Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the votes following the first vote in this series be 10 minutes in length.

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about what we will be talking about around the country and around the world tomorrow. Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of D-Day. There aren't a lot of days known in history around the world by just one letter, but June 6, 1944, is known that way. It is the greatest amphibious battlefield landing ever and probably the single greatest military operation in history. It was done to liberate people in Europe from one of the most savage regimes that ever existed. At 15 minutes past midnight, 18,000 paratroopers began to step out of their planes high above Normandy, France, going in behind what would be the landing the next day. Below them, there were about 200,000 people streaming toward the Continent on almost 7,000 ships, with about 1 million others to follow after that landing was made on D-Day. A journalist who wrote about the battle noted that by 4:30 that morning, the Stars and Stripes flew for the first time over a town liberated by Americans in France in World War II. So a lot happened from midnight to 4:30, but a lot more was going to happen that day. Americans led the operation, but there were also troops from Britain, from Poland, from Norway, from Canada, and even French troops returning to help free their own country were there. They were told that when you land in Normandy, you will have only one friend: God. I am sure there was lots of praying going on that day. It became known in literature and on film as ``The Longest Day,'' and it gave the Allies the threshold they needed to free the Continent from the crush of the Third Reich. There was clearly chaos--that many people doing that many things in that many different ways. There were missteps, and there was bad luck, but in the end, there was an unimaginable amount of courage and sacrifice and just simple providence in what happened that day. When one landing group was landed in the wrong place, a place they weren't supposed to land, the commanding general, Theodore Roosevelt, who was the son of the former President Theodore Roosevelt, told one of his officers just to keep on bringing the men ashore. He said: ``We are going to start the war from right here.'' It is not where they intended to be, but it is where they were, and in their view and General Roosevelt's view that day, where we are is where we are going to start; there is no going back now. They didn't go back. One of the men who joined the fight that day--and there were millions who would eventually--with hundreds of thousands that day was Ralph Goldsticker from the Marine Corps Reserve. He had signed up for the Army Aviation Cadet Corps right after Pearl Harbor. He said, when talking about this later, that his parents were scared silly when they found out he had signed up immediately to become a flyer in what would become World War II. He flew 35 missions as a bombardier flying in a B-17 Flying Fortress, including two missions on D-Day. His first mission that day was to help take out the big German guns that guarded the beach where British troops were landing. He remembers the skies being so thick with airplanes that he had to fly from southern England all the way back to Scotland just to get in line to head to France. Later that afternoon, he flew a second mission to attack German reinforcements who were headed to the beaches. Ralph was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal in recognition of his service. You know, he was just one of thousands of Missourians from the lowest private to General Omar Bradley, who was commanding the American troops who were part of that mission, and many of them would never return. We just had a series of votes a little earlier than we would normally have in the week because 17 or so of our colleagues are going to be part of the D-Day celebration on this 75th anniversary. I had an opportunity myself to be in Normandy a few years ago. We were in Normandy at the Normandy American Cemetery, where there were 7,000 graves out in front of us. On what was a private trip, not a government trip, we were fortunate to have a good guide who understood the war and the cemetery. He took us through the cemetery, and then he took us over and sat us down on the stone wall with the English Channel to our backs and those 7,000 graves out in front of us. As we sat there at that spot, he flipped open his computer and on his computer he had some video of General Eisenhower and Walter Cronkite sitting exactly on that same spot on June 6, 1964, the 20th anniversary of D-Day. General Eisenhower, of course, gave the orders in spite of weather and other things, hoping it would work out as it was supposed to. As for what happened on D-Day and what happened later, he said to Walter Cronkite something like this: You know, Walter, my son John graduated from West Point on D-Day. Many times over the last 20 years I thought about him and his wife and the family they have and the opportunities they have had, and I thought about these young men--Eisenhower said, looking at those graves--and I thought about these young men and what they didn't get to do because of what they were asked to do. That, by the way, was the same commanding general who had that famous note in his wallet that day, stating that he would take full responsibility for what happened if it didn't go well. That was the kind of leader he was. I mentioned that there were 18,000 paratroopers. He was told that 70 percent of those paratroopers would not survive the day. There is a statue here in the Rotunda of this building that is based on a photo of Eisenhower the day before D-Day, surrounded by those young paratroopers. They were 18, 19, and 20, and maybe even a few younger than 18 surrounding him. They had been told that he wouldn't want to talk to them, but when he got there, it was obvious that he was there to see them. That statue in the Rotunda shows Eisenhower making a gesture. Nobody knew for years what that particular hand gesture was, but it turns out that he was talking to a young man from Idaho, and he was talking about fly fishing. So that gesture of Eisenhower in this building, if you are in this building looking at that statue, is Eisenhower the day before D-Day, talking to a young man about fly fishing. Again, he had been told that 70 percent of those paratroopers would not survive the day because of what he and others were asking them to do. The numbers weren't that bad, but they turned out to be plenty bad. The Germans had released water in an area behind Normandy in an unexpected way. So many of those paratroopers who expected to land on the ground instead went into flooded lands and drowned. Other things happened that couldn't have been planned for and weren't planned for, but they were there to do that job. The fighting that first day, D-Day, paved the way for more men to come ashore. It began the long push from France into Germany and, for them, into history. I think there will be slightly more than a dozen D- Day survivors at that 75th anniversary. You don't have to do the math very long to know that if you were in the military on D-Day, you would be in your nineties today, and they are going to be there with our colleagues and others celebrating what they did and what they were willing to do. One observer wrote on D-Day: There never had been a dawn like this one--700 ships, 200,000 people ready to land and establish the beginning of the end of World War II. So on D-Day, we remember again the sacrifice of those thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We honor their courage and devotion to the cause of liberty. We serve them by continuing to remain strong and preparing to fight for freedom everywhere. That means doing all we can for the men and women who defend us today. It means we carry the legacy of the generations that fought 75 years ago on D-Day and every other war where Americans fought and died. They deserve our gratitude today and every day. We need to continue to understand the importance of our alliances and our willingness to stand for freedom. D-Day is a great day and this is a great, great week to be reminded of that. I yield back.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to honor the work and career of Chancellor Mark Wrighton of Washington University in St. Louis. On May 31, 2019, Chancellor Wrighton concluded his term as chancellor after 24 years at Washington University. In 1995, Chancellor Wrighton began his career at Washington University in St. Louis. He was brought to St. Louis to serve as the 14th chancellor to one of the top institutions in the United States. Consistently ranked in the top 20 for best universities and currently ranked No. 8 for best research and medical schools, Washington University in St. Louis's reputation has grown; and its academic reach expanded under the leadership of Chancellor Wrighton. Although it was already a top school when he arrived, Chancellor Wrighton had a strong vision for boosting the full-time faculty numbers, making capital improvements to continue the high-quality learning experience for students, expanding their reach internationally, and enhancing the advancements in their medical research. Under his guidance and leadership, Chancellor Wrighton saw the construction of 50 new buildings, including a state-of-the-art research facility, the Debra and George W. Couch III Biomedical Research Building that is home to top researchers involved in genetics, genomics, and regenerative biology. In addition, one of his projects that has arguably made the biggest impact in St. Louis and is playing an important role in cancer research is the development of the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center. His focus on capital improvements to enhance the quality of learning and research, as well as hiring the best leadership to oversee the faculty, doctors, and researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, have led to pivotal results in the areas of treating, researching, and developing new approaches to dealing with diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer's. His comprehensive vision for the best talent to work in top-quality facilities has pioneered the way for better approaches to personalized medicine and lifesaving treatment making a significant contribution to addressing many of the complicated diseases facing patients and the families that love them. In addition to medical care and research, Chancellor Wrighton had a vision for contributing to the entrepreneurial climate in St. Louis and supporting the St. Louis community. There have been many positive local impacts made by Washington University, but an important commitment Chancellor Wrighton supported as an original collaborator was to launch Cortex. Cortex is the St. Louis home to the region's largest innovation campus for bioscience and technology startups and companies. Chancellor Wrighton's early and continued support of enterprises such as Cortex and other collaborations, like the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, demonstrate his commitment to support local economic growth and enhance job creation. Over the years Chancellor Wrighton has been an instrumental leader not just in the St. Louis region but across the country. He is not only known for being one of the best in the field of chemistry, which is where he started his career, but for being the best in educating our next generation of students, researchers, and citizens to be productive, engaged, and to make a difference. Chancellor Wrighton has led Washington University in St. Louis with great integrity. He has been a valuable partner to the St. Louis community. He has been and I am sure will continue to be an important adviser to me and to those that will seek his expertise to help address the many issues facing our region, State, and country. He has laid the groundwork for his successor to continue to enhance the quality education Washington University in St. Louis has been recognized for over the past several decades. We thank him for his years of commitment to the University and to the St. Louis region.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I think, by any standard, it is a stretch to suggest that we are churning out judges. We are doing our constitutional job of confirming judges that the President is constitutionally required to nominate. We are going to vote on a Missouri judge today, Judge Stephen Clark, to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. In the process of churning out judges, Judge Clark--or soon-to-be Judge Clark, I hope--was told by the White House in July of 2017 that he was going to be its nominee for this place on the court. If it were July of 2017 and it is now May of 2019, the churning is, obviously, not going very well. In fact, to get people to even serve in these jobs is going to get increasingly difficult. In the case of Steve Clark and his family, he had a pretty unique practice that was focused on him and a couple of associates. I am not even sure of the kind of law they practiced, but I am sure it was not the kind of law that was referred to a minute ago. His wife was the assistant in the office, and I think they had an associate or two. Yet, if all of your clients have been told for 20 months or so that you are going to be a district judge, the first question they ask is, Can you handle this case? The answer you give is, Well, I don't know, but probably not. Eventually, Congress will get to this, and, eventually, I will be confirmed. From the time of July 2017 to November 2018, there was nobody coming in the door anymore, and the law practice closed, as it should. It was not forced to close. Clearly, the best thing to do was to go ahead and admit that the supporting effort of that practice had gone away but that the overhead was still there. Since November, Stephen Clark has been waiting for this day to happen. This is not churning out judges, and I may get back to this topic in just a minute. Certainly, for nominees like him who are willing to have their names submitted--who are willing to say yes when asked if they would be willing to be nominees--we have to do a better job, not the job of suggesting that somehow this happens easily to people who aren't qualified. Steve Clark has been a respected, practicing attorney in the Eastern District of Missouri for 28 years. He knows the law; he knows the community. The American Bar Association rated him ``well qualified'' to hold this job. He has been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee twice now, once in 2016--see if I have that right; there is so much history here, it is hard to even know what the book would look like--and once before the 2018 election. Then all of these nominees had to be sent back to the White House, so after the 2018 election, after the Congress started work again in January of 2019, his name had to be resubmitted. The committee had to vote on him again. They had to look once again to see that he was ``well qualified'' to hold this job. They had to once again verify that he had 28 years in private practice. We even had a past president of the Missouri Bar Association, who is a Democrat, say: ``Steve Clark will make an excellent addition to the federal court bench.'' The very idea that we characterize judges we are putting on the courts as enemies of any group of people is pretty offensive when you think about it. The law of the land is the law of the land. Judges are bound by precedent. Certainly, lawyers are bound by precedent. There is nothing to suggest anything other than the ``well qualified'' status of the bar association. We need to fill this vacancy. We even have a temporary judgeship in the Eastern District. The workload is so great that the temporary judgeship should become permanent, but that is not the judgeship we are talking about here. We are talking about somebody who is ready for this job, willing to give up his law practice with what should have been an absolute certainty he would be confirmed, but no absolute certainty he would be confirmed. I certainly wish the process hadn't taken so long, but I am glad we were able to adjust the rules of the Senate last month to start getting more people through that process. Without that, people in this case in my State--the people in the Eastern District of Missouri--would have to wait even longer. We may have never gotten this judgeship filled if we hadn't changed the rules. Unfortunately, there are still a whole lot of people waiting to be confirmed to important jobs in the government. There is still too much obstruction for no real reason. In fact, in past Congresses, judgeships like this would have been filled by unanimous consent. We would have filled five or six a day if we had vacancies of well-qualified candidates at the end of the day with no debate, but our friends on the other side have decided: No, we are going to take the maximum amount of debatable time available for, say, a Supreme Court Justice or the Attorney General of the United States, and we are going to apply that to every job--district judges, the assistant secretary of whatever, who is the lowest person appointed in whatever Cabinet office there is. We are going to apply the 30 hours to them. Of course, what you did to do that is use up all of this time because nothing else can happen on the floor during that 30 hours. Was debate happening on the floor during that 30 hours? Of course not. The average debate time used during that 30 hours was 24 minutes. So for the other 29 hours and 36 minutes, nothing happened that related to that judgeship. This morning, when I was driving to the Capitol, I actually heard somebody on one of the news programs say: Now they are forcing judges to be confirmed with only 2 hours of debate instead of the 30 hours that should have been used. That would have been a valid criticism if the 30 hours were ever used, but when the 30 hours is only 24 minutes, it is no criticism at all. It is a ridiculous position to take. You don't have to be a genius to see that it is designed to not allow the President to have the jobs confirmed in the government that the Congress has determined that the Senate would have to confirm. There are, I think, about 970 of them. By the way, if you took 30 hours for each of the 970, I think it would have been impossible--and we were proving it was impossible--for the President to ever get a government in place. Then the judicial vacancies that occur--this is a vacancy we are filling today that was vacant months before President Trump was elected, maybe 3 months, maybe 4 months, but we haven't had anybody in this judgeship now for well over 2 years. In fact, as I said earlier, we have had, for 22 months, somebody who was told they were going to be the nominee and to prepare to serve. In the 3 weeks we were in session before the rule change, we were able to confirm seven nominees in 3 weeks, and that was the principal work we were doing in that 3 weeks. These nominees fill jobs that are running the government or court positions that they are appointed to serve in for a long time. We filled seven of them in 3 weeks. In the 3 weeks after we had the rule change, we cleared 24 nominees in that period of time. By the way, the debate spent an average of 3 minutes--of the 2 hours that were available to those 24 nominees, the average time spent debating was 3 minutes. The minority is still suggesting that we are going to use the maximum time no matter how little time is used, no matter how little time is called for, because even if it is not 30 hours--it is now 2 hours--we can force 2 hours of no legislative opportunity and no legislative planning as the Senate tries to do part of the job that only the Senate can do. The House doesn't do this; only the Senate can do this. This is a job that is done by the President, who nominates, and the Senate, which confirms. If you can keep the Senate confirming part to a maximum use of time, if you are in the minority, you can keep the legislating opportunities to a minimum. Now, somebody might say: Well, gee, what would they bring to the floor? There are a lot of things we would bring to the floor if we had the time to get on them and stay on them. Of course, we would really like to bring the appropriating bills to the floor soon and do those. We cleared 24 nominees with an average of 3 minutes of talking about each one--maybe a few minutes. I think that even includes the time just making aspersions about these nominees in general, which don't relate to anybody. That would be included in that 3 minutes as well. We continue to have a lack of cooperation to do the job of the Senate in the way that for 200 years it was done. I hope my friends on the other side will begin to work with us and begin to understand that everybody has caught on. The people in this building and outside this building know what has been happening for almost 2.5 years now, and more responsibility is going to have to be taken than has been taken up until now. I will say, again--almost 2 years after Steve Clark was nominated--I believe we will finish that job today, and if we do, it will be a good day for him, a good day for his family, and a good day for people waiting to get an opportunity on the Federal court docket in the Eastern District of Missouri to have a person not decided by me to be well qualified for the job but decided by the American Bar Association and twice approved by the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate. While this work has taken a long time to get done, it will be good to see it done. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have 9 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 9 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Environment and Public Works The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 9:45 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 1:45 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Daniel Aaron Bress, of California, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit, Michael S. Bogren, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Michigan, Stephanie Dawkins Davis, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan, Jason K. Pulliam, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Texas, Frank William Volk, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of West Virginia, and David Austin Tapp, of Kentucky, to be a Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims. Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Committee on Veterans' Affairs The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Special Committee on Aging The Special Committee on Aging is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management The Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to be joined soon by my colleague and cochair of the Senate Law Enforcement Caucus, Senator Coons, to honor the men and women who work for us every day to help protect us every day during Police Week. This is an annual event. It brings law enforcement officers to Washington from around the country and of course including my State of Missouri. As it turns out, Police Week is really a bad week to rob a store in Washington with a town full of policemen. Just last week, several would-be robbers came out of a robbery and almost ran into a group of St. Louis area policemen and a New Jersey policeman. They immediately chased down and arrested the perpetrators of that crime. Criminals are often not very smart, but you have to be particularly not smart to decide you are going to rob a store in Washington during Police Week. Thank goodness for those who wear blue and work to serve us and protect us every day and even do that when they are off duty and hundreds of miles away from home. So congratulations to those officers for what they did while they are here, and nobody is very surprised by that. When Senator Coons and I came to the Senate a little over 8 years ago, we started trying to find a law enforcement caucus to join, and found out there wasn't one, so Senator Coons said to me: Let's just start one, and we did. This is the week. We get a chance every year to talk about, specifically, what happens this week. We look for opportunities through the year to, No. 1, honor the people who work here protecting us every day, and, No. 2, to talk about things happening in the country that affect the people who protect us and protect police and sheriff's departments. This is the time of year, frankly, when the tragic loss of family is so evident as we add people to the police memorial. Four Missourians were added to that list this year. Deputy Sheriff Aaron Paul Roberts of the Greene County Sheriff's Office--the county I live in--died when his patrol car was swept into the Pomme de Terre River after he responded to a 911 call. Deputy Roberts had served with the Sheriff's Office for about 1 year, but he had previously served with the Willard Police Department for 4 years. He is survived by his wife, daughter, and by his parents. In April of 2018, Miller County Deputy Sheriff Casey Shoemate was killed when his vehicle collided with an oncoming vehicle while responding to a structure fire. He had served with that department for about 1 year as well, but he previously worked in two other Missouri police departments. He is survived by his two children, his fiancee, his parents, and his siblings. In March of 2018, Clinton Police Department Officer Christopher Morton was shot and killed when he and two other officers responded to a 911 call. As Officer Morton and his colleagues arrived at the scene, a man began shooting at them. The officers returned fire. They entered the building. The subject continued to fire. He fatally wounded Officer Morton and injured two of Officer Morton's colleagues whom I had a chance to visit with at that department not long after this incident. Officer Morton had been with the Clinton Police Department for 3 years. Prior to that, he served in the U.S. military through the Missouri Army National Guard. He had been deployed to Kosovo. He had been deployed to Afghanistan. His parents and siblings, I know, worried about him there but wouldn't have, in their wildest imagination, thought he would be killed at home near his hometown when reacting to a 911 call from a house. In March of last year, FBI Special Agent Melissa Morrow, of Kansas City, died from a brain cancer she developed following the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon. She had been assigned to the Evidence Response Team of the FBI Washington Field Office. She spent 10 weeks after that event recovering and processing evidence from the site in hazardous conditions. Melissa is survived by her parents, her sister, a niece, and a nephew. The names of these fallen men and women were added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial here in Washington and to the Wall of Honor at the Missouri Law Enforcement Memorial over the last month. They will be remembered by people who benefited from and remember their bravery, their dedication, and their sacrifice. This is a time when we honor those who serve us, particularly for lives which have been lost, but it is also the time to think about what we can do to serve them in a better way, to be sure they have the equipment they need, the resources they need, and the training they need. I mentioned at an event earlier today that for the last 50 years, law enforcement and emergency rooms have also been, unfortunately for everybody involved, the de facto mental health delivery system in the country. Officers now take crisis intervention training to be sure they are really prepared when they are dealing with someone whose intent is not criminal, but their activities are impacted by their mental health issues and what to do in that situation so everybody is better served. We have worked hard to see that the Regional Information Sharing System in our State, headquartered in Springfield, is properly funded. The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program has the center for our region in Kansas City. Those are things that Senator Coons and I have worked together on to do our best to fund. Two different times now, we have worked together to extend the Victims of Child Abuse Program. Last year, we again introduced the bill. I think the previous extension had been a 5-year extension, and we came to the end of that. This is the program where, at 23 centers in Missouri, people understand how to get the forensic information, the testimony they need from kids who have either been the victims of crime or witnesses of crimes. Every law enforcement person I have talked to, Senator Coons, every prosecutor I have talked to believes that what happens at these victims of child abuse centers can't be replaced anywhere else. Now we are working together on the National Law Enforcement Museum Commemorative Coin Act, a bill that the Senate passed last year, and the House didn't get to it. We want to do that again. The Law Enforcement Museum in Washington would be the beneficiary of the proceeds from that coin after the cost of the coin is paid. We are going to be working together on that. We have worked with other colleagues. I have worked with Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas on the Kelsey Smith Act. It is named after 18-year-old Kelsey Smith, who was abducted and murdered in 2007. This bill strengthens the ability of law enforcement to get the information they need, quick access to someone's cell phone to get the information of where they might still be or where they last were when they separated from that phone, if that is what happened. Senator Stabenow and I are continuing to work on the Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Act, something that every time we have support testimony on that act, it always involves law enforcement, which wants more focus on mental health courts and more focus on drug courts but particularly more focus on the ability of officers to deal with the situation in the best possible way when they come upon it. Remembering those who have fallen and continuing to work for those who stand up for us and run to the side of danger as they shield us from danger is important. I am glad to be joined today by my good friend Senator Coons from Delaware.

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, I am glad to be joined by my good colleague Senator Hawley. He brings incredible depth to the issues we talked about. He grew up in Lexington, MO, I understand, in smalltown America. He was educated in some of the best schools in our country and had the great good fortune to be assigned as a John Roberts law clerk in the office of another John Roberts law clerk and the good judgment to convince her to marry him. He and Erin are a valuable asset to our State. They have two wonderful little boys. I have enjoyed the time we have had together and look forward to more time with Josh and his family. He clearly thinks deeply about the issues that affect the country. He is focused on not only the present but the future. Those are all good things. We have jointly had the opportunity to represent a State that is as diverse as any State in the country. I think a week, a month, a year in Missouri is probably the closest thing to that same period of time if you could somehow condense the entire United States into one place, where sometimes St. Louis is seen as the westernmost eastern city and Kansas City may be more like Denver than St. Louis. Northern Missouri is more like Iowa. I would state to Senator Grassley that when crossing the border there, you certainly can't tell when you cross from Missouri farmland into Iowa farmland and the small cities and small towns. The Bootheel, Delta South in character where Josh and I live in Springfield has that northwest Arkansas-Oklahoma vitality that is different from anywhere else in our State. As we travel actively around our State, as we both do, I think we have a great sense of so much of what happens in the country. It is still the population center of America, if not the exact geographic center. Missouri is where the country comes together. Josh had an opportunity last year to talk to tens of thousands of Missourians about that and to communicate in other ways with millions of Missourians about that. I am glad he is here and glad to welcome him to the work we will be doing together. We won't agree every single day because if we did, I guess we could have just one Senator and give him two votes. But it gives us a chance to talk about the issues we face and what that means for our State but also what it means to the country. I am delighted he has committed himself to public service. Missourians have now elected him to two statewide offices in less than 3 years, and they have expressed that confidence in him. With great frequency, I run into students both Josh and Erin had when they were both teaching at the Law School at the University of Missouri, and they always tell me Erin was the best teacher they ever had and often tell me Joshua was the best teacher they ever had. They must not have had a class with Erin yet. But I am delighted that they are both part of the discussion that will lead America forward. I look forward to engaging in that discussion with them and partnering in the things we can find to do together and getting a chance to represent our strong, unique State that I think is ready to merge into a greater future, whether that is with all the healthcare and ag research we see happening, the GEOINT focus that is coming into our State because of the new NGA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency facility being built there. This is a time of great opportunity. I am glad to have the chance to share part of that opportunity and look at that future with my colleague Josh Hawley and certainly want to join others in welcoming him officially to the Senate today as he makes his maiden speech to the Senate. I yield back.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, this week is Small Business Week. For over a half a century now, the country has officially recognized Small Business Week, but in our country, small businesses have always accounted for and still account for most of the jobs created-- certainly, for most of the new jobs created. In Missouri, that is absolutely the case. We ought to be doing all we can to create an environment in which people can get those new jobs and often get their first jobs, and I think we are doing that. There is nothing better for small business than a strong overall economy. Almost daily now, we see some new number that sets a new record for the last 40 years or maybe for the last 50 years. In the case of the unemployment number, just this week, for the 13th month in a row, we have had more jobs available than people who have been looking for work, and that had never happened a single time--not one single time--until 13 months ago. The best thing, obviously, for small business is to be part of a growing economy, a vibrant economy. We are seeing that, and there are reasons for that. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is one of those. Almost every small business now pays less in taxes on its business than it did before. Businesses are allowed to fully deduct the cost of new equipment so they can reinvest and reinvent and grow their businesses. That means more jobs. The tax cuts also allow people to keep more of their money, and that means they have more of their money to spend. In my State of Missouri, we found that in the first 12 months of the tax cut--so these numbers are now about 6 months old, and I think, if anything, they have gotten better--the sales tax and use tax were up 2.5 percent. We know the last quarter of the overall gross domestic product was up 3.2 percent, but 2.5 percent of real growth in just tax income is one of the ways one measures whether people are spending their money or not, and they are. People in this economy feel more confident about their jobs, and that makes a big difference. In the previous 8 or 10 years, the fear that people had of losing their jobs has really gone. People now go to work believing there is a better chance they will get promotions than they will lose their jobs, and that makes a real difference. So we have done things that are helpful in cutting taxes. We have also done things that are helpful in reducing regulation. The President has been particularly helpful in leading the recovery after removing regulatory redtape. Actually, small businesses are much more affected by regulatory redtape than are big businesses. Big businesses can hire somebody to go through the regulations and stay totally focused on that, and small businesses can't. If you are afraid you are going to violate some Federal regulation, you are less likely to go ahead and make the kind of investment you would like to make than you otherwise would be. We have also created more access to credit by cutting down some of the overregulation of community banks. There is more we ought to be doing. One thing we could have that a lot of small businesses could really benefit from is the New Markets Tax Credit Program. This is a program that was first authorized in 2000. It encourages investment in high-poverty areas or in low-income areas. Again, in Missouri, 42,000 new jobs have been created as a result of the New Markets Tax Credit Program. The other day, I went to the first new supermarket since 1968 in North St. Louis. This new supermarket opened because it was able to use the New Markets Tax Credit Program. It is a program we clearly need to extend. Once again, I and Senator Cardin, from Maryland, introduced that legislation, and we hope that can happen. On the health front, there is nothing better for small business than the idea of association health plans. It has been challenged in court, but I will tell you what. In Missouri, we have had experience with this for a long time. It does work. It just, frankly, makes sense. If you are a small restaurant owner, you are not going to have as good a program for your employees as if you could get that program through the Missouri Restaurant Association, through the National Restaurant Association, or through some other association that would allow you to be the kind of group from which 180 million Americans already get their insurance. We need to continue to work on this as we honor small business with things like we have done in the last couple of days. The Ex-Im Bank is often not thought of as a thing that small business uses, but there are more small business Ex-Im Bank loans that are processed than there are of big business loans. Even when there are big business loans, those big businesses almost always have small business providers for what they do. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission can't fully work in a way that people can count on if it doesn't have the people there to make it work. We did that today. So my colleagues and I are here today to talk about small business. It is the engine that drives America. This is the week in which we honor it, but, frankly, our economy is dependent on it every single week, and I am glad to be here to talk about it.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with respect to the Dhillon nomination, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, we have been stuck for some time now on having an appropriations bill that meets the disasters that have occurred recently in Missouri and, before that, in the Carolinas and Georgia, and other places. I want to continue to work hard to get that done, but I want to talk a little bit about the effects of what has happened in the State of Missouri as part of what has happened with floods this spring. We have seen catastrophic and, in some cases, historic flooding both on the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers over the last couple of months. Along the Missouri, there was this unusual thing, and I actually never heard the term before, a ``bomb cyclone.'' It is a wind event that also produced lots of rain in Nebraska in the Northern Plains on frozen ground. All of that water had no place to go except run off, and it was the equivalent of 8 inches of rain in a place from which we usually don't get water. There had been significant rain over the last few days of March. That created another flood. On the Mississippi, we have seen significant rains there. While they haven't set a record, they have certainly consistently ranked the Mississippi crests among the seventh highest flood levels that river has ever been from some of the locks. There are locks north of St. Louis. You can navigate the river without locks south of St. Louis, but in the area from the Canton Lock and Dam to the Winfield Lock and Dam on the Mississippi, there are significant problems waiting to happen over the next few weeks. After the rains occurred in Northwest Missouri and in Iowa and Nebraska, in our State and Kansas, much of the water is still there. The floods have stayed up so high for so long that it is difficult to really evaluate the damage that has been done. Unlike a tornado, which we have some familiarity with, where you can go in quickly and evaluate what happened, you can't do that nearly as quickly with a flood. We do know there has been at least $25 million in damages to public infrastructure and costs of emergency measures experienced statewide. There have been 215 road closures statewide, with 46 roads that continue to be closed as late as the third week in April. Interstate 29, north of St. Joseph, has been closed since March and is expected to stay closed until probably June. This is obviously a very disruptive set of circumstances for people who would normally use those roads and bridges all the time. One of the major class 1 roadways has been damaged. That roadway was just raised in 2011 to deal with the flood in 2011. An ethanol plant was knocked offline. Electric substations have been damaged. Grains stored in bins from last year's harvest have been destroyed. Livestock have been lost. Many farmers will not be able to get crops in the ground this year because it will be too wet once the water goes down--until it is too late to successfully plant the crops. So thousands of acres and hundreds of farms just simply will not be able to do what they do because of the flood. The scale and scope of these events has clearly overwhelmed local governments, overwhelmed county governments, and stretched the State government in a significant way. Most effectively, and most importantly, it has impacted families and individuals. If your home is underwater, if it takes 2 more hours to get to school, if you have no chance of planting your crop or if you are in a business that relates to the family who is going to plant the crop, if you have nobody buying the seed or paying the repairs for their equipment, paying for the gasoline--the things you do to stay in business--that has all kinds of impact as well. The Governor of Missouri has requested a Presidential disaster declaration. I am certainly for that, and every Member of the Missouri delegation signed the letter asking the President to grant that declaration. The assistance that would be impacted by this would be vital. It is important. We need that kind of assistance now. I am going to continue to work--and I hope all our colleagues continue to work--to make this year's disasters and last fall's disasters eligible for the funds we appropriate for disaster coverage. During the flood, a lot has been said about the Corps of Engineer's management of the Missouri River, and what, if anything, they could have done that might have prevented the flood this time. I think probably not. This is such an unusual flood that the locks on the Missouri were north of where the flood occurred. There was a dam that broke that would not normally have broken, and that would normally not even be part of the Missouri River management system. The Corps has been out there trying to help figure out how to recover rather than figure out what caused this particular flood. In fact, the Corps and the permanent staff in places like the Kansas City office of the Corps understand the Missouri River better than anybody, in my view, and are helpful when they can be. That doesn't mean the Corps, in a greater sense, isn't responsible for what has become the new normal on the Missouri River. We have had recurrent historic flooding on the river now for 15 years. Ever since the Corps asked for a new management plan in 2004 and got the new management plan, it just simply doesn't work. At least 6 of the top 10 river crests in recorded history have occurred in the last 15 years. Floods in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011--you see the pattern here--2013, and 2019. The only reason we didn't have dramatic floods every year was we had a couple of drought years in 2009 and 2012. This all goes back to that 2004 management plan. What changed in 2004? In 2004, the Corps started to implement the Missouri River Recovery Program in response to a Biological Opinion--``opinion'' may be the key word here--Biological Opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which took the position that the existing management of the river was impacting one species of fish and two species of birds. The ultimate result was prioritizing the management of the entire river to benefit that fish and those birds. It was above flood control. It was above navigation. It didn't consider what was detrimental to families, to farms, or the local infrastructure and was not necessary. Saving wildlife is a worthy goal, but for that goal to truly be worthy, it has to also include how it impacts families, how it impacts people, and how it impacts the economy. We had management plans on the Mississippi River as well, but the wildlife management plans didn't become the plan that substituted for all other plans. The Corps' management plan brought about changes to the lower river. There are six locks and there are six dams, rather, and reservoirs above the Lower Missouri that starts roughly in the place where Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri all come together. What happened was they began to destabilize the banks, constructing pallid sturgeon chutes that impacted how the water ran into the river. They no longer dredged the river like they had before. Just to understand why that matters, a 9-foot channel of the river carries a lot more water than a 6- or 7- foot channel of the river. If you are channeling the river so you can still navigate the river, they had interception rearing complexes, none of which appears to have made much of a difference, except they made it hard to control the river at flood stage. Modifying or eliminating the river control systems eliminate the normal things in a river, such as revetments, wing dikes, and chevrons that control the river and send the water in the direction it needs to be for flood protection, and that just didn't happen. Fish and Wildlife and the Corps of Engineers actually now know that some of the actions they were carrying out caused direct negative impacts on the river and didn't do any good. There is a high level of certainty that when you notch a dike in the river--which means you cut a hole in a structure that is designed to channel the water--that when you do that, bad things happen. That is why that structure was put there in the first place for a reason. One of the most disappointing parts of what has happened is a relatively low level of certainty that any of these things do any good. In fact, the Corps and the Fish and Wildlife people have already abandoned the pursuit of what they constructed, pallid sturgeon chutes, which they thought would encourage the pallid sturgeon to multiply. By the way, this is a fish we happen to multiply ourselves at the Neosho National Fish Hatchery, which I believe is the oldest fish hatchery in the United States. The U.S. hatchery system is in Neosho. Pallid sturgeon is one of the things they do. They didn't work, but they did encourage more flood risk. I would have one suggestion for the Corps: If you know an action will increase flood control and you know it will harm people and harm property and you don't know whether it will help save a species, don't do it. There has to be a way you figure out first whether this is going to work, and then you might evaluate if it is so important that we are going to impact people and property. What we had is a big experiment that turned out to be the wrong thing to do to start with. It didn't serve the purpose, and it did harm the river and people who live on the river. Flood control and navigation needs to be, once again, elevated to the top two priorities of managing the river. I look forward to working with my colleagues to figure out how to do this in a better way. There is no question that the Mississippi River is about to be more important than it has been in 100 years. There is also no reason that the Missouri River, as an avenue of commerce and as an avenue that people can get near and enjoy from a tourist's and traveler's perspective, can't be there, and there is no reason it can't continue to be managed in a way that benefits families, that benefits us economically, and that doesn't repeat year after year after year the flooding that did not occur under the original management plan. We need to look at that plan. We need to have a management plan that meets the commonsense standard. The current plan does not, and we have had now 15 years to prove that the current plan does not meet it. I am going to be working hard with both the Corps, the Department of the Interior, and Fish and Wildlife to see if we can't have a plan that meets that commonsense standard.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, on April 30, 2019, the Joint Committee on Printing organized, elected a chair, a vice chair, and adopted committee rules for the 116th Congress. Members of the Joint Committee on Printing elected Representative Zoe Lofgren as chair and Senator Roy Blunt as vice chair. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the committee rules be printed in the Record.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, on April 30, 2019, the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library organized, elected a chair, a vice chair, and adopted committee rules for the 116th Congress. Members of the Joint Committee on the Library elected Senator Roy Blunt as chair and Representative Zoe Lofgren as vice chair. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the committee rules be printed in the Record.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, as we said when we began to talk about tax reform months ago now, the purpose of tax reform was stronger families and expanding opportunities for every American. I think the facts are clear that that is exactly what happened. Over the past year, most people saw bigger paychecks. Many of those people saw bigger paychecks because they had less money taken out of their checks. Ninety percent of middle-class Americans received a tax cut. Pay increases for lots of other Americans set new standards in recent years. I think the pay increases of slightly less than 4 percent in the last year are higher than at any time in recent memory. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the child tax credit doubled from $1,000 to $2,000 per child. That credit is available to many more families than before and obviously is twice as big as before. People are able to keep more of what they earn. We have an economy right now where people actually believe for the first time in a decade that the chance they are going to get a promotion is greater than the chance they are going to lose their job. They have also stopped worrying about their neighbor losing their job or someone else in their family losing their job. At this time, we have an economy where people who want to go to work can go to work with confidence. Unemployment last month was at a 49-year low. Around a year ago, for the first time, more jobs were available than people looking for work. That had never happened before since keeping these statistics, that there were more jobs available than people looking for work. When it happened the next month, it was the second month in a row that it had ever happened because it had never happened before the first month. I think we are now 11 months into that statistic where there are more jobs than people looking for work. In 2018, we had the strongest economic growth that we had seen since before the financial crisis about a decade ago. According to the Department of Labor, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.4 percent year over year. That is the largest increase in a decade. Job openings increased to 7.6 million at the beginning of the year. That is the third highest job-opening number in a long time. As I said earlier, for the 12th straight month, the number of job openings has exceeded the number of jobseekers. There is no doubt that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been part of the economic turnaround and will continue to be. One of the ways it will do that is by promoting new investment in areas where they need it most, through what we call in the tax bill opportunity zones. In Missouri, there are 161 areas that have been designated as opportunity zones, making them eligible for the investment incentives under the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I want to thank my friend from South Carolina, our colleague from South Carolina, Senator Scott, for all of his hard work in making sure this provision not only makes sense to people but making sure we fought hard to see that it was included in the tax bill. The majority of these zones were required to have an average poverty rate of at least 20 percent and a median family income of no more than 80 percent of the statewide median income. So obviously there are areas where something needs to happen to improve those areas. It is predicted that $100 billion of private capital will go into those opportunity zones. These are places where, even unlike the 1031 exchange, you can take an asset that is no longer working for you or you are no longer excited about having and you can get rid of that asset and put it in an opportunity zone. It doesn't have to be a like- kind exchange. There is a difference in focus and focusing where people need it. Attracting new investments to distressed urban and rural communities with high poverty rates and slow job growth is a challenge. This is one of the things that the tax cut is beginning to do and that the new tax bill is beginning to do, bringing in that investment and creating more opportunities for families. Just recently, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson came to St. Louis to highlight opportunity zones. Here is what the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development said: ``The Opportunity Zones present an incredible opportunity for people to take unrealized capital gains that would normally be invested into more traditional vehicles and focus them on areas that are traditionally neglected.'' The opportunity zones are another example of how tax reform is working to benefit Missourians and people all over the country. I think the goal of a tax plan that would benefit families and benefit individuals is clearly being realized as we approach the day that none of us are ever excited about--tax day. It is not the most popular day in the year, but over the past year, people have been able to keep more of the money they earn, and maybe just as important, they have been earning more money than they earned before even if they didn't benefit directly from the new Tax Code. While this is not the most favorite day of the year, it is a day that has been better for American families than this day has been for a long time, and hopefully it will be even better a year from now. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, in the last vote today we established a new precedent. The rules of the Senate are a combination of the rules of the Senate, the standing orders of the Senate, and the precedents of the Senate. Senator Lankford and I had hoped to do this with a permanent standing order that basically would have put the Senate exactly where the bipartisan vote was in 2013, which included my vote, to have the same kind of rules that we are encouraging now. This process is designed to speed up not only nominees for Republican Presidents but also nominees for Presidents who are Democrats. In the last 2 years, we have seen an extraordinary use of every tool available to the minority. The Senate is designed to be a place where the minority is heard. In fact, at one time, any Senator could stop everything forever, and when Senators started doing that to excess, that rule was changed. The protections of the minority often have to be looked at again when the minority abuses those protections. That is what has happened in this case. Now we have 2 hours of debate on the nominee we are debating right now. If we hadn't just taken the vote we took that overruled the Chair, we would have 30 hours of debate. I guarantee that there will not be 2 hours of debate about this nominee. There may not be 2 minutes of debate about this nominee if we see what we have seen happened in the last 2 years. The rules of the Senate currently say that if any Senator wants to hold up consideration of a nominee, then, the Senator can insist that we go through the process of invoking cloture. In the first 2 years of the Obama administration, that process was used 12 times, and that was more than had been the case in the past. In fact, the previous 3 Presidents had cloture invoked on their nominees a total of 12 times. That is 24 times in 4 Presidencies. In the first 2 years of President Trump's time in office, the majority leader had to come to the floor 128 times and say we are going to have to invoke cloture to have a chance to vote on this nominee. It is the first week of April. Eleven times this year already the Senate has had to invoke cloture on a nominee for a government job--for a judgeship or some other government job. While that debate time was seldom used, occasionally, at the end of the week, we would say: Well, OK, we will just go ahead and do the last one. Each time, we had to assume that 30 hours would be used up for those people to be processed and to have a chance to do the jobs that they were going to do. The history of the Senate is exactly as the majority leader described here earlier. In the first 200-plus years of the Senate, while the Senate often used a delaying tactic to delay legislation and require the Senate to think about it more, the Senate virtually never used the rules of the Senate to slow down the process of putting people in the Cabinet. In fact, several Presidents--and Presidents in this century--had their full Cabinet put in place within the first day or two of their administration. That didn't happen with this President, and it is obviously what brought us to where we are today. Usually, in the first couple of years of a new administration, the President not only gets his Cabinet approved right away, but the President is also able to put people around those Cabinet officers who want to move the government in the same direction that the voters just said they wanted the country to go. The term of an administration is only 4 years. At the end of 2 years, if you are sending back 124 nominees who just simply didn't get voted on--they got investigated, they got the background checks done, they went through the committee, and the committee voted to send them to the floor--that was always supposed to be part of the work of the committee, and that happened for 124 people who never had a chance to get voted on in the first 2 years of this administration, many of whom had been waiting in line for a year. Now, if you are appointed and have a short-term job in the Federal Government and are willing to serve, the one thing that does for sure is to put your life in some chaos--coming up with the material that the Congress insists on, going through the background check, and getting your financial records out. For most people, it also means putting the way they make a living on hold. I had somebody whom I nominated as one of three people for the President to choose from to be the district judge in the Eastern District of Missouri. I made that nomination roughly 24 months ago. Twenty-two months ago, the President told the person he chose that he was going to nominate that person. Last November, after a year and a half of that person telling all his law clients, ``You know, I am about to become a Federal judge; you may need to find another lawyer,'' and after he closed his legal process, he hasn't been voted on yet. That man was one of the people sent back from the White House. He had to be sent back up this year and had to go through the Judiciary Committee again. He had to get back in a line, where every single person took 30 hours of debate, after the 1 day that had to be debatable between the time the leader brings you up and you come to the floor. This sounds pretty complicated. That is because it is, and it is made more complicated by the fact that people have used it as a delaying tactic. Now, as for the 128 people whom I mentioned--the 128 people whom the majority leader had to file cloture on--compared to 12, let's be sure we are comparing this the way this used to be, even in recent years to now--128 compared to 12. When those 128 people finally got votes, the support was substantial. When they finally got votes, one-third of them got 70 votes or more. Thirteen percent got 90 votes or more. So you have 90 people voting for people that someone insisted we needed 30 hours of debate for, and there wasn't a debate at all. Twenty district judges had cloture filed on them. Twelve of those district judges had nobody vote against them after 30 hours on the floor, where, in all likelihood, nobody had anything to say during those 30 hours. The average amount of time that we spent talking about nominees during the 30 hours that has been insisted on is less than 1 hour. The person who generated the most discussion, at least this year, was the new Attorney General. That is a pretty important job. There should have been quite a bit of discussion. In fact, it was our intention--the intention of the standing order that Senator Lankford and I filed--and it will continue to be the intention, that that person will still have 30 hours of debate if anybody thought that was necessary. Supreme Court justices, Cabinet members, and circuit judges would all have 30 hours of debate. But even with the Attorney General, less than 4 hours was used to talk about what everybody listening would believe is one of the most important jobs possible. For the 10 other nominees who have had cloture filed on them prior to this week, almost no debate time was used. In fact, again, even in the case of Attorney General William Barr, four-thirtieths of the time was used. That means that twenty-six-thirtieths of the time wasn't used, but we couldn't use it for anything else. We couldn't use it for another nominee. We couldn't use it for a piece of legislation. We couldn't use it to talk about how the government spends its money basically to debate an appropriations bill that would be on the floor. It just couldn't happen. Last week, we confirmed Bridget Bade to be a judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. We used less than 1 minute of the 30 hours that the minority insisted on--less than 1 minute of the 30 hours--but nothing else could be done during those 30 hours. Every Member of the Senate knows that the abuse of this process is done to delay and to keep us from confirming not only other people who need to be confirmed but to keep us from getting to the work we need to get to. It prevents us from taking up other legislation. It prevents us from doing our job. It has to be discouraging when you talk to people in the future about this: Would you be willing to serve as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for something? Would you be willing to serve as the Assistant Deputy Secretary of Treasury for IRS? And, by the way, you really can't start anything new, and you may never get voted on. When you do get voted on, you may not actually be able to serve in that job for more than a few months if you serve the rest of the term of this Presidency. People will begin to say no, and we all know that. Today we have 140 people who are waiting to be voted on for jobs they have been nominated for. They are now out of committee. They have done all the paperwork. They have cleared all of the days. They have done everything they needed to do. When President Reagan was President, the average number of days between the time you were voted out of committee and the time you were voted on on the floor was 5 days. By the time you had gotten out of committee, you had already been weeks, if not months, into this process. Five days later, you would get to know whether or not you were going to get the job. With President Trump, the average number of days between the time you got out of committee and the time you got voted on was 55. That is 55 days when you are waiting to do the job that you have been willing to do, have answered every question you have been asked, have gone through all of the background checks you needed, and you are still waiting. This system cannot work that way. We would never get everybody confirmed that a President is required to nominate, which means we also would never have time to get the other things done that the Senate needs to do. I think the step we took today was an important one. We will talk about another category of people to be confirmed later today--district judges. I believe we will be able to make that change as well. Again, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, and the circuit judges would all still have 30 hours available to them. Our friends on the other side may continue to insist on that, but if they do, I guarantee that if you run a clock on this, in all likelihood nobody will ever use the 30 hours to talk about the nominee. If we didn't do it to talk about William Barr, we are not hardly going to do it to talk about anybody else. Debate is an important thing. Having the right people in the right job is an important thing. It is also important to have them in the right job at the right time. Today, I believe the Senate is taking important steps to return back to the traditional role of the Senate in confirming nominees and giving Presidents an opportunity to do the job they were elected to do. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, March is Women's History Month. A number of my colleagues have been coming to the floor and talking about the accomplishments of particular women in their States. I want to do the same thing. When Virginia Minor, a St. Louisan, was denied the ability to register to vote in 1872, she took her case all the way to the Supreme Court. While she wasn't successful at the Supreme Court level, she remained a leader in the suffrage movement and later testified before the Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage in 1889. Remember that women didn't get the right to vote until 1920. So she was working on this with thousands of others for a long time. She is also one of seven women represented in the Missouri State Capitol's Hall of Famous Missourians. Virginia Minor and her fellow suffragettes blazed a trail of political leadership that others followed. In 1952 Leonor Sullivan became the first woman in Congress from Missouri. During the 24 years that she served in the House, she became the first woman appointed to the House Democratic Steering Committee. She was elected secretary, one of the elected leaders, of the House Democratic caucus for five terms. Our former colleague, Senator Claire McCaskill, won her Senate race in 2006. With that, she became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri. Certainly, Senator McCaskill and I disagreed on plenty of things over the years, but, frankly, when it came to the big issues affecting our State, we always figured out how to work together to get things done. Also from our State, I want to recognize Margaret Kelly, who in 1984 was appointed to the position of State auditor. When that happened, that made her the first woman to hold statewide office in Missouri. She was elected to a full term in 1986 and reelected two more times after that. In Missouri, at least, you can't talk about politics and the impact on politics without talking about Phyllis Schlafly, who was a vocal and tireless advocate for conservative ideas. She was never afraid of a fight, but she also knew when to celebrate what was possible. One of the great things about Phyllis Schlafly was that she knew how to win, when you could win, and what you could win, when you could win it, and, then, how to come back and fight for what you didn't get the first time and continue to work for more. She was a friend of mine. I value her legacy. There is no question that she impacted the political landscape of the country. As I mentioned earlier, there are seven women represented in the Hall of Famous Missourians. Two of them were committed lifelong to education. In 1873 Susan Blow, who was born in St. Louis, founded the first public kindergarten in the United States in the Des Peres public school in Carondelet. In 1818 Saint Rose Duchesne opened the first Sacred Heart school outside of Europe. The Academy of the Sacred Heart was the first free school west of the Mississippi and the first Catholic school in what would eventually become the St. Louis Archdiocese. I mentioned that this was Saint Rose Duchesne, one of the first women to be an American who rose to the level of sainthood. There are also a few world figures in that hall of fame, like Josephine Baker, who was not only an iconic entertainer but also a civil rights activist and, interestingly, a member of the French resistance during World War II while she was entertaining in Europe. In our hall of fame, she is joined by other entertainers, like Ginger Rogers and Betty Grable. The seventh woman honored in the State capitol is Sacagawea, who, of course, was part of the Lewis and Clark expedition into Missouri and up the Missouri River and other territories of the Louisiana Purchase. To cover all of the notable Missouri women in history would be impossible. To talk about the countless women who are making an incredible impact in our State today would be impossible--people who are devoted to public service, who are successful entrepreneurs, who serve our country in the Armed Forces, and so much more. Those women and others continue to help lead our country and to inspire younger women. There is a reason that March is Women's History Month, and thousands and thousands--maybe millions--of Missouri women would easily qualify in that category of people who have made a difference in history. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I want to talk a little about the Green New Deal, but I can't pass up the opportunity to point out that we are now starting 30 hours of debate on the Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is outrageous. Everybody knows it is outrageous. If you start the clock right now, there will not be an hour of debate--there might not be 10 minutes of debate--on the Director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but what our friends on the other side have done is ensure that we can't do any other business during that 30 hours, and, at some point, once it is too late to do anything else this week, they may even waive some of that time back. This has to change. I certainly would like to see Members on the other side of the aisle work with us to make that change. The bill I have reported out of the Rules Committee that we have reported out of our committee to change this is given more verification every single week, as we try to let the President put a government in place, as we try to do our job of confirming judges to judicial vacancies. That has to stop, and I believe it is about to stop. I would like to see some cooperation from our friends on the other side so we can move forward in the way the Senate should move forward. The Green New Deal Mr. President, the Senate has also been talking about legislation called the Green New Deal. A dozen of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have put this legislation in place. When you sponsor a piece of legislation, it usually means you are for that piece of legislation and think it needs to be debated, and it sure does. This is a huge piece of legislation. Anything called the green anything would mean you would think it would be mostly about climate change or environmental things, but actually most of it is about other things. I want to talk for a few minutes about what it says about healthcare. It is estimated that one part of the Green New Deal would cost $36 trillion over the next 10 years. That is about the same amount of money we would spend for everything else over the next 10 years of the money we appropriate. It is such a big number; it is hard to imagine how you would even describe it, but $36 billion would be 100 times what it would cost to rebuild the entire Interstate Highway System. If you can imagine the entire Interstate Highway System, and you wanted to build it all over again--build it again, go in and tear it up, and build it again--do that 100 times over the next 100 years or however many years it would take, that is $36 trillion. I might have even said earlier $36 billion, but it is $36 trillion, 100 times what it would cost to build the entire Interstate Highway System all over again. It is an absolutely enormous figure, but the government is accepting an absolutely enormous new obligation, an obligation that, just in terms of the healthcare part of this bill, would again be more than all the money we would expect to spend over the next 7 years. That would take us through fiscal year 2025. Everything we would spend on Social Security, everything we would spend on Medicare, everything we would spend on Medicaid, everything we would spend on defense, on education, on homeland security, on interest on the debt, and everything else would be less money than we would spend in the first decade on Medicare for All. If you look at this legislation, it is pretty obvious that Medicare for All would, for a lot of reasons, be Medicare for None. One is that big of a system probably wouldn't serve anybody very well, if at all. Two is that Medicare would be eliminated. It would just be part of a big healthcare system. If you are planning on benefiting from Medicare as we know it today, that will not be there if this bill passed because everybody would have something that would be theoretically like Medicare is now, but there wouldn't be Medicare; there wouldn't be Medicaid; there wouldn't be military TRICARE; there wouldn't be the Children's Health Insurance Program. None of the things we have now would exist. They would all become part of this big system of Medicare for All. In fact, it actually would eliminate private health insurance. We are in this debate way beyond the debate of the days of when President Obama said over and over again, if you like your current healthcare insurance, you can keep your current healthcare insurance. Nobody even pretends with Medicare for All that would be the case. In fact, this legislation specifically says: ``It is unlawful for a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this Act.'' You will have no choice but to look at Medicare for All. So when they say Medicare for All, they really mean Medicare for All. The other forms of healthcare coverage would be gone. One of our colleagues who is also running for President said: ``Let's eliminate all of that.'' ``That'' in the question was private health insurance. ``Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on.'' Well, what moving on would look like would be everybody, again, thrown into one system. There would be a single-payer, the Federal Government. There would be a single system. You could call it Medicare for All or anything else you want to call it, but there would be one place to go. We are now spending about $6 trillion over the next 10 years on Federal healthcare systems. This would go from $6 trillion to $36 trillion. I could spend a lot of time talking about, how could we afford that? What would the taxes look like? The point is, it is an outrageous proposal, particularly for the millions and millions of Americans who like the insurance they have, who get insurance at work. It has been a benefit in our country that workers first started getting right after World War II. It has been a benefit at work that workers have never paid taxes on. It has been a benefit at work that an awful lot of people have been well served by. We need to fill in the gaps. We need to create more options. We need to do lots of things. This isn't one of them. When people lose their healthcare options, when people begin to have to stand in line for healthcare like people do in Canada, they are quickly persuaded that, whatever turn was made, it was made in the wrong direction. This would be a turn in the wrong direction. It would be something the government can't afford and individuals and families will not want. It would be something that people who have actually depended on Medicare being there when they qualify for Medicare--and people pay into it all their working lives, just like they do into Social Security, except there is no cap, so many people pay a lot more into that fund than they do the Social Security fund--but it would be gone. Medicare for All would be Medicare for None. I think there is a reason sponsors of this bill aren't eager to talk about a lot of it and don't even want to vote on it. If I had sponsored it, I might not want to vote on it either. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have 9 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry The Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Heath P. Tarbert, of Maryland, to be Chairman, and to be a Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The New Space Race: Ensuring U.S. global leadership on the final frontier.'' Committee on Environment and Public Works The Committee on Environment and Public Works is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 10.15 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled, ``A new approach for an era of United States-China competition.'' Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the nomination of Daniel P. Collins, and Kenneth Kiyul Lee, both of California, both to be a United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit. Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Cyber Crime: An existential threat to small business.'' Committee on Veterans' Affairs The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at a time to be determined, to conduct a hearing on John Lowry III, of Illinois, to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for Veterans' Employment and Training. Subcommittee on Seapower The Subcommittee on Seapower of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Subcommittee on Communication, Technology, Innovation, and The Internet The Subcommittee on Communication, Technology, Innovation, and The Internet of the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the United States Patent and Trademark office.''

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, we had a lot of discussion about the energy parts of the Green New Deal, but it goes into lots of other areas. There are many frequently asked questions. I would say on the energy costs--and President Obama's energy adviser says you couldn't reach the goal--one thing we need to remember on the energy costs is that families pay those utility bills. We just avoided a clean power regulation that in my State would have doubled the utility bill in 10 or 12 years. During the 3 years or so we were debating that because the court cases kept saying there really is no authority to do this, I kept reminding the people I work for, the next time you write your utility bill, just write out your check one more time, because if this goes into effect, within a decade, that is what you will be doing. See what happens when you pay that bill by writing your check one more time. Some of the questions on this have been about other things as well. The fact that we love a challenge--this Green New Deal creates that. It talks about Medicare for all. At least in the talking points, it talks about job guarantees for all, a vacation in every job guaranteed by the government, and I think maybe even a vacation in the government program if you choose not to work. There are lots of things here for people to be concerned about. There are estimates of cost, but even if they were three times the cost, it would be pretty extraordinary. In fact, $36 trillion would rebuild the entire Interstate Highway System every year for 100 years. When you are talking about $93 trillion, $80 trillion is the entire gross domestic product of the world. These are big numbers. It is a big bill. Surprisingly, a dozen Senators are supporting this bill. They have cosponsored the bill. Whether it is the guaranteed jobs number or the universal healthcare number or the all-renewable electric grid system number or the guaranteed green housing number that individuals would have to comply with, this is an amazing step in a different direction. It is one that the country clearly will not take. It is one that I believe even the sponsors have some concerns about. We will have a chance to vote on it here in the next few days or weeks, and we will see what the American people have to say about it. I yield my time.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 25, S. Res. 70.

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Continuing as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 21.

Mr. BLUNT. I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. BLUNT. Thank you, Mr. President. One of those items was an enrolling correction and the other was funding for committees. Our committees are beginning to do their work, and this makes it, obviously, appropriate and possible for them to do that.