Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I just listened to the other debate on the floor, and it reminded me of the fact that our friends on the other side of the aisle introduced a resolution calling on the Federal Government to adopt what they call the Green New Deal. From my point of view, the legislation is pretty far outside the mainstream in what it is proposing and how it is proposing the problems we should be debating. I don't have any problem with that. Those problems should be solved, and even though it seems pretty far outside the mainstream of thought, at least 12 of our colleagues in the Senate have cosponsored it. The majority leader thought it would be fair if we had that idea out there--it is getting a lot of public attention--to have a chance to debate this legislation and vote on it in the Senate. The Democrats have called it a sham. They said: Why should we have debate on this piece of legislation? Why would we want to vote on this piece of legislation? Now, it is not cosponsored by a majority of the Members of the Senate, but it is cosponsored by over 25 percent of the Democrats in the Senate, and one would think that if 25 percent of their conference is sponsoring a bill, they would be glad to come to the floor and talk about that bill and talk about what it does. So let's talk for just a couple of minutes about what that bill actually says. One of the things that it does is that it calls for the United States to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. That is just a little more than 10 years from now. It says, basically, that we want to have a zero-carbon-dioxide emissions by then. I know there was some discussion in the rolling out of this bill that that would mean that ground transportation and air transportation would either be eliminated or minimized--at least the way we travel right now would be. At some point in the future that may happen, but it is highly unlikely it is going to happen in the next 10 years, which is what the bill calls for. Maybe that is why they don't want to debate it. Even President Obama's former science adviser says that this is not feasible. Harvard University professor John Holdren was quoted in the New York Times saying: ``As a technologist studying this problem for 50 years, I don't think we can do it.'' So that is a pretty good source who indicates that what we are talking about here can't happen. So that big headline goal appears to be impossible, but we probably could debate it anyway. Let's hear from the other side, particularly the 12 cosponsors, to say why it is possible, why we should be able to do that, and why that is in the legislation that they filed. The rest of the legislation goes really beyond things that don't relate to the environment. There is a laundry list of policies that appear to be popular right now in the so-called progressive discussion. One is a single-payer health system and the other is a Federal job guarantee. The talking points suggested that that would be a Federal job guarantee for people who can't work or aren't willing to work. Of course, that was so controversial that immediately people began to say: Well, maybe that is something that the Republicans snuck into our talking points. But it turned out that wasn't true. There is a provision calling for ``repairing the historic oppression of . . . youth.'' That is sort of what this whole Green New Deal seems to focus on--accepting responsibility in a debate for things that really don't make the kind of sense one would want them to make as you move toward legislation. They don't really say what the ``historic oppression of youth'' was. Probably that is not related to the economy or the environment or the greenness of the Green New Deal. But even if we agree that these ideas are good ideas, the other question is this: How much is it going to cost? The American Action Forum looked at the biggest parts of the legislation, and they estimated that the total would run anywhere from $51 trillion to $94 trillion over 10 years. To put this in perspective, the Congress right now appropriates about $1.5 trillion a year. We spend more than that through programs that are in place like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but we appropriate $1.5 trillion a year. If the estimates of the Green New Deal are right, that would suddenly become $5 trillion to $9 trillion a year. That is a pretty good multiplier of $1.5 trillion a year--six times, in fact, of what we are spending now--at the $9 trillion level. That works out to be about $65,000 per family per year. That would probably be more government than we could afford, but that is how it works out. There is nothing that talks about how families are supposed to come up with their share of the bill. While some of the ideas in the Green New Deal--Medicare for all or a job for everybody, guaranteed by the government--sound like good ideas, I don't think they are going to stand the test of the debate. I think that is one of the reasons that maybe the other side doesn't want to have the debate. Some talk about: Well, maybe we will all vote present or we will not vote at all. I think it is pretty hard to defend what you are out there talking about when you are not willing to come to the floor and talk about it. That is a debate we are going to have. I suspect we are going to have it sometime this month, and I look forward to engaging in that debate. This week, we are having another debate on nominees. Right now, the debate is on the nominee for the Administrator of the EPA. There has been some discussion of the environment in the debate on the Administrator of the EPA. Next, we are going to go to someone to serve on the TVA commission. This is somebody who has been voted out of committee two times in bipartisan voice votes and never allowed to have a vote in the Senate. I will remind my colleagues again that under President Reagan, the average time in days from when a person was voted out of committee--and remember, as all of us on the floor would know, the committee is where questions are asked, and the background check has been completed. That may take a substantial amount of time, depending on the nominee and how complicated their information is--sometimes less time, sometimes more. That has all happened in the committee. Under President Reagan, the average number of days from the time a person was voted out of committee until they were voted on, on the floor was 5. The total number of times the majority had to file cloture to get that vote was less than a handful in the entire first 2 years. For President Trump, the average number of days for a nominee to be voted on is 55, and the majority leader had to file cloture 128 times even to get a vote. We are going through some of those votes this week. The 30 hours of debate almost never includes debate about the nominee who is using up floor time that could be used for debating how we spend our money, how we defend our country, or what our foreign policy oversight responsibilities are going to be. We are going to continue to look at the options and continue to talk to our friends on the other side about how 60 Senators can work together to change the rules in a way that they would be changed going forward to get the rules back more to the days of Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and all of their predecessors, where nominees were never used as a way to use up time. Nominees were never held hostage so that other legislation or debate couldn't occur. We are working hard to find 60 of us who want to return to a time when legislative priorities in the Senate still had the protections of the minority that have always been there, but those protections couldn't be used to the disadvantage of people who have stepped up and are willing to serve and are often voted out of committee on a bipartisan basis, only to be held up on the floor. I look forward to the debate on the Green New Deal. I look forward to the other debates we are going to have on the floor of the Senate this year. For the people who are willing to serve, who have been reported out of committee, who have been thoroughly questioned and investigated but can't get that vote and get to work, that is not what we want to do. That is not who we should want to be. I hope we can work together to find a way to change that rule as well. I see my good friend, the Senator from Hawaii, is here. We are working on some things together right now that we would like to get to the floor and have those bills voted on later. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, on February 13 the Rules Committee approved S. Res. 70, which authorizes funding for the Senate's committees from March 1, 2019, through February 28, 2021. For this 24-month period, the 18 committees covered by this resolution are authorized to spend up to $214,055,860. This is a small increase over the funding authorized by the current committee funding resolution, S. Res. 62. For the information of my colleagues, committee funding authorized by S. Res. 70 remains 13 percent below levels from a decade ago. Committees are the lifeblood of the legislative process. It is in our committees that policy is created and programs and agencies are overseen. Our committees are where the Senate first exercises its advice and consent function over the executive branch's nominees. Well- functioning committees are crucial to the Senate's role as a separate but equal branch of the government. The resolution before the Senate is the result of a bipartisan process Senator Klobuchar, the Rules Committee's ranking member, and I undertook this year to solicit more input from committee chairmen and ranking members. The resolution reflects the needs identified by our colleagues and will help ensure our committees are able to carry out their responsibilities and duties. I would like to thank Fitz Elder and Rachelle Schroeder from my committee staff; Lizzy Peluso and Lindsey Kerr from Senator Klobuchar's committee staff; and Cindy Qualley, the Rules Committee's chief clerk. Additionally, I would like to thank Ileana Garcia and Ted Ruckner from the Disbursing Office and John Henderson from the Office of Legislative Counsel. I greatly appreciate their hard work in developing this resolution.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, as the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Senator from Iowa, has just pointed out, the Senate will soon vote on the nomination of William Barr to serve as Attorney General. As has also been pointed out, this is, undoubtedly, one of the most qualified nominees to come before the Senate in his having already held the same position under President George H.W. Bush. He has also served as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, as an Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, and as Deputy Attorney General before he served as Attorney General. His confirmation hearing lasted more than 12 hours, during which time he and other witnesses answered hundreds of questions on a wide variety of issues he might confront as Attorney General. He was straightforward and forthcoming. He earned high praise even from the ranking Democrat on that committee--our colleague, Senator Feinstein from California-- who said: He's obviously very smart. He was Attorney General before. . . . No one can say he isn't qualified. I was thinking last night, obviously Mr. Barr is qualified. He is bright. He is capable. She could have said more, but one of the things she said after that is, ``I won't be voting for him.'' This is an important job for the American people. There are a lot of jobs out there to be filled. It is hard to argue that any of them are more important than this one, but it is also hard to argue that there is not something wrong with a process where that is the comment that could be made, followed not too long after that by: I won't be voting for him. Senator Grassley pointed out that the last time Bill Barr was confirmed to be Attorney General, it was by voice vote. It seems as if that must have been a long time ago. It hasn't been that long ago; it is just the way the Senate used to work. That is why the Rules Committee that I chair voted out a Senate resolution earlier today dealing with this issue. This should not be the problem that it is. It shouldn't be an issue, but, frankly, the nomination process is broken. In every election in this country, one thing has been certain: At least one party will not be happy with the result. I certainly understand why our Democratic colleagues weren't happy with the results of the 2016 election. There have been elections I have not been happy about and some that I have been happier about than others even when I was happy. This is a process that makes it easy not to be pleased with what voters decide to do, but that doesn't give you the right to stand in the way of what voters try to do, and that is exactly what our friends on the other side of the aisle have done. Over the past 2 years, we have had unprecedented obstruction when it comes to just trying to put a government in place, unprecedented obstruction to confirming a President's nominees. During the first Congress President Trump was in office, the previous 2 years, he submitted 1,136 nominees for jobs across the Federal Government. During that same period of time, President Obama submitted 1,132 nominees. By the way, President Trump is sometimes criticized for not getting the nominees up here quickly enough. He actually got four more nominees up during that period of time than President Obama did, but the Senate confirmed 920 of President Obama's nominees during that first 2 years, and the Senate only confirmed 714 of President Trump's nominees--barely half for President Trump and about 70 percent, 75 percent for President Obama. There is a nearly 200-person difference, but more important, maybe, than the difference is the obvious effort for us not to be able to get other work done. At the end of the last Congress, we returned the largest number of nominees from any President since Ronald Reagan. There are really only two reasons for that. One is to, frankly, stall the confirmation process and make it difficult for the President to do the job of being President. If you don't get the people to help you do the job you are elected to do, you can't do the job as effectively as you would otherwise. We just had a government shutdown, which I think all of us were disappointed by. That is bad policy. We don't want to repeat it again. We didn't want to repeat it that time. But we have a partial shutdown of many of these Agencies and parts of the government every single day because we don't have the people necessary to put the rules in place. There was a lot of discussion during the government shutdown about farmers who weren't able to get the loan guarantees they needed because the office was closed. Well, to some extent, it is the same way when the door is open but the people aren't there, when the door is open but the rules for the new farm bill haven't been issued, and when the door is open but the trade regulations that need to be made for the tax bill aren't out there. The other reason, by the way, the second reason, is just to use up floor time. There are only so many things we can do here on the Senate floor. The majority leader is fond of saying that the most precious commodity in the Senate is floor time. If we are required to drag out this process, as the minority has insisted we do for the last 2 years, things don't happen otherwise. During the first 2 years of the Trump administration, there were 128 cloture votes right here--128 cloture votes. That is where a Democrat-- usually the minority leader--insists that we are going to have to get a majority of votes to even have the debate on a candidate. Once you file that, that takes a day before you can even begin to have the debate, and then the debate is 30 hours. So half a week is gone before the week starts just trying to confirm one person for one thing. That could be as important as a Supreme Court Justice, or it could be the lowest level of confirmation in any of the Agencies of government. By the way, those are the people who haven't been put in place because obviously lifetime judges matter, and both parties would prioritize that. There have been 128 cloture votes. In the first 2 years of the past three Presidents, there were cloture votes a total of 24 times--24 times. That is an average of 8 compared to 128. There is a lot of difference between 8 and 128. Because the tradition of the Senate--as a matter of fact, I think if President Bush were on here, President George H. W. Bush--that number was zero. No time. And that was much more traditional, up until that time, than now. When President Reagan was President, once a nominee got out of committee, it was an average of 5 days before that nominee had a vote here on the Senate floor. It was normally the same kind of voice vote that Senator Grassley mentioned that Bill Barr had the last time. The average was 5 days. With President Trump, it was 55 days before a nominee could get a vote once they got out of committee. Remember, if you have agreed to serve in one of these jobs, you have given all of your financial information, you have given all of your personal information, and you have been investigated through and through. You have appeared before a committee, and they have asked you every question they could think of to ask you. They have voted you out of that committee. And then 24 people, at the end of last year, were sent back to the White House, at the end of that conference--I think it was over 24 people, over two dozen people--who had been waiting 1 year to become maybe the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior. This will not work. This is not how our system is supposed to work, and we need to move forward. And it is not like when this happens--when these 128 cloture votes happen--there is a huge debate. There are 30 hours, plus the intervening day, but that doesn't mean there is any big debate. In fact, usually there is almost no debate at all on these nominees. When the nominees were voted on, 48 percent of the nominees got over 60 votes and 37 percent of the nominees got over 70 votes. So clearly this is not about holding back somebody who could be confirmed; it is about using up time that should be used for other things. There are two jobs in the Senate. One of them is the personnel business. One of them is confirming people the President nominates. But the other is the legislating business. The other is the funding the government business. The other is the talking about foreign policy business. The other is talking about the economy and trade and taxes. Every hour we spend on this is an hour we can't spend on that. The resolution we passed out today was one I introduced with my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Lankford, who has been working on this issue for 2 years now, and others of us have as well. We introduced this bill to cut the amount of time back to what had been a temporary standing order when Republicans were in the minority, and we agreed to this temporary standing order. The Democrats were in the majority. There was a Democrat in the White House. We agreed to essentially this same framework: 2 hours for most nominees, 30 hours for circuit judges and Supreme Court Justices and Cabinet officers. Seventy-eight Senators voted for that temporary order. Usually when you do you a temporary order, it is to see if it works. Well, it worked, but we didn't do it again. So we are now saying, let's make that temporary order a permanent part of the way the Senate approaches this part of its job. We are moving in that direction. We had a debate this morning in committee. The time we are spending on the floor--if there is a nominee who needs 30 hours, they are almost certainly going to be in that category that gets 30 hours. If there is a nominee who would be in the 2-hour category, they are going to have been through committee, they are going to have been thoroughly vetted, and the committee will have decided they should be reported out. We need to get back to where 5 days after that, the Senate lets this person go on to fill a job that is, in all likelihood, not going to last beyond one administration and maybe not even that. It won't be long before nobody is willing to sign up if a year later, after you have put your life on hold, you find out that the Senate somehow can't get to the job you have agreed to serve on because we have to take time that the Senate never took before. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle look at that standing order that could change our rules in a way that allows people who are willing to serve to be thoroughly vetted, thoroughly questioned, and then voted on. This can't happen unless they get voted on. Clearly, the current process of voting on people is a process that has been abused. While the Senate is a place that recognizes the rights of the minority, those rights have only been upheld when the minority viewed them for what they are--rights of the minority rather than tools of the minority to obstruct the elected Government of the United States of America and the work of the Senate. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, the Committee on Rules and Administration has adopted rules governing its procedures for the 116th Congress. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, on behalf of myself and Senator Klobuchar, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the committee rules be printed in the Record.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk about the bill that we are considering this week. This is a bill that for sportsmen and for those who are interested in public lands is going to have a big impact. It will have big benefits for our country and big benefits for my State of Missouri. This package includes a number of important provisions to expand hunting and fishing access--something that, I think, every Congress, over a handful of Congresses now, has tried to do and failed to do. It has provisions to protect natural resources and provisions to improve public lands. In my State of Missouri, we have more than 1.2 million hunters and fishermen. They spend about $1.67 billion annually and support almost 30,000 jobs in our State. For the first time, this bill makes it clear in statute that all Bureau of Land Management and National Forest System lands will be open to hunting, to recreational shooting, and to fishing unless they are explicitly closed. They can be closed, but they have to be explicitly closed for safety reasons or other justified reasons that are established not just by the Bureau of Land Management or by the National Forest System but through a public process. In other words, they are going to be open unless they are closed instead of the current situation of their being closed unless they are open. This will create an opportunity for people who want to use public lands for those purposes to be able to do so unless those who are responsible for managing those lands can make a real case that they shouldn't be able to do so. This bill includes important provisions that will improve the visitor experience in two of Missouri's U.S. National Park Service units. One is the provision that would really enhance one's opportunity to learn more about the personal life of the Nation's 33rd President, Harry Truman. I am standing here behind the desk I use every day, which was also the desk that President Truman used when he was in the Senate. Particularly, there are lessons that can be learned from his life at the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, which was first dedicated in May of 1983. It preserves the history of the person who has sometimes been called the people's President. He was the President who, when he was retiring and the press asked him ``What is the first thing you are going to do when you get home?'' thought for only a minute and said, ``I guess the first thing I will do is take the suitcases to the attic.'' In his 7\1/2\ years of being President, he was a guy who had not lost the sense of the kinds of commonsense things that real people deal with. His story is really well told at his family home in Independence. It is a site that includes not only the home that he and Bess, his wife, shared through their entire marriage, from 1919 until his death in 1972, but some adjacent family properties and some nearby properties of Truman's farm home, which was the home in which he grew up in Grandview, MO. This is a bill that, in many cases, does really simple things. In this case, it just takes the money, frankly, that the city of Independence wants to give to the Federal Government so the Federal Government has the money to build a new visitors center. The National Park Service would like to build it on this piece of land, but before it can do that, we have to accept the piece of land. That is something that will happen in this bill when we pass it. There is another provision that would enhance the visitor access to Ste. Genevieve, which is at least the newest historic park in Missouri if not, certainly, one of the newest in the country. This is something we did last year in transitioning some property to the National Park System from the State park system. Ste. Genevieve, which is on the banks of the Mississippi River, was established in the 1750s by French settlers who were attracted to the area because of the water access, the rich soil, and the ability to make a living there. In fact, the historic park encompasses what was called the common field in the Mississippi River Valley, where citizens would own or be allocated a plot in that field and would farm in that plot. It was not part of the settlement community itself but was at the river bottom, which meant that for flood reasons, you wouldn't want to build a house there, but you could grow some of the most incredible crops that could be grown then or now. In fact, the common field in Ste. Genevieve is recognized as being the oldest continuously farmed piece of land west of the Mississippi River. Ste. Genevieve had been governed by the French, then the British, then the Spanish, and then the United States in its history as it came into the United States as part of a territory with the Louisiana Purchase. The imprint of each of those countries is still evident in that community today. That is partly thanks to the State of Missouri. It is thanks to dedicated historic preservation groups, including the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, the Foundation for Restoration of Ste. Genevieve, Les Amis, and the Ste. Genevieve Chamber of Commerce. They have all worked hard to recognize the unique architecture they have there, some of which dates back to the late 18th century. More of it dates back to the years right after the turn of the 19th century and the very early 1800s. This bill would allow significant things to happen in that park, including acquiring a standing visitors center that wouldn't happen otherwise. The bill also permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Many of those hunters and fishermen whom I mentioned earlier are, appropriately, big advocates of this Land and Water Conservation Fund, which allows property to be available to them and to be preserved through this fund in a way that doesn't allow it to be developed but still to be available to hunters, fishermen, birdwatchers, and outdoor enthusiasts. That fund is largely funded from Federal receipts from the offshore oil and gas leases. In 2018, $487 million was appropriated by the Congress to continue to maintain and enhance that fund. It supports Federal and State land acquisition, planning grants, and outdoor recreational programs. That has been a program that, for a long time now, the Federal Government has periodically extended. This is the first time that it would be permanently authorized. This bill reauthorizes the partners in Fish and Wildlife. It reauthorizes the National Geological Mapping Program, the Public Lands Corps program, and, for the first time, the Invasive Species Program at the Corps. The wildlife response activities, as it involves drones, are described here and defined in a new and better way. It also requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the attorney fee payments they make and, maybe even more importantly, to declare publicly the awards they make to individuals and groups that have filed a civil case and are doing that under the Endangered Species Act. A lot of determinations have been made there that the public was not aware of and, frankly, in my view, that would not have been made if they had to stand the test of public scrutiny that they now have to stand under with this law. I want to congratulate Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell for bringing this bill to the floor. As we work hard now to do what is necessary, I look forward to passing it here, sending it back to the House, getting it on the President's desk, and doing these things that, in so many cases, have been years now in the making. This bill brings together about 100 separate pieces of legislation, each of which will make an important difference--no matter how small they are--in the community or the area that they will impact. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, the Senate is currently debating the Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act. These are issues that we need to deal with, and it is really an important time to be talking about these issues. Really, there are four different things that this bill does. The first thing this bill does is to go further in providing security for Israel. I think virtually everybody in the Senate--there may be an exception or two--understands that Israel is our greatest ally in the Middle East, that Israel is a great source of intelligence for us as we try to work our way through problems in the Middle East, and that we rely on Israel for the partnership we have there in the things that Israel has done to study and test. Unfortunately, it has gotten to test in real situations military defense systems that will intercept things that are coming at us. As for the whole concept of a bullet that can hit a bullet, which some people thought was such a farfetched idea when President Reagan talked about it in the 1980s, Israel has proven one can do it with our help with regard to some of the technology. It is a partnership. Israel, unfortunately, is in a place that actually uses it to really intercept things that are coming at its citizens, and we found out it works. Security for Israel is security for the United States. In 2016, the United States and Israel signed a 10-year agreement on security assistance. This bill makes sure that the agreement will continue to have the full force of law. This legislation makes sure that we are giving some concrete aid to help Israel protect itself and to protect its own security. It also states very clearly that the policy of the United States is to ensure that Israel can counter and defeat threats when it faces its enemies. These are countries and other groups that don't like Israel. It is in their schools, their propaganda, and their commitments as nations to talk about the importance of Israel's not existing. In fact, some of them use maps on which Israel doesn't exist. If you were to look at the educational structures of some of Israel's neighbors, you would have to find something outside of what you learn in school to understand that there even is an Israel. Of course, there is Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. There are plenty of threats to Israel and to what Israel and the United States stand for. This part of the bill has previously passed both Houses of the Congress in slightly different forms. Now it is time for both Houses to pass it in the same form, to put it on the President's desk so as to further defend and define the things that are there. This is an important thing to do. The second part of the bill extends our cooperation between us and Jordan. We have no more faithful partner outside of Israel than Jordan. Frankly, that Israeli-Jordan border is critically important in how that cooperation works. We saw what happened when the Syrians looked for a safe place to go, and they went to Jordan. So we have done our best to ensure that Jordan can meet its humanitarian crisis based on what has happened in Syria. The economic stability of Jordan--believe me--is critical to the economic stability of the region. This bill also comes up with new ways to assist our allies when they face these unanticipated situations, and some of these situations last for a long time once they start. The third part of the legislation imposes sanctions on anyone who does business with the Government of Syria. The tragedy of Syria--the tragedy of the Syrian people, the chemical warfare of Bashar Assad, the barrel bombs that have been dropped in neighborhoods where innocent people live, those being children and senior citizens, and where people are trying to work every day--makes it clear that this is not a country that we should support. Actually, this portion of the legislation already passed the House by voice vote. We need to join the House with its commitment to continue to put pressure on Syria for Syria to meet the standards that civilization should require of those we deal with. We can't deal with Syria as long as it continues to act in the way it has been acting. It is something we know needs to be done. Hopefully, we will have a vote that will move this further toward reality. The fourth part of the package we are talking about is another thing that we can do in our support for Israel. There are groups of people who seek to target Israel through a series of boycotts and disinvestments and sanctions. These are usually not governments. They are individuals and institutions that are trying to harm Israel by boycotting any kind of business there. This anti-Israel activity is shameful. Those who promote it should be penalized. If they want to find out what it is like to not be able to trade, we should show them what it is like not to be able to trade. There are 26 States that have already passed legislation that allows them to deal in different ways with people who have either disinvested in or boycotted Israel. This bill provides some further definition of how they can move forward. Boycotting Israel is unacceptable. That is an important part of this package. All of these things need to be done, and this is an important time to send that message around the world--that not only our allies inside world can count on us but that our enemies in the world--our adversaries--can also expect us to do what we should do to support our allies, to defend freedom, to look forward as one amendment that has been offered will do that I have cosponsored to meet our commitments to NATO, to understand the continued dangerous nature of terrorist threats, to be thoughtful as we make decisions that move us further away from the safe havens that those threats have used in the past. This is an important time for us to send the very message that this bill and the proposed amendment do send. I look forward to seeing that message sent first by the Senate and then by the House, with then, hopefully, a signature from the President of the United States. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask the Senate to join me today to support the posthumous promotion of U.S. Marine Corps SSgt Roger David Marsh to gunnery sergeant. Today I would like to recognize the distinguished service of Mr. Marsh, who passed away at the age of 72 on June 17th, 2008. Mr. Marsh served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps for 20 years with a superior record, including combat actions against enemy forces throughout his career in both Korea and Vietnam. Throughout his time in the Marine Corps, he received numerous awards and citations to include the bronze star with valor. Additionally, he made significant contributions to his community after his retirement from the Marine Corps by actively participating in the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion, as well as his 30 years of exceptional service as chief of policy for Webb City, MO. Prior to Staff Sergeant Marsh's retirement from the Marine Corps, he was selected for promotion to gunnery sergeant. He worked diligently for 8 years to get that promotion. Due to personal reasons, he chose to leave the Marine Corps prior to the 2-year obligation of service and therefore was not promoted. Forty-five years after his retirement, we can finally honor his service and legacy through a posthumous promotion. The State of Missouri and our Nation were very lucky to have such a dedicated member to the community. Mr. Marsh's extraordinary service to the Marine Corps and time after his retirement were remarkable. His actions rise to the level of service that warrants this unique honor. Therefore, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Roger David Marsh's life and legacy with the distinction of gunnery sergeant.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to honor the work and career of Mr. Robert Cardillo. On February 7, 2019, Robert Cardillo will conclude nearly 36 years of service with the U.S. intelligence community, ending as Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA. In 1983, Robert began his career at the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, as an imagery analyst. He served in a multitude of positions for DIA and NGA, to include Acting Director of Intelligence for the Joint Staff, in which he supported the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the first time a civilian has ever held that position. He was then selected by the Director of National Intelligence, the DNI, to be the first ever Deputy Director for Intelligence Integration. In that capacity, he was responsible for vastly improving intelligence integration, the principal mission of the DNI as established under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. As a critical additional duty, Robert also served as the primary briefer for the President's daily brief at the White House. From 2014 to 2019, Mr. Cardillo then led NGA as its Director. Under his guidance and direction, NGA provided much lauded geospatial intelligence support to U.S. and allied combat operations in Southwest Asia and around the globe, assisting in the fight against militant extremists. NGA also conveyed key indications and warning during crises in Northeast Asia, the Middle East, North and Central Africa, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Highlighting the need to get unclassified data to the warfighter and our allies, Director Cardillo pushed hard for unclassified geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT, to exist in the open. He urged NGA to work in tandem with commercial satellite imagery providers and other unclassified industry partners. His support of innovation in artificial intelligence, automation and augmentation, and his focus on activity- based intelligence set NGA on a course to improve the speed and quality of geospatial and imagery analysis. His attention to the ebola crisis in West Africa and other humanitarian assistance and disaster response initiatives showed the value of human geography to the world. Director Cardillo was equally successful at forging new multinational partnerships in Europe and Asia, and his outreach to industry, academia, think tanks, and other international partners led to an informal but increasingly thriving global GEOINT enterprise. Mr. Cardillo was also the first NGA director to emphasize the importance of the Arctic and Antarctica and the first to take on the security, quality, and pedigree of imagery pixels and data, so that the GEOINT enterprise can continue to serve as a safe foundational frame of reference for the entire intelligence community. Robert led NGA with integrity for more than 4 highly challenging and demanding years, to include the selection of a future headquarters site in St. Louis, MO. He laid the groundwork for a world-class building that will be designed to endure well into the 22nd century and to serve as the modern workplace that his workforce so richly deserves. Director Cardillo will long be remembered as a relentless visionary who restructured the future of his field to embrace public and private partnerships, data science, and machine learning. His far-sighted vision will continue to drive requirements and ensure that NGA shows the way to a safer United States and a more secure world. We thank him for his years of service to the intelligence community and to this country.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, you may have presided before, but you haven't presided when I have spoken on the floor, so it is great to welcome you, as both my colleague and the Presiding Officer, and I am glad to be working with you and glad we are both here today. We are both here today at a time when the American people really expect the government to work; the American people really expect people in Congress to be able to find middle ground. For too long we have been stuck--frankly, on both sides of the aisle--with too many people who ran for office saying: If I don't get what I want--I just don't want anything to happen unless it is exactly what I want. The best I can tell, that doesn't work anywhere. If you are getting what you want wherever you are working, wherever you are living, wherever you are going to church, there is probably something wrong with you. Democracy is about compromise. I think one of the great fallacies of the second option we will have today is that it is designed to keep the government open for 2 weeks at last year's spending levels, and then, at the end of 2 weeks--I don't know what happens then. There will be no information that Members of the Senate and the House will know 2 weeks from now that they don't know now. There is nothing that could be debated or discussed in the next 2 weeks that couldn't be discussed in the next 45 minutes. I think it is pretty clear to the American people that this has boiled down to a fight in which we need to reopen the government and, frankly, we need to secure the border. I just heard our good friend, our colleague from Virginia, say that, generally, his side of the aisle has been better than our side of the aisle at securing the border. I don't think that is necessarily true, but I am glad to concede that if our friends on the other side want to step up and work with us to secure the border--fine. I will also point out that securing the border for the last four Presidents has meant building barriers, and every time that happened, those barriers worked. When President George H.W. Bush built a barrier south of San Diego, the detentions of people coming across the border decreased by 95 percent. That is really the only way we have of measuring whether this was better before the barrier or after the barrier. When you have 95 percent fewer people coming across and being detained, something must be working. President Clinton built a barrier at El Paso, and detentions went down 95 percent. President George W. Bush built a barrier at Yuma, and detentions went down 90 percent. When you have a 90- or 95-percent solution, you should be able to make that solution a part of moving forward to solve the problem. The President has come, in my view, quite a way. He has gone from a big wall all along the border to a barrier only where a barrier makes sense. The President would like to add 10 or 20 percent to the barriers already built by all four of his predecessors. I don't see why some movement in that direction can't be part of what we get done. The shutdown has gone on too long. It has been played out way too much in the public and way too little with Members of Congress trying to get together and work this out. People who need government services aren't getting those services. In many cases, people providing the services that are essential are providing those services and not getting paid. People who would like to be at work are at home. Unlike any other time when the government has been shut down, Congress has said in advance that everybody will get paid, eventually. So the traditional worry about whether you will get paid, whether your income is there, is gone. But the pay is not there at the time it is expected to be. Normally, if you went to work for government at any level, you didn't go to work for government to get wealthy; you went to work for government because that was a secure job. So we have eliminated for too many people the security of one of the reasons they took a government job rather than a job that might lead to some more financially satisfactory destination--or might not. The whole reason they did this, in many cases, is they knew that check was going to come. It is not coming. The bill the President proposed keeps the government open with new priorities--largely agreed to already by the House and the Senate-- until September 30. So 2 weeks from now, we wouldn't face this exact same problem again. It does things I think need to be done to create more security for kids who were brought here as children and grew up here. I think this is a 70- or 80-percent issue in the country that all of us understand--that if you were brought to this country as a young child, if you grew up here, if you haven't gotten in serious trouble, not only should you be able to stay, but we should want you to stay. We need that kind of vitality in our country. The President said he would like to see a final appropriate solution on that. This bill creates a 3-year opportunity, much like--I think it was the BRIDGE Act that was sponsored by people on both sides of the aisle who would have said let's settle this for a while as we try to come to a further conclusion; the same kind of 3-year structure for people who were here because we decided we needed to give them asylum. We need to figure out how to deal with that on a long-term basis, but 3 years not only puts it through this Congress, it puts it a year into the next Congress and the next Presidential administration. Some of us need to be focused on getting this job done. I think this bill does that. It is not perfect. I never voted for a perfect bill. I introduced two or three perfect bills, but I have never gotten to vote for a perfect bill and don't expect to. This is not our job. Perfect is not our job. Our job is the possible. I think the President has actually shown more flexibility than our friends on the other side. If you don't like some of the things the President has proposed, the response is not this is a nonstarter. The response is to make it a starter. The response is, if you don't like something about what we are doing for deferred action on kids who were brought here, what would you do to make that better? The President's proposal goes a long way toward solving these problems. Most importantly, it opens the government immediately. It assures that will be the case until we get to the beginning of the new spending year on October 1, and it meets the government's obligation to secure the border. Nobody expects it to be impossible for anybody to ever get over the border in any way, but people do expect to have the kind of border security we can afford. I think the proposals the President makes does that. We need to be more concerned about our ports of entry. We need to be more concerned about things and people coming across the border who shouldn't come across the border or people being brought across the border for purposes they do not want to be part of. This is an important moment. We need to get this job done. The two votes today will indicate whether we want to get this done on a long- term basis and get back into the regular basis of government or whether we want to get this done for a couple of weeks, assuming somehow there are going to be dramatically new facts on the table in the next 2 weeks that are not there now. I don't believe that is the case. I am going to vote for the bill that gets the government open again and lets us get started with the work of how to fund the government on October 1 of this year, not how to fund the government right now. I think the other bill does not get us anywhere but right back to where we are 2 weeks from now. Unanimous Consent Agreement I have a couple of things I need to point out; one is, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the filing deadline for second-degree amendments for the cloture motion specified in the order of January 22 occur at 2:20 p.m. today.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Ernst for yielding and for her leadership in these issues. All of us here today are here at a time when thousands of people from around the country, including hundreds from Missouri, will be here to participate in the annual March for Life. They see it, as we do, that an unborn child is not a potential person, but it is a person with potential, a whole living, distinct human being. Polling reflects that the American people understand that in a significant way. It is not a celebration but a powerful reminder that we value life as people come here this time of year. More Americans are coming all the time to support life. We just had a meeting with someone who was going through the recent Knights of Columbus and Marist poll. Three in four Americans say abortion should be limited to, at most, the first 3 months of pregnancy. These numbers continue to move in the direction of understanding that life begins at conception, and more and more people believe that life deserves to be protected just like any life would. A majority of Americans oppose using taxpayer dollars to pay for any abortion at any time. Seventy-five percent of Americans oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion overseas. This includes 64 percent of self-identified, pro-choice Democrats who say they are not for spending taxpayer dollars to fund abortions overseas. Fifty-six percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Independents comprise that as well as, as I said before, 64 percent of pro-choice individuals collectively say they are not for that. Preventing taxpayer funding for abortion has been longstanding law and has had a bipartisan consensus until just recently. Now, this is an important issue that the country disagrees on, but the one thing we reached agreement on is, those people who think there is nothing wrong with abortion shouldn't force the tax dollars of people who believe it is the most fundamentally wrong thing you can do to be used for abortion. So the Hyde amendment prevents taxpayer funding of abortions or abortion coverage in various Federal healthcare programs, including Medicaid and Medicare and the Children's Health Insurance Program. All of those programs are, in effect, walled off from Federal support if abortion is involved. A bill I initially passed as chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee, renewed again this year the Hyde amendment, as it has been renewed every year since 1976 and signed into law in every year since 1976 by Republicans and Democrats in the White House. Recent calls to appeal the amendment, however, in the Democratic Party platform and from a number of my friends on the other side of the aisle, are just simply out of touch with where a majority of Americans are and where 100 percent of the people coming here for the March for Life are. Instead, far from being repealed, the Hyde amendment, in my view, needs to be made permanent, and it needs to be applied across the entire Federal spending spectrum, as it was initially anticipated. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which would do just exactly that. I also want to take a moment to recognize the efforts of what has become one of the most pro-life administrations in our Nation's history. One of the first Executive orders President Trump signed was to reinstate and expand the Mexico City policy. In fact, he wanted to expand it to the point that he even wanted to retitle it to the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy. The policy prevents Federal tax dollars from funding foreign NGOs--foreign nongovernmental organizations--that perform or promote abortion. I also want to call attention to the efforts the administration has taken proposing regulations that would first of all prevent title X family planning grantees from colocating with abortion clinics or from promoting or referring clients for abortions. None of that money was ever to be used for those purposes, but it is pretty hard when you are in the same facility, funded by the same overall group, not to suggest there is some connection. President Trump and his administration have said that would not be allowed. They have passed regulations to further protect the right of conscience. In a famous letter written in the last year of his Presidency, President Jefferson said that the right of conscience--the right to fervently believe what you believe is the right thing--should be the right we hold the most dear, and the President is trying to be sure that applies in every possible case to Federal law as well. They also voted to separate payment requirements from abortion coverage in ObamaCare and have really continued to do exactly what the President said he would do in these areas. I know we all also want to encourage those who are participating in the March for Life on Friday. Every human life matters. The advocacy of people who come here year after year or perhaps are coming for the very first time makes a difference. So for the efforts of the thousands who defy the weather--and the anniversary of the decision just happens to be in what almost always turns out to be the worst weather we have in Washington during the year, but that doesn't seem to deter those who are marching here or those who are speaking to those who come here to defy the weather and to March for Life.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, as our colleague from Iowa just pointed out, these problems not only need to be solved, but they are solvable. At the core of the debate we are having right now is obviously border security. Everybody says they are for border security, but they have different views of what that means. I want to start by saying that I fully support the President's call for a more secure border, and, frankly, I think physical barriers are part of that. We have thought that for a long time. They work. People who now are opposed to them generally have often been for them. In fact, a generation ago, we began improving and expanding barriers in a few areas along the southern border, and in every instance, they have made a difference. In 1992, the U.S. Government built a wall in the San Diego sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the number of people caught crossing that border decreased by 95 percent when the barrier was erected. The border is not exactly like a bank. You don't have to have a level of security that nobody can ever get through at any time, under any circumstances, but if you have a solution that solves 95 percent of the problem, that may be about all we can afford to do in terms of solving the problem that way. That barrier, that wall, that fence south of San Diego did exactly that. The next year, we built a wall in El Paso, TX, at that part of the border, and there was a decrease of 95 percent there as well. In 2000, we built a wall at the Tucson, AZ, sector, and apprehensions there dropped 90 percent. We have a 90-percent solution or a 95-percent solution. That is reasonable to the American people who think that the job of the Federal Government--and they are right in this--that one of the jobs of the Federal Government is to secure its border. You wouldn't have to look very far in troubled parts of the world to find a story about Lebanon or some other country--to read that sentence that says: This government is not truly functional because they don't have control over their own borders. It is a reasonable expectation of government. In 2000, as I said, we built a wall in Tucson. You can call this whatever you want to. If you are offended when I say ``wall'' or ``fence,'' you say whatever you want to say--it has the same impact. I have been to the border a number of times. I have walked along the barriers there. I have been on one side of the fence--the two sides of a fence with a patrolled roadway in between. It looked pretty effective to me, and the numbers indicate it was effective. In 2005, when we added a wall in the Yuma part of the Arizona sector, apprehensions went down another 95 percent. We have President Clinton and Presidents Bush--Bush 43 and Bush 41-- all were part of thinking barriers worked, and the Congress was too. There was not an issue as to whether a wall works, where a wall works, until President Trump as a candidate began to talk about building a wall. They have made a big difference in the areas where we have tried them in the past. The President has often said in recent days that the wall doesn't necessarily work everywhere, and I fully agree with that. We couldn't afford to have the wall everywhere, and if we did have the wall everywhere, you would have to monitor it with some remote monitoring device anyway because there are large sections of the border where there aren't people and where there is no access. It doesn't mean you can't monitor that. It doesn't mean you can't have that kind of a wall erected. We need to do that. In November, there were nearly 52,000 people who were caught trying to sneak across the border. Now, you can act like that is not a very big problem--unless you have ever lived in a community of, say, 52,000 people, and then you realize that is a lot of people. And in 1 month alone, they were coming across the southwest border. According to the Department of Homeland Security, nearly 17,000 criminals were apprehended trying to get into the country last year. That is about half of the population of the capital city of Missouri. Seventeen thousand people trying to get in with a criminal record just last year. We have seen a 50-percent increase in gang members being caught trying to come into the country illegally and a 73-percent increase in the seizures of fentanyl. One of the things we do in the health and human services area that I work in and appropriate for and work for an appropriate opioid response is try to figure out how we can get fentanyl out of this system, how we can get something out of this system that is deadly for a significant number of the people who turn to that as they get addicted to painkillers. If the fentanyl seizures are up 73 percent over where they were the year before, something needs to be done. We clearly need to secure our borders. I support the immigration system. I am a proponent of legal immigration. I think how we meet the workforce needs of the country, how we deal with the fact that we have people who are here who aren't legal, who have otherwise not gotten in trouble in the country--about half of them came across the border, and about half of them came in some other way and decided, this is a pretty doggone good place, and I want to stay here and am afraid to go home because I may not get back-- how do we deal with that? How do we deal with this in a way that we meet our workforce needs, that the skill needs of the country are met? And skill needs can be unskilled people--we don't have people willing to do some unskilled jobs--and highly skilled people. We don't have enough people doing their jobs in an economy that is growing faster than the economy has grown in a long time. The economic numbers in some cases are better than they have been in 50 years and in most cases have been better than they have been in at least a decade. Every part of the border doesn't need to be secured the same way, but the border needs to be secured. Our friends on the other side, in what has been a pretty impressive show of party unity, have just decided that they want to reject the options of how we secure the border. People who have voted to build and maintain almost 700 miles of border fencing have suddenly decided that another 50 miles or another 2 miles is immoral. Talk about selective immorality. That it is OK to have 700 miles of fence but it is not OK to have 702 miles of fence is a very interesting place, it seems to me, to draw the line. Our friends on the other side have rejected attempts to fix the way we deal with children who are brought across the border or come across on their own. There are 48,000 children right now that the U.S. Government is doing their best to take care of--I hope and insist that we do that--who came across the border on their own. Another 2,600 or so came across the border with an adult. More often than not, that adult was their parent, but not always. We have 50,000 children who came across the border, and there is no response to any ideas that the administration brings up, no positive response from the other side as to how to deal with that. They have rejected adding beds at detention centers for people who are caught crossing the border illegally. Why would you do that? Why would you not want to have additional space for people who are in custody for illegal behavior? I suppose because it becomes so critically important that people just be released on their own recognizance, to come back at a later time. Some of our friends on the other side, in fact, have called for the complete abolition of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement efforts. At the very time when these are some of the most stressed people working on behalf of the country for the Federal Government, we have people on the other side saying we should eliminate border enforcement. We had a bill introduced in this Chamber last year that every Member of the minority supported. When you read it closely--I am not at all sure they all did because I don't believe this is the position they all had, but when you read it closely, it was a clear open borders bill. There was no way anybody was likely to be apprehended crossing the border except just to tell them ``You know you are here legally now. Come back sometime, and we will see if we can figure out what to do.'' We are for protecting people who are uniquely at risk in the country that they come from. Asylum is an important thing. No country in the history of the world has been any more open than we have been to allowing people to come here legally, to have people who legally seek asylum come here. But the truth is, there is no asylum granted just because you are from a poor country or from a dangerous country, so most of the people who come saying that they are seeking asylum don't get it. Maybe that is why most of them don't show up in court. They know that their argument-- they would rather be here than where they are from, but their argument will never work in court for most of them, and that is clearly understood. We are going to have a lot better opportunity to solve the problems we need to solve regarding the border if people have confidence that the government has done a reasonable job of securing the border. I don't think anybody expects the border in a big country like ours to be so impenetrable that nobody could ever get in under any circumstances. I think they do expect that when you have found the 90- or 95-percent solution, appearing until now to be affordable and widely supported-- when you have found the 90-percent solution, people do expect that at the very least that you would apply the 90-percent standard to the responsibility of the government to secure its borders. So whether it is trying to figure out what we need in our workforce to have a continued growing and vibrant economy or it is trying to figure out what we do about people who have come here and decided to stay, whether they came here across the border or in some other way but stayed beyond the time they were supposed to be here or got here without going through the normal process--those are going to be much easier to come to a conclusion on if people know that the government has done its job to get the border under an acceptable and anticipated level of security, which we would expect to have in a country as strong and vibrant as ours. Particularly for people who were brought here and grew up here, this is an 80-percent issue in the Congress and in the country. Virtually nobody thinks kids who grew up here and didn't get in significant trouble shouldn't be allowed to live in the country they grew up in. Frankly, we need them. We need young people entering the workforce. We need people who are, in almost all cases, highly motivated. I talked to a university president just this week who said that these kids are the kids who, over and over again, set the standard. They are the kids who, over and over again, prove why we want them to be in our country. These problems will be much more solvable if we will just deal with the one fundamental problem of controlling our borders, of having immigration laws that work. I hope, as was mentioned earlier today, that we can get to this conclusion and get to this conclusion quickly. This is obviously a place where we need to come together. Not only does the government need to function, but this is an issue we need to solve, and I guarantee that all of these related issues will be more easily solved if we secure the border. No President has ever had the credibility that this President will have if he says to the American people: I have met my commitment. The border is secure. We are now continuing to work to be sure that the court systems work, that we have protected those people who protect us on the border. There is great credibility here if the President is willing to get to a place that he can say that. I think his efforts to secure the border are significant steps toward allowing us to solve the other problems we need to solve, and we need to solve them sooner rather than later. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, we come to the end of what I think has been a very productive conference. I am not happy, as most of us aren't, with an ending that doesn't allow us to get all of the principal work of the Congress done, which is to decide how we are going to fund the government, how we are going to spend money. We did--this year for the first time in a long time-- get 75 percent of that job done before the beginning of the fiscal year. There is nowhere else in America where that would be a bragging point, but we hadn't done that in 20 years, and so it is a pretty significant accomplishment. What we need to figure out is what we did and how we can replicate that in the future. We have to get to this work. We have to have the kind of floor debates we had this year. We don't need to let it drag into the end of the year as too many of the bills did this time. The worst possible thing to do, in my view, in terms of funding the government, is to shut down the government. The next worst possible thing to do is a long-term CR, where you just say: We couldn't decide how to spend the money this year, so we are going to spend it like we spent it last year. The next option is the one we are following, which appears to be a short-term CR to, unfortunately, come back and begin next year's work with the obligation to finish this year's work. That is clearly a mistake, and it is a mistake that ends a Congress that otherwise was pretty successful. All kinds of regulatory reform occurred. Some of it the Congress was involved in. For the first time in the history of the Congressional Review Act, the Congress--15 times--sent to the President a regulation that the Congress was not going to approve, and, 15 times, the President agreed with that decision. That happened exactly one other time in the 25-year history of the Congressional Review Act. There was one time before this Congress when it had happened 15 times. The regulatory situation of the country is much better. The first major rewrite in the tax bill in 31 years has clearly had and is having an impact on our economy. The numbers in my State of Missouri are as good as they have been in a long time. I think our unemployment number is at its lowest in 18 years. The national unemployment number is at its lowest in almost 15 years. Missouri's number, at 3.2 percent, is even lower than that. There are things like the long-term extension for the FAA, or the Federal Aviation Administration, and the farm bill. There are a lot of things that we should be talking about. I want to talk, for just a few minutes, about the things that have happened for Missouri this year here in the Senate. We have made significant progress in addressing some of the most important issues facing both the State and the Nation. Just this month, we had a land transfer for the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency. It started out as an ocean mapping agency in St. Louis, MO, decades ago, and then it became a full partner in our overhead architecture that tries to figure out what is going on in the world at any given moment on any given day--things like mapping out what we know about the outside of the place where Osama bin Laden was hiding and where he was eventually found, guessing from watching traffic going in and out of there, what might be on the other side of the door when you go in. That is just one of the things that happens at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency every day. That one and others happened at Next NGA West, the St. Louis facility. There was big competition on what we should do about that. The decision was made to put that $1.3 billion new facility in the city of St. Louis, right next to one of the great Federal disasters of all time. The Pruitt-Igoe housing complex--not well thought out--had to be imploded within a short time of people's moving in there. Within a decade or so, it was known to be a disaster. Not too long after that, it just imploded. That is sort of, again, the implosion of so much of that part of a city that, at one time, was the fourth biggest city in the country in terms of population. It is not there any longer. There are things like the GEOINT workforce--the national geospatial location being there--that will make a difference. Certainly, there is aviation, and we make lots of military aircraft in our State. The bill that we funded that we worried so much about in recent years really brought it back to where we have the multiyear funding of things like the Super Hornet, the Hornet, and the Growler. It just so totally disrupts the efforts of our enemies to figure out what that formation of planes is all about. It is an important part of flying, whether they come off of the deck of a ship or off of a runway or anything else. Boeing won the opportunity to make the Air Force's T- X trainer, and it is beginning the process right now. The nonmanned tanker is important. Just a few years ago, keeping those lines open in a way that we were concerned about wouldn't have happened. I had the chance this weekend to be a part of the launching of the future Freedom Class ship USS St. Louis. The Navy asked for 32 of those ships, and this Congress gave them 35. Now, if you are listening out there and you are a taxpayer and are thinking about this, well, why would the Congress give them 35 when they asked for 32? We look not just to the immediate need of that line but at the long-term and unfunded need. It hasn't been that long since the Navy would have asked for 32 ships but might have gotten 18 or 16. We are in a place in which, once again, we are looking at our defense obligations. We also had the biggest pay increase for men and women in uniform in over a decade. All of those things matter. Senator McCaskill and I worked on one piece of legislation to allow the historic Delta Queen, which will be based at Kimmswick, MO, which is just south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River, to get back in operation again. It is a 1920s riverboat on which, not too many years ago, President Carter took his summer vacation with the other passengers. The Gateway Arch was reopened. Officially, 60 years after the arch was built, it was time to restore it. It was also time to connect the arch in better and different ways to the city of St. Louis--to the historic courthouse where the Dred Scott decision was started. That is where the local Federal court case was that wound up in a Supreme Court disaster. In the hearts and minds of the people, they are looking back at how wrong-headed that particular court was, but that old courthouse is still there. It is now connected to the arch, as it was not before, and to downtown. I talked yesterday to the designated person who runs the Park Service. I said that we wanted the second century of the Park Service to be a public-private partnership. There is no greater example of that than the reopening and the restoring of the arch and in the connecting of it to downtown. There has been 300-and-some million dollars spent. Almost all of that money was either privately or locally raised with a tax on the city of St. Louis. I think about $20 million of that 300- plus million-dollar project was Federal highway money. The message there is that if you are going to expect a different source of money, you also have to expect a different kind of partnership. I think one of the things the Park Service learned with that big project was if the second century of the system were going to be different, it can't be just like the first century. You get your money from somewhere else, and then do whatever you want to do. What happens is you get your money from somewhere else and you have to create a sense that you really have partners in that. In St. Louis, during World War II and after, a lot of the work on atomic weapons was done. In September, Congresswoman Wagner and I were able to join a signing ceremony on a record of decision of what to do with some of that military waste--that radioactive waste that had been left from the years before and after the end of World War II. It had been discarded by the Federal Government in ways that were not well thought out, in the West Lake Landfill. Families there have been tireless advocates in demanding that things be done for the health and safety of their children and their community. They waited for 27 years for some real criticism out there by Scott Pruitt, who was the EPA Director. When we first talked to him about this, he said that you can't be on the priority list for almost 30 years if it is really a priority list. With his and Administrator Wheeler's leadership, somehow we came to a conclusion there that has generally been met positively by people who have worked so hard to get that Federal decision--there is a public-private partnership--and the private companies they worked with to do something with this material-- to now do the right thing with the material, which means moving it out of our State. In southeast Missouri, there was a port authority, an inland port authority. An almost $20 million bridge grant was announced the other day that will allow that inland port, with two new rail lines, to become much more multimobile than it had been before. What is going to happen to rural food demand? It is critically important. No country in the world is better suited than we are to meet the doubling of world food demand between now and 2050. In the doubling of the biggest area of commerce in the world, our inland ports in that discussion become particularly important. Both the Congress and, in this case, the Missouri General Assembly are paying attention to the inland port structure like they have not before. The biggest single piece of contiguous agricultural ground in the world is the Mississippi River Valley. Unlike the others in the world that may be almost as big, it has its own built-in transportation network. The Missouri, the Ohio, the Arkansas, and the Illinois are rivers that flow into the Mississippi River and create that network that now links through the Panama Canal easily. You can go to Asia. You don't go through the Panama Canal. You easily get to the east coast of our country or you get to Europe and Africa. It is a great opportunity for us, and that kind of investment makes that opportunity more likely to pay the kind of dividends we would hope it would pay. In September of this year, Congress passed and the President signed the Energy and Water appropriations bill, which included $25 million for the Delta Regional Authority, which is an authority designed to benefit a part of our country in which the early focus on labor intensive occupations, particularly farming, has given way to looking at that part of our economy without thinking about what has happened to rural communities and the rural workforce as that has moved on. Broadband is part of that, and I think we are going to see that continue to be a big part of what goes on in the future. We have the small ports and the Mississippi River and tributaries project. We have the Ste. Genevieve National Historic Park, and the President signed that bill in March. Ste. Genevieve has French architecture that goes back to the late 1700s and to the very early 1800s. It is unique in the kind of architecture that is preserved there. Some of the oldest buildings, certainly, in the middle of the country and, in some cases, west of the Mississippi are there, and we are moving forward. I hope, even this week, to do a couple of additional things that will make that historic park work and be open to people from all over the world. The French Ambassador wants to go there in the near future and see what we are doing, as an example, to maintain those buildings that are reflective of a different part of our heritage than we have in most of the country. Research institutions, like the University of Missouri, the USDA ag research facility in Columbia, and other places across our State, have benefited from additional research money. In East Locust Creek, in August of 2018, it was announced that the final investment would be made for an East Locust Creek Reservoir in North Central Missouri. Water is a bigger and bigger challenge as we look toward the future, and thinking now about how we are going to have the kinds of water opportunities we need for drinking water or agriculture water and other water is very important. In Sedalia, MO, a project to help--Congresswoman Hartzler and I worked on a project to help make the industrial park work better. Nucor just announced this year a significant and brandnew steel facility in that part of our State. In Kansas City, the Buck O'Neil Bridge, across the Missouri River, is something that has needed to be done for a long time. The community had come up with 90 percent of the money needed, a bridge grant that Secretary Chao called me about, that the community had applied for, gets that last $25 million of that 200-and-some million-dollar project. There has been a long fight at Whiteman Air Force Base in Warrensburg to maintain the A-10s and then do what we could to get the replacement wing there. That is important, as were the things that happened in Saint Joseph with the lift capacity, the ability with those C-130s, where 19 different countries come to that facility and train to figure out how to get the kind of support we need for military all over the world, including our NATO allies. Senator Boozman and I, from the days we were in the House together, formed an I-49 caucus. Another announcement just in the last month will allow the last few miles of I-49 to be completed in our State. I was there about 8 years ago when Highway 71 in Missouri became I-49, and in most of our State now it is I-49, and it will be I-49 in all of our State. So what has happened there and what has happened with opioid grant funding and with our mental health leadership in our State have resulted in significant legislative achievements this year. The HIRE Vets Act is legislation that provides not only for hiring vets, but it also establishes recognition. Everybody says they hire vets. This is following up on legislation that was passed here in the Senate and in the House and signed into law in May of 2017. The Labor Department came up with that new standard of acknowledging who hires vets and who is better at hiring vets than anybody else. The first five Missouri employers were recognized this year with dozens of employers all over the country, in a tiered situation. It is sort of like the LEED standard for energy efficiency; we now have a standard for hiring vets. As with the FAA reauthorization bill I mentioned earlier, our efforts to move toward more rural broadband have moved significantly this year, but, still, that is one of the things we need to be looking at next year. I would argue that this is certainly one of the most effective right- of-center Congresses in a long time. I think it has been an effective Congress. We looked at the issues facing the country, and we have done the best we can, in a long- and short-range way, to deal with those issues. It is something we ought to be talking to people we work for about, trying to use that as a standard. We were good this year; let's figure out how to be even better next year. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 3749, introduced earlier today by Senator Klobuchar and myself.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered and laid upon the table.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, while our colleagues show their affection for Senator McCaskill, let me talk a little bit about my relationship with her and her service to our State. She chose not to do that, but she has served Missourians at every level of government--as a county legislator, as a State legislator, as an extraordinary prosecutor, and as the State auditor, when her particular talent to find out exactly what was going wrong and point it out was maybe at its best use, and 12 years in the U.S. Senate. I know that not too long ago Claire and Joe took their family on a vacation to a ranch in the West. I was thinking about that, and thinking about her reminded me of a story I had heard about a wrangler at one of those ranches, who was just perfect on a horse. Somebody who was visiting asked: How do you get that good riding a horse? He said: Well, first of all, you get on the horse and you put your boot in the stirrup. You put your heel right up against the back of the stirrup. You sit easily in the saddle, and you ride for about 30 years. You ride for about 30 years. If you had paid any attention to either the last Senate campaign in Missouri or the one I was involved in before that, you heard a lot about 30 years. In the case of Senator McCaskill and me, we have our own 30 years. About that long ago, she was starting her second term in the Missouri legislature--smart, well-prepared, all she always is. I was the first Republican elected secretary of state in 52 years and only a couple years older than her. In fact, we never had much of a fight about who was going to be called a senior Senator because neither wanted to be the particular senior anything at this point, but we began to work together. Claire was smart, she was quick, she was funny, she was insightful, and she was always well-prepared. She was also, by the way, on the Appropriations Committee that I had to report to. The questions were always tough and usually I could answer them. Even then, I often wondered how somebody as smart and well-prepared as Claire could so often wind up on the wrong side of the issue of the day based on my view of the issue of the day. We still have that--the 8 years we were here together. Let me tell you, on anything that involved Missouri, I think you would have a hard time finding an exception where we didn't get to the same place, where we didn't get there quickly, and where we didn't do everything we both could do to figure out how to reach a conclusion. In fact, all week I was thinking, is there any way I can get to St. Louis to where the property transfer will be made for the new NGA, the National Geospatial West facility--$1.3 billion facility--right where Pruitt-Igoe used to be, something new that will be the center of activity and something that was built at the site of a really bad government decision. We worked very hard to get that done. I was thinking, I am going to do that, until I found out it wasn't going to be next Tuesday; it was going to be today when Senator McCaskill was going to give this speech, and I knew I needed to be here and wanted to be here for that. I also say that our staff--and her Washington staff is here--our staff in Washington, our staff in Missouri, to the best of my knowledge, have always worked closely on everything. They would even be at meetings where one of them would be explaining why I voted the way I did and the other would be explaining why Claire voted the way she did, and they would often ride together. That was the way we worked together on citizen concerns, on Missouri concerns. That happened here as well. Claire talked about her family. Joe Shepard, a great friend of mine for--frankly, Joe was helping me before he started helping Claire, but she pretty well totally converted him to her side of the aisle, but we are still good friends. I have gotten to know Claire's sisters and appreciate her sisters. They are the best. They are always there for her. Occasionally, they will look just enough like Claire that they could ride in her car in a parade and she could be in a parade somewhere else. Claire's mom: The last person in the car is a Republican--I can absolutely hear Claire's mom saying that. In fact, after I was elected to the Senate, I was in the Senate and happened to see Joe and Claire's mom and went over to say hi. Claire's mom said: Well, I would like to say it is nice to see you here, but based on everything I said in the campaign, I would be two-faced. That was Betty McCaskill, and I liked her for it. I was at Betty McCaskill's memorial service during Claire's campaign that year for her second election to the Senate. She was at my dad's memorial service during my election campaign to the Senate this time. As Claire and Joe were leaving, Claire said to me: What a perfect service for Leroy Blunt. Nobody in this body could say that like Claire could say it because she knew my dad. When family got up, we talked about my dad, but Claire knew that was not just a passing comment; it was knowing who we were and knowing who she is and what she knew about that. Of all the times we voted differently, we have a relationship without pretense, as much as you can possibly have between two Members of the Senate from the same State. The best part of the last 8 years--we have been friendly for 30 years, but in the last 8 years, we really have become good friends. Old friends are hard to make. It takes a long time, say 30 years, to really make old friends. I look forward to our time together after you leave here. I have benefited from our time together while you were here. Our State has benefited from your service in incredible ways at all levels. Even on the days we didn't disagree, I never doubted your sense that you were doing the right thing. It is an honor to be your friend, and it is an honor to have worked for you. Thanks for all you have done for the State of Missouri.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I further ask that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each; further, that at 2:15 the Senate vote on the Kobes nomination as under the previous order; finally, if the nomination is confirmed, that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid on the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I know that we have a number of things scheduled here, including some farewell speeches from some of our colleagues. I was scheduled to speak, and I do want to speak, and I will try not to take too much advantage of the time. I wanted to speak today and this week about the importance of treating mental health and the importance of the role that law enforcement plays in the way we treat mental health in this country. For too long, law enforcement and emergency room personnel have been, in effect, the de facto mental health delivery system for the country. The National Institutes of Health says that one in five Americans has a mental health or behavioral health issue and that one in nine adult Americans has a behavioral health issue that impacts how they live every single day. Two Congresses ago, in the 113th Congress, Senator Stabenow and I worked to pass legislation--the Excellence in Mental Health Act. What that did was to create eight State demonstration projects that would last for 2 years each to see what would happen if we treated mental health like all other health concerns--something that everybody knows I believe we should have been doing and something that in eight States we are doing. The good news was that 24 States applied, a number that exceeded every discussion that anybody had about how many States would step forward and say: We would like to be the States that try to do this first. Twenty-four States applied. I was certainly proud that Missouri was one of the eight States chosen to be in the demonstration project. We are about halfway through the 2-year project, and in our State and in the seven other States, people have access to mental health services they didn't have before. Most Missourians are within a relatively short drive of a facility that will treat their mental health problem like it was any other health problem, and as we begin to do that, I think we are going to see the kind of impact on law enforcement and the kind of help that law enforcement needs as well. Just a couple of years ago, I rode with both the crisis intervention teams in Kansas City and in my hometown in Springfield. In Springfield what I saw there were officers dealing with a 24/7 linkup to the Burrell mental health clinic, the local and regional mental health provider. Sixteen officers, at that time, had, in effect, iPads that linked them up to a mental health professional. It didn't take too long--and I think this would be indicative of what most law enforcement officials see almost every day--before we came on someone huddled in the alcove of a building that was vacant who clearly had a behavioral health problem. It wasn't at that point a drug problem or an alcohol problem. They were where they were because they had a mental health problem. The officer was able to Skype back immediately with a mental health professional. What I was really most interested in is that even with a well-trained officer who knew exactly what they were doing and how to do it--even with that officer there--as that officer linked the person up with someone--in effect, a telemedicine linkup with a mental health professional--you could tell that that person was more comfortable talking to the iPad and communicating that way than he was with the officer that was right there with him, and it wasn't because the officer was in any way intimidating or unprofessional. It was just because of what it was--a linkup with someone at another site, but someone who clearly was well prepared to deal with those kinds of issues. So we are going to see that this benefitted the kinds of things that the mental health community can do to provide more resources to the law enforcement community. The Excellence in Mental Health Act is providing a service and, I think, producing real results. I would also say, as I conclude my remarks on this topic, that what we hope to see is a significant number of people. Remember, I said NIH said that one out of five adult Americans has a behavioral health issue. What happens when you deal with that behavioral health issue in terms of how you deal with all of the other health issues that that individual or that community will be dealing with? What happens if somebody is feeling better about themselves--taking their medicine, eating better, sleeping better, showing up for the doctor's appointments, showing up for the dialysis appointment, doing what they ought to be doing? I believe what we are going to find and what has been found in earlier big county studies of this kind is that actually doing the right thing winds up saving money, not costing money. But also doing the right thing for police officers, for people in emergency rooms and providing the kinds of connections and alternatives needed make a big difference. For all of the healthcare providers and the law enforcement individuals involved, I am grateful for what they do, and I think we are seeing some real results from the bill that this body passed, President Obama signed into law, and is producing great results. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am here to talk for a few minutes about Major House and the work he has done in our office. We have benefited for the last several years from a military detailee being on the Intelligence Committee and on the Defense Appropriations Committee and having significant military installations in our State, as many of us do, but we certainly have those in Missouri. It has been valuable having MAJ Aaron House with them. Major House has been a great resource on a number of important national security issues in our office. The knowledge and experience he has gained as a U.S. Army Reserve officer have helped inform our discussions on defense issues critical to Missouri and critical to the country. Aaron was born in Plattsburgh, NY, on the shores of Lake Champlain. He joined the Army in 2001. He first served as an enlisted soldier for 3 years and then as a commissioned officer after that. He has served in both the Engineer Corps and the Finance Corps. He deployed to Iraq, where he conducted rapid crater repair, route clearance, and construction operations. His most recent assignment before joining our office was with the joint staff working as an analyst for the Office of the Comptroller in Defense. He is extremely well educated and holds a bachelor of science in manufacturing management from Clarkson University in New York, a master of science in human relations and business from Amberton University in Texas, and he has both a master of business administration and a master of public administration from Syracuse University in New York. He comes with all of that background. Combining that with his background in finance, he has been critically important to us as we move through a number of important projects this year. He has been able to devote a lot of time to gathering and analyzing data on historical military construction projects as we move forward on those projects. He has provided knowledgeable recommendations on a host of foreign policy issues as well. He was very involved in the last year in Colombia, where Senator Cardin and I cochaired an effort with the Atlantic Council to look at moving Peace Colombia to Plan Colombia and then looking at that again now that the Colombian Government has changed. We have looked at some things that involved Australia and China and Russia, just to name a few of the areas where Major House has been helpful in our office. On veterans issues, he has been helpful as we try to connect veterans with the resources they need and the benefits they have every right to have, but they sometimes have a hard time accessing those benefits. Having him in the office has been an asset. It has been a pleasure for me and our entire staff. I certainly wish him all the best in the next chapter of his military career. He and his wife Mindy have three daughters. They have a newborn son. So even in that year he was with us, they added a fourth child at their house. His family and friends who support him and the sacrifices he and his family--his immediate family--make to serve are deeply appreciated by us. He has been a real benefit to the country. He has been a particular benefit to the Missourians whom I get to work for. I am grateful to have had him this year and will again say that this is a program that really is beneficial to the Senate. I hear from our past detailees over the years that it was an incredible opportunity for them to understand how the Congress works from the perspective of each of our offices and makes a valuable addition to what they take to their next assignment and every future assignment. I think the Chief of Staff for the President spent some substantial time in this building representing the Army and said he was the most knowledgeable guy in the Army when it came to talking about issues that he learned right here and how to work with and provide information and advice to Congress. We are glad Major House has been with us, appreciative of the program, look forward to welcoming our next detailee soon, and wish Major House and his family great success as they move forward. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Robert Ivanauskas, a Federal Energy Regulatory Committee detailee with the Senate Energy Committee, be granted privileges of the floor until and through December 21, 2018.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent that my military fellow, our military detailee, MAJ Aaron House be given floor privileges during the duration of my remarks.