Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I mentioned what incredible leadership Mr. Alexander, the Senator from Tennessee, provides on these issues. I was pleased, as he was pleased, and I know the Presiding Officer was also, that last year, for the first time in 12 years, we were able to have an increase in NIH research. The future statistics that the Senator from Tennessee talked about on Alzheimer's and other things can be disrupted. In fact, that 2050 number of twice the defense budget spent on Alzheimer's alone with tax money--if you could delay the onset of Alzheimer's by an average of 5 years, you would reduce that number by 42 percent. So those research dollars not only have the impact we want to have on families and the individuals involved in that and other diseases we are dealing with now but also have an incredible impact on taxpayers, have an incredible impact on what we can do with the rest of the health care revolution that is occurring. The mental health effort the Senator from Michigan, Ms. Stabenow, and I were able to work on together a few years ago is about to produce at least eight States--and hopefully more--where, at the right kinds of facilities, mental health will be treated just like all other health. This Congress is talking about doing the right things. We are making important steps in that direction. Mr. President, I want to talk today about another thing that really impacts families--in this case, military families. I have this bill on my desk, the National Defense Authorization Act. I notice it is only on the desk of half of the Members of the Senate. Members on this side of the floor are ready to get to this bill and get this work done. Maybe there is a message on the other side of the floor that this bill is not there. We had hoped to get to it this week. We have not yet. But certainly we should get to it as soon we return to our work after the end of this week. In the National Defense Authorization Act--I am really glad that bill includes the Military Family Stability Act, a measure that I introduced with Senator Gillibrand to provide more flexibility for military families. Today we have the most powerful military in the world, but we also recognize that our military men and women do not serve alone. The former Chief of Staff of the Army, GEN Ray Odierno, often said that the strength of our Nation is in our military, but the strength of our military is in its families. So our military families need to be understood, recognized, appreciated, helped. Those families have changed a lot over the years. They have sacrificed much. In the last 15 years, those families have dealt with persistent conflicts somewhere in the world and the likelihood of deployment to that conflict. But more importantly, the stress that puts on those families generally is what matters to them--maybe not more importantly in the greater context of what is going on but very important to them. More military spouses are working today than ever before. In the world we live in today, this is good news. But all too often, military spouses sacrifice their own careers to meet the needs of the spouse who is in the service. Frequent redeployments, frequent deployments, and frequent relocations really have an impact on those careers. According to a study done by the Military Officers Association of America, 90 percent of military spouses--that is more than 600,000 men and women--are either unemployed or underemployed. More than half cite the concerns about their spouse's service and the deterrent of moving from job to job--a deterrent not only for employers but a deterrent in that they sometimes have a hard time having the kind of recognition for the skills they bring to a new State or a new location that they need. It is unfair to our military families for the spouse to needlessly have problems that could be avoided. Clearly, if you decide to pursue a military career--and that, by necessity, means relocation from time to time--this is not going to be the same career as if you went to work and you had every likelihood that you would work there for the next several years. These frequent and sometimes abrupt relocations take a heavy toll on students as well. Research shows that students who move at least six times between the 1st and 12th grades are 35 percent more likely to fail a grade. I am not sure that exact research applies to military families. That is an overall number of what happens when people move. But the average military family will move six to nine times during a child's time in school--three times more often than the nonmilitary family. These relocations of military families means that we need to find a better way to deal with those challenges for working families, and the Military Family Stability Act does that. The costs of needlessly maintaining two residences so that someone can finish school or someone can complete a job are the kinds of things that this act and this inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act gives us a chance to deal with in a different way. It would allow families to either stay at the current duty station for up to 6 months longer than they otherwise would be able to stay or to leave and go to a new location sooner. This probably is most easily understood in the context of school. If you only have a month left in school and your family could stay there while the person serving in the military goes ahead to the next post and is responsible for their own housing during the time they are there as a single serving individual--often they are going to find space available on the post itself for one person while the family stays until that school year works out better. A job could be the same. One person we had who came and testified-- Mia, who now lives in Rolla, MO--is married to a soldier who was being reassigned from Hawaii to Fort Leonard Wood, MO. That reassignment was supposed to occur in June, so she applied for a Ph.D. program at St. Louis University that would begin in August. She applied for a teaching position at Missouri Science and Technology at Rolla that would begin in August. Then her husband's transfer did not happen in June and it did not happen in July, but she needed to be there in August. Under this change, moving the family household could easily occur in August and her husband could follow in October, as he did, but all of the expense of her going early was on her. She really had two options: One was to not pursue her graduate school class when it started, and the other was to not have a teaching job. Neither of those was a very good option. She went ahead and moved. Her husband essentially couch- surfed, but they had to pay for the move rather than the way that normally would have happened. This would not have to happen otherwise. When Senator Gillibrand and I introduced this bill last year, we were also joined by Elizabeth O'Brien, who coached Division 1 college basketball for 11 years, with stints at West Point, Hofstra University, and the University of Hawaii. But she married into the Army, and because of the lack of flexibility, she gave up her coaching career. The story she wanted to tell that day was that when she and her family were in Germany, where her husband was serving, her two children were in a German public school. They needed 2 more months to finish that year in the German public school. There really wasn't a very good transition when he was sent back to the Pentagon. There were no German public schools where they could have finished the classes in the Washington area. Basically, they wound up having to finish that year as home schoolers and then start another year the next year. It would have been very easy for him to move on ahead, if that is what the family wanted to do, and for the family to stay in Germany for 2 months so the children could finish that school year in a way that it couldn't possibly be finished anywhere else, and then the family would move. That is the kind of thing that would happen under this legislation. The day after we introduced this legislation, I happened to be hosting a breakfast for people who are supportive of Fort Leonard Wood and working at Fort Leonard Wood. I sat down at a table with two officers. One of their wives, a retired master sergeant, mentioned that we had proposed this legislation the day before. All three of them immediately had a story about how this would have benefited their family if at some time at a specific moment in their career, they could have stayed another 30 days or if the family could have gone forward 30 days earlier. I am proud this bill has widespread support, including from the National Military Family Association, the Military Officers Association of America, the Military Child Education Coalition, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans of America, Blue Star Families, the National Guard Association, and the Veterans Support Foundation. After more than a decade of active engagement around the world, frankly, at a time when military families have a lot more challenges than military families may have had at an earlier time, this is exactly what we ought to do. We have had hearings on other issues over the last year. Over and over again, I have asked people who were testifying, representing the military, what they think about this. Usually these are admirals and general officers. In all cases, a story from their career immediately comes to mind. Universally, they say: We have to treat families different than we used to treat families because too often the failure to do that means we are losing some of our most highly skilled people, who are still willing to serve but are no longer willing to put an unnecessary burden on their spouse or their children. The Military Family Stability Act goes a long way toward removing one of those unnecessary burdens. I am certainly pleased to see it included in the National Defense Authorization Act and look forward to dealing with this important bill at the earliest possible date. I see Senator Isakson on the floor, and I yield to him.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, we have looked at the proposal. I think we have reached an agreement on the proposal that takes this issue up through September of next year. I think now is the time to move forward. I urge my colleagues to vote for the amendment, and at that point we will work with the House for a final conclusion.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, this is an important issue that is being discussed on the floor. I join Senator Blumenthal certainly in my commitment to do whatever we can to extend more choice to veterans. I believe there are less than a handful of issues in which the VA is, in all likelihood, the best provider. They should be better at post- traumatic stress than anything else. The VA should be better at IED- attack injuries. They should be better at prosthetics. There is no reason they should be the better place to have your heart valve replaced or your kidney cancer dealt with. More choice for veterans is better for veterans, and will make the VA a better provider than the VA is today. So I am certainly supportive of that discussion. Mr. President, Senator Warner and I today have filed an amendment to the transportation bill, which is the part of this debate that deals with transportation. The BRIDGE Act creates new ways to help us fund our Nation's infrastructure. Last year, Congress was finally able to come together to pass a bipartisan highway bill, the FAST Act. It took a while to get to the FAST Act. We had 37 short-term extensions of the highway bill from 2009 on, but we finally have a 5-year highway bill that provides certainty for the next 5 years. This is a chance when, at every level of government, we can now put extra tools in the toolbox, and we can involve the private sector in ways that it has not been involved as a funding partner. There are many things the private sector can do in partnership with the public sector. Strengthening our overall infrastructure, especially our transportation network, is vital to boosting economic growth, to creating jobs, and to increasing competitiveness in Missouri, in Senator Warner's State of Virginia, and across the Nation. Current infrastructure fails to meet our current needs, including our drinking water, highways and ports, and energy transmission. In addition to all the things we see above ground, there are many things below ground that need to be dealt with. Part of the storm water system in the city of St. Louis was built while Abraham Lincoln was President. It is amazing how long wood will last if you keep it soaked in water for 152 years or so, but that is what a part of that system is all about. We are way short in infrastructure investments. Senator Warner and I, for three Congresses now, have been trying to find the best way to add more ability to do more of the things that need to be done. We have a transportation system that is interconnected, with an extensive network of highways, roads, and bridges, and of freight and passenger railroads, urban and rural rail transit systems, airports, waterways, and pipelines. All of those things make us more competitive than we would be otherwise, and more competitive means better jobs. It means that people living paycheck to paycheck have an opportunity to have paycheck to paycheck plus savings. They have an opportunity to have paycheck to paycheck plus retirement. They have an opportunity to see those things happen that need to happen in their lives and for their families. The transportation system links our country. It links urban and rural America. It serves as the backbone for interstate commerce, and it connects the United States to the rest of the world. Our economic competitiveness and our ability to export in the most competitive way is very dependent on our infrastructure. The American energy revolution is directly related to the ability to access unconventional oil and gas. We have more new American energy than we ever dreamed possible. We can access that energy, but we don't have a way to transport the energy that we need to use it most efficiently. The Greater Mississippi River Basin--the biggest contiguous piece of agricultural land in the world--is where the waterways of the country come together. These waterways allow us to be more competitive. They allow farmers to easily ship their products to domestic and foreign markets. A modern transportation system will be key to remaining competitive with other grain producers elsewhere in the world. Brazil is a great example of a country whose ability to grow agricultural products has far outgrown its infrastructure. The ability to compete-- the ability to get things to market, the ability to get things all over the world--is dramatically impacted by that. The American Society of Civil Engineers continues to give the United States poor marks on our infrastructure and says that we need billions of dollars in investment over the next several years to bring it up to adequate conditions. The BRIDGE Act is not a way for Federal taxpayers to become responsible for every local obligation but for States and communities, along with the Federal Government, to have new ways to do the things that need to be done. We can't continue to ignore the infrastructure needs of the country. We particularly can't continue to ignore the infrastructure needs of the country that we can't see. We just saw appropriate attention in Flint, MI, to a problem that didn't meet the eye because it is underground. The gas lines, the water lines, the storm sewer lines all need attention. The capital markets and private sector investors have growing interest in being a part of meeting that great infrastructure need. The BRIDGE Act will incentivize private sector investment by establishing an independent infrastructure financing authority to provide loans and loan guarantees to critical infrastructure projects, including transportation, water, and energy infrastructure. It is a proposal like the ones we need to help close the gap that needs to be closed. During this week--a week in which I am not sure how the planning worked here--we have the transportation bill on the floor during infrastructure week. I think we ought to give serious consideration not just to the infrastructure that we appropriate money for but the process and the tools we put in place so that the infrastructure needs of the country can be met. I am certainly pleased to get to work with Senator Warner on this project. We have had lots of input from people who understand the infrastructure needs of the country. I hope the Congress will look at this as one of the things that can be done to help meet those needs. 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 want to talk about the amendment I have offered with Senator Murray and Senator Mikulski and Senator Cochran. The chairman and the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee have joined in that amendment, as have Senator Graham and Senator Leahy. The committees involved are truly looking at this, trying to find a way forward that allows us to take action. We do need to take action, as my good friend from Maryland has just so well explained. There is no vaccine. There is no simple diagnostic test. There is no way to treat the virus once you get infected. So communities really don't have very many options right now. The limited resources they have to manage the one thing we can do something about immediately besides education--the local mosquito population--are resources that are not nearly adequate to meet the current need. At this time, there is no way to fully prevent the infection, leaving high-risk populations at risk, especially pregnant women or women trying to get pregnant. That seems to be the population where the impact of this disease--the impact of this Zika infection--has not only the most short-term but the most long-term implications because of microcephaly and other things that are going to be impacting children born. I am told by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that every indication now would be that once you have had Zika, you cannot get it again. It becomes the inoculation, so just because you get Zika and may at a later time become pregnant, you are not likely to have the same thing. That is one of the studies going on, to verify for sure that is the case and also to verify for sure how long after you have had Zika that pregnancy can still be a problem. This is a growing problem. There are already 650 confirmed Zika cases in the U.S. territories, with the majority of those being in Puerto Rico. There are over 500 travel-associated cases of Zika in the United States. If they got it here, it has been through sexual transmission and not from the mosquitoes themselves because obviously it is not mosquito season yet, but that is very close. This is a public health threat and clearly an emergency. This is not something we can plan now to deal with 2 years from now because 2 years from now would be too late to deal with this crisis. However, I want to make clear that our deliberations over the supplemental request have never been an either-or scenario. There has never been a scenario where we are either going to rubberstamp the administration's request or do nothing. That straw man will not work. That is not the situation. We need to evaluate this request. The request has certain items the administration asks for that I think if you look at them not even very closely--and certainly when you look at them closely--you find out they are unnecessary, they are unwarranted. This is a bill designed to address an emergency situation, not a bill designed to make the most of an emergency. For example, the administration's proposal has a request for the building and expansion of new Federal buildings; $85 million of that initial request was to build new buildings. There is no way those buildings would probably even be started during the so-called emergency timeframe or during the real emergency timeframe. Certainly they would not be of use during the timeframe. That is not a real reason to ask for money; it is just an excuse to ask for money. The Congress could, should, and I believe will say: No, we are not going to do that. The second request I would like to point out today, the request to provide the department of health with $175 million of that $1.9 billion, was just a slush fund. It was just a fund with virtually unlimited authority to transfer that $175 million or any part of it to any purpose of any Federal Government agency. There may be some purposes in this emergency we don't know about yet, but they are not going to be $175 million, and they are not the kind of emergency appropriations you couldn't get by other means where the Congress is clearly involved. We did not provide this kind of funding in the Ebola crisis when the Democrats were in charge of the Senate. We should not provide it today. There is no reason for a $175 million undesignated fund to be used anywhere in the Federal Government, any more than there is a reason to take $85 million and build a new Federal building, and say ``Well, it is part of the Zika emergency'' because it clearly is not. If there is a need for a Federal building at CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can come to the Congress and make that case. That is the way that should be done. If this amendment prevails today, that money will not be available. It is not unreasonable to ask the administration for details on what activities would be funded. What are their priorities, and when would they realistically spend these funds? The $1.1 billion emergency fund would take us through the end of not just this fiscal year but the next fiscal year, about the same time we would hope in talking to the National Institutes of Health that a vaccine will be available. Once a vaccine is available, we will need to look at this Zika infection in a new way, and we will get to look at it in a new way. If the administration had been a little more transparent at first, maybe we could have reached this point earlier. But to suggest that the Congress has needlessly delayed funding is both unfair and untrue. I also think that this is the time we can move forward. The role of the Appropriations Committee is to look at this and to see that the money appropriated is going to be spent in the right way. In the meantime, the administration has made available to the Zika crisis almost $600 million. Mr. President, $589 million is a lot of money. It is particularly a lot of money when it is basically one-third of what was being asked for. Whether what was being asked for was necessary or not, $589 million of unobligated funds that were available in other places have been brought to this cause. The fact that the administration did that shows in a good way just how serious they are about the crisis. If this were not a real crisis, they would not be taking $589 million that in some process would be spent somewhere else and say: Listen, we need to spend this on Zika right now. But for the people we work for, it is important to understand that $589 million is being spent on this, and that is no more than what would possibly have been spent if this appropriation would have happened the day the administration asked for it. The Appropriations Committee took the necessary time to understand the funding needs and response requirements to ensure that we protect all Americans, including taxpaying Americans. We worked in a bipartisan manner to provide the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of State with targeted funding to respond to Zika. Today we have that result, a bipartisan amendment worked out between the leaders of the Appropriations Committee and the Labor HHS and State and Foreign Operations Subcommittees to meet this emergency. Specifically, I worked with my ranking member on Labor HHS, Senator Murray, to reach an agreement that will provide $850 million to the Department of Health and Human Services to respond in a three-pronged strategy. First, that Department is to provide the funds necessary to develop vaccine candidates, therapeutics, and new diagnostic tools. Secondly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be able to focus responsible efforts domestically and internationally on the highest priority activities, such as vector control, emergency preparedness, and public health outreach. Finally, the supplemental provides targeted funding to Puerto Rico, which public health experts believe will be the most at-risk area in a Zika outbreak. Additionally, this amendment, with the work of Senator Graham and Senator Leahy, includes $248 million for the Department of State and USAID to support other affected countries' ability to implement programs to reduce the transmission of the virus. This amendment is a targeted response providing the funding needed through 2017. It includes funding for priority initiatives focused on prevention, control, and treatment. It does not include funding for unessential requests. I hope at the end of the day all Members find a way to meet this emergency. I believe the bipartisan amendment we are offering is the most likely of these amendments to meet the need. Certainly, in my view, it is the amendment that has taken the most focus on exactly what is needed to meet this crisis and meet it now. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today I want to talk about the Obama administration's nuclear agreement with Iran and the many ways the agreement has failed to rein in Iranian hostile behavior over the course of the last year. Over the last week, I thought it was interesting that there was great reluctance on the part of people who voted in an enabling way to allow the Iranian agreement to occur to take a stand on the position that Mr. Cotton brought to the Senate floor, where we would not now give Iran millions of dollars to purchase heavy water that they would use in their nuclear activities and obviously continue to produce. In addition to that, I saw on Monday of this week that Iran tested a variant missile with a range of over 2,000 kilometers capable of striking Israel. Over and over again, we see Iran participating in hostile behavior and, somehow, none of that behavior violates either the spirit or the `letter of the agreement that was discussed as such an important breakthrough with what was going to happen in Iran. For those of us who predicted that Iran's behavior would not change and that behavior in the neighborhood would change in fear of what would happen because of Iran--I think those predictions are becoming more and more obviously true. On April 2, 2015, a framework agreement was reached on that program. Here we are a year later. This agreement seems not to have accomplished any of the things that we would want to accomplish with the country of Iran. According to President Obama: ``Iran so far has followed the letter of the agreement, but the spirit of the agreement involves Iran also sending signals to the world community and businesses that it is not going to be engaging in a range of provocative actions that might scare business off.'' That is an absolute quote from the President. Now, why we are concerned about scaring business off from Iran, I don't know, because another quote from the administration over and over again is that Iran is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. I think if we were talking more about that activity of Iran and less about what they need to encourage business activities, we would be doing what we should be doing. Jennifer Rubin wrote in the Washington Post that ``his comments are curious both because the `letter of the agreement' seems to be forever changing to incorporate Iran's demands and because despite Iran's actions, the president continues to make more and more concessions.'' The administration sold this deal on the promise that we would see a great change in behavior. Take, for example, the behavior that has occurred: Iran's continued disregard of the United Nations Security Council resolutions dealing with ballistic missiles. Since the conclusion of the nuclear deal last summer, Iran has test-fired new classes of missiles whenever it wanted to; as I just mentioned, as late as last Monday. In October, they tested new missiles that are precision guided and more sophisticated than the current missiles they have. They have now tested missiles that could reach Israel. Despite the U.N. Security Council explicitly calling for Iran to halt its ballistic missile activity, Iran's leaders have consistently rebuffed anything that is coming from the international community that it says is out of bounds of the resolution, and apparently everything is out of bounds of the resolution. In August of 2015, the deputy foreign minister of Iran and chief nuclear negotiator told the Tehran Times: ``The restrictions on weapons posed through Resolution 2231 . . . are not mandatory and we can disregard them.'' That statement directly contradicts Secretary of State Kerry's statement when he talked about the resolution. When he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last July, on July 23, Secretary Kerry said: They are restrained from any sharing of missile technology, purchase of missile technology, exchange of missile technology work on missiles. They cannot do that under Article 41, which is Chapter 7 and manda- tory. . . . Obviously the administration has a much different interpretation of the current U.N. resolutions than Iran, but they also appear to have a completely flexible interpretation of what the agreement actually says. In March of this year--just a few weeks ago--the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment of Iranians who carried out cyber attacks against critical infrastructure and the financial sector of the United States with the knowledge of the Iranian Government. What does critical infrastructure mean? Critical infrastructure means the utilities, the transportation network, the things we have to rely on every day to provide the infrastructure the country needs to function. The indictment notes that one of the hackers ``received credit for his computer intrusion work from the Iranian government toward completion of his mandatory military service in Iran.'' I don't know any other way to interpret that than to say that if someone is in the Iranian military and if they want to cyber attack the United States, they will give someone credit for military service time to do that. I would think the administration would consider applying sanctions to put more pressure on Iran and not worry quite so much about Iran's future business opportunities. Curiously, yet predictably, the administration has taken the opposite approach and continues to reward bad behavior. That reward can come and has come in the administration's basically easing financial restrictions that prohibit U.S. dollars from being used in transactions with Iran. The dollar continues to be the principal economic currency of the world. Why we would want Iran to have more access to that currency, I don't know. Yet the Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, said that giving Iran access to U.S. currency would ease the blockade. He said, ``Since Iran has kept its end of the deal, it is our responsibility to uphold ours, in both letter and spirit.'' There may be only five people in the world--and they are all in the Obama administration--who believe that Iran has kept up its end of the deal. On April 2, 2016, Eli Lake wrote about how the President has to keep on giving to save his Iran deal. In other words, Mr. Lake wrote: I was under the impression that the nuclear negotiations with Iran ended in July. There was the press conference in Vienna, the U.N. resolution that lifted the sanctions on Iran and the fight in Congress that followed. That turns out to have been wrong. He goes on further to say: It wasn't part of the ``deal'' in July, which only lifted nuclear-related sanctions on Iran but kept other sanctions to punish the country's support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and its ballistic missile program. We don't seem nearly as committed to those sanctions. On April 3, 2016, the Ambassador of the UAE to the United States wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal highlighting concerns about Iranian actions in the year since the nuclear deal. The Ambassador pointed out that behind the talk of change, the Iran we have long known is still around. He then goes on to list the concerning actions Iran has taken in the last year, such as firing rockets near the USS Truman aircraft carrier in December 2015 while the Truman was peacefully transitioning the Strait of Hormuz; No. 2, detaining 10 American Navy sailors in January of 2016; No. 3, Iranian visits to Russia to purchase military fighter jets and equipment, presumably with the billions they received as part of the nuclear deal. According to the Ambassador, the list can go on and on, with Iranian influence continuing to cause instability in Yemen, Syria, as well as Iran's support for Hezbollah. There can be no doubt that the Obama administration's nuclear agreement with Iran has left regional allies nervous. The Ambassador from the UAE in the editorial I referenced has made that point very clearly, and I ask unanimous consent to have it printed in the Record.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 15 minutes.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, the administration's nuclear agreement has left the region nervous, has left the world less stable, and has left our colleagues in the Senate who voted for it unwilling to vote on anything else about Iran. I think we are finding that the people we work for don't believe this was a good agreement, and we will be talking about this agreement and the aftermath the agreement has created for a long time. We need to restore a world where America's friends trust us and our enemies are afraid of us. It is a dangerous world if we have exactly the opposite of that happening, when our friends don't trust us and our enemies aren't afraid of us, and this Iranian agreement is one of the reasons that is the case. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Change of Vote

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, what I came to talk about today is a bill we did pass a couple of weeks ago. As we get ready for police week early in May--I think the week of the 9th of May--there are people we want to recognize and do recognize and do appreciate. I am cochair, along with Senator Coons of Delaware, of the Law Enforcement Caucus. I want to speak today about something we have just done to honor our first responders. I want to start by recognizing the first responders from my State of Missouri who lost their lives in the line of duty last year. In Missouri, four law enforcement officers died in the line of duty. Deputy Sheriff Steven Brett Hawkins of the Harrison County Sheriff's Office, Trooper James Matthew Bava of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Sergeant Peggy Marie Vassallo of the Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Department, and Officer Ronald Eugene Strittmatter of the Lakeshire Police Department lost their lives. Deputy Sheriff Brett Hawkins of Bethany, MO, suffered a fatal heart attack on September 13 following an emergency response. He was 34 years old. Deputy Sheriff Hawkins suffered that attack after returning home from his shift, which included the search of a residence and surrounding property. He had served with the Harrison County Sheriff's Office for 3 years. He is survived by his wife, daughter, and three sons. Trooper James Bava of Mexico, MO, was involved in a fatal vehicle crash while pursuing a motorcyclist for a traffic stop on August 28. Trooper Bava had served with the Missouri State Highway Patrol for 2 years. He was 25 years old the day he lost his life serving us. He is survived by his parents, a brother, three sisters, and his fiancee. Sergeant Peggy Vassallo of Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Department was struck and killed by a vehicle on August 24 while rendering aid to another driver after being involved in an accident en route to work. Sergeant Vassallo had served with the Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Department for 15 years and had previously served with the St. Louis County Police Department for over 13 years, almost 30 years' service. She is survived by her husband, son, and two grandchildren. Officer Ronald Strittmatter suffered a heart attack after attempting to help an older person who had fallen. Officer Strittmatter had served in the Lakeshire Police Department for 4 years and had previously served in the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department for 24 years. He is survived by his wife and a son. In Missouri, we also lost five firefighters and first responders in the line of duty last year. Battalion Chief Chris Tindall of Raymore, MO, died shortly after responding to an emergency incident in January 2015. He was a 19-year veteran of the South Metro Fire Department. Larry Lawhorn, a volunteer firefighter with the Orchard Farm Fire Protection District, suffered a fatal medical emergency in May of last year while driving a first responder vehicle en route to a structure fire. He had been a volunteer with the department for 20 years and had previously served 15 years with the St. Charles County Fire District. In October 2015, two firefighters were killed in Kansas City in the line of duty. Larry Leggio, a 17-year veteran of the Kansas City Fire Department, and John Mesh, a 13-year veteran of the Kansas City Fire Department, were able to save two residents from a burning apartment complex before a wall collapsed on them after they had evacuated other people from the building. EMS pilot Ronald Rector of Linn, MO, was killed during a flight operation in March 2015. He was inbound to pick up additional crew members at St. Louis University Hospital in a medical helicopter when his helicopter crashed. Early this month, I introduced the Fallen Heroes Flag Act, which creates a program to provide a flag flown over the Capitol to the family of firefighters, law enforcement officers, members of rescue squads or ambulance crews, and public safety officers who lose their lives in the line of duty. I thank my colleagues for unanimously passing that bill last week. The House had already passed a similar measure introduced by Congressman Peter King, and I hope to get a final bill on the President's desk in very short order. Our Nation's first responders put themselves in harm's way to keep us safe, and we mourn the loss of all those who have given their lives in the line of duty. We can never in any way fully repay the debt we owe them and their families. These are people who go to work every day, with the greatest goal for their families being that they come home safely that day, and they have more reason to worry about that than most of us have. All we can offer instead is our gratitude. My hope is that each flag that is flown over the Capitol and provided to these families will be a lasting symbol of our appreciation and a fitting honor to those who embody the very best of what we stand for as a nation.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, as I conclude, one other thing I want to mention is Silver Star Service Banner Day. I thank my colleagues for unanimously passing a resolution I submitted with Senator McCaskill last week to designate May 1 as Silver Star Service Banner Day. It is a day we honor our Nation's servicemembers who have been injured or become ill while serving, and we also honor their families on that day. I am grateful to work for this cause and for the work the Silver Star Families of America do. This is a nonprofit organization headquartered in Clever, MO. In 2004, that group began its work to remember, to honor, and to assist members of the Armed Forces from every branch of the military and from every war. This organization assists veterans who have suffered physical or emotional trauma from war and distributes Silver Star flags and care packages to wounded veterans and their families. Our military men and women put their lives on the line to defend our Nation, and many have done so in ways that result in tremendous personal cost for them and their families--from loss of life, to injury, to trauma of all kinds. On Silver Star Service Banner Day, I hope all Americans will take a moment to reflect on the countless sacrifices and appreciate the blessings of freedom their service has provided. We salute our former and current servicemembers and encourage all Americans to do the same with the presence of a Silver Star service banner in the window or a Silver Star flag flying in the front yard. Those who serve deserve and should receive the gratitude of the Nation, whether they serve in the military or as first responders, and in the last few days the Congress was able to step forward and recognize those who serve in unique ways. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I came to the floor today to talk about another issue, and I will talk about the issue I had scheduled to talk about earlier this week. But in regard to the issue of Zika, it does need to be dealt with. It is being dealt with. The good news is that there was substantial money various departments had that could be reprogrammed, and the fact that they have reprogrammed it indicates to me that there is a genuine belief in the administration, which I share, that this is an emergency. Over half a billion dollars has already been reprogrammed to deal with that emergency. I believe some of that reprogramming money needs to be restored, and some of it probably doesn't. The Ebola crisis is not what we thought it might be in Africa, but it is still in existence there. I think some of that money needs to go back into the accounts it had been reprogrammed out of. But if anybody listening to this debate believes that nothing is happening, that is not accurate. I do appreciate my friend from Florida recognizing that a lot of discussions are going on. I was in several this week, and some yesterday with House Members and Senate Members. The House could pass a bill first. That may or may not happen, but what really needs to happen is a bill that gets on the President's desk. I think there is almost no chance the Senate would pass a $1.9 billion bill as proposed. The best place to debate that could be the Senate floor for several days or it could be to work on a bill that could come to the floor quickly, go to the House, and be passed by the House. If there were a slim chance that the Senate could pass the bill we have been talking about--the bill as proposed that would spend $1.9 billion, in big hundred-million dollar chunks, which we talk about as if that is no money at all and is somehow a plan--that in all likelihood wouldn't pass the Senate, and I am absolutely sure it wouldn't pass the House. What would we have gained? This is something we need to work out. We can work it out. I believe we will work it out. The goal is not for the Senate to pass a bill. The goal is for the Congress to pass a bill and the President of the United States to sign that bill. I believe that will happen. Many people, including me, are working to see that happens. The majority leader knows that, and others who have spoken today reflect the fact that they know those discussions are going on.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today I wish to honor a man who has served faithfully for 27 years in the U.S. Air Force, with the vast majority of that service in the Missouri Air National Guard. It is a big loss, but Col. Michael Francis is scheduled to depart the 131st Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base on May 15, 2016, after a long and distinguished record of service in the unit beginning July 28, 1998. I think it is important to note that Colonel Francis has been associated with a unit whose history has spanned over nine decades and whose former members have included the likes of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh. Colonel Francis commissioned in the U.S. Air Force in 1989 as a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and, after almost a decade, transitioned from Active Duty to the Air National Guard, continuing his dream of a career as a fighter pilot in the F-15 Eagle. Throughout Colonel Francis's service at the 131st, he has seen the unit transition from the F-15, the Nation's premier homeland defense and air superiority aircraft, to the B-2, the Nation's lethal stealth bomber involved in global missions. Since being chosen to command the first B-2 Operations Group in the Air National Guard when the 131st transitioned from the F-15 Eagle to the B-2 Spirit, Colonel Francis has been a standout leader in the nuclear community. His achievements boast nothing less than perfection. As the present wing commander, Colonel Francis paved a new path for the National Guard by leading his unit to be the first bomb wing certified for full-spectrum nuclear operations and was entrusted with strategic nuclear deterrent operations for our country. Throughout his long career at the 131st, Colonel Francis remained dedicated to the vital missions of the Air National Guard. However, he also never forgot his commitment to his wife, Jane, and sons, Greg and Brian. While Colonel Francis might be leaving the 131st Bomb Wing, he will continue his selflessness in service to this great country. Colonel Francis will be reassigned to the Missouri National Guard Headquarters and promoted to brigadier general. Again, I wish to extend Col. Michael J. Francis my sincere congratulations upon his new assignment and thanks for the years of service he has rendered to the 131st Bomb Wing, the State of Missouri, and the Nation.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the bill that is on the floor. The very fact that we have this bill on the floor deserves some attention. We have an appropriations bill on the energy and water responsibilities of the Federal Government. I think this is the first time this bill has been on the Senate floor in 7 years. With the current majority, the Appropriations Committee is 1 month ahead of any time in recent history that bills have been marked up and brought to the floor. The majority leader set aside 12 weeks to do the work that for decades--in fact, for a couple of centuries--was the core work of what the Congress did. The Congress set the priorities of the country by having an open and free debate on how the Congress and the country would spend the money that was entrusted to the Congress--the long-ranging discussion of the power of the purse. You know, you don't have to be a great student of American history to say: Well, don't you men and women in the Congress have the power of the purse? Well, we do have it, according to the Constitution, but we have not had it in the practice of the last 6 or 7 years when the work of the Congress simply was not done in a way that people could see what was going on or that Members could freely weigh in. One of the things about the debate we are having on this Energy and Water bill is that any Member of the Senate can come to the floor and they can say: Don't spend this money at all. In this bill, spend the money here rather than there. They can say some combination of those two things, and then the Senate votes on that before we approve the final bill. I am pleased that we are debating this bill. That may actually be more important than the bill itself. But the bill itself is important as well. This bill provides the critical resources to support the safety and long-term viability of our waterway systems. One of the reasons we are so competitive internationally and so competitive in our own domestic economy is that we have had the ability to use the waterways of the country--particularly the internal as well as the external waterways-- in a way that makes us more competitive than we would be otherwise. Our inland waterways in particular are critical to economic growth. We are right on the edge of a time when world food demand doubles from the Presiding Officer's State, from my State. Agriculture, which is the biggest economic sector of the economy, is in a great position not only to meet those food needs in our country but to meet food needs worldwide. That position is dramatically enhanced if we have a transportation system that doesn't just include highways and doesn't just include railroads but also includes the waterways of the country. Another thing our two States have had in common--the Upper Missouri and the Lower Missouri--is the devastating challenges that flooding can present. This bill makes it possible for us to deal with flood control and navigation. Once again, this emphasizes that the Corps of Engineers can't just say these are the top two priorities of managing the Mississippi River Valley system, particularly the Missouri and Mississippi, but those really need to be apparent in their commitment to both flood control and navigation as things we want to do. I am pleased this bill prioritizes things like the bank stabilization and navigation project on the Mississippi River, the tributaries project that is central to our flood control efforts in our State. I am also glad the bill increases funding for small ports and harbors to serve as vital places for us to compete. You know, the inland ports are basically export ports. There is nothing wrong with buying things from other people, but it is better to sell things to other people. The inland ports serve a geographic area that is roughly twice as big as the coastal ports. That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the coastal ports; it just means, let's get realistic about where we are making investments that allow us to compete. If a coastal port effectively really supports an area, say, 300 miles inland from that coastal port, an inland port supports an area 300 miles in all directions. So this is an effective thing for us to do. Also, we need to ensure that we are looking at our port systems as a system, not just as one individual port. The old days of the Congress being able to say ``This is what you want to do in this port or this harbor'' are now being replaced by being sure the Corps of Engineers understands its responsibility to do this. Another agency that needs to understand its reasonable responsibility is the EPA. So once again I am on the floor for the third time in about as many months--and heaven knows how many times in the last several years--talking about this incredible overreach EPA is making when they want to decide they don't want to change the law that says navigable waters of the United States are under the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency--not a new concept in law at all. Navigable waters have seemed to be a Federal responsibility since the 1840s in law, in bills that have passed the Congress. So in the early 1970s, the Clean Water Act was passed, and the EPA was formed. The Clean Water Act said the EPA will have jurisdiction over navigable waters. But with this outrageous waters of the United States rule, the EPA wants to now define ``navigable waters'' as basically all the water in the country. They want to say it is any water that can run into any water that can run into any water. I don't know how many iterations of that there would be that can run into any water that eventually runs into navigable water. There is a case before the Supreme Court right now where the EPA is challenging a company in Minnesota based on navigable waters. The location they are challenging is 120 miles away, by no argument, from the nearest thing that anybody would truly consider a navigable water. The Farm Bureau in Missouri has a map that I have brought to the floor now a number of times--the Farm Bureau map of where the jurisdiction of the EPA would be under waters of the United States. This is anything that deals with water: a building permit, runoff from your driveway, resurfacing a parking lot, fertilizer on a farm field, drilling a hole for a utility pole. Anything that involves water, theoretically, under this rule, could come under the jurisdiction of the EPA. In my State, anything that would meet the EPA definition of what could be the definition of their new sense of waters of the United States covers 99.7 percent of the State. The Presiding Officer is a little further from this map. He may not be able to see the two dozen white dots on the map that would clearly still under the jurisdiction of the State of Missouri or under the jurisdiction of a county government or under the jurisdiction of a city. That would be three-tenths of 1 percent. Senator Hoeven, who has fought to not allow this rule to go forward, as I have since the day it was proposed, has once again proposed an amendment to this bill. We all get to vote on it. A majority of the Senate has shown its concern about this particular regulation, this outlandish regulation--enough that the Senate and the House have put a bill on the President's desk in the last few months that the President vetoed, which said: Don't go forward with this regulation. What this amendment says is: No money can be spent to go forward with this regulation. I certainly encourage my colleagues to once again step up, as they are already on the record as having been willing to do, to stop this regulation. This amendment--the way to stop this regulation is to say that no money can be spent to move forward with this regulation, which a majority of the Congress, Democrats and Republicans, organizations all over America, government at virtually every level, county governments, city governments, and State governments, have said they don't want. The Attorney Generals of about half of the States have a case before the Supreme Court. But none of that seems to get through to the all-knowing EPA on this issue. Today I urge my colleagues to once again step up and say: We want this stopped. One way to stop it is not to have any money available to move forward with this outlandish rule. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to support the Fallen Heroes Flag Act of 2016, S. 2755. This bipartisan legislation will create a program to provide Capitol-flown flags to the immediate family members of firefighters, law enforcement officers, members of rescue squads or ambulance crews, and public safety officers who are killed in the line of duty. These flags are provided at no cost to the family and will come with a certificate from the Senate, signed by the providing Member and President pro tempore, which contains our expression of sympathy for the grieving family. Certificates coming from the other body will be signed by the Speaker of the House and the providing House Member and express the sympathy of the House of Representatives. I hope all my colleagues will join me in support of this legislation. Our first responders make tremendous sacrifices for our communities. If one of them makes the ultimate sacrifice, the least we can do to recognize their life, show our gratitude, and express our sympathy for their family is present them with a flag flown over this building. Under existing rules, Senate offices may not use official funds to send flags to individuals. This legislation authorizes a new program, administered by the Architect of the Capitol, that will make it possible for families who have lost a loved one in these circumstances to request and receive a Capitol-flown flag at no expense. We are all grateful for the sacrifices these dedicated public servants make every day to serve and protect our communities, and this legislation will make it possible to present grieving families with a symbol of our gratitude. This legislation has been endorsed by the National Fraternal Order of Police and the Sergeants Benevolent Association. I ask unanimous consent that their letters of support be printed in the Record following my statement. I would like to thank all my colleagues who cosponsored this legislation, particularly our ranking member of the Rules Committee, Senator Schumer. I would also like to thank Congressman Peter King, who has championed this cause in the other body for many years. This legislation includes some revisions to the previously passed version in the House, but I expect they will be agreeable to the other body. I hope both bodies will pass this legislation quickly and send it on to the President for his signature. Thank you.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, it is springtime in Missouri. Whether it is in our State that joins the Presiding Officer's State of Oklahoma or in Iowa, we are seeing trees begin to bloom. It was great to be home the 2 weeks we were home and again last weekend and see the flowering trees sort of move from north to south and, I guess, south to north. It is one of my favorite times of the year, as it is for a lot of people. Particularly during the 2 weeks we were home, we would not see the blooms of the Dogwoods, and then a couple of days later we would see them farther north in the State than we had seen them before. People like the spring. They like the great weather, they like to get out and do things with their family--only to be reminded sometimes just how fickle the spring weather is. One thing a lot of people--including most of us--dread at this time of year, however, is that spring comes at about the same time that they have to file their taxes. That date comes this week, and if the weather is not predictable, the increasing reach of the Tax Code should be predictable and is predictable. Ronald Reagan said that Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, and our friends on the other side believe every day is April the 15th. We are having the income come in now and seeing what happens with it. It is the time of year we ought to look at what is happening with the hard-earned dollars American families work for. It is estimated that Americans will pay about $3.3 trillion in Federal taxes and about half that in State and local taxes. A total of almost $5 trillion--or 31 percent of all the national income in the country--goes to taxes. If, at various levels of government as a country, we are taking 31 percent of the money every family earns, we ought to be thinking about what happens with that and justify every penny of it. Another way of looking at it is that Missourians, and people across the country, will spend more on taxes this year than they spend on food, clothing, and housing combined. A lot of people might ask where the taxes are coming from. After all, in 2001 and 2003 Congress cut taxes. But that doesn't seem to be the case when we pay the tax bill. While we did cut taxes as a country in 2001 and 2003, in 2009 we put a lot of taxes in place. One prime example of what happened in 2009 is the $1 trillion tax hike in the President's health care bill. Now, $1 trillion over 10 years is a lot of money. It is $100 billion a year that the government hadn't been collecting in taxes but now is. A few years ago the Ways and Means Committee asked the Congressional Budget Office, along with the Joint Committee on Taxation, to look at what the ObamaCare taxes really meant, and they revised that estimate up. They listed 21 tax increases, including 12 tax increases on the middle class, and those 21 tax increases amounted to a $1 trillion tax hike. A few of those taxes have been delayed for a little bit. We were able to slow down the silly tax on medical devices. Whom they thought that would help when people who voted for that bill and that tax, I don't know, but an extra tax on medical devices seems unreasonable to me. I don't know a single person who ever bought a medical device because they thought they were going to have a good time with it. They bought a medical device because they thought it was necessary for their health. Then, not only do we collect this money, not only do we collect 31 percent of all the money people work for in taxes, we see the national debt continuing to increase. The national debt held by the public stands at about $13.5 trillion, but the national debt is really closer to $19 trillion because we owe a lot of money as a country and people to the places it has been borrowed from--the Social Security trust fund--and all $19 trillion has to be paid back. It is hard for most of us to even begin to think how much money that is, $19 trillion, but the gross domestic product--the total value of all the goods and services produced in the country--is less than that. GDP is estimated to be about $17.9 trillion. Another way to look at the national debt is that we have managed to accumulate a national debt that is more than equal to everything the country produces in a given year. Everything Americans work to make, everything we produce--the value of not just the products we make but the goods and services we make--is now exceeded by the national debt. There is no credible economic measure that would indicate that a country is stronger if the debt is bigger than the value of what it produced as a country. We have the debt, and then we have the deficit spending. Deficits occur when the government spends more money than it generates in revenue. Balancing the budget two decades ago wasn't all that easy to do. It required hard choices. But we as a country were able to reach a bipartisan consensus that surpluses are preferable to deficits and that a country is far better off as a result; that a growing economy is better than a stagnant economy; and that the economy is more likely to grow if the government isn't constantly sapping, for no defensible reason, the economic opportunity of people spending their own money to advance themselves and their families forward. One thing that every model shows is that it is easier to pay off the debt and it is easier to pay the bills of the country if you have an economy that is growing. But regulators who are out of control, and deficit spending hurts economic growth. If we look at the first year of the Obama administration, adjusted for inflation to today's dollars, that deficit ran about $1.6 trillion. Following that, during the first term it was $1.6 trillion, then $1.4 trillion, then $1.3 trillion, and then $1.1 trillion. That sounds as if the deficit is going down, but it is $1.1 trillion over a budget that just 20 years ago was balanced. It is $1.1 trillion over a budget that a little more than a decade earlier had been a balanced budget. If we accept this year's number, the average deficit over the last 8 years is $963 billion--right at $1 trillion--and we are borrowing that money and the $19 trillion that came before it at almost the lowest interest rate imaginable. What happens if the borrowing rate goes from where it is to, say, 5 percent? We already see that the interest on the debt is quickly becoming the third biggest government payment--Social Security, Medicare, paying the debt. Things like defending the country, a transportation system that works, health care research--all of those things are way below just the interest we would have on the debt, and that is at the lowest rate ever. Federal borrowing is really nothing more than a tax on the future. Federal borrowing is nothing more than saying: We want to have what we want to have right now, and we are willing for somebody else to pay the bill for what we want to have right now. As people sit down and file their taxes over the next 48 hours or so and make final calculations and look at what they made and look at what they are paying--as they have done over the last few weeks and will do over the next couple of days--it is an important time for them to talk to the people they elect to public office: What do you think you are gaining by not making the tough choices? What do you think you are gaining by not doing the things we have already agreed we need the government to do and doing those really well rather than coming up with yet another program that may or may not produce results? The health care plan is one of those. I had a hospital group in this morning. They had done a calculation of what part of the bill people were paying with their personal money as opposed to insurance that they had to try to protect themselves against health care costs before the Affordable Care Act and what they are paying now. What they found is that before the Affordable Care Act, they were paying 10 percent of the bill with personal money. After the Affordable Care Act, the average person with insurance was paying 20 percent of the bill. So the highest, fastest growing level of debt that hospital had was people with insurance who weren't able to pay the bill because their deductible was so high. So we managed to raise $1 trillion in taxes, insure almost no one in terms of total numbers--we still have about 30 million people who are uninsured--and in many cases, the people who are insured don't have the coverage they had before. People need to be asking what we are doing to mortgage the future and what are we getting out of that. Just as Missourians have a responsibility to ensure that their taxes are paid by April 15, we have a responsibility to ensure that their tax dollars are wisely used or not taken from them at all. I think the fiscal policy of the Obama administration over the last 8 years has been an irresponsible way to spend people's money. The cost- benefit analysis we asked for comes back with silly things, like we evaluate how much people worry about something or we evaluate how much people's feelings are hurt. What we ought to evaluate is what we get out of these excessive rules and regulations and regulators and inspectors that truly is a benefit as opposed to what do we get that is just one more additional burden that people are asked to pay for and, even worse than that, that then their children and grandchildren are asked to pay for by seeing this accumulated debt. We hear from our friends on the other side that it was necessary to engage in excessive spending to keep the economy afloat following the recession--the only way to do that is for the Government to play a bigger role in the economy. And what do we have to show for that? The economy is still struggling, the recovery has been unbelievably sluggish at best, and wages are stagnant for middle-class families. Why? One of the reasons is high taxes, combined with the onslaught of redtape, and regulators that are out of control. The policies coming out of this administration have really made any possible stimulated growth in the economy hard to find. The challenges of getting healthy economic growth and getting our fiscal house back in order will only become more daunting as the direct and indirect costs of things like the President's health care plan accumulate. I think we ought to all commit ourselves here, as people are coming to the end of this tax-paying season, to work together, to work on both sides of the Capitol and at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to find solutions for an overtaxed middle class, for out-of- control spending, unsustained long-term debt and interest payments. We need a flatter, fairer, less complicated, and more competitive tax structure. If we are going to ask the American people to send in 31 cents out of every dollar they make at all levels--some people send in a lot more and some people send in a little less, but 31 cents out of every dollar of income in the country goes to government--the government has a real obligation to see that every one of those 31 cents is spent for a good purpose or not taken from people at all. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk a little about the Court and the vacancy on the Court. First of all, I want to express my shared concern with my good friend from Delaware about what is happening in Iran and how we are reacting to what is happening in Iran and how much we need to be focused on that country, still understood to be the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world and designated by the current administration and current security agencies that it is bad. I am pleased to see that topic is one of the things we are talking about today. Filling of the Supreme Court Vacancy Mr. President, the Supreme Court has gotten a lot of attention since the unfortunate loss of Justice Scalia. When I was home a few days ago, in at least one meeting when this question came up, somebody said: Well, the Constitution says that the President is supposed to nominate somebody and the Senate is supposed to have hearings. Well, I am not a lawyer. I have been a history teacher, and some days that is better than being a lawyer. In fact, I have argued that most days it might be better than being a lawyer. But when that came up, I said that is not what the Constitution says at all. It is easy to talk about what the Constitution says, but that is not what the Constitution says. The Constitution says the President will nominate someone to serve on the Court, and the Senate will give its advice and consent. This is a 50-50 obligation, a two-part puzzle that has to come together before this happens. Understand that the people at the Constitutional Convention thought about doing it differently than that. They thought about doing it so that the President would nominate, and if no one in the Senate objected or the majority of the Senate didn't object, then the nominee would just serve. They decided not to do that. What they decided to do was to have both things happen in order for someone to serve. Early on, it was clear that there were no hearings about who would be on the Court. There was no Judiciary Committee, and there were no hearings to be held. As a rule, either someone was confirmed or often, when they weren't confirmed, the Senate just didn't deal with the nomination because their part of the necessary things that had to come together wasn't ready to come together. What the Senate has to decide when there is a nomination to the Supreme Court is this: Is this the right time for this vacancy to be filled, and then is this the right person? In election years, the Senate for most of the history of the country has decided it wasn't the right time. The last time a vacancy was filled in an election year was March of 1988, but that was a vacancy that occurred in the middle of 1987. Then the Senate, with President Reagan, went through hearings for Judge Bork, and they looked at Judge Ginsburg--not the Justice Ginsburg that is currently on the Court, but another Judge Ginsburg--and, eventually, 9 months or so later, Justice Kennedy was put on the Court. That wasn't a vacancy that occurred in an election year. It took 9 months to fill a vacancy that occurred in the year before the election year. The job of the Senate has always been to decide if this was the right time to do it. The last time a vacancy that was created in an election year was filled was 1932. The last time a vacancy was filled in a previous election year when the House, Senate, and Presidency were of different parties was 1888. In 1968, President Johnson tried to move Abe Fortas from Justice on the Supreme Court to the Chief Justice, and Democrats in control of the Senate would not let the President fill that vacancy in an election year. The idea that there is anything extraordinary going on here--the case has been made over and over again by our friends on the other side and even by the Vice President himself that filling a vacancy in an election year is just something the Senate should be very thoughtful about. If you follow what Vice President Biden said or what Senator Schumer said or what Senator Reid said, what they were saying is: Don't fill a vacancy in a Presidential election year. They were right. They were right because we are now 7 months from the Presidential election. One of the things people ought to be thinking about is what happens when whoever is elected President puts someone on the Supreme Court for life. This is an appointment that if the person determines that they are going to serve for the entire rest of their life, they can. Justice Scalia, whose death created this vacancy, was put on the Court by Ronald Reagan and served more than a quarter of a century after Ronald Reagan left the Presidency. He was put on the court by Ronald Reagan and served more than 12 years after Ronald Reagan died. This is a long shadow or a long ray of sunlight, however you want to look at it, that goes out way beyond the life of this President. You can make the argument that, well, we had a Presidential election already, and why couldn't that election that was held in 2012--why wouldn't that determine--why wouldn't that be good enough? Well, No. 1, it was held in 2012, and following the election that was held in 2014, the American people sent a Republican Senate. The most recent election of those two parts it takes to fill this vacancy produced a Republican Senate that is at least 50 percent of this determination of who goes on the Court. We can wait. It is not unusual in the history of the country for the Court to have an even number. In fact, the first Court had six people. Is there anything in the Constitution about the size of the Court? No. The Constitution creates a Supreme Court and other courts as the Congress determines necessary. Originally, there were six Justices on the Court, mostly because that is how many circuits the original Congress thought were needed. Those Supreme Court Justices each served as a circuit judge in the six circuits in the country. So you actually had something we don't see now, where a Supreme Court Justice would sit on an appeals case of a case where that same person had been the original circuit judge, the lower appeal before the Court. There was no thought that the Court was going to be a legislative body, no idea that you would have to worry about a tie-breaker because these six people were supposed to figure out what the Constitution and the law said and reach the conclusion that six good lawyers would reach. Very often, in the next 100 years, the Court had an even number. It had a changing number that changed with some frequency, but it wasn't seen that the Court couldn't function if somehow there were fewer than nine Justices. In fact, there have been at least 15 times since World War II when there were eight Justices. The longest Court that had 8 Justices was 13 months. When Justice Fortas resigned in May of 1969, the Democrats in the Senate didn't fill that vacancy until June of 1970--13 months, 8 Justices. No one has come forward talking about what great devastation was done to the country while we were waiting to get the right person for the country--at least what the Senate at the time thought was the right person for the country to serve for the rest of their working lifetime, which has generally been the standard. When Justices are split, they always have the opportunity to just defer to the lower court and say: Well, there is an appeals court decision here. We can't decide it better than the appeals court did, so that becomes the decision. They also can say: This is complicated enough. You might have differing views of two different courts of appeals. We need to rehear this at a later date. That also would not be unusual. While only one time in the 20th century have we had a vacancy of over 300 days, there have been 10 times when the Court had vacancies above 200 days, 300 days in the life of the Court. Of the 36 people who have been nominated to the Court who didn't get on the Court under the Congress they were nominated, 25 of them didn't have a vote. We are not plowing any new ground. We are not coming up with any new legal philosophy. In fact, we are looking at what the Senate is supposed to do. I think the President of the United States has done exactly what he should do. There is a vacancy, and the President's job is to nominate somebody to fill that vacancy, but often that nominee has not been put on the Court or not been put on the Court by that Congress at that time. I can speculate that the only good reason for that--certainly in recent years--has been the argument that people need to have a voice in this decision. This is a decision that in all likelihood will outlast the next Presidency. Even if the next Presidency is a two-term Presidency, the person who goes on the Court--more likely than not-- will serve beyond the time that this President is elected. When John Tyler was President, he nominated nine people. He made nine nominations of people who didn't get on the Court. By the time he left the Presidency, I think there were multiple vacancies on the Court because the Senate was not prepared to confirm the people he nominated. Probably their excuse at the time was he was the first Vice President to become President, so maybe they wondered, well, maybe this is not someone who gets the deference of a President, and Presidents in their last year have never received much deference. This is a lifetime appointment. These are important cases. As an example, just look at the cases that are before the Court now. There is a case on appeal from a Texas Circuit Court where the President--as many of us said at the time, the Court says the President's amnesty Executive decision was way beyond the power of the President. If the President wants to change immigration laws, he has to come to the Congress and change the law. As much as--maybe more--than this President would like to do it, Presidents don't have the authority to change the law by themselves. They can do a lot of things with the law, but the one thing they cannot do is change the law. The Texas Court of Appeals said you can't change the law. The Texas Circuit Court said you can't change the law, and we will see what the Supreme Court says about that. If they are tied, unless they decide to rehear it, the result will be they cannot change the law. Executive amnesty doesn't work, and you are not going to be allowed to make it work. The administration is suing a number of religious entities. One is the Little Sisters of the Poor. The lawsuit is that they are trying to force those entities--Little Sisters of the Poor is an example--to have health insurance coverage that violates their faith principles. As I understand it, the purpose of the Little Sisters of the Poor, the order of the Little Sisters of the Poor, is something such as this: We are here to serve elderly people without means, no matter what their faith is, as if they were Jesus Christ. It doesn't sound like a bad thing for somebody to be willing to do, a Christian organization to serve elderly people without means no matter what their faith is--as if they came to the door and they were Jesus Christ. That is what their order says. Would the United States of America be irreparably harmed if the government allowed the Little Sisters of the Poor to have health insurance that met with their faith principles? I don't think so. Would the country be harmed in a significant way if we decide it is the overwhelming purpose of the government to make you do things for no particular reason at all that violates your faith principles? The first freedom in the First Amendment is freedom of religion. I don't think that is by accident. Those are the kinds of cases the Court decides. In a regulatory case that they just heard a few days ago, the argument appeared to be with a company in Minnesota that grows peat moss. The EPA is saying we have the authority to regulate navigable waters, and so we are going to get involved in your peat moss farm, because even though it is 120 miles from any navigable waters, the water from your peat moss farm could run into other water that could run into other water that 120 miles away would run into navigable waters. Look right here in the Clean Air Act. It says we have the ability to regulate navigable waters. No reasonable person would believe that is what ``navigable waters'' means, but that is the kind of thing we ask the Supreme Court to do. It is not just what the Court will do in the next 7 months. Even if somehow a nominee began the process right now, I think the average has been about 54 days. That is the 9 months it took to get to Judge Kennedy and less than that it took to get to somebody else. By the time you are through the 54 days, you are through most of the arguing period for this Court anyway, and you are not supposed to participate in the decision if you didn't hear the argument. This is a lifetime appointment to the Court. This is an appointment that has to be nominated by the President and approved by the Senate. They both have to agree, before it is over, that this is the right person at the right time. I think the history of these nominations and the common sense of Americans would lead them to believe that the American people deserve to be heard on a decision that has this much impact and lasts this long. While I am not on the Judiciary Committee, I certainly am supportive of the determination that the chairman and others on this committee have made. There will be time to deal with this lifetime appointment when the American people have had a chance to weigh in one more time 7 months or so from today. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today the Senate is taking a second step to deal with a public health crisis that is destroying lives and damaging communities across the Nation, the epidemic of opioid and heroin abuse. Step 1 late last year was to reduce spending in other programs and increase the dollars available to deal with this addiction. An estimated 1.9 million American adults have an opioid-use addiction or disorder related to prescription drug pain relievers. Another 500,860 have an opioid-use disorder related to heroin. Some 2.5 million Americans are dealing with this problem. Our Nation's veterans are particularly at risk for developing a dependency on opioids. A study published in 2014 found a high prevalence of chronic pain among veterans because of their service. The chronic pain among veterans was 44 percent compared to 26 percent in the general public. There was a higher prevalence of opioid use, at 15.1 percent, in the U.S. military after a combat deployment, after possible injuries in training or injuries from an IED attack, compared to just 4 percent in the general public. In 2014, more than 1,000 Missourians died from an opioid overdose. In St. Louis alone, deaths related to opioid abuse have increased nearly three times since 2007. Member after member has come to the floor, just as they came to me last year as the chairman of the funding committee for health and human services and explained what a problem this is in their State. The majority leader made a point to me the other day that in Kentucky more people died last year from drug overdoses than died from car accidents. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4 people every day die from an overdose of opioid pain relievers, and 78 people die every day from a combination of pain reliever overdoses or heroin overdose. Many times those prescription opioids have been the pathway to heroin. Deaths from prescription opioids have quadrupled in the past 14 years. These are stunning statistics. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has rightly labeled this an ``epidemic.'' This should get a good vote on the Senate floor today or tomorrow. But just because it gets a good vote, it does not mean it was not an important debate to have. Just because it gets a good vote and is now better funded than it has been in the past, that does not mean the Senate and the House don't need to weigh in and say: Here is more specific ability to deal with these problems in new ways. The good news is that addiction is a treatable disease. Those who receive treatment can recover and go on to lead full, healthy, and productive lives. In Missouri 72 percent of the individuals who had gone through our State's opioid treatment program in random tests test drug-free. The problem with addiction is that only about 10 percent of individuals who are battling drug addiction receive treatment. That is why I am proud to be a cosponsor of this bill. That is why it is important that we commit ourselves to win the fight against addiction. We need to make sure that all of the stakeholders are involved. As to first responders, if you are a first responder attached to a fire department, for instance, the odds are that you are going to respond to three times as many drug overdoses as you do to fires. So whether it is first responders, paramedics, or the law enforcement community, we need to use all of our resources to try to be sure that we are doing what needs to be done here. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act that we are debating provides grants from multiple government agencies to encourage State and local communities to pursue strategies that we know work. The only thing you have to do is be sure and implement those strategies. The bill expands the educational efforts to understand addiction as a chronic illness. That promotes treatment and recovery and prevents opioid abuse from going forward. The bill also expands resources to identify and to treat the incarcerated population suffering from addiction disorders with evidence-based treatment. Finally, it expands disposal sites for unwanted prescription medications to help them out of the hands of children and adolescents. Way too many unused painkillers are still in people's medicine cabinets or their dresser drawer, waiting for somebody else to find them and, once they know they are there, to find them again. This bill represents a strong bipartisan effort to address this epidemic. I filed two amendments that I think will improve the bill. I hope to see them in the managers' package. The first amendment will just simply expand the efforts that we have already made in a bill that Senator Stabenow and I introduced a couple of years ago and that got a significant pilot project in the Excellence in Mental Health Act. What that does is to provide 24-hour access for people living with behavioral health issues--with mental health issues. That would include substance abuse disorder. Excellence in Mental Health creates a demonstration program that really just simply, in the right kind of facilities, requires that mental health is dealt with like all other health--that behavioral health is dealt with like all other health. When we started that debate, there was a belief that no more than 20 States would implement Excellence in Mental Health if every State in the country were allowed to do it if they wanted to. We now have 24 States that have applied to be one of the eight State pilots. The administration said: Why don't we increase the 8 States to 14 States? We have an amendment to this bill that would say: Let's go ahead and increase the 14 States to all 24 States, because not only is this the right thing to do but what these States will find out is that when you deal with mental health like all other health, you probably save money because the other health issues that people with behavioral health issues have are so much more easily dealt with. It has been long said that we have really turned over, in an outrageous way, the mental health obligations of our society to the local police departments and the emergency rooms. That is no way to do this. It is no way to solve this problem. We are about 50 years behind. We are beginning now to catch up in the ways we should. I also filed an amendment to authorize the Department of Health and Human Services to use telehealth to allow this program to work more effectively, to allow telehealth to be one of the specifically reimbursable opportunities here. According to the Centers for Disease Control, individuals in rural communities are more likely--not as likely, not less likely, but more likely--to overdose on prescription painkillers than people in the cities, people in urban areas. In fact, death rates from overdoses in rural areas now greatly outpace the rate in large metropolitan areas, which historically had higher rates. So what do you do to connect those individuals with the kind of help they might need on a basis that they can turn to that help when they need to? One way to do that, certainly, is telehealth treatment options. Telehealth allows individuals in rural or medically underserved areas--many of whom just simply don't have other treatment options--to receive the care they need, to receive the attention their issue needs remotely. Additionally, telehealth can be an important component in ensuring that those patients receiving treatment for pain management use opioids effectively and appropriately and don't get started down the wrong path and the wrong way. In July 2014, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study that followed patients who reported moderate to intense chronic musculoskeletal pain. Of the 250 patients in the study, half received the normal standard of care and half received a year of telephone monitoring in addition to normal care. Patients who were monitored via telehealth were twice as likely to report less pain after 12 months, having someone to talk to or being able to ask a question about whether they should increase the medicine because their pain was worse that day. Researchers have clearly noted that fewer telehealth patients started taking escalated doses of opioids than people who were simply taking medicine on their own. Telehealth holds promise in lots of areas. I believe this happens to be one of them. As chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee, I was proud to see us increase funding at a 284-percent increase. I will say again that we did that by cutting funding in other areas. One of the things the government has to start doing is to truly prioritize. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Today, with this piece of legislation, the Senate is telling our friends on the other side of the Capitol and around the country that this is an epidemic we intend to deal with. I look forward to the continuation of this debate, the end of this debate, and passing this bill. Thank you. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to address the Senate in morning business.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk about Judge Scalia for a few minutes, and then I will address the vacancy on the Court. There is no question that the Supreme Court has lost a strong and thoughtful voice. No matter what issues the Justices on the Court might have disagreed with, or even when there was a disagreement on how to interpret the Constitution, there is no question that Judge Scalia had a unique capacity to get beyond that. He will be missed by the Court for both his intellect and his friendship. He was an Associate Justice on the Court for almost 30 years. He was a true constitutional scholar, both in his work before the Court and on the Court, and he brought a lifetime of understanding of the law to the Court. He began his legal career in 1961, practicing in private practice. In 1967, he became part of the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law. In 1972, he joined the Nixon administration as General Counsel for the Office of Telecommunications Policy, and from there he was appointed Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. He brought a great deal of knowledge to his work and finished the first part of his career as a law professor at the University of Chicago, and that is the point where he became a judge. In 1982, President Reagan appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, a court that gets many of the cases that wind up on the Supreme Court. He was on that court for a little more than 4 years. In 1986, President Reagan nominated him to serve as an Associate Justice. He was an unwavering defender of the Constitution, and as a member of the Supreme Court, he had the ability to debate as perhaps no one had in a long time--and perhaps no one will for a long time. He had a sense of what the Constitution was all about and a sense of what the Constitution meant, and by that he meant what the Constitution meant to the people who wrote it. There is a way to change the Constitution. If the country and the Congress think that the Constitution is outmoded in the way that it would have been looked at by the people who wrote it, there is a process to do something about that. That process was immediately used when the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution and can still be used if people feel as though the Constitution no longer has the same meaning as what the people who wrote it and voted on it thought it meant. Justice Scalia had the ability to bring that up in every argument and would sometimes argue against his own personal views. He argued for what the Constitution meant and what it was intended to mean. His opinions were well reasoned, logical, eloquent, and often laced with both humor and maybe a little sarcasm, but they were grounded with the idea that judges should interpret the Constitution the way it was written. His contributions to the study of law left a profound mark on the legal profession. Lawyers, particularly young lawyers in many cases, talk about the law differently than they did before Justice Scalia began to argue his view of what the Constitution meant and what the Court meant. He had a great legal mind. He was fun to be with. I will personally miss the opportunity to talk to him about the books we were reading or books the other one should read or maybe books that the other one should avoid reading because of the time required to read it. He had a broad sense of wanting to challenge his own views and was able to challenge other people's views not only in a positive way but in a way that he thought advanced the Constitution and what the Constitution meant to the country. As I stand here today, I am sure many people all over America and the people who the Scalias came into contact with are continuing to remember his family. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Maureen, their nine children, and their literally dozens of grandchildren. I am not sure if the number is 36 or 39, but it is an impressive number. Those who had a chance to see, be there, or read his son's eloquent handling of the funeral service and the eulogy can clearly see the great legacy he and Maureen Scalia left to the country. I am not a lawyer, which is often the most popular thing I say, so I don't want to pretend to be a lawyer here talking about the law and the Constitution, but you don't really need to be a brilliant lawyer to understand the Constitution or understand what Justice Scalia was going to be. I was a history teacher before I came here, and I know the Presiding Officer was a university president. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I had unbelievable opportunities because of where we live. We have the Constitution, and there is no magic as to the number of Justices that should be sitting on the Court at any given time. In fact, the Constitution doesn't even suggest what the number should be, and there have been different numbers over time. For some years now the number has been nine, but there have often not been nine Justices sitting. In the event of a recusal or some other reason that a Justice has to leave, such as resigning to do something else, there has often not been nine Justices. In fact, there have often been eight Justices. There has often been a Court that could easily wind up in a 4-to-4 tie. In fact, since World War II, the Court has had only 8 Justices 15 times. Right after World War II and about a month after Harry Truman became President--when he was a Member of the Senate, he used the desk that I now get to use--he asked Justice Robert Jackson to be the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg. Justice Jackson then went to Nuremberg, and for the better part of a year and a half--from May of 1945 until October of 1946--he was not sitting on the Court and wasn't making decisions on the Court. He was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. A tie on the Court can do a lot of things. It can uphold a lower court decision. A tied Court can decide to rehear a case, which is also not unusual in the history of the country. Again, you can be tied even if there are nine Justices and one of them, for whatever reason, decides not to participate in that case. When that happens, the Court can do a number of things and will. This is an important decision, and it is a decision in the shadow of the next election. We are 9 months and a few days away from people getting a chance to vote, and a lifetime appointment on the Court is an important thing. Justice Scalia was appointed by Ronald Reagan and served for three decades. He served for a quarter of a century after Ronald Reagan left the White House and for a decade after President Reagan died. This is something worth thinking about, and frankly at this moment in history and in other moments in history when a vacancy has occurred in an election year, it has often been the case that the decision is that the American people ought to have a say on who sits in that Supreme Court seat. That is what will happen this time, and I think it is the best thing to happen this time. There is a lot at stake. The Court has had 5-to-4 votes on decision after decision. What the Court does on the Second Amendment matters, and what the Court does on the First Amendment matters. The first freedom in the First Amendment is freedom of religion. No other country was ever founded on the principle that the right to pursue your conscience and the right to pursue your faith is a principal tenant of the founding of this government. It was a principal tenet in the Revolution. More importantly, it was immediately added to the Constitution when there was some concern that maybe the Constitution was not clear enough about this fundamental principle. During a time when the Obama administration is suing the Little Sisters of the Poor because the Little Sisters of the Poor doesn't want their health care plan to be a plan that includes things that are different than their faith beliefs, freedom of religion is very important. That is one of the cases before the Court right now. I don't know how the Court will decide to determine it. I do know there is a reason we should be concerned about freedom of religion, the right of conscience. President Jefferson, in writing to a church that asked him about individual freedom, said to that church--I think it might have been late in his administration, might have been an 1808 letter--of all the rights we have, right of conscience is the one we should hold most dear. The American people need to be thinking about that as they determine the next President, who is likely to not just fill this vacancy but likely to fill more than one vacancy during their time in office. Mrs. Clinton says if she is elected President, she will not appoint anybody to the Supreme Court who will not reverse the freedom of speech case in Citizens United. Sounds to me as though the Presidential candidates are willing to make the Court a major issue in this campaign. Voters should have the right to make the Court a major issue in this campaign as well--freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the Second Amendment, the Tenth Amendment that says anything the Constitution doesn't say the Federal Government is supposed to do is left to the States. The closer you are to where a problem is, when solving that problem, the more likely you are going to get a commonsense solution. That is why that Tenth Amendment is there and why it needs to be vigorously adhered to. These are important times. Anytime we have an election in the country, there is always a sense that this may be the most important election we have ever had. They all are and particularly an election where the constitutional principles of government, where Executive overreach, where regulators who are unaccountable and out of control are one of the big concerns in America today. It is an important time to be thinking about the Supreme Court and an important time to be thinking about the responsibilities of citizens and the responsibilities of the next President of the United States. This President has every constitutional right and obligation to nominate somebody to a vacancy on the Supreme Court, but there is a second obligation in the Constitution; that is, the obligation of the Senate to confirm that nomination. I have a view that the answer to that question is not this person, not right now because we are too close to making a big decision about the future of the country to not include this process of what happens to the Supreme Court in that process. I wish the process of democracy well, the American people well as they think about these things, and the Senate well as we do the other work that the Constitution requires us to do. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, recent developments in North Korea should have raised serious concern. As we have heard over and over again in the Senate from Members of both parties, they have raised serious concerns. This weekend North Korea launched its latest so-called satellite into orbit. We know this was nothing but an attempt to conceal their development of ballistic missile programs that would actually check launch capability, not really launching a satellite. On January 6, North Korea claims to have tested a hydrogen bomb, which, if true, would significantly increase and advance its nuclear capabilities. Even if not true, they have significant weapons in what everyone in the world would understand to be dangerous and even unstable hands. In October 2014, the senior U.S. commander on the Korean Peninsula told reporters that North Korea has the capabilities to put together a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can be mounted on a ballistic missile. Now we see them continuing to check that launch and missile capability. They already tested atomic nuclear weapons in 2006, 2009, and in 2013, in all cases in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and, frankly, in violation of the agreements they had made in the early part of 2003 and 2004. Nuclear experts have reported that North Korea may currently have as many as 20 nuclear warheads and that the capital, Pyongyang, has the potential to possess as many as 100 warheads within the next 5 years. Combined with what appears to be growing sophistication in their missile technology, they have been seeking a way to represent a direct threat--something potentially disastrous in a nuclear way--to the United States and certainly to our allies in the region. They have shown capacity to proliferate nuclear weapons and technology to other dangerous regimes and, we have every reason to believe, dangerous individuals. U.S. officials recently connected Iranian officials to North Korea and specifically mentioned two Iranians who, according to the report, ``have been critical to the development of the 80-ton rocket booster, and both traveled to Pyongyang'' to work on this. According to reports, Iran might coincidentally conduct a nuclear launch later this month. Now we see Iran doing what it is doing, and we see Korea with the capacity to do what it is doing. Frankly, what we see in both cases, as well as Russia, are economies that are faltering, and people have every reason to wonder about those in charge of their government. The more that occurs, the more dangerous a government might be in an unstable country, trying to do everything they can to enemies they feel they need to defend themselves against and people they need to advance against. We also know they have significantly increased their cyber capabilities. We continually hear from our intelligence community that a cyber threat is one of the greatest threats we face. We saw North Korea launch a cyber attack on Sony Pictures in 2014, which did incredible damage in many ways, including their ability to disrupt the critical infrastructure of our country in the same way they were able to get involved in the cyber world of one major company. According to a November 2015 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ``North Korea is emerging as a significant actor in cyberspace with both its military and clandestine organizations gaining the ability to conduct cyber operations.'' When we look at North Korea's attempts to increase and/or exaggerate the potential they have with the weapons they have or their ability to develop those weapons and when we look at what North Korea is doing with their cyber activities, we see a continually growing threat. The bill brought to the floor from Senator Gardner's and Senator Corker's committee, the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, takes steps by providing the tools necessary to hold North Korea and its enablers accountable for what they do. The bill's overall goal is to peacefully disarm North Korea through mandatory sanctions that would deprive the regime of the means to build its nuclear and ballistic missile program and advance its malicious cyber activities. Specifically, it mandates sanctions against individuals who have materially contributed to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile development; individuals who have engaged in money laundering, the manufacture of counterfeit goods, or narcotics trafficking that would benefit those programs; and individuals who have engaged in significant activities undermining cyber security against the United States or foreign individuals. In addition to these sanctions, the legislation targets additional areas that would deny North Korea the resources it needs to continue its malicious activities. For example, the bill mandates sanctions on individuals involved in trading minerals and metals that could be part of a nuclear program. This section would send a strong message, certainly to China, North Korea's chief diplomatic protector and largest trading partner. The things that could be used as sanctions would surely make China think twice about what they are doing with North Korea but also think twice about what North Korea is doing with the world. China purports to have a significant influence in North Korea. China purports to not want to see nuclear destabilization occur. This bill would be an incentive for China to live up to those claims. It has consistently failed to leverage its political or economic influence up until now. If China is getting serious about getting North Korea to change its behavior, we would like to see that happen. In a new view of sanctions, there is a waiver in this bill, as there has traditionally been. The President of the United States will have a waiver of these penalties. But this waiver is much stronger from the legislative perspective in that the President can only use the waiver on a specific basis and has to report, as I understand it, what that basis is. This measure also goes beyond the traditional sanctions regime because it requires the administration to put forth a comprehensive strategy to promote improved implementation and enforcement of how these sanctions would work and what they would do to combat North Korea's cyber activities, to promote and encourage international engagement on North Korean human rights violations, and to report back to Congress on what they found. There can be no doubt that other would-be nuclear regimes are going to be watching this carefully. We saw the lack of appreciation for U.S. commitment in the early weeks and months of the unfortunate Iranian deal. Frankly, the Iranians should and will look back at 2003 and 2004 and wonder why the agreements with North Korea didn't work and wonder if we are committed to those agreements and wonder if we still are determined to stop North Korea when we see the kind of activities we see today. This begins to send that message, but the required implementation and reports will send that message in more aggressive ways than the Congress and consequently the country have before. Finally, we need to ensure that all U.S. forces deployed in the region are appropriately equipped with the most up-to-date surveillance and counterballistic missile platforms. Our regional allies-- particularly South Korea and Japan--need to be assured that the United States is committed to both the stability and defense of all our partners and interests in the region. South Korea and Japan should also be encouraged to undertake any self-defense measures that are necessary to augment American forces already in the region. North Korea remains a serious threat to peace and stability in the region and the world. North Korea continues to be a bad example of what happens when the United States makes agreements and isn't prepared to follow through on those agreements. The world is watching. I hope my colleagues will join me in sending a clear message that North Korea's provocations are not acceptable and that its continuing pursuit of illicit nuclear weapons will not be tolerated. We will get a chance to vote on that issue today. I hope we send a strong message. I hope the administration becomes a stronger partner in this message than the messages we are failing to send right now on Iran. I think this is an important moment for the country and the world.