretary of State than he was then to be the Director of the CIA because not only has he done everything he has done up until then, but he has understood, from the unique perspective of the CIA, the foreign policy and the intelligence challenges we face every day. He has taken the responsibilities seriously. He has briefed the President over and over again. The President knows exactly what he is getting and Director Pompeo should know exactly whom he is working for.

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have 7 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, April 25, 2018, at 9:45 a.m. to conduct a hearing. 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, April 25, 2018, at 3 p.m. to conduct a hearing. committee on indian affairs The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 25, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing. committee on the judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 25, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Andrew S. Oldham, of Texas, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit, Alan D. Albright, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Texas, Thomas S. Kleeh, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of West Virginia, Peter J. Phipps, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and Michael J. Truncale, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas. committee on rules and administration The Committee on Rules and Administration is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 25, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing. committee on small business entrepreneurship The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 25, 2018, at 3:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing. subcommittee on oceans, atmosphere, fisheries, and coast guard The Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 25, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Enhancing the Marine Mammal Protection Act.''

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, over the last couple of weeks, many of us have had an opportunity to spend more time at home than we do just going back and forth a few days a week. While I was there, I had the opportunity to talk to small business owners, employees--people who are seeing their paychecks for the first time reflecting what we have done with the tax bill. Both in my hometown of Springfield, MO, and around our State, I also heard a level of optimism that was very encouraging. One of the people I talked to was on the national board of manufacturers. A recent poll of the manufacturers looking at their confidence level reflected that it was the highest it has ever been in all of the time they have been polling on how they see the future. Mr. President, where you and I live, in an economy that makes things and grows things, we always do better. We are a productive part of the country. We don't do quite as well in an advice economy, but we are not opposed to an advice-giving economy. We have people who give advice. But, frankly, if you put that on top of truly productive capacity and a marketplace that meets that capacity, we always do very well. As I talked to people, I heard consistently two reasons that people feel their optimism is justified and understandably growing. One reason is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. No matter what was said about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, people who were told it wouldn't help them are finding out, when they get their first paychecks, that it is helping them. People who were told that the investment opportunities that would encourage them to grow their small businesses wouldn't be there for them are finding out that they are there for them, and they see those things coming. The economy is generally seeing money stay where we live that otherwise would have gone to Washington, DC. Forty-three different entities have come to our offices with ideas about what they are doing. The 53,000 State employees in our State--the payroll deduction would indicate that this year, $32\1/2\ million from just that group of employees that was sent to Washington, DC, last year--it will stay in Missouri this year. I mentioned on the floor not too long ago that one of our counties had reported that their county payroll--that the average county employee would take home $1,800 more this year, with the same paycheck to start with. That is beyond what they would have taken home last year. For all of those county employees put together, in Boone County, MO, it would mean that $946,000 will stay in Boone County that previously would have gone to Washington, DC. That makes a difference in the economy of the county because there are a lot of other people beyond those 485 employees who see the same kinds of things happening to them, but it really makes a difference for families. That take-home pay difference that some people here in the Senate and other places in this building would suggest won't matter to families--it turns out it matters a lot. And I will say again that it particularly matters a lot if you don't have it. If you have all kinds of money, it is easy to say: Well, $200 a month--what difference does that make? Let me assure you, it makes a difference if you don't have it. Lots of families and individuals are beginning to see the ability to do more things with their own money. The second thing I consistently heard about was just the difference in the regulation atmosphere. Earlier this week, a dozen Federal agencies came together in an effort to improve the environmental review process to allow infrastructure projects to go on more quickly--not only to diminish the time it takes to get a project started but also to be able to, with more certainty, go out and start the process of bidding and acquiring and the things you need to do to make that happen. There were a dozen Federal agencies working together with a common purpose, asking: What can we do to make this system work better? We have had up to 29 statutes and 5 Executive orders that resulted in a number of different decisions under Federal law that allow those projects to move forward more quickly. We had a discussion in the Commerce Committee this morning with one of the nominees for the Surface Transportation Board who had been instrumental in helping put together a more streamlined way to get things done if, for instance, you were putting something back exactly where it had been. It makes sense to everybody in America that if you are building a bridge where there was a bridge, it should take less of an environmental impact study than if you are building a bridge where there has never been a bridge before. But until right now, those two things were not treated in a significantly different way; they were treated in the same way. Now, because of legislation that we passed and the President signed, they will be treated in a different way, as they should have been. Location is a great advantage to our whole country. Again, in the middle of the country, where I live, I have seen--I think it may be our greatest competitive advantage--access not only to the national marketplace but to the world marketplace. Generally, we have the same things in America. Things that allow us to put infrastructure in place more readily and make it more affordable to get it done in a quicker way are all good things. This week, one of the nominees we will be voting on is the Deputy Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. Over the last decade, based on theirs own estimate, the Environmental Protection Agency imposed somewhere between $43 and $51 billion in regulatory costs annually. You have to be an incredibly strong economy to absorb another $50 billion in regulatory costs from one agency. And that is their estimate; you could get other estimates that say: Oh, no, it is going to be a lot more costly than that. These are the costs they are willing to admit to. The current administration has turned the page. I hope that the new Deputy Administrator becomes an active part of that. I think the EPA has been on the forefront of really looking at the kinds of things that are holding back the economy and trying to do things that make sense. The EPA Administrator, Administrator Pruitt, quickly got on the job of dismantling two of the most costly and burdensome regulations that may have ever been proposed by any Federal agency. One is the waters of the United States, where the EPA decided that virtually all of the water in the country was somehow related to navigable water. Some of it might eventually run into navigable water, but the law says that the EPA has the authority to regulate navigable water. The EPA said: Oh, no, that means any water that could ever run into any water that could ever run into any water that could ever run into navigable water. In our State, that meant that 99.7 percent of the State would have been under the EPA authority, if they wanted to exercise it, for things that would have slowed down the economy, made it harder to resurface your driveway or dig a utility pole or put fertilizer on your field or get a building permit. It was a ridiculous proposal, and Administrator Pruitt and the EPA understood that it is ridiculous--just as, by the way, the courts did. The reason this had not gone into effect yet is largely because the courts basically said to the EPA, in many instances: You don't have the authority to do that. This change was made because the EPA realized that they didn't have the authority. Frankly, if they did have the authority, it would have been a bad idea. There was a power plan that would have been so excessive that, in the State where I live, the utility bill would have doubled in about 10 or 12 years--a power plan that would have added up to $39 billion in compliance costs, every single penny of which would have been passed along in your utility bill and mine, all of it added to the utility bill in ways that just, frankly, didn't make sense. The EPA has moved away from that but not away from the idea of regulation or environmental control. In fact, Administrator Pruitt came to the Thomas Hill Energy Center in our State in April of last year to hear directly from workers, from the electric co-op members that provide electricity to many of our rural residents, and from ag leaders about the impact of that. He listened to that and went back--I am sure he did that in other places--and withdrew that rule but at the same time proposed a solution for West Lake Landfill, which has been on the critical ``we need to take care of this'' list for 30 years. The job of the EPA is not to strangle the economy. The job of the EPA is to make the environment more protected by doing the things that the EPA was designed to do. I think that is what they have been doing-- looking at the rules that don't make sense, trying to be sure that we don't do things at the Federal level that cost people their jobs, their livelihood, and their opportunities for no reason at all. I had a meeting this week--it was Friday a week ago--at the Missouri State University, where the head of the Missouri Department of Agriculture, Chris Chinn, and the Missouri Farm Bureau president, Blake Hurst, and I answered questions for about 45 minutes from a crowd there to talk about agriculture and the future of agriculture. Not a single question was asked about the farm bill. The questions were basically about trade, rural broadband, and regulation. I think you could go to lots of other places and say: What do you want to talk about that you are most concerned about with the Federal Government, and two or three of those topics would come up again. Last year the Senate used the Congressional Review Act to block 15 new major rules that had come up late in the previous administration. That act had been used exactly one time since it was put into law, in 1995 or 1996. It had been used exactly one time during the entire life of the law until we were able to look at it and use it 15 times last year to eliminate rules that would have cost our economy $36 billion in compliance costs. They were not rules that we had before. In the case of the last administration, the country had gone along without these rules even being proposed for 7\1/ 2\ years but, suddenly, on the way out the door, there were all these new things that would have held the economy back in a way that, frankly, nobody would want to have to do if they were still there to take responsibility for it. So we are looking at what we can do in regulation, looking at what we can do in transportation, looking at what we can do to make us more competitive and allow things to happen so the taxpayers have the benefit of a process that works for them instead of a process that works with them. Rolling back unnecessary redtape isn't just important for infrastructure. It isn't just important for individuals. It is also important for strengthening our economy. I think we are seeing that happen. These people who are willing to serve, like some of the individuals we will be voting on this week, are people who are willing to give of themselves and their time, their effort, and their energy to work for the citizens of our country. We should be grateful to them, but we should also be sure that we are watching carefully to be sure that they continue to do the kinds of things that create opportunity and competition. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, everybody doesn't just come up with the same description of someone they have worked with every day by accident. When we think about everything that has been said and everyone independently setting down what we remember about Senator Cochran, what we think about when we think about Senator Cochran--he is a gentleman. He is a quiet persuader. He gets things done in a way that makes things that would otherwise seem hard for other people seem easy for him. The true, groundbreaking politician came to the Congress in 1972, but in 1978, he was the first Republican elected statewide in Mississippi in over 100 years. He gave evidence to that willingness to serve everybody in the direction he gave his staff. Nobody ever talks about Senator Cochran without talking about his staff. It doesn't take long into that conversation to talk about his staff. Just as Thad Cochran encouraged them to do on day one, they always tried to solve everybody's problem they worked for, no matter what that past relationship might have been or how they disagreed on other things. The first time I got a chance to work with Senator Cochran, I was the chief deputy whip in the House, and we were in a leadership meeting trying to bring some things to a conclusion. I think the majority leader in the Senate at the time was Thad's colleague from Mississippi. Trent Lott turned to Thad and me--I was the junior person at the table. My mom and dad were dairy farmers, and maybe that is why Senator Lott thought I would understand this. It was a dairy issue, as I recall, and he said: Why don't you and Senator Cochran work this out? I think it was something on milk marketing orders, which almost nobody understood. It was a problem that nobody thought they could solve. I had been here about 25 months, and Senator Cochran had been here 25 years, and what I got was the great gift of watching him work out that problem, and it got to the conclusion that, for whatever reason, everybody was happy with. His leadership, for States like Missouri and Mississippi with large rural populations--I think we have a bigger urban population than Mississippi, but we both have big rural populations. Whether it was agricultural issues or flood insurance or rural economic development, Thad Cochran was always there--at one time, not just as the chairman of the Agriculture Committee but also the chairman of the agriculture appropriating committee, and anybody who has worked around here very long knows it doesn't get much more powerful than that when it comes time to solve problems. There have been mentions of Hurricane Katrina and stepping up, along with Haley Barbour, the Governor of Mississippi, coming together, convincing the Congress of things that needed to be done, and a few things that got done in Mississippi that didn't get done anywhere else. I was presiding this morning when Senator Schumer spoke. He mentioned--he didn't mention it is his comments a few minutes ago, but he mentioned this morning--and this is an important view of both of them--he said that he remembered Thad saying one time: I don't call a lot of press conferences; I don't think it is part of my responsibility. Senator Schumer quickly pointed out that was not his view of press conferences, but it was Thad's view of press conferences or ``Meet the Press'' or anything else that didn't focus on his job of getting things done. The bill we will vote on today does things for members of the Active Armed Forces and veterans that we haven't done in a long time. It is a fitting conclusion to the service of Thad Cochran, who in 2013 received the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award. He was stationed in Boston for part of his service in the Navy, where nobody could understand what he said, but they wanted to do whatever it was that Thad Cochran wanted to do. I liked the term that Senator Shelby used, that Thad Cochran is one of the last practitioners of the lost art of being nice--the lost art of being nice. I talked to my 13-year-old son Charlie just this morning, and I said: You know, Charlie, it is actually easier to be thoughtful than to be thoughtless. So many of us don't mature much beyond the 13-year-old understanding of that. We would be better off to watch and learn from what Thad Cochran did so well while he served in this body. Thad and Kay will be missed in the daily Senate family, but they will always be an important part of the Senate family. It is an exciting time when you get to go home to Mississippi and don't immediately understand that you very quickly have to turn around and come back to Washington to do what Thad did so well for so long, representing the people he worked for, the people he loved. At least two generations of Mississippians don't remember when Thad Cochran wasn't their Senator, and only when this time in the Senate ends will people fully begin to realize how much he did, how much they appreciate what he did, and how much has happened because Thad Cochran was here.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, first of all, I think the session led by Senator Alexander and Senator Collins on the cost-sharing has been very helpful and shows the impact that would have if we went forward with it, but I want to talk about the funding bill itself. The first and foremost thing this bill does is it makes critical investments to keep Americans safe. It is the largest annual defense increase year-to-year in 15 years. It provides a pay increase for those who risk their lives in service to us. When we send our men and women who are willing to do that job in harm's way, we ought to do everything we can to ensure that they have every possible advantage. We don't want Americans to be in a fair fight. We want Americans to be in an unfair fight because we have stacked the fight in favor of people who are defending us. We lost the advantages we had over the last 10 years. We clearly have not funded the military at the level it needed to be funded. We haven't provided the training dollars. We let the equipment get old. I would like to think I have consistently been on the other side of that debate. We see what happens when we lose that advantage. We lost 80 personnel this year and last year, 2017, in accidents--in training accidents and other accidents--where people are asked to do too much for too many hours without enough training on the kind of equipment they are going to be using. We had 80 people lost in those accidents--four times as many people as were lost in combat. We can't continue to let that happen. That is what this bill does. It turns the page after a decade of inadequate funding, a decade of diminished readiness, a decade of training that wasn't what people should have been expected to have before they were expected to do the things we asked them to do. This bill makes the equipment better, it strengthens our military defense, it strengthens our missile defense, it funds new weapons systems, and invests heavily in measures designed to counter the threats such as ISIL and North Korea. It begins to upgrade U.S. military strength with funding increases for shipbuilding, for aircraft procurement and maintenance. Some of the aircraft we make--the Growlers and Super Hornets--in Missouri, and there are lots of small suppliers that are a part of that readiness chain that are jeopardized when we decide we are not going to keep our equipment up-to-date or repaired. This bill has a pay raise for the military men and women that they deserve. It also deals with veterans. In my State, we have 500,000 veterans. I am proud to see this bill provides a record level of Veterans' Administration funding but also continues down the path of being sure veterans have more choices. There is no reason to drive by three hospitals that are really good at something that the veterans hospital you are going to may not be as good at. There are things veterans hospitals should be better at than anybody else. They should be better at post-traumatic stress. They should be better at IED attacks, where eyes and limbs are hurt. Always the veterans hospitals have been as good as anybody on prosthetics when people have lost legs and lost arms. That is part of what veterans uniquely are likely to have happen to them more than others. There is no reason to assume they should be as good at kidney dialysis or open-heart surgery. There is every reason to assume, if they want to go somewhere that really is good at this that is closer to where they live, they should be able to do that. This bill funds either the construction or the repair and backup of almost 100 miles of the wall that the President talked about at the border. It provides the money to keep the Guantanamo Bay detention facility open. It has the Fix NICS component, particularly with Federal agencies. It was a shock to me and others, as we have looked into this, that so many of the problems with reporting to the background check system have been through Federal agencies and the military failing to report the kinds of things that clearly would be reported if they had happened in a civilian environment. Fix NICS does that, providing incentives for States to figure out how to make their reporting better. This includes the Hatch and Klobuchar safe schools language that talks about how to stop school violence, early intervention, military mental health awareness. In my State, at least, we have been leaning on something called mental health first aid, where teachers and others who work with young people are not turned into psychiatrists or psychologists but in a fairly intensive, but short, period of time are given some of the key things to look for to then try to connect that young man or woman with the kind of help they need. The equipment that could be available for better securing schools would be available in new ways under this bill, if we pass it. Some of that is in the education area. I am on that subcommittee with the Presiding Officer. The labor, the health and human services, and the education components of the bill are strong--what we are doing for the third year straight in healthcare research. Until this year, every time we made that new commitment to healthcare research, after 12 years of no increase at all, we did it with no new money. It was purely prioritizing this as an important thing. With this year's bill, the bill we will pass today, we will restore 22 percent of funding that the NIH lost in research buying power in the previous 12 years, where not a single new penny went to healthcare research beyond what they had before--whether it is Alzheimer's, cancer, or the BRAIN Initiative. We just simply know a lot more than we knew a dozen years ago about the human genome, about the individual impact of cancers, about getting your own system more aggressively fighting back, by sort of amping up your own system's response. Your system and mine, we have a response to those cancerous attacks, but usually it is quickly overwhelmed by the cancer itself. It doesn't have to be that way because research has led the way on that. This bill is not perfect. I could go through the bill--every one of us could go through the bill and find something in there that we individually don't like. That is part of the legislating process. Going back to my earlier comments, it is a different decision to be made when you decide: I am absolutely committed to defending the country, but I am going to find something in the bill that funds that that I can be against, so even though I can be for defense, I don't have to explain anything I am not for. I would rather we brought these bills to the floor one at a time. I am lucky--I hope--fortunate to be on the special committee that was just appointed to try to figure out a way to make the budget and appropriations process work in a way that this might be the last time we have all this in one bill. It didn't used to be that way. It has been that way for about 10 years now. It needs to stop. Every Member needs to have a right to be able to amend these bills, to bring them to the floor one at a time or two at a time, have a real debate, and put them on the President's desk as we pass them, not to wait until 6 months after the new spending year begins and then have one big bill and have no real impact on what is in that bill in ways we would like to--at least vote on having it changed. It is not perfect. There was right-to-conscience language, where healthcare professionals who didn't want to be part of a particular procedure that would generally be a life-ending procedure because of their personal conscience and faith beliefs--you would think that could have made it in this bill, but it didn't. I would be much happier about voting on this bill if it were there, but it is not there. So I can find things that aren't there that I would like to see in this bill. I can certainly find things that are in the bill that I would prefer not to see us go forward with. But that is the process of democracy. That is the process of legislating. You have to look at the alternatives before you. If we are going to make the kind of commitment to our national defense and the men and women who defend us that this bill makes, if we are going to make the kind of commitment to healthcare research and school safety that this bill makes, the choice today is to vote for the bill sometime before the continuing resolution runs out tomorrow or to think of how you could have done this in a better way. I think we all can think of better ways to do this. Moving forward here, it is important that we have made a commitment to the opioid crisis we are seeing in the country. More people now die from drug overdoses than in car accidents. Drug overdoses have become the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the country today. We have $1.5 billion in flexible spending for the States as part of the $3 billion being spent to fight the opioid crisis in the next year. About 15 percent of that $1.5 billion is going to go to the States that have the biggest problem. There will be some allocation to every State because every State has a problem, but some States have bigger problems. For the first time in this fight, with the good advice of Senator Shaheen, Senator Capito, Senator Portman, and others, we are factoring in a way to get more money quicker to the States that have big problems. There is also money for the National Institute of Health to research new ways to respond to drug overdoses so that more people survive the overdose and research different ways to deal with pain so that people don't get addicted to the things they are addicted to now and either die from overdoses or move to even more dangerous drugs. And people who don't die from an overdose can see their lives crumble in front of them even if they are fortunate enough to recover from the addiction they became part of. This is a national crisis, and this bill views it as a national crisis. Whether it is a domestic crisis, like opioids, or an international crisis, like our failure to defend ourselves in a way that people who defend us would expect us to be willing to do--this is a bill that overall deserves to be voted for. I intend to vote for it. I intend to start tomorrow trying to have a bill next year that not only comes to the floor in a different way but also corrects the problems that I think could have been better served in the bill we have before us today. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, in the next few days, we will begin to debate this important bill on sex trafficking. This is something that, for whatever reason, the country turned its back on for too long. As the ways to communicate and the ways to offer so-called adult services grew, the government and law enforcement didn't have the new tools they needed to fight back. This is a bill that Senator Portman and others have worked so hard on, on this side of the building. We are actually taking up the House bill. The principal sponsor of the House bill is Missouri Congresswoman Ann Wagner, with whom I have worked closely and who has been a good friend of mine--she and her family--for a long time. When the House passed this bill overwhelmingly, Ann Wagner said that they ``sent a clear message to trafficking victims: you are not alone, and justice is no longer out of reach.'' It is hard to imagine a more lonely place, I would think, than someone who is being trafficked, some young woman, young child, boy or girl, who has fallen into the hands of traffickers and who, for drugs or whatever reason, has been sold into this or become dependent in a way that put them into this. Congresswoman Wagner went on to say about this bill that ``FOSTA will produce more prosecutions of bad actor websites and more convictions and put more predators behind bars.'' She said: ``It will give victims a pathway to justice and provide a meaningful criminal deterrent, so that fewer businesses will ever enter the sex trade and fewer victims will ever be sold.'' The whole idea that people are being sold to be used in whatever terrible way someone else wants to use them is so offensive. The idea that we have websites that people can go to that have some description of some person who is helplessly in this system and how they would be used--that is something Congress should stand up on. By voting for Congresswoman Wagner's bill, the House has already done that. On our side of the building, Senator Portman and others have worked so hard to draw attention to the fact that we need to find time to get this bill on the floor. Now we have a bill that has already passed the House, and all we have to do is pass that bill and send it right to the President, or we can make some changes that Senator Portman and others may want to suggest, and then we can send the bill back to the House, where hopefully it can be dealt with in the same overwhelming way they passed it the first time. Then we can get this bill on the President's desk and do exactly what Congresswoman Wagner said this bill will do. It is time for us to do everything we can to end this. We would be foolish to think that one piece of legislation will end this problem. By working with law enforcement, looking at trafficking, looking at locations like the intersections of major interstate highways, where it is easy to bring people, to pass people along to somebody else, to get them to where not only are they disoriented, but your actual contact with that person doesn't last very long before you give them to somebody else or sell them to somebody else who could use them in a terrible way--this needs to stop. I am confident the Senate will pass this next week, and I will just say that it is about time. Funding the Government Mr. President, also next week we are going to move forward on an appropriating process that has gotten way out of control. I am glad the leaders have decided to appoint a special committee to look at this. The Presiding Officer and I are on that committee. We will be looking at the budgeting process and looking at what has happened. Instead of bringing these bills to the floor one at a time and letting every Member of the Senate have an opportunity to amend any bill in any way they want to as long as it deals with spending and as long as you don't add new money--every amendment you want to come up with where you want to take some money here and spend it here instead and have a debate about why that should happen--that is what the Congress did for a couple of hundred years, and it is time we did it again. This idea that all the bills come together in one big, what we call an omnibus-- ``ominous'' might be a better word--an omnibus spending bill that includes everything, plus all the legislation that it can possibly carry, is not the way this process should work. It is the way this process is going to have to work this year because we missed all of those opportunities that are now behind us. As soon as we get this done, we need to start on this year's process. We know what the top-line spending number is going to be. There is every reason to believe that this year's process could be a big step in the right direction, but some guidelines from that special House and Senate committee will do even more. I would like to say, as the chairman of one of those appropriating committees--the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee--that one bill of the 11 left after the Defense bill is decided on--that one bill has about a third of all of the money to be appropriated of the discretionary money. Senator Murray, my counterpart on the other side, and I have worked hard on this committee for 3 years now. In the House, Chairman Cole and Congresswoman DeLauro, the chair and the ranking member on that side, have worked hard as well. These are big decisions to be made. These programs matter, but some of them matter more than others, and part of our job should be and needs to be setting priorities, doing things that increase the commitment to the programs that are working and eliminate the programs or change the programs that don't work. Hopefully, we will continue to do more of that this year and even more of that next year. Some of the programs touch the lives of so many Americans, such as apprenticeship programs. Medical research clearly touches the life of virtually every American and every American family. What we could do to develop a flu vaccine that actually hits the mark every year instead of misses the mark often, things we can do in special education--these are all parts of this one part of the bill that Senator Murray and I and Congressman Cole and Congresswoman DeLauro have been working on. Frankly, everybody should have had a chance to work on this. I think we know a lot about these topics. I think that our debate is a good debate, but it is not nearly as good of a debate as if every single Senator got to be a part of working on this, not just the three dozen or fewer Senators who are on the Appropriations Committee. There are a wide variety of programs here that need to be funded. I want to spend just a few minutes talking about some of the priorities that we are looking at that need to be part of this bill and create a sense that this is really a process that matters. First, we are on track to increase the third straight year of significant increases for the National Institutes of Health and health research. What do they do? In the last decade, we failed most of the time to make any increase at all. In fact, 2 years ago, when I started chairing this committee and Congressman Cole started chairing the committee on the other side of the building, it had been 12 years since there had been a one-penny increase in health research. During that 12 years, we figured out so much more about the human genome. We figured out so many more ways to figure out how I am different from you and how you are different from me and how that makes a difference and how whatever is attacking my system we can fight back. There was not one penny of an increase in 12 years. In fact, the research people said that we were 22 percent below, in research buying power 3 years ago, where we had been 12 years earlier. Young researchers who had never gotten a research grant before weren't likely to get one when they had less effective money to spend than they have had for over a decade. So hopefully that 22 percent--our goal would be to get most of that 22 percent back in 3 years. We have also already restored 13 percent of it. I hope we have a big number next week that gets us back to where we are--at least back to where we were in 2005 or so. We made a commitment at the end of the last century to double, in a short period of time, the National Institutes of Health funding, and then somehow we thought we were done. We would be done anytime there is no more research to be done. We will be done as soon as we have developed a cure for cancer and found out what to do about Alzheimer's and determined what we can do to lessen heart attack risks and found the answer to every orphan disease, diseases that only a few people have. Let me tell my colleagues, we are a long way from doing that. In the last 3 years, we have tripled the amount of dollars going to Alzheimer's research. Without a cure for Alzheimer's or a way to slow down the onset of Alzheimer's, the projection is that by 2050, we will be spending twice as many tax dollars on Alzheimer's-related care and dementia-related care as we are spending now to defend the country. If I had said we would spend $1.1 trillion, I don't know about everybody who is listening, but in my case, it is pretty hard to get a handle on that. What does that really mean? How much bigger is that than $1.1 billion? Well, $1.1 trillion is twice what we spend to defend the country. Every military base everywhere in the world, every ship, every plane, every paycheck for every soldier, sailor, airman, marine; the National Guard, the Coast Guard; training dollars--that is about $500- and-some billion, approaching $600 billion. We would be spending twice that in today's dollars, in tax dollars--not what families would spend to try to deal with the tragedy of Alzheimer's but twice that in just tax dollars if we don't find something to do. A cure would be great. Just figuring out how we could determine early, in an effective way, that you were likely to get Alzheimer's and try to begin to delay the onset of Alzheimer's so it either doesn't affect you at all because some other health concern does or you get it a few years later. If we could delay the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years on the average, that $1.1 trillion in today's dollars--in 2015--would be reduced by almost half, by 46 percent. So knowing how to detect this--there have been some great studies going on that have been funded in better ways over recent years. This has continued. I think what we are looking at in the Brain Initiative--the Cancer Moonshot, as Vice President Biden referred to it--diabetes--again, these diseases that maybe not very many people get are particularly the diseases that the National Institutes of Health needs to be doing research on because there is not much of an economic driver for private sector research on a disease that almost nobody has. So a lot of the money that we put into NIH research we specifically try to put in there without any specific category, where we are saying: You take this money, and you do what you think needs to be done, and we are going to have oversight to talk about what you did. A bunch of Members of the Senate and the House aren't going to try to become the research deciders for the United States of America--and, by the way, for the world--when you do that. In this bill, we are also looking at the crucial fight on the opioid epidemic. The President says it is a crisis, and he is right. It is the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the country today. It has exceeded car accidents as a cause of death in the country and in Missouri and in many other States. The last two funding bills have put almost an additional $1 billion into opioids from where we were just 3 years ago, but the Presiding Officer will remember that in the last continuing resolution, some specific money--about $3 billion more--was given to this cause, and it is the job of our committee and then the Congress to decide how to spend that $3 billion. We need more resources. There is no reason to think that the opioid addiction epidemic, leading to heroin and other drugs, is slowing down, so we need to do things that improve treatment and prevention efforts. Prevention, obviously, is better than treatment, but if prevention fails, we need better treatment systems than we have now. We need to look for alternative pain medications that aren't addictive. I will say that in the 1970s and 1980s, I am told, in medical schools, they thought opioids weren't addictive. So we need to be sure that when we have an alternative that seems to be nonaddictive, that it really isn't addictive. We need to think of the workforce needs and what happens when people become addicted to pain medicine and their pain doesn't go away, probably because their addiction doesn't go away. Then there is behavioral health that impacts so many families and so many communities. If you are going to recover from opioid addiction, you have to have a place to go. Too many programs and policies say: We will work with you for 14 days. A lot of them say: We will work with you for 28 days--4 weeks. Not many people get this behind them in 28 days. So we are doing that. In this bill, we are also looking at ways to support students and parents and teachers. Obviously, a safe environment--what can we do to provide more flexibility to schools to spend the money they currently have from the Federal Government to create a safer environment, and what can we do to increase the money available for that? We need to be doing things that prepare people not just for college but for careers. If you can get a certificate that puts you to work in a job you love quicker than you can get a college degree that maybe doesn't do those two things--we ought to be thinking about whether our post-high school dollars are equally available to both college and other kinds of training. We need to see that people have access to higher education. We are doing that by increasing funding for the Pell grant--this is not a loan; it doesn't have to be paid back--given specifically based on economic need and performance in school. You have to stay in school; you have to get passing grades. But in many colleges in my State of Missouri--in community college and in several of our 4-year schools--if you qualify for the full Pell grant, that is more than enough to pay tuition, books, and fees. If you are putting yourself through school or if you are returning to school as an adult, if you are the first person in your family to graduate from college, year-round Pell means that if you have something working, you need to stick with it as long as you can, as quickly as you can. Summer break is always well-intended. For 10 years Pell didn't pay for school in the summer; it does now, starting last year. This will be the first year that students and colleges and universities can really prepare for summer Pell. But if you don't break the rhythm you are in where things are working for you, you are much more likely to graduate from college than you would otherwise. We need to be sure we prioritize funding for elementary and secondary education grant programs so that they are fair across the country, so that we are not only supporting STEM education, but we are also supporting IDEA for students with learning disabilities, an obligation the Federal Government has taken on itself. We are going to have a chance next week to deal with this important, long-awaited bill on trafficking. I think there will probably be one vote that covers more things than it should on funding the government for the year we are already in. But, as I have talked about today, there are many reasons for Americans and American families to be focused on the job we do. Frankly, we need to spend our time figuring out how, in the future, the American people can watch the Congress more closely and watch the Congress openly debate the priorities of the government, which the government sets nowhere else quite the way it does when it decides how to spend the money we have been entrusted with. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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