Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have 2 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Agriculture The Committee on Agriculture is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, December 05, 2018, at 4 p.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Rules and Administration The Committee on Rules and Administration is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, December 05, 2018, at 4 p.m., to conduct a hearing.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I am honored to join my colleagues here to talk about President Bush. The outpouring of appreciation from the country has been significant. His son, the 43rd President, said that it takes a long time for the determinations of history to come in. I think the 41st President had almost 25 years for people to begin to put his Presidency in the right kind of historical reference, the right context of looking back and seeing not only what happened then but what has happened since then because of what happened then. I am pleased that he and Barbara were able to live long enough after that significant Presidency to see what happened. Certainly in Missouri, we claim part of the Bush family. His mother grew up in Missouri. The Walkers were from Missouri. He treated Missouri like it was one of the States that he was connected to by relationship. His grandfather and later his Uncle Herbert and the rest of the family would go in the summer to Walker's Point, named after that Missouri part of his family, just like the Walker Cup is named after that part of his family. The impact of his mother is pretty great. I heard the President talking the other day, in an interview with Jenna Bush, about whom he would look for when he got to Heaven. That was a couple of years ago, I think. He said: Well, if Barbara has gone there first, I think the right answer would be that I am going to look for her first. But then he said: I think my mom and my dad, and he said their daughter Robin, whom they lost when she was 3 years old. So his mother was an important part of his life. You could tell that when talking to him or to his children, when they remembered their grandmother, and you could see a lot of what she taught him in him, including that competitive nature. They don't name sporting cups after your family unless your family begins in competition. There was that competitive nature, but that was also based on never bragging about yourself. To be a real competitor like the President was and not brag about yourself is not always an easy thing, but, certainly, maybe to his political detriment, it was part of his upbringing. Another part of his upbringing included, in many ways, the best values of that World War II generation: Stand up straight, take responsibility, share credit, and take blame. Those were all part of who George Herbert Walker Bush had become--that idea that you should do what you are supposed to do and that idea of the importance of service to others. If you are going to be part of the team, if you are President Bush--I heard Jon Meacham, his biographer, say that he tried to kind of get into the depth of that: What about this commitment to service, and aren't there lots of ways to do that, and can't you have service without recognition? But President Bush, understanding the conflict, actually, in what he believed and the profession he had pursued said: Well, there is nothing wrong if you are going to be on the team to want to be captain of the team, whether it is captain of the Yale baseball team, which he was, or the President of the United States. The Yale baseball team leads me to another thing that the Presiding Officer and I know when we think about him; that is, the willingness as a young man to serve--and to serve immediately. In fact, at 17, still in high school, after Pearl Harbor, he talked about going to Canada to join the Canadian Air Corps because you could do that at 17, but in our country you couldn't join the Air Corps until 18. There was no Air Force yet. It was the Army Air Corps or the Navy Air Corps. He was persuaded by, I assume, his mom and dad, and others, by saying: Well, let's finish high school first, and then when you are 18, you can join the U.S. Air Corps. He did that, I believe, on his 18th birthday, or really close to his 18th birthday, to become then the youngest aviator in the war at the time when he got his flying credentials and serving in that way. That was part of that generation. Then, the war was over, and he and Barbara get married right before the war ended. Then he goes to college. That young man with a wife and a baby goes to college and becomes the captain of the baseball team. He was a man with really always great athletic ability and great grace in so many ways. He had grace under pressure and grace with others, but grace in sports, as well, and the ability to do that. Now, when you are the captain of the Yale baseball team, you can talk a lot about the team instead of yourself. When you decide to enter politics, there is an almost total contradiction between pursuing political office and not talking about yourself. It just doesn't quite work that way. You have to be willing to do that. We could always see in President Bush that reluctance to cross the line his mother had taught him and talk about himself and talk about his accomplishments. Even at his best, he was held back, in many ways, by that reluctance-- what he would see as bragging on himself. His public service was significant and broad-based. I believe you could make the case that perhaps no one had ever been better prepared to be President than George Herbert Walker Bush, but in that effort to become President, you have to run first. I remember in 1980 hearing Barbara Bush talking about this. I remember this because it was so unusual. I don't remember anybody else saying anything like this when they decided to run for President in 1980. When he ran for President, I heard Barbara Bush say this when asked: This guy has run for Congress once; it is the only elected office he has ever had, the House of Representatives and reelected. And she said: Yes, but George has a big family and thousands of friends. Now we see, at the end of his life, how that network of friends continued to be an important part of who he was, but I don't recall a single other person ever successfully running for President on the basis that he had a big family and lots of friends. But that was his unique way to associate with people, which included the thousands of letters he wrote. As the Vice President said yesterday, he wrote to friends over the years, and as it turned out, in retirement. He wrote letters to almost anybody who would write him. He would respond as, again, his mother probably taught him to do: If somebody takes the time to write you, you take the time to write them back. He was a man of appreciation and thank-you notes and sympathy notes. So that network of friends and family eventually became very important. Now, where I live in Missouri, we were the ultimate bellwether State for about 100 years. My friend from Ohio would come close to being able to take that crown for a while. Ohio has usually been a winner in Presidential elections. But for 100 years, from 1904 to 2004, we voted for the winner every time but one. So that last part of that--that last 20 years of that time period--very much is the time period where President Bush 41 and Bush 43, for that matter, were part of national politics. Missouri would have been a significant place for him anyway. His brother lived there--his younger brother Bucky, who passed away in the last few years--and Ambassador Burt Walker was there. So there are lots of interrelated and connected family members. So we saw Candidate Bush and then Vice President Bush and then President Bush in our State a lot. I was the elected secretary of State when he was Vice President, and I was the secretary of State when he was President. So I had the chance to benefit from knowing him. I had a chance to go to Walker's Point a few times and to go to church with the Bushes. If you were with the Bushes on a Sunday, either you were going to be left by yourself or you were going to go to church, because that was as much a part of who President Bush was as anything else-- maybe a bigger part than anything else. He said that in his faith--the Episcopal faith. Maybe he wasn't about sharing publicly his faith, but he was absolutely committed to his faith. In fact, he raised the money to build a chapel at Camp David during his Presidency. There had not been a chapel there before. A number of Presidents, starting with Franklin Roosevelt, had used Camp David, but it was President Bush who decided: Well, church services on Sunday in the cafeteria could be in a better place; let's do what we can. So he raised the money privately to build the chapel that is there today. The Missouri connection goes a little bit further. Not only did Missouri vote for President Bush in 1988--and if my story is going to have any truth to it, I would have to point out that Missouri voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, because we were still voting for the winner by pretty much the margin of whatever the national average was in the last 50 years of that 100-year saga. After Desert Storm, President Bush looked around to find a place to do the first Fourth of July parade, and he came to Marshfield, MO, in the county where I was born--Webster County. I was going to be grand marshal of the parade that year, as I recall, but when it became apparent that the President wanted to come to be in that parade, I was more than willing to concede that he should be the grand marshal of that parade, and I walked not too far behind him. Then, in 1992, after the convention--I believe it was the first kickoff--the first campaign kickoff was at Branson, MO, and I had the chance to be there with him. We went to a country music show at the Moe Bandy Theater. Loretta Lynn was sitting with the President and Mrs. Bush, and their good friend from Texas, Moe Bandy, was performing. That was a part of America and a part of our music that the President loved. I think the kickoff rally itself was outside in the parking lot, at Silver Dollar City, and the Herschend family was there. JoDee Herschend just this week died, as well, after a long fight with cancer. All of those connections go back to the big family and thousands of friends. There was nowhere in that matrix that I just talked about where President Bush didn't leave with more friends than he had when he came--friends whom many times he figured out how to develop a lifelong connection to. All of us could use more of that skill. There is social media and the quick response, but the letter writing and the phone calling and the thinking about when you need to reach out to people in a way they can transparently feel it continues to be important. The other things are not unimportant, either, but his connectedness took a little more effort than some of ours do. Let me just say, in terms of preparation and how it paid off, he was CIA Director, a Member of Congress, one of the very first Envoys to China, before we had official relationships, Envoy to the United Nations, Vice President of the United States, and his making connections and contacts and friendships. There was Desert Storm. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, and the President says: ``This will not stand.'' He assembled what may have been the greatest coalition of nations at any time. The nations that weren't willing to fight were often willing to help others to pay for the fight. I don't know if anybody else could have put that coalition together the way President Bush did, but he put that coalition together with maximum force and to guarantee minimum loss and suddenly freed Kuwait and showed that the United States was still going to stand up for people who couldn't stand up for themselves. Then, there was the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have just enough time now to look back. I have heard many others over the last few days talk about how that could have gone so badly wrong for all of the other countries that were trying to emerge from the domination of Russia and the Soviet Union. But George Herbert Walker Bush was on the phone, reaching out, talking to leaders, saying the things that actually had just been predicted by the West Germans themselves to be impossible-- that, somehow, East Germany could become part of West Germany. That is exactly what happened. The President encouraged, stood beside, and went out of the way to be sure that Helmut Kohl, the leader of West Germany, had the kind of support that he and his government needed. He reached out to bring this country, which had been isolated for 40 years, back as part of their country and into the country. So all of these East European countries that were emerging from Soviet domination had a chance to move from domination to democracy. That would not have happened the way it happened if somebody less prepared and less capable had been there. Character paid off then, and character is being recognized today for the value it has. As thousands have walked by the casket in the Rotunda of the Capitol of the United States of America, millions of others have thought about what a life of character means, about what the willingness to take responsibility means, and about how important it is to share credit, to take blame, to be prepared, and to believe there is great value and virtue in serving others. That is what George Herbert Walker Bush did. As we think back at the impact he and Mrs. Bush and their family have had on the country, there is a great lesson to be learned. I hope we are all taking time to learn it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have two topics. I want to talk in a moment or two about National Adoption Month, but before I do that, I want to talk just a minute about Russia's continued outrageous behavior in Ukraine and the most recent incident where Russia has manufactured another crisis in order to take advantage of whatever situation they think the moment is ripe for. Clearly this has been allowed to go on for too long. While Ukraine is not a member of NATO, I think NATO countries-- including ours--have a great interest in what is happening in Ukraine with Putin's continued aggressive behavior. We had a joint session--the only joint session where the President of Ukraine has spoken--a few years ago. He made the point that they appreciated the humanitarian help, but I thought the most telling moment in that speech was when he said: We appreciate the humanitarian help, we appreciate the blankets, but you can't fight the Russians with blankets. That was the time under the Obama administration when we were not giving Ukraine either the defensive or offensive capacity they needed. President Trump has made a different decision, which I support, in helping the Ukrainians defend themselves. I also support whatever we can do at this moment to let it be known to Putin that we are supportive of Ukraine's efforts to have an independent, democratic government, that we will continue to be supportive of that and we will continue to be helpful in that effort, and President Putin had better be careful that he doesn't take one step too far. In fact, he has already taken steps further than should have been allowed. Those steps--the seizure of Crimea, the invasion of eastern Ukraine by people who were clearly Russian soldiers in plain green uniforms--should not have been allowed. The President has to deal with that, but we need to deal with that in a way that gives Ukraine all the help they need in dealing with that themselves. Whether the President should make that point by not meeting with Putin or whether he should make that point by meeting with Putin and clearly expressing not only our concern but our absolute rejection of the efforts the Russian Government has made toward Ukraine in an aggressive way, I don't know. I do know that it is time for us to be very clear about how we feel about that and emphasize our continued commitment to the NATO countries along the Russian border, that we absolutely will respond if there is any aggression toward those NATO countries. Frankly, we should be aggressive in our efforts to help Ukraine defend itself.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I think by any standard, as we conclude this Congress, the House and Senate, working together, have put more legislation on the President's desk that has long-term impact than at any time in a long time, whether it was the opioid legislation or healthcare research funding. I want to talk a little bit today about the Federal Aviation Administration extension that, just last week, the Senate passed and the President signed. I believe the 5-year reauthorization is the longest reauthorization since the 1980s. So the traveling public, the FAA itself, the Department of Transportation, and the airline carriers of both people and freight have an understanding of what the next 5 years should look like. One of the things that will happen during the time that begins right now--the Senate and the House listened and the President listened to the traveling public about their concerns about what happens on airplanes and in airports. This is a bill that I worked on in the Aviation Subcommittee, along with Senator Cantwell, Senator Thune, and Senator Nelson. We worked for almost 2 years to get this bill to where it was when the President signed it, to address the safety, security, and comfort of the traveling public. In the wake of consumer complaints about the shrinking seat size on airplanes, the law directs the FAA to set minimum legroom standards and width and length requirements for airline seat size to ensure passenger comfort and safety. I think all of us have had some experience with seeing seats get smaller all the time. Like every other Member of the Senate, when I am flying back and forth every week, usually in one of those coach seats, somebody says: I thought you came back and forth on a private plane. Actually, only a few Members--maybe less than a handful--are able to do that. Most of us fly just like everybody else does, with no particular benefit. But you can sense those seats getting a little smaller and the legroom getting a little tighter. We have given new responsibility for the FAA to set standards, so the traveling public knows somebody is paying attention to them and how long they are going to be in that seat and what it is going to be like when they are there. We also have a provision that you can't take somebody off an airplane once they have been allowed to board because you somehow oversold. If somebody is on that plane, they can't be taken off that plane unless they agree to be taken off that plane or the passenger acts in a way that the safety and security and the health of other passengers could be a problem. So there is no more involuntarily bumping of passengers who are on a plane. The law prohibits placing live animals in overhead compartments. More and more people seem to travel with pets, and people have had bad experiences with that in the last few years. So overhead storage is not appropriate storage any longer for your pet if you are traveling with a pet. It also sets minimum standards for service animals that are allowed on flights. We all see that more all the time, too--a pet not in a cage but important to the individual who has a service animal. Many veterans now have a service animal. There are now standards on what that animal can be and how it has to behave on a plane. It bans in-flight cell calls. If you have ever sat by somebody before the plane takes off and learned way more about them than you want to know, you can imagine what it would be like if you had to learn way more about them based on every call they could make all the time you were flying. So that is not going to happen. The next time you are on the ground and somebody continues to talk until they are told they can't do that any longer, just be grateful that can't continue once the plane gets in the air for the whole time of the flight, which would technically have been allowed with Wi-Fi or whatever allowed that phone to be connected. That is not going to be the case now. Airline fees have changed. I don't like airline fees. Most people don't like airline fees. But if you pay a fee and you don't get the service--if you pay for a seat assignment that doesn't work out to be the kind of seat you paid for or early boarding, and that didn't happen or baggage that somehow wasn't handled the way your special fee was charged--the airlines now have to keep track of that and get you that money back as soon as they reasonably can or face a penalty. The law requires air carriers to submit to the Department of Transportation a one-page summary of passengers' rights, including compensation for flight delays, cancellations, and mishandled bags. Every airline has to have that available for you to look at. By the way, the Department of Transportation is going to have a Consumer Aviation Advocate. There will now be somebody at the Department of Transportation--it will be their job, their only job, to respond to you; they and their team will respond to you if you have had a problem on an airline and want to see what can be done about it. Provisions are included to address disability issues on planes, whether restrooms are accessible, whether anything happens that would harm a disabled passenger or damage their wheelchair or the other aids they have. We have a 3-year reauthorization of the Transportation Security Administration. There are some real needs there in both TSA Precheck and TSA generally that are met with this. One of those needs is more access to dogs. We all see dogs in airports, but every study since 9/ 11--and there have been a lot of them--indicates that nothing is more effective than a dog for finding most of the things you are looking for. Some of us have gone through security lines lately where the line moves pretty fast, but a dog checks everybody in that line. We will see what happens there, but dogs generally are doing the kinds of things that need to be done. So whether it is the FAA Reauthorization Act or America's Water Infrastructure Act, which we passed yesterday--I think the vote on that was 99 to 1, but that doesn't mean it was easy to get it to the floor, and it doesn't mean it normally gets done by a Congress. But that has happened as well. The insurance policies that Democrats voted to take away yesterday have been mentioned here this morning. Those short-term health policies were available until the very last days of the Obama administration. I don't know the reason the administration had to suddenly decide that it didn't want that ability that several hundred thousand--maybe a couple of million--people had to get short-term coverage at a rate they could afford. For people in a job transition or something else, those were available that entire time. The Urban Institute says that 1.5 million people who otherwise would have no insurance will be able to have insurance under those short-term policies. The policies under the Affordable Care Act are still available; they are still subsidized; they still do everything that is the maximum of ObamaCare. If that is what you want to have, particularly if you are subsidized in that marketplace, that is probably where you should be. But a lot of people aren't, and a lot of people don't have immediate access, and a lot of people are in transition. The Urban Institute is not normally seen as a conservative watchdog, but they said that 1.5 million people will have insurance with these policies, which will continue to be available for people who wouldn't have insurance if they hadn't have been. So you can say anything you want to say. You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts, and I think the facts on the vote we took this week on those short-term policies are pretty clear. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I yield to the Senator.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about what my good friend from Delaware talked about with regard to our being judged by history. Some of what I want to talk about today is of the history of this system and of others who have served. I have read several times in the last 30 days, particularly, that the Democrats feel they can do anything because of the way Merrick Garland was treated. I don't think there is any comparison between the way Merrick Garland was treated and the way Judge Kavanaugh has been treated. The only comparison I can think of is that they are both on the DC Court of Appeals and that they have both said very kind things about each other, but there is no comparison. Merrick Garland was nominated in the last year of a Presidency. The last time someone was put on the Supreme Court who was nominated in the last year of a Presidency was in 1932. The last time that happened was in 1932. The last time someone went on the Supreme Court when the President was of one party and the Senate was of the other and when it was a Presidential election year was in 1888. There is no comparison. In fact, Vice President Biden--then-Senator Biden--said on June 25 of 1992, in what turned out to be the last year of the Bush Presidency: If there is a vacancy, there will be no hearing until after the election. There was not a vacancy, by the way. They were just putting that historical marker down that if there were a vacancy, there would not be a hearing until after the election. Of course, that meant there would not be a hearing that mattered. Unless the President were to be reelected and the majority in the Senate were to stay the same, there would be no reason to assume there would be a judge appointed by this President this year. Senator Schumer said in July of 2007, in his not wanting to wait until election year but just wanting to put his position on the table even earlier in the last year of another Bush Presidency, that we should not confirm any Bush nominee--I think he meant--from that moment on. As a matter of fact, he did say we shouldn't confirm any Bush nominee from that moment on except in extraordinary circumstances. I am sure he didn't mean one vacancy on the Supreme Court would be an extraordinary circumstance but a circumstance that would be dealt with just like Judge Garland's was dealt with, and people were heard. Yet that is not what this is about, and it sets no precedent any more than Senator Biden or Senator Schumer set a precedent that should have been a surprise for anybody. So what do we have with Judge Kavanaugh as we decide in the next few hours or in the next day or so whether he becomes Justice Kavanaugh? This was the seventh background check of this judge by the FBI. There had never been a more extensive review of a Supreme Court nominee-- seven times in slightly more than a dozen years--in going through this background check. More than 150 people had been interviewed. He had 36 hours of testimony before the Senate, during which you and others on the Judiciary Committee could have asked him anything you had wanted to ask. He had 65 private meetings with Senators, during which they could have asked him everything they wanted to ask--including, by the way, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, who had had this information available to talk about. More than 500,000 pages of executive branch documents had been provided--more than for the last 4 nominees. Of all of his opinions as a judge and of all the cases he was part of, there were about 300 of those. By the way, that is the best way to look at what kind of judge he would be. He was asked over 1,200 questions for the record. That is like, after you have asked all of the questions you could publicly think of, then one has about a week to answer any questions that have been submitted for the record. He had 1,200 questions submitted for the record that he had to answer in that short period of time. There were three confidential calls with the committee. Then, last Friday, our colleagues decided--and I think, as it turned out, maybe wisely so--to do one more final FBI review of whatever they might not have asked about in the other seven FBI interviews that had occurred over the years. The outside number was 1 week. A week ago, 1 week was what was going to be plenty of time. I think some Members in the minority at that time said: Well, maybe even 3 or 4 days. That is what it took with the Clarence Thomas hearing. By the way, that was before these issues became public, because it was turned over to the FBI like it should have been, and in 3 or 4 days, they had talked to everybody they could talk to. So, last week, 3 or 4 days might have been enough, but certainly a week would have been enough, according to the other side. Of course, that was never going to be the case. A week was never going to be enough. By the way, in background checks, when you are asked to be part of that--if it is your background check--one of the questions you are asked is, are there any drinking problems? Are there any drug problems? He had been asked that over and over again. I think anybody who is interviewed is always asked, do you know of any problems like that? Usually, a question is, Have you ever heard of anything that we would be interested in if we had heard about it? Another question often is, Would you tell us three people whom we might not have talked to who might know something about Judge Kavanaugh that we should know? Over a decade and a half, there have been 7 FBI interviews and 150 people interviewed, the behavioral question, the drinking question, the drug question, which hasn't come up as far as I know, but it is always asked. It has been asked over and over again. Then you and I and Senator Inhofe went the other morning to hear a review of this last set of interviews, wherein people who possibly would have been able to corroborate something were interviewed and couldn't corroborate it. In many ways, the case got weaker as that moved forward, but we heard that. Then I heard that afternoon that Senator Schumer said that this is full of hints of misconduct. So I went back this morning and looked through the six prior background checks, and I looked through this background check. As it turns out, I agree with Senator Grassley, who said there was no hint of misconduct. If there had been a hint of misconduct in the previous five, he would have never been nominated. If there had been a hint of misconduct in the sixth one, he wouldn't have been nominated. It wouldn't have sustained itself. If you look at the pages that are new, there is none there now. So you can say anything you want to say. You can say it is not time enough. You can say, even though no witness ever saw any of these events, you just haven't talked to enough people yet, even though you have talked to everybody who has been mentioned, as far as I know, with any credible charges. So here we are. Now it is temperament. I don't think there are many Senators who would not have had his same indignation in being accused of something that he, without equivocation, swore did not happen, not only in those instances but in any other instance. It took 43 days for Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be confirmed. We are at about 83 days, or something like that, now. I looked up a couple of articles just to refresh my memory. When she shows some fire--and she has plenty of it, and I admire that--the description of her is her ``well-known candor.'' That is how you describe it when Justice Ginsburg has her own opinion, like what she said about the Republican nominee last year: He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He should withdraw. She said: I can't imagine what this place would be and can't imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our President. Now, is that a temperament issue, or is that too political? By the way, I am not offended by political. The Court never was either. John Marshall, one of the great Justices of the Court, was the Secretary of State for the person who appointed him. Earl Warren, who certainly set a standard for the Court, had never been in any public office except politically elected office before he became the Chief Justice. When he joined the Court in 1953, there were three former Senators sitting on the Court. There were two former Attorneys General sitting on the Court. Both had been appointed by the Presidents for whom they had been Attorneys General. Elena Kagan was the principal lawyer for President Obama. Yet, suddenly, political becomes a problem or temperament becomes a problem. Thurgood Marshall said while he was on the Court--by the way, I admire him in so many ways. I admire Thurgood Marshall's work and what he did as a lawyer, and the decision that President Johnson made was clearly historic. As a Justice, Thurgood Marshall said: I wouldn't do the job of dogcatcher for Ronald Reagan. About President Bush, while he was still a Justice, Thurgood Marshall said: It is said, if you can't say something good about a dead person, don't say it. Well, I consider him dead. Obviously, he considers him dead and takes the first injunction that he doesn't have anything to say, but there is nothing wrong with people on the Court having opinions. In this case, we have a judge for whom you could look at 12 years of judging, and you could look at 300 opinions, and you could look at his law school classes he taught. There is plenty to look at. It all, I believe, leads to a couple of conclusions: One, the way this nomination has been treated has been outrageous. I think my good friend who spoke before said he had never seen anything like it. Well, there has never been anything like this: Hold on to information that can't be corroborated. Only release it after it is clear that the judge has the votes to be confirmed and when you want to do, as the majority leader said, anything you can possibly do as the minority leader to slow down and stop this nomination. We have plenty to look at here. We cannot set a standard of guilty until proven innocent because then anybody can make any charge at any time, particularly when there are many reasons to believe that there is nothing in 7 background checks, that there is nothing in 150 interviews, that there is nothing in a very visible public career to ever suggest that Judge Kavanaugh is anything different from what he said he was and those of us who will vote for him believe him to be. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, my colleague just talked about standing up for the Senate, about standing up for the values that traditionally have been our values. One of those principal values has been ``innocent until proven guilty.'' What we have seen happen here in the last week is something that did not need to happen, certainly, in the way it has happened. The hearing, the hours of questions, the picking apart of those answers at leisure--we have seen all of that. Do you know what would have happened if we had followed this process the right way? It is hard to do when a significant majority of the committee says that it is against the nominee before he has the hearing and when several Senators say they are against the nominee before he is even nominated, no matter who the nominee will be. There would have been a normal background check that would have occurred if the information that had been available to the committee-- to the Democrats and their staffs--had been turned over at the time. How would they have handled that? How would those in the FBI have handled that on July 30 or August 30 or on any other date? They would have handled that by going and talking to the people involved. Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh would have been interviewed by the FBI. The people they would have mentioned with whom the FBI should also talk would have been interviewed by the FBI, and that would have been put in the file. The material could have been presented to the committee as it should have been. In Judge Kavanaugh's private hearing, they were willing to talk about baseball tickets. They could have pursued this in the private hearing: Here is what is in this file. What do you have to say about that? Dr. Ford, as she said she had wanted to be, would have been kept anonymous in that process. There would have been no reason--unless the committee would have decided to do what somebody on that committee did--to have used her name and for this to have become a major public confrontation. This could have been handled in another way. Her letter and her personal trauma could have been handled in a way that they were not. In fact, it couldn't have been handled more poorly or politically by some in the minority or by their staffs than it was. Only after the original hearings had ended, only after it was obvious that Judge Kavanaugh--in my view, it was obvious--had the votes to be confirmed, then, suddenly, were these unverifiable charges made public by the Democrats on the committee and by their staffs. I work hard in the Senate to find agreement with my colleagues of both parties. I have been the principal Republican cosponsor on legislation with all but four of the Democrats in the Senate. I do my best to find the areas we can agree on. In fact, with regard to this FAA bill today, Senator Cantwell and I chair that subcommittee, while Senator Thune and Senator Nelson chair the full committee. There is this and appropriations. There are a lot of things that have happened this year that haven't happened for a while, and it is because we have reached out to try to work together. What we have with this nomination is a new principle. I find the ``guilty until proven innocent'' conduct by some of our colleagues to be totally unacceptable. It is not who we are. It cannot become the new standard. I heard somebody say at a meeting this week: Well, if these charges are out there, this person will always be impacted when there is a case before the Court that might possibly involve those charges. That cannot be how we pursue the future. We cannot pursue the future by thinking: If you are charged with something, you will be, from that point on, somehow unable to do the job that you are eminently qualified for. We have a person here who has 300 court of appeals opinions on the most challenging court of appeals in the country--more than a dozen of those accepted almost word for word by the Supreme Court. There is plenty to determine judicial temperament. There is plenty to determine whether the judge can do what the judge is supposed to do. Unless later today, somehow, we see something, which is highly unlikely based on all of the things that are already out there, I intend to vote for Judge Kavanaugh. I don't think he would have said he categorically and unequivocally didn't do this--or anything like it regarding the specific charge--if he had. It was not necessary. You wouldn't have to say that about conduct over three decades ago. You could say all kinds of other things, but here is a lawyer whose legal capacity has never been challenged. He would not have had to make that unequivocal statement if there had been any reason to be concerned about that statement. He said he didn't do it. All who were mentioned and who were asked if they saw it happen say they didn't see it. I believe something traumatic did happen to Dr. Ford. I don't believe it involved Judge Kavanaugh. With the obvious, specific three-decades-later memory of the person involved--with that exception--you could actually believe that both of them are telling the truth. I joined Judge Kavanaugh's daughter in praying for Dr. Ford and her family. I also think we should all pray for Judge Kavanaugh and his family. This is an issue that has gotten totally out of hand. It is an issue that has gone well beyond the bounds of what we believe in our country. It is an issue that we can't let begin to determine the future way we do these things. You cannot have guilty until proven innocent. You cannot have innocent until nominated as the standard for the country. We cannot let this go forward that way. Some relationships here--and they are important ones to me and others--are going to take a little while to restore, but we will have to restore them. There aren't enough of us to walk away from each other and say: We cannot possibly move forward in working with you. I intend to continue to work with my colleagues, but I also intend to continue to stand up for the fundamental values of fairness that this country has always held most dear. We need to do that this week with this nomination as well.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to honor the work of Ms. Adrienne Arsht on the occasion of the 5-year anniversary of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council. Throughout her career, Ms. Arsht has worked in and called home New York, Miami, and Washington, DC. Today, she tirelessly dedicates herself to promoting artistic, business, and civic growth in these three cities. In 2013, Ms. Arsht founded the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council to broaden the understanding of regional transformations with a focus on high-impact work that shapes the conversation among policymakers, the business community, and civil society. The center focuses on Latin America's strategic role in a global context with a priority on pressing political, economic, and social issues that will define the trajectory of the region now and in the years ahead. Its work provides an essential forum for navigating the dramatic economic and political changes defining the 21st century by informing and galvanizing its uniquely influential network of global leaders. In 2013, the Ambassador of Spain to the United States presented her with the prestigious Spanish diplomatic honor, Order of the Cross of Isabella the Catholic, for her contributions toward Spanish-speaking countries. Earlier this year, Ms. Arsht was awarded the distinguished Order of San Carlos of Colombia by direction of President Juan Manuel Santos to recognize her deep commitment and support of Colombia. Ms. Arsht serves as executive vice chair of the Atlantic Council. In 2017, she founded the Adrienne Arsht Center for Resilience to explore the intersection between people and the geopolitical events that affect them. From natural disasters and displacement, to global pandemics and terrorism, the Center for Resilience helps individuals, communities, and societies navigate the global changes that define the 21st century. Ms. Arsht has also been an ambassador for the arts in the United States. She has contributed to the preservation and sustainability of multiple artistic institutions in the cities she calls home. In Miami, she secured the financial footing of the city's performing arts center, prompting its board to rename it the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in 2008. Her contributions to the Lincoln Center in New York City were recognized with the dedication of the Adrienne Arsht Stage in Alice Tully Hall in 2012. In Washington, DC, she created the Adrienne Arsht Theater Fund at the Kennedy Center to support a wide variety of musical productions. Ms. Arsht was awarded the Carnegie Hall 2017 Medal of Excellence, recognizing her visionary and outstanding contributions to cultural and nonprofit institutions nationally. Adrienne Arsht is a philanthropist at heart and an extraordinary business leader who serves our country and advances international understanding.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today we are about to mark a milestone. Maybe it wouldn't be a milestone for any other group except for the U.S. Congress; that milestone is getting a significant part of our work done on time. This will be the first time in 22 years that we have passed the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill before the start of the fiscal year. Just a few days ago was the first time in 11 years this bill has even been debated on the Senate floor. So we are heading in a good direction. This is a bipartisan agreement. It isn't exactly the bill that I would prefer; it isn't exactly what my ranking member Senator Murray would like to have done here. But working with our House colleagues and with Senator Shelby and Senator Leahy, we have actually done the job this year that the appropriating committee is supposed to do, which is to appropriate the money--to decide how to spend the people's money that we have been entrusted with. For instance, this bill funds things like the opioid bill that 99 Senators voted for yesterday. It is one thing to vote on a bill that says: Here is what we ought to do. It is another thing to then actually do it. Most of the things we voted on yesterday will not happen unless we decide to fund the things we said we wanted to do. This is one of the most difficult bills to negotiate. It is 30 percent of all nondefense spending. It is, interestingly, combined this year with the defense bill. So you have the No. 1 priority of the Federal Government--to defend the country--as part of the bill, which is 50 percent of all the discretionary spending, and then another 12 percent or so with the Labor-HHS bill. Sixty-two percent of all of the spending the government will do that we have a choice in--that is not mandatory spending--happens in the bill the Senate is voting on today. There is a lot of push and pull in this bill. In fact, our committee got 6,164 requests from Senators during committee negotiations about things they cared for in this bill. There were 31 amendments that were offered in the debate on the bill on the floor. Today's bill, I think, reflects the priorities of both sides of the Capitol and both sides of the aisle. We fulfilled the commitments the leaders made in the February budget agreement to keep the extraneous issues off these bills that fund the government. It also fulfills the President's demand that he doesn't want any more omnibus spending bills. He wants these bills in small packages that we can debate and he can look at. It invests in national priorities, like fighting the opioid epidemic, expanding medical research, promoting college affordability, and strengthening our workforce. This bill accomplishes a huge goal that I, Senator Murray, Senator Durbin, Senator Alexander, and others have had for several years now, which is to get back, fully committed, to health research funding, the NIH grant process that to a great extent had gone into a stagnant, no-growth mode for over a decade. This bill looks at things like Alzheimer's. We are spending well over $200 billion a year in tax dollars for Alzheimer's and dementia care. Now we will spend 1 percent of that in a way that will try to find a solution. If we don't find a solution, the tax dollars spent on Alzheimer's disease alone are anticipated to increase to the size of twice today's defense budget by 2050. Twice what we are spending today to defend the country is what we will be spending to deal with Alzheimer's if we don't find more ways than we know now to diagnose and delay onset. If you could delay onset by 5 years, you would cut that number by 46 percent. So there is a focus on research--whether it is Alzheimer's, immunotherapy for cancer, or CRISPR technology. Young researchers are back in the business of getting grants that encourage them to stay in research. That is an important part of this bill. Things we are doing with opioids--again, yesterday was about what we want to do; today is about whether or not we are willing to do it. This continues that commitment. The Council of Economic Advisers says that the cost of opioids is more than $500 billion a year in lost work, family trauma, other health matters that occur, and loss of life. The No. 1 cause of accidental death in America today is drug overdose. This bill provides $3.8 billion toward targeted opioid funding and represents the fourth year we have increased opioid treatment, prevention, and recovery programs. One of those programs is $1.5 billion that would be divided among the States to see what they can do in their State. Again, it is not only the No. 1 accidental cause of death in America; it is the No. 1 accidental cause of death in most States in the country today. We have $200 million for community health centers to expand behavioral health and substance abuse disorders. If you don't have a behavioral health problem before you get addicted to opioids and other drugs, you certainly have one after. We increase funding to improve surveillance and prevention in all 50 States. There are extra dollars for research at NIH in pain management to try to figure out a better way to manage pain without the addictive impacts of opioids. We have a set-aside for the hardest hit rural communities. On a per capita basis, rural America is much more dramatically impacted by this opioid epidemic than urban America is. There is money here for services for children at risk--children who have to be taken out of the home they are in and helped and assisted back to some normal environment where a kid can grow up. We have money to help people in schools to be ready to learn and to be prepared for careers and training. Certainly, the apprenticeship programs are programs that Senator Murray has advocated effectively for, both in this bill and on the floor. The bill includes an increase for Head Start--again, getting kids ready to go to school--more title I money to support students in low-income schools and help them meet challenging State economic or academic standards. There is an increase for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, so students with disabilities have more Federal encouragement, even though more of that burden is still borne locally than was ever thought possible when the IDEA was passed. There is more funding for academic enrichment grants and charter schools, impact aid for dedicated, evidence-based STEM education programs, and for career and technical programs. I will say that in the 4 years we have worked on this committee together, we do have a little more funding this year than we had in previous years, but we continued to move in all of those directions the first 2 years, and we did that by eliminating programs and combining programs that weren't working. So this bill still reflects hard choices--things that allow people to get to college, to stay in college, returning to year-round Pell grants and increasing the maximum Pell grants. As I said earlier, I believe, for the first time ever, it is on the floor with the defense bill. It is something our leaders on both sides of the aisle thought we might be able to do. It was, frankly, by a lot of standards, a pretty bold experiment. But I believe the vote today is likely to show it is an experiment that really makes a lot of sense. So I am certainly urging my colleagues to support this bill today, and I thank Senator Murray and others who have worked so hard to make this happen. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I want to speak for a few minutes about the hearings going on today with Judge Brett Kavanaugh. I had a chance, as you did, to meet him a little over a month ago. It was clear from that conversation that he is clearly the best person available, in my view, to fill the vacancy left by Justice Anthony Kennedy. I think his opening remarks this week gave great evidence to that. He said, as he described himself, that ``a judge must be an umpire--a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy. . . . I do not decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro- plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro- defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.'' What does it mean to be a ``pro-law'' judge? It means that you see your job as a judge who will look at the law and determine what the law says, whether that is criminal law or civil law. I am not an attorney, but if you hire an attorney to give you advice on civil law, the greatest benefit you can have in making a decision based on that advice is that judges at all levels, up to the Supreme Court, will look at the law as hopefully your good attorney did and say: This is what this law means. If you make this decision based on what the law says, the courts in the United States of America will reach that same, likely, conclusion. Your attorney might say that the law is not clear on this issue, and that is a different scenario. But the judge's job is not to decide what is the right thing. The judge's job is not to decide what the law should say. The judge's job is not to decide what the people who wrote the Constitution should have written or should have meant if they had known everything we know today. The judge's job is to look at the law and look at the Constitution and decide that is what it said. Nothing would be a better example of Judge Kavanaugh's philosophy than the 300 opinions he has issued as a judge. There is a lot of discussion: Well, there is not enough material out there. We haven't seen everything. We haven't seen everything that went through the White House when he was the Staff Secretary for President George W. Bush. We haven't seen all of that. Of course, that is not the case. There is plenty to be seen. In fact, there is more paperwork available to look at from Judge Kavanaugh than from the last five Supreme Court Justices put together. I will state that if you are looking for paper, you have paper. If you are looking for the judge's position, you also have 300 cases, some of which were appealed to the Supreme Court. Thirteen of his opinions--and I think some of them were when he was in the minority on the circuit court bench--became the opinions that the Supreme Court essentially adopted almost exactly as Judge Kavanaugh had written them. What we are trying to do is put somebody on the Supreme Court for a lifetime appointment. This individual happens to be somebody who for 12 years has been on what is often described as the second most important court in the country. Why would the DC Circuit--that is the court of appeals for the DC area--be the second most important court in the country? The reason is that most of the cases that involve new Federal law, that involve expansive Federal law, wind up right here. For 12 years, Judge Kavanaugh has been one of those judges. Believe me, if the Supreme Court had said over and over again, when there was an appeal from the DC Circuit, that Judge Kavanaugh's opinion really makes no sense or that Judge Kavanaugh's opinion wasn't based on the law, the facts, and the Constitution, we would have heard about that. In 300 opinions, we would have heard about that if that had been the case, and we have not heard that. In fact, what we have heard over and over again is about the job this judge has done and the skill he brings to the court. Going back to the idea that a judge's goal is not to decide what the judge would like the outcome to be but what the law says, Justice Scalia, who was replaced last year by Judge Gorsuch, said that ``the judge who always likes the results he reaches is a bad judge.'' Why would you be a bad judge if you always liked the decisions you reached? The reason is that you couldn't have always been looking at the law. The judge doesn't write the law. The judge doesn't come up with the law. The judge doesn't even have to agree with the law. The judge's job is to decide what the law says. If you look at every case before you and evaluate it based on the facts and apply the rule of law, you are going to come up with a conclusion you won't always like, but you will come up with a conclusion that the people who are in the case will understand as far as how you came up with it because you came up with it based on the law and the facts. Judge Kavanaugh's credentials have been discussed before. Frankly, they are not being very widely discussed this week because the hearing--at least half the time--appears not to have much to do with Judge Kavanaugh at all but whether there is enough paperwork to look at or whether a judge would have reached a different conclusion than he reached. But his qualifications are pretty significant. He is a graduate of Yale Law School. He clerked for three Federal judges, including the Justice he is about to replace. Of course, being a clerk for a judge means that you have graduated from law school. Someone has looked at all the applicants to be their clerk, and--it is almost like graduate work after you have graduated from law school--you are chosen to be that clerk. So that happened three times with Judge Kavanaugh, including for Justice Kennedy. He clerked for Justice Kennedy alongside Justice Gorsuch. In 2006, President Bush nominated him to serve on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. In addition to that, since 2009, he has been the Samuel Williston Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. He was hired by Justice Kagan before she was nominated to the Court by President Obama and who was then dean of Harvard Law School. He has the interesting opportunity to be confirmed to the Court--and I believe he will be--and to be sitting on the Court with a Justice nominated by President Obama who hired him to be a lecturer at Harvard Law School. In addition to his legal career, he has devoted himself to his community. He coaches his daughter's basketball team with some pride, Coach K--not always the Coach K I would think of but the Coach K the girls on that team think of when they think of Coach K. He is a church volunteer. He has mentored people at schools. He has been widely supported by those who have dealt with him--his classmates, colleagues, clerks, and legal scholars. This week, he received a unanimously ``well qualified'' rating from the American Bar Association. That is the very highest rating they can give, and it was unanimous. That is a pretty good signal that he must have been well prepared as a lawyer to be a judge. The Judiciary Committee has received letters from more than 140 law professors, more than 40 members of the Supreme Court Bar, 34 of his former law clerks, 80 former Harvard Law students, 31 Governors, and many more. His nomination isn't just widely supported, it is thoroughly vetted. There are 480,000 pages of documents and, in 300 cases, the opinions he has written. I continue to believe that the Supreme Court is one of the longlasting and most important legacies of a President, but it is also one of the important legacies of the Senate. The Constitution says the President nominates but the Senate advises and consents. This is not just about advice, it is about becoming a partner in that process of becoming a member of the Supreme Court for as long as you live, unless you decide to leave earlier than that. I am disappointed that almost half of this Senate announced they wouldn't be for Judge Kavanaugh before his confirmation hearings. At least one-fourth of the Senate announced they wouldn't be for Judge Kavanaugh before he was nominated. No matter who was going to be nominated, one-fourth of the Senate was not going to be there. I think we will find that a majority of the Senate will be there later this month. I think we will find the majority of the Senate will be there before the first Monday in October, which is the day the Court starts to hear cases for the coming year. I think Judge Kavanaugh is going to serve our country well and, I hope, long. I look forward to his confirmation later this month. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I know we have a series of votes coming up, and I won't stand in the way of those votes once we get over the next couple of minutes, but I didn't want to let the week go by without talking a little bit about John McCain here on the floor. A number of people have asked me this week--particularly members of the media have asked: Who is going to replace John McCain? I think the point is, he will be a hard man to replace. He brought a unique background to this job. He was raised in the house of a man who was going to become an admiral. His grandfather was an admiral on the deck of the USS Missouri when World War II ended. John McCain grew up in a house where visiting Members of the House and visiting Members of the Senate was not unusual. I think that gave him a real capacity to have a comfort level to speak forcefully and truthfully with people at all levels. Clearly, his time as a prisoner of war had a great impact not only on who he was but also on what he was able to do and what he was able to say and how he was able to say it. He was a man of intense energy. There is a picture in this building of Theodore Roosevelt seated in a chair, and his left hand is made into a fist. I never saw that picture thinking it was a fist about to hit somebody but a fist trying to contain his own energy. There was a reason Theodore Roosevelt was John McCain's hero. H.W. Brands wrote a book about Theodore Roosevelt, which was called ``T.R.: The Last Romantic.'' The truth is, if there were a last romantic, it was John McCain, not Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt was who he was, but John McCain brought an intensity to what we do, an immediate willingness to engage. Certainly, I think every Member of the Senate experienced at least once when that immediate engagement, with no doubt in his mind, was there. Members of the media also saw that. He was a man of intensity. He was a man who believed in his country. He was a man who believed this country deserved to be represented well all over the world and that freedom should be defended. Somebody observed to me earlier today that when traveling with John McCain, he was unbelievably patient with the troops and unbelievably tough with the generals. I saw that, and many of us saw that. He will be missed, but his work was well done. His place was clearly filled. He made a difference in the history of the country, and he made a difference for all of those of us who got to know him. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, we will vote in a few minutes to move forward with the Defense, Labor, HHS, and Education appropriations bill. That probably sounds like a pretty unusual combination, even though I think most voters, most taxpayers, understand that to get this work done in the timeframe we have to do it, we generally need to bring more than one topic together on the floor at the same time. But why Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education? Well, first of all, that is 62 percent of all the spending. If we can get this bill passed today, get a conference with the House, get this single bill on the President's desk by the end of the fiscal year, we will have funded that much of the government in a timely way for the first time in a decade. If we can add the other bills to it that the House and Senate have passed, we will have 90 percent of the spending on the President's desk and in place before the spending year starts. It doesn't sound as if that would be a very big accomplishment, but by the standards of the last decade, it would be an incredible accomplishment to bring these bills to the floor, to allow them to be debated, to allow them to be amended. We have a managers' package that would include a number of the 60 or so proposed amendments just on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education part of the bill. I don't know how that is exactly going to work out today, but I do know we can take that managers' package to the conference and say: This is what we agreed to as a managers' package. Whether we officially are able to add it or not, every bit of it is germane to the bill, germane, in my view, to what could happen in conference. I would also point out that, for decades, the priority of my side of the aisle, of our side of the aisle, has been that defending the country first is the No. 1 priority. One of the top priorities on the other side of the aisle has been: Well, let's take the biggest of the nondefense bills and be sure we are equally prioritizing it. So in my view, for perhaps the first time this has ever happened, the leaders have decided to bring these two top priorities to the floor together and let voters, Democrats and Republicans, voters on the Senate floor, decide how they want to move forward with those bills. Let me just talk for a few minutes about one of the items in our bill--the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee, which you and I serve on--and that would be healthcare research, specifically Alzheimer's and how it relates to that research. First of all, for a dozen years, ending 4 years ago, there had not been a penny of increase in health research. When I became chairman of this committee 4 years ago, Senator Murray and I began to work on reprioritizing healthcare research, with Democrats and Republicans getting together to figure out what we needed to do. For at least the first couple of years, what we needed to do was eliminate other programs and combine other programs and make tough choices to be sure that health research was a priority. When we pass this bill today, we will have increased health research spending in a budget that for 2 years had no growth at all and has had some growth in the last 2, but by 30 percent--30 percent--from $30 billion a year to $39 billion a year at a time when we know more about the human genome, we know more about what makes each of us different from all the rest of us than we have before. What are we beginning to see? We are seeing things in immunotherapy in cancer; we are seeing things in brain research. We are not seeing the kinds of results we want to see yet in Alzheimer's, but we are moving in that direction. Every hour, Alzheimer's disease costs taxpayers at least $21 million--every single hour. Someone in the United States is developing Alzheimer's every 65 seconds. We are spending somewhere in the neighborhood of 277 billion tax dollars a year on Alzheimer's and dementia-related care. I have just given three numbers. It is hard to talk about appropriating without giving numbers. Maybe numbers are not the most riveting thing, particularly when you start talking about millions or billions or even trillions. What does that really mean? That means we are spending basically an amount equal to half of the defense budget on Alzheimer's and dementia-related care. That will have an overwhelming impact if we don't do something differently than we are doing right now, just because of the projected long life and demographics of the country. In 2050, which is 32 years from now, we will be spending, in today's dollars, $1.1 trillion on Alzheimer's and dementia care--$1.1 trillion. One point one anything--who knows? Let's go back to defense again. That is twice the defense budget of last year--twice the defense budget. I don't really have a great grasp of what $1.1 trillion is, but I do have a sense of what every military base everywhere in the world would be. Add to that every ship, every plane, every piece of equipment, and add to that every training dollar, and add to that every paycheck for every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, person in the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Reserves, and you will begin to approach a pretty big number. We would be spending more than twice that amount. If you add up all I have just talked about, taxpayer spending would be more than twice that just on Alzheimer's and dementia. Obviously, there is a huge taxpayer need to find a solution here. There is an even bigger individual need. It is not only a devastating disease for people who have it, it is a devastating disease for the people who care about them. There is one generally used number out there that says for every tax dollar we are spending on Alzheimer's and dementia right now, we are spending two private dollars, almost never insured. These are caregivers. These are people who care about you, who give up part or all of their career and time to take care of you instead of doing what they otherwise would be doing. The person being taken care of may not have any real idea, at some point, as to what is going on, but the people taking care of them know. That is a big reason to find a solution. If we could just delay the onset of Alzheimer's, if we could figure out how to come up with something that would slow down the onset of that disease, if we could delay the onset by an average of 5 years, we would cut that $1.1 trillion by 42 percent--almost in half. If we could just have the average person who gets Alzheimer's get it 5 years later than they are getting Alzheimer's today, almost half, 42 percent, of that $1.1 trillion would go away. So this is something we obviously need to prioritize. Just 4 years ago, we were spending about $600 million on Alzheimer's research. We were spending $250 billion on taxpayer-related care. We were spending $600 million--what is that? Is that one-quarter of 1 percent? We were spending $600 million on research to try to help solve this problem that we are spending these billions of dollars on every year. In 4 years, we have gotten that number beyond the disease goal a handful of years ago. We said: If we just could have $2 billion for Alzheimer's research every year, we would have a better chance to find a solution. Well, this year, we have passed the $2 billion. We are at $2.34 billion, but we are still spending less than 1 percent on trying to find a solution to the problem of what we are spending every year on the problem. It is an important 1 percent. At Washington University in St. Louis--I didn't know when I started chairing this committee what great leaders they are in this research effort. I knew this was one of the top health research universities in the country. I didn't know where we were in terms of the cutting-edge on Alzheimer's, but Dr. Randy Bateman at Washington University in St. Louis is very close. He has unveiled the results of a blood test that hopefully will detect early on whether you individually are on the way to developing this problem. Obviously that matters if we can find things that could be done to significantly slow down the advance of this disease. It is not particularly expensive to take a blood test. It is not very invasive. It gets a quick result. Now what you have to do--you have to have a CAT scan. Somebody, in an expensive process, looks at your brain and figures out if you have amyloids developing in your brain that are likely to cause this. So early detection--Dr. Hodes at the National Institute on Aging at NIH says that one of the real reasons we can't find solutions is we cannot figure out how to get the right group to clinically test. A blood test would help with that. So we are working on that. I see my friend Senator Markey is here. I would point out to him that because of the leader's time, I started talking only about 8 minutes ago and maybe have only 2 minutes right now. If you want to use that 2 minutes before the vote--but we do have a vote--then we will figure out later, maybe, how to get back to your time. But thanks for your interest in health research. Certainly, Dr. Blumenthal, the Senator's wife, is a great advocate of this. Why don't I yield this last minute or so to Senator Markey; then maybe there will be other time later, but I know we have a vote scheduled in a minute.

Mr. BLUNT. I yield back my time as well.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, certainly I want to thank my colleagues today for the credit that they have shared with me and that I am reluctant to accept. This is clearly an effort to establish what our priorities are. There are a lot of things in this bill that are goods things for somebody to do. In some cases over the years, we have not done them as well as we should have, and well-intentioned programs didn't work. We have gone through the process of eliminating programs and combining programs so we could set the priorities mentioned just this morning by Senator Collins, Senator Capito, and Senator Moran. When you think about what we are talking about here--healthcare research, the opioid epidemic, and what is happening in the Alzheimer's space--we would have never imagined these numbers in cost or family impact. There is one thing I want to mention just briefly before we end this part of our discussion. I think between votes and other things this morning--Senator Cardin is here and, like me, planned to do what I am doing now about an hour ago. So I am going to take just a couple minutes. I want to talk a little about the labor part of this bill. For the first time in the 20 years we have been keeping statistics on jobs available and people looking for work, this is the first time there are more jobs available than people looking for work. That is a big number and a big thing to think about. The other thing to think about is that the match between the people looking for work and the jobs available is not exact. In fact, most of the people looking for work don't have the skills for the jobs that need to be done. Recently, I was in Missouri visiting with a small manufacturing company. They had 20 job openings and were just waiting for somebody to come in the door who had the skill set for those job openings. What we do to do a better job of combining the skills people need with the jobs that are out there or the jobs that will be out there-- the apprenticeship programs in this bill that Senator Murray and I have particularly been focused on with Secretary Acosta give people new ways to get ready for work. They create new ways for partnering between people already in the workforce and someone they can mentor, an apprentice. We are looking at the Pell grant area for ways that the post-high school Pell grant can be used in different ways that allow not just traditional college programs but various kinds of certificated programs that allow people to go to work in areas where there are high demands. Right now, construction, energy, hospitality, healthcare, and manufacturing are only a few of the industries where jobs need to be done. We have around 400 registered apprenticeship programs in my State, with more than 13,000 apprentices working with several hundred employees. There are 530,000 Americans in apprenticeship programs nationwide--over half a million Americans--getting ready for the jobs that are out there. What the Department of Labor is doing with Job Corps--for years, the major Job Corps measurement has been ``Did you get some kind of certificate?'' Well, we are now shifting from ``Did you get some kind of certificate?'' to ``Did you get a job?'' It is great to have a certificate; it is a whole lot better to have a certificate that gets you a job. Over the next 3 years, we are moving from--of course you get the certificate--that is a basic part of the program--but does it lead to a job, and do you still have that job or a job like it a year later? That is how the people running these programs are going to be measured in the future, as opposed to whether they just got somebody through the program. Now it will be ``Did you get somebody through your program in a way that met the goal of the Job Corps?'' It is not the Certificate Corps; it is the Job Corps--now measuring by getting a job. This bill is reflective of the new efforts in our society to try to match people with the jobs that are out there and to do the kinds things in our economy that ensure that those are jobs that allow people to raise a family and allow people to have opportunities they wouldn't have otherwise. So I am looking forward to later today when I believe we will all vote for this bill--Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, combined with the critically important bill on defense.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I appreciate the concern of my friend from Wyoming on this. I will be voting to waive the point of order. My colleague from Wyoming was exactly right when he said this is a complicated formula. It is a combination of discretionary and mandatory funding for the Higher Education Act. The discretionary portion of the maximum award is established annually in the Labor-HHS bill. We changed the maximum Pell for discretionary funding from $5,035 to $5,135 for the 2019-2020 school year. That is an additional mandatory funding of $1,060. Maximum Pell will be $6,195. That is in line with the kind of increases we have had now for the last 12 years in a row. I will be voting to waive and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, it has been 11 years since this bill has been on the floor. Consequently, none of these staffers have probably ever been mentioned on the floor before, even though every single year they have made this continued, great effort. Senator Shelby, Senator Leahy, and Senator Durbin decided, along with Senator Murray and me, that we would bring this combination of bills together that has never been on the floor at any time--Labor-H and Defense. The Defense staff has been recognized, but let me just mention the Labor, HHS, and Education staff: Mike Gentile, Jeff Reczek, Ashley Palmer, Courtney Bradford, and Laura Friedel, our staff director. All of them are on our side of the aisle. Obviously, Senator Murray's staff played a critically important part in this as well: Mark Laisch, Lisa Bernhardt, Kelly Brown, Catie Finley, and Teri Curtin. Clearly, this bill would not be here today, in the condition it is in, or we would not have been able to have responded to all of the suggestions this week without both of these staffs having worked to have made it happen. I yield back.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I have 6 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Kelvin Droegemeier, of Oklahoma, to be Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, James Morhard, of Virginia, to be Deputy Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Joel Szabat, of Maryland, to be an Assistant Secretary of Transportation. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Kathleen Laura Kraninger, of Ohio, to be Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, Kimberly A. Reed, of West Virginia, to be President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, Elad L. Roisman, of Maine, to be a Member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Michael R. Bright, of the District of Columbia, to be President, Government National Mortgage Association, and Rae Oliver, of Virginia, to be Inspector General, both of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Dino Falaschetti, of Montana, to be Director, Office of Financial Research, Department of the Treasury. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: David T. Fischer, of Michigan, to be Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco, Earl Robert Miller, of Michigan, to be Ambassador to the People's Republic of Bangladesh, Daniel N. Rosenblum, of Maryland, to be Ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan, Kip Tom, of Indiana, for the rank of Ambassador during his tenure of service as U.S. Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, and Donald Y. Yamamoto, of Washington, to be Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Somalia, all of the Department of State. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: William Cooper, of Maryland, to be General Counsel, and Lane Genatowski, of New York, to be Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, both of the Department of Energy. Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Prioritizing Cures: Science and stewardship at the National Institutes of Health''. Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, August 23, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Ryan Douglas Nelson, of Idaho, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit, Richard J. Sullivan, of New York, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit, Gary Richard Brown, Diane Gujarati, Eric Ross Komitee, and Rachel P. Kovner, each to be a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, Stephen R. Clark, Sr., to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri, Lewis J. Liman, and Mary Kay Vyskocil, both to be a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, John M. O'Connor, to be United States District Judge for the Northern, Eastern and Western Districts of Oklahoma, John L. Sinatra, Jr., to be United States District Judge for the Western District of New York, Joshua Wolson, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, James W. Carroll, Jr., of Virginia, to be Director of National Drug Control Policy, and Ariana Fajardo Orshan, to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Peter G. Strasser, to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, and G. Zachary Terwilliger, to be United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, all of the Department of Justice.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, this is the first time in 11 years that the chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee has had a chance to stand on the floor and present a bill. It is a subcommittee that I am honored to chair. As a subcommittee member, I am honored to get to serve on that committee with the Presiding Officer. It is a subcommittee that is led on the other side by Senator Murray from Washington, the ranking member on this committee. This is not a bill that either Senator Murray nor I would have drafted on our own, but our job was not to draft a bill that I thought was the perfect bill for me to vote for or the perfect way for all of these agencies to be run. There is a reason that this bill has not been on the floor in 11 years. It is big. It is complex. It can be contentious. But Senator Shelby, the chairman of the full committee, and Senator Leahy, the lead Democrat on the full committee, have made an incredible, good-faith effort to come to the floor with a bill that focuses on how we spend the money. There is not much new in this bill about all of the things we could try to determine about social policy and about issues that all of us feel strongly about, but there are other committees whose principal job is to do that. Our committee's principal job is to decide how we establish the priorities for the country and how we spend the money. Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer have also both had to agree that if we are going to get these appropriations bills on the floor, if we are going to have all of the Members of the Senate--for the first time, in the case of this bill--get a chance to debate this bill for the first time in 11 years, that is not going to happen if we try to have a big authorizing bill and a big appropriating bill all wrapped into one. I see the ranking member has come to the floor right after I praised him and Senator Shelby for the unique leadership they have had that has allowed us to get this bill on the floor. This bill deals with everything from medical research to home energy assistance, to employment opportunities, training programs, and Pell grants for people who are trying to go to college who don't have the resources that would allow them to do that otherwise. It is the largest of the nondefense discretionary bills. About 30 percent of all of the nondefense spending is in this one bill. We take that bill and add it to the defense spending bill, and suddenly we are looking at roughly 62 percent of all of the spending of the Federal Government. That still sounds like a pretty big bill, but it is the first time in the case of the Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education Subcommittee--and then we have that unique add-on, ``and Related Agencies,'' just to get the footprint even a little bigger--in over a decade that Members have been able to come to the floor and say: No, we would like you to spend the money here rather than here. By the way, as the Presiding Officer understands, to do that, that Member also has to say: Here is where we are going to take the money from to pay for it. So it is not just on the floor and you get to make up all of the spending you want to that those of us on the appropriating committee didn't have a chance to do. There is still a finite amount of money. So for the Presiding Officer's amendment, the Kennedy amendment, which will be offered right after we finish this morning's discussion and go to votes, he had to come up with an amount of money to pay for that. I am fully supportive of the amendment that he and Senator Reed came up with to deal with the pressing issue of suicide prevention and the disturbing suicide rates. In my State of Missouri, suicide rates have increased by 36 percent above where they were in the year 2000--a 36- percent increase. Too many of those are our veterans. Too many of those are people who serve on the frontlines of homeland security, police, and veterans. All of that is something we need to look at. Here is the Presiding Officer's opportunity, which he took, to say: No, I think there is a better way to spend some of this money than how the committee spends it. That is what we missed for the last 11 years, when 69 of the Senators didn't have any say as to what the 31 of us who serve on the Appropriations Committee need to debate and talk about. So we now bring this bill to the floor. There were 6,164 ideas that came to Senator Murray and me--6,164 Member requests of ideas as to how this could be the best possible bill. I think most of those are reflected in what we did. In this bill, we talk about fighting the opioid epidemic. We talk about promoting college affordability, strengthening the workforce, and having people better prepared for the jobs that are out there to be filled than they would otherwise see. Now, both sides would approach drafting this bill differently. We would both start out with some significantly different sets of priorities. We have been able to reach an agreement that neither of us would have drafted on our own, but that is not the job that we were given. We have been able to present a bipartisan bill to the full committee and have that bill referred out of the full committee with 30 ``yes'' votes and 1 ``no'' vote, and now we are bringing that bill to the Senate floor. It represents a compromise on both sides. It represents taking a step back on issues that authorize on both sides, which we can deal with at a later time. I certainly appreciate not just the leadership of Senator Leahy and the leadership of Senator Shelby but also the leadership of Senator Murray in helping to determine what those priorities would be and should be. I see Senator Leahy is standing on the floor, and I am glad to yield to him for a comment.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont for his leadership. Again, this is the first time in over a decade for the 69 people who aren't on the Appropriations Committee to get to come to the floor and offer amendments and think about what this bill does. Let's talk about some of the things it does. We worked really hard over the last 4 years to do the kinds of things we ought to do in healthcare research. This bill, for the first time, reaches a long-held goal of the national plan to address Alzheimer's disease, of getting those annual research dollars up over $2 billion--in fact, $2.34 billion, exceeding what had been a long-term goal. The goal should not be how much money we spend. It should be finding a way to solve this problem. This is a significant increase over last year. It quadruples where we were 4 years ago. We spent 277 billion tax dollars a year on Alzheimer's and dementia-related care. A lot more private money is spent than that--three times that amount in private money--and there is lost work as caregivers step back to help people with these terrible diseases of dementia and Alzheimer's. But here is $277 billion. So this bill does about 1 percent of that in research to try to solve a problem that taxpayers are overwhelmed by. It is a problem that by 2050, if we don't find a solution, we will be spending about twice today's defense budget on Alzheimer's care, twice today's defense budget--$1.1 trillion of today's dollars being spent on Alzheimer's care if we don't do what we need to. This is the only leading cause of death that doesn't have a treatment, doesn't have a cure, doesn't have a way to prevent it, and, obviously, the right kind of discovery, the right kind of medical advancement that can change the lives of millions of American families now and in the future if we do this. I am pleased to see we are making that investment. I am also pleased to see that after a 12-year period, when there wasn't any increase in healthcare research spending at all, we continue to find money, in many cases by eliminating programs that weren't working, to where we had a 30-percent increase in NIH funding over the last 4 years. What a 4 years to be doing that--understanding the things we know now about the human genome, understanding how each of us is different than all the rest of us and that, in fact, each of us has a different capacity to fight disease than any other person does. If you can figure out how to maximize that, such as things like immunotherapy in cancer, where many cancers that 5 years ago were largely untreatable--and if they were treatable, they were treatable with radiation and chemotherapy--are now treatable by just simply figuring out how, in your own system, you can maximize your ability to fight back. That is the NIH healthcare research kind of victory we need to now continue to find out why it works on some cancers and why it doesn't work on others. This kind of research and commitment to NIH not only helps individuals and helps families but, frankly, at a time when healthcare is dramatically changing, has the ability to help our economy. The economy that figures out new ways to be in this healthcare fight is also going to be the economy that has the job opportunities and the transformational opportunities to be part of that. Not only are we looking at healthcare research, but we are also looking at research as it relates to the opioid epidemic. The opioid cost to the economy is now anticipated to be about $500 billion a year in lost work time and other costs related to the opioid epidemic. This bill provides a significant, targeted opioid funding. This is the fourth year in a row we have increased our funding. Again, this is only the second time we have had any more money to do it with. We have had to look at programs that weren't working and cut, reduce, and combine those programs to fight back on the opioid epidemic, which is now, and for a couple of years has been, the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the United States. It is the No. 1 accidental cause of death in my State of Missouri. The 73,000 people who died last year with overdoses exceed the number of people who died in car accidents, which for decades had been the No. 1 cause of accidental deaths until opioids replaced it. We have $1.5 billion available for State opioid response grants. Understanding that every State is different, and frankly the more things we try to do in different ways, the more likely we are to find the things that work. We have that. There is more money for community health centers to expand behavioral health and substance abuse disorder services. There is an increase in the ability to improve surveillance and prevention efforts in the illicit drug space or the drug abuse space, more money to research pain management. Part of the NIH money, at half a billion dollars, is designed to find more ways to research for better pain management and better ways to, if you have become addicted to drugs and opioids specifically, end that addiction in an effective way. There is more money for the hardest hit rural communities. Some of our Members have advocated strongly for a drug problem that is more of a rural drug problem on a per capita basis than it is an urban drug problem. There is more money for children and families who are put at risk by opioids. I saw a news report just this week focusing on kids being raised by their grandparents because their parents wound up with an opioid addiction problem that drove their life in a way their children were not only in danger and ignored but had to go somewhere else. This bill prioritizes education programs through a student's life, focusing on programs that provide the most flexibility for States and communities that meet the needs of families, children, and their workforce in their State. There are increases for Head Start, increases for title I support for low-income schools to help them meet academic challenges. There is more money to meet the goal the Federal Government set decades ago, where individuals with disabilities are assisted within the school context, as the Federal Government determined they had to be, but the Federal Government has been wanting and coming up with the money that was committed to do that decades ago. We continue to make steps in the right direction there, and I think there are substantial steps in this bill. There is flexible spending so schools can look at more science, math, and STEM education, more computer science education, and more ability for schools to take some of their funds and look at school safety. Nobody wants to see kids go to school in an environment that is not as safe as we can possibly make it. This allows more flexibility for local administrators and local school boards to decide how they are going to meet that school safety need. We looked at impact aid, charter schools, and programs that create both competition and fairness in a way I think people we work for will like. This bill maintains the significant investments made last year on college access. The best way to minimize college debt is to get done, finish. Year-round Pell is something we returned to after several years of having only the normal traditional school year Pell. Year-round Pell is maintained in this as part of our Federal commitment to have people going to school. If you are an adult going back to school, if you are somebody who is a first-time college attender in your family, if, for whatever reason, you are paying for your own school, the most likely way to get done is don't interrupt a pattern that is working. This bill allows that to continue. We also do things that I think better prepare our workforce for the workplace. It is a bill to look forward to working with Members to see how it can be improved, just like the amendment we will be voting on soon that deals with suicide prevention in ways Senator Kennedy and Senator Reed have suggested, and I support. With that, I will conclude my remarks. I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes of debate, equally divided in the usual form, prior to the vote on the Kennedy amendment.

Mr. BLUNT. I yield the floor. Vote on Amendment No. 3773

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