Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today I want to talk about the President's recent dealings with Iran and the serious questions the administration's actions have raised. Let me begin by saying first of all that I welcome--as do all Americans who have been watching this--the release of the three American hostages who were wrongfully detained in Iran. We are all glad to see the return of Pastor Saeed Abedini, Jason Rezaian, and Amir Hekmati. That they have been freed and that they have been reunited with their families is important. Our prayers--my prayers and the prayers of so many Americans--remain with those families and with the family of Robert Levinson, a former FBI employee about whom we have not been given the kind of information we need to have. If he is alive, we should demand his release. If he is not alive, we should demand and find out what happened to Robert Levinson. In return for these three hostages being released, the United States released seven Iranians or Iranian Americans who had been convicted of transferring technology, which included nuclear dual-use technology, to Iran. The administration also agreed to take 14 Iranians off the Interpol arrest list as part of this effort to get Americans unfairly held back. If clearing the way for 21 convicted or indicted enemies of the United States wasn't enough, then the United States, in my view, also agreed to pay $1.7 billion to Iran. In everybody's view, they paid that $1.7 billion at the time of the swap. The administration, I guess, would want us to believe it is coincidental that the day after the American hostages were released and the day after the Iran deal went into effect, Secretary Kerry announced that the United States had settled a claim at the World Court at The Hague dating back decades. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian General Reza Naqdi said: ``Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies and doesn't have to do with the [nuclear] talks.'' Whether it had something to do with the nuclear talks or not, I don't know how significant that is. I submitted an amendment when we were debating the Iran agreement that it shouldn't be finalized in any way until all of these hostages were returned. In fairness, I didn't think it should be finalized in any way, no matter what, but I definitely couldn't understand why we wouldn't insist that these innocently held Americans were returned. It becomes more and more obvious all the time that the Iranians had a plan. Not only did they want to further humiliate the United States, but they simply wanted money. Under this settlement at The Hague, the United States will be paying Iran--and has already paid Iran--$1.7 billion. This is supposedly $400 million in principal stemming back to a former military sale before the fall of the Shah of Iran and then $1.3 billion in interest--$400 million in principal, and $1.3 billion in interest. The timing of the swap and the announcement of the breakthrough in the settlement--this had been at the World Court for 35 years, and we are supposed to believe that it is just another coincidence in the Obama State Department. Peeling back the details of this settlement is even more troubling because the money had already been spent. This was Iranian money from a foreign military sale that had been held in what is called the FMS account--the foreign military sale account. It was originally placed in that trust fund, but then it was spent. Why was it spent? It was spent because the Congress in 2000 passed legislation that the President signed that directed the Secretary of the Treasury to use that money to compensate victims of Iranian terrorism. In cases like Flatow vs. Iran and four other related cases, Iranian terror victims all received compensation from this fund, effectively wiping out the balance of the fund. The trust fund that the administration is referring to has already been spent. How do you give money back that has already been spent? You can't give money back that has already been spent. I suppose you can take taxpayer dollars, which is what happened here, suggest that somehow this was money of the Iranians all the time and give those taxpayer dollars to Iran in return for, as their own general said, the release of the people he called the American spies. Did the administration essentially agree to ransom to get these Americans released? It certainly appears so. I think you and I and every Member of the Senate should continue pressing the administration for answers. If they want to spend taxpayer money, there may be some legal way they can do that, but there is really no legal way they can say they are giving money back that the Congress already told them to do something else with, and they did. In addition to that money we have now given to Iran, the Iranian agreement allows somewhere between $100 million and $150 million held by countries all over the world since the late 1970s to be returned to Iran. Just last week, Secretary of State Kerry said that some of this money will ``end up in the hands of the [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.'' Well, of course that is where that money is going to wind up. There was an argument made during the Iranian agreement that there are so many needs in Iran that they are going to spend this on other more worthwhile things. But no matter how many needs there were in Iran, Iran is, by the administration's own determination, the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Of course when you give them money back, they are going to use that money for what they are already using their money for. They are just going to have over $100 billion more at their disposal. The world's largest state sponsor of terrorism--whether it is backing Palestinian terrorists in Gaza or supporting Hezbollah's attacks against Israel from Lebanon, the regime will now have more resources to do that with. Iran, of course, has made no secret of its nuclear ambitions nor of its willingness to flout the treaty obligations in order to achieve those ambitions. It recently launched two ballistic missile tests in the past 3 months. It is a direct violation of the U.N. resolution which prohibits them from engaging in activities related to ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, but they have done it twice in the last 90 days. Even Members of the President's own party who have supported the Iran agreement have criticized the administration's lack of response to these violations. What is the world to think? What are the American people to think when we are transferring money at the time we get American hostages back, when we are allowing missiles to be launched near the U.S.S. Harry Truman, when we are allowing ballistic missile tests to occur, and acting as if we have made some great breakthrough with Iran? The recent detention of U.S. sailors in Iran is another example of how little we have gained in this Iranian policy agreement. The administration has gone out of its way to accommodate the demands of this regime that is hostile and sponsors terrorists. Enough is enough. It is time that the Congress stood up, and I urge my colleagues in the Senate to utilize every tool at our disposal to hold the Iranian regime accountable. One important step will be to secure Iranian assets owed to victims of terrorism who had been awarded judgments by our courts and other courts. Why would we give money to Iran when there are Americans who are victims of terrorism that courts have said have a right to that money? They found Iran liable for sponsoring fatal attacks against American citizens, including the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. According to the Congressional Research Service, about $43.5 billion in unpaid judgments from Iran to Americans are due. Iran should not receive any sanctions relief until those claims have been paid. We ought to look at how we can secure Iranian assets to provide some measure of justice for victims of these terrorist activities. That should include assets held by foreign countries, foreign companies, and countries who do business in the United States. The idea that the Iranian regime is now our partner is dangerously naive and one that undermines our global leadership. It confuses our friends, and it emboldens our enemies. I urge the President to quit bending to this regime and start putting the interests of the American people and our allies first. I urge the Congress to continue to look at this recent exchange of money for hostages. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be allowed to speak as in morning business.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 3, 2016, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 3, 2016, at 9:30 a.m., in room SD-406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Stream Protection Rule: Impacts on the Environment and Implications for Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act Implementation.''

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 3, 2016, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Strains on the European Union: Implications for American Foreign Policy.''

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 3, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Need for Transparency in the Asbestos Trusts.''

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 3, 2016, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 3, 2016, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Canada's Fast-Track Refugee Plan: Unanswered Questions and Implications for National Security.''

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 3, 2016, in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building at 2:15 p.m.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Tuesday, January 26, at 2:15 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination: Calendar No. 306; that there be 15 minutes of debate on the nomination, equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate vote without intervening action or debate on the nomination; that if confirmed, the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following morning business on Tuesday, January 26, the Senate proceed to Calendar No. 218, S. 2012, with a period of debate only until 3 p.m.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I appreciate that. This is a bill that has been on the President's desk. It passed the Senate, which means that 60 Senators were supportive of this rule not being able to go forward in its current status. The President vetoed the bill. This would be a time for the Congress to stand up. If you didn't have any other interest in this fight, it is the time for the Congress to stand up and say: If you are going to change the law, the only way to change the law is for the Congress to change the law. The President appears to be willing to discover all sorts of ways that can't be found in the Constitution to change the law. But even if you were on the other side of this issue, even if you want to come to the floor of the Senate and vigorously argue that the EPA needs the jurisdiction of all the water in the country, as a Member of the Senate, the Senate should do that, the House should do that, and the Constitution should work. Senator Barrasso, it is clearly not working here. ``Navigable waters'' has been used in Federal law since about 1846, and until the last couple of years when the EPA asserted differently, everybody always thought they knew what that meant. If you could move something on it, navigate it, then the Constitution says the Federal Government has the obligation for interstate commerce. So debating how much of the Missouri River, as Senator Hoeven brought up, is navigable is a constitutional debate to have because it is a commerce issue. I say to Senator Barrasso, suggesting that all the water in the country is navigable doesn't make sense. The Senator has been one of the leaders in trying to point out for months and years now that this rule will be ruinous to economic activity.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, we are urging our colleagues to do just exactly that--vote to override and reassert the constitutional authority of the Congress. To finish up our part of our discussion this morning is somebody who also understands the importance of the land, what it means to love and appreciate the land, how you can do that closer to the land than farther away, the Senator from Iowa, Mrs. Ernst.

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

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my Republican colleagues.

Mr. BLUNT. Thank you, Mr. President. We are here today to vote in about half an hour on overriding the President's veto, a congressional action that would not have allowed the country to move forward with the so-called waters of the United States rule. The waters of the United States sounds like a lot until you look at the map beside me. This is a map of the State of Missouri and of what would be covered under EPA jurisdiction, if this rule is allowed to go into effect. This is a map from the Missouri Farm Bureau that nobody has taken issue with, and the red part of our State would be covered by Federal Government authority. So 99.7 percent of the State would suddenly be under the jurisdiction of the EPA on all things related to water: water running off the parking lot, water running off your driveway, water running off your roof, water falling into your yard, water falling into a vacant lot if someone wants to build a house on that vacant lot--all of those things in 99.7 percent of the State. I think that three-tenths of 1 percent may be some unusual seepage area where the water runs away in a way that the EPA hasn't yet figured out how to assert jurisdiction over. The law passed in the early 1970s, the Clean Water Act, said that the EPA would have jurisdiction over navigable waters. So, if you believe the EPA and believe this rule and believe in the President's veto, navigable waters would apparently be every drop of water in 99.7 percent of Missouri. If the President and the administration and the EPA want to change the law where it no longer says ``navigable waters,'' but where it says virtually all the water, there is a way to do that: Introduce a bill, come to the Congress, and the Congress votes on that bill. If the House and Senate approve it--I know this sounds like it is a pretty pedestrian discussion. But apparently the President and EPA don't understand that it is the way to change the law. It is not just that somebody decides that all of the water in Missouri--or to be accurate, 99.7 percent of the water in our State, of the geography of our State on any water issue--suddenly becomes the jurisdiction of the EPA. I will assure you that if the EPA gets this jurisdiction, there is no way that they can do what they say the Environmental Protection Agency should do. That is the case in Missouri. I am joined by my colleagues from North Dakota and Wyoming to talk about this. Certainly, we have been on the floor repeatedly to talk about this. We also talked about remedies. A great remedy would be that any regulation that has significant economic impact should be voted on by the Congress. It is a bill we have all co-sponsored called the REINS Act. Now the analogy here is pretty good--to put the reins on government. But what would really happen in the REINS Act is that anybody who would vote for a rule like this would have to go home and explain it. Frankly, I think anybody who doesn't override the President's veto had better be prepared to go home and explain it. Senator Barrasso and Senator Hoeven have been vigorous in this fight. As to Senator Hoeven, I know this is something that matters where he lives and where we live, but it is also a great indication of what happens when the government somehow believes that no matter what the Constitution says or what the law says, the all-knowing Federal Government should be in charge of everything everywhere--in this case, virtually all the water in the country.

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 want to talk about something that was overlooked late in the year as we passed the surface transportation bill--the highway bill. It was called the Fix America's Surface Transportation Act or the FAST Act. It wasn't very fast. I am glad to see the President signed the law last month. It is one of the things people understand they can't do for themselves--along with defending the country--having a transportation system that works and taking advantage of who we are as a nation, being strategically located in as fine a place as you can be to do business, to create jobs and opportunity all over the world. The FAST Act in my State would provide $5 billion to Missouri over the next 5 years to improve our roads, bridges, and rail system. That is the amount of money we will send in over the next 5 years. We are either slightly a donee State or slightly a donor State. We might be better off if we kept all the money, but that is not what is happening right now. We are certainly better off if we know what the highway program looks like for 5 years. An effective transportation plan is good for the country, but it is particularly good where I live. If you look at any map of the river structure of the country or any railroad map of the country or any highway map of the country, a significant part of coming together of all three of those--rail, water, and highways--all happens right where we live. Because we are the hub of the railway, highway, and water systems, it is very important that we have a system that makes the most of that where we live. When I had a chance to speak to the Missouri House of Representatives in Jefferson City over the first week of the year, I told the Missouri General Assembly that this is a competitive advantage for us, but we need to make the most of it. When we had the highway bill that we have had in the 5 years the Presiding Officer and I have served in the Senate, nobody could rely on anything. This is the first 5-year bill we have had in 17 years. But before 2009, we just ended a 4-year highway bill. Then, since 2009, we have had 37 short-term extensions of the highway bill. So if there is anything fast about the FAST Act, it certainly wasn't quickly getting to a highway bill that works. The longest of those 37 extensions was 2 years. I think the second longest may have been 6 months. Not only is that no way to build roads and bridges, but it is clearly no way for legislators to have an idea in our home States of how to respond to that plan. By the time you try to figure out how to respond to the plan, how you can maximize it to the advantage of your State--my State or anybody else's--and how we can maximize that plan to our advantage, the plan is over with. By the time you have a legislative session, look at the plan, the State department of transportation analyzes it, and you start talking about it, the 6-month extension of the highway bill is over--or even the 2-year extension. There are all kinds of studies that indicate a significant loss of what you can buy with the money you are spending if the highway bill is 2 years or less. I think the discount is about 30 percent because people don't bid as competitively as they would bid to be part of those projects. They are not willing to move people to where a major project needs to occur. They cannot buy the equipment and plan to depreciate it out. So you wind up paying a lot more than you would have to pay. That is where we have been since 2009. The States have been the place where they didn't have any way to maximize a Federal program because the Federal program was gone before they could really calculate how they could most take advantage of it. So I hope that now we do one of the things that people really expect the government to do--one of the reasons they pay the taxes and one of the reasons the tax for transportation has always been pretty well received. People think: OK, I pay a tax when I fill up my car with gasoline, fill up my car with diesel, fill up my truck with diesel or fill up my truck with fuel. When I do that, I pay a tax and then I use the roads. So that seems fairer to people than most taxes, but we haven't had a system that allowed us to make the most of that. In our State, 22 percent of the major roads of Missouri are now considered in poor condition. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives us a C, and this is one of the areas where we would want to be an A. If you are a C instead of an A, the average Missouri motorist pays about $400 more a year in extra maintenance because we are trying to maintain a system that has gotten into poor condition. Some 44 percent of our highways are congested. Congestion costs motorists a lot of money in just wasted fuel. You don't have to spend much time around Washington in a car to realize how much time you can waste in traffic, but we see that happening more and more all over the country. In our State we have more bridges than any other State, and they are in among the worst conditions of the country, with 30 percent of our bridges rated as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. There was just a TIGER grant awarded to replace the Champ Clark Bridge across the Mississippi River, which I believe was built in 1919. If that bridge has to be shut down before it can be replaced or would have been shut down, the detour to get to where that bridge gets you is 75 or 80 miles driving around to where that bridge currently takes people. We have many bridges in our State that are county bridges; they are not State bridges. I have talked to county commissioners, and one of their principal concerns is this: What about the fund that helps us with our off-system bridges? Senator Casey and I created a fund to do this in 2012. We added it to the 2012 highway bill. Since then, it has provided about $775 million annually to States. Out of that State fund, whenever you are part of the off-system road system, the State pays 85 percent of a bridge that the county otherwise in most cases wouldn't be able to replace. We have one county that I think has 4,000 people and 40 bridges. That is a lot of bridges for 4,000 people to try to be responsible for. It is our smallest county, and that is maybe a different debate, but they have 40 bridges. We have many bridges in our State. The county road-county bridge system has about 50 percent of all the bridges we have in Missouri. The bridge system and the highway system are critical to us if we want to compete. As the middle of the country grows things and makes things, it is a great opportunity for us to get things--not just onto the river system and onto the railway system--all over the country and all other the world. Transportation really matters. The FAST Act--and I have a hard time saying the FAST Act without thinking how slow the FAST Act really was in getting passed--creates two freight-based programs that allows States to compete for funding for major projects. In a world where we want to compete, we need to figure out how we can compete more effectively. How do you get things to places where they are made into products? How do you get things that are grown and need to be shipped to places? How do you get them to places in a better way? In the life of this bill, the State of Missouri should receive about $150 million to look at those freight projects because those projects and the effective use of how you get things to places create jobs. The Missouri Department of Transportation has already developed a State freight plan to encourage strategies. Now this bill makes that plan more of a reality. The FAST Act also includes some help for our Nation's rail systems. I had a bill, the Track, Railroad, and Infrastructure Network Act, that when you are improving a railroad system, it allows you to have the same kind of streamlining that we were recently able to provide for highway construction. You don't get caught up on something that has to be needlessly litigated for long periods of time when, in fact, what you really need to be doing is getting that highway finished in the highway part of this bill or have the expedited ability for these issues to go to the top of the list and to get resolved so that people can get the things they make where they want to get them. They can get the things they buy quicker than they would get them otherwise. They can get to work, they can get to school, and they can get to the hospital when somebody is sick. I mentioned that, particularly because we just had floods in our State in the last few days. For a while, Interstate 70, Interstate 44, and Interstate 55--all three--were closed. There was a time when two of those were closed at the same time. They were closed for 24 to 36 hours, and it makes a difference in how people are able to live their lives. The Federal Permitting Improvement Act that I cosponsored was also included in the bill. This is a piece of legislation that Senator Portman and Senator McCaskill introduced. It will now allow better coordination between the deadline setting for permitting decisions--the same kind of thing for highways that we are also doing for railroads-- to make this important transportation system work. Looking at the United States, Winston Churchill once said we were the best located country in the world--an ocean on either side and neighbors that we could deal with north and south. And the ability to get anywhere would be another addition to that location advantage we have. The FAST Act includes two important provisions to give relief to electricity providers. One is a law that creates emergency route working groups for electricity and other things. If you have a vehicle that needs to get from Oklahoma to Joplin, MO, after the tornado, you don't have to get it especially permitted and authorized to come across that State line in what has been declared an emergency. The same thing would have happened in recent days in several places in our State close to a border, close to the equipment they need. The flood means there is an emergency. Now those vehicles can cross the State line without having to have the special permission that needed to be received in the past. Secondly, the Grid Reliability Act that I introduced with my Missouri colleague Senator McCaskill simply improves reliability. If you have two conflicting Federal agencies--one saying you can only use that plant so much of the time and another saying we have an electric emergency--you have to use every facility you have to provide the electricity that is needed, and that can now be done. There are many committees of jurisdiction here. The commerce committee that I am a member of is certainly the committee that is focused on infrastructure, focused on ports and other things that I haven't mentioned a lot but that are very important. I have mentioned at other times on the floor of the Senate that this is one of the great accomplishments of the first year of this Congress that may easily go overlooked, but I can tell you that county officials all over America and State legislative bodies all over America are looking at this bill and figuring out how do we use this as a way to move our transportation system into the 21st century, how do we use this to help provide opportunity, and how do we use this to help provide the kinds of jobs that provide the kind of pay that families need to live on and to live the kinds of lives they would like to live. I look forward to seeing this bill implemented. I think all of us need to watch carefully to be sure that we are making the most of one of the responsibilities of government. Defending the country and having a transportation system that works are both things that individuals and families can't do for themselves. I believe the FAST Act gives us a better chance than we have had since 2009 to look at the future with a greater degree of certainty and to work in an area that is critically important for the country but even more important for Missouri and others who live in the middle of these transportation networks, where they come together. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the privileges of the floor be granted to Benjamin Reinke, a congressional fellow with the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, effective today through December 31, 2016.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk for a few minutes at the beginning of my remarks about what the response to the flooding has been in our State of Missouri. I was in St. Louis County with Congresswoman Wagner on Saturday. I was in St. Charles County the week before that. I was in Cape Girardeau following up on the work Congressman Smith has done there. I was in St. Genevieve, Perryville, Cassville, and Monette. If you know anything about the geography of our State, those places are spread pretty far apart, but we had a flooding situation that was almost totally generated in our State--different from the floods we normally deal with--and the communities reacted with very little time in an impressive way. The Corps of Engineers was also there to help. The National Guard was there to do what they needed to do. Now we see FEMA and the SBA stepping in to see who qualifies for assistance. There was loss of life. More often than not, the loss of life occurred when somebody drove around a sign that said ``Don't pass this sign'' and then got caught in a situation they didn't anticipate or thought was less than it turned out to be. Some families clearly are grieving that loss of life. We had five international soldiers who lost their lives near Fort Leonard Wood. Maybe the whole idea of a low-water bridge that you and I would be used to was something they hadn't thought about. We had three interstate highways close--Interstate 55, Interstate 70, and Interstate 44. They were not all closed at exactly the same time but within somewhere between a 24- to 36-hour timeframe. We will have to look at that to be sure people don't lose access to where their kids are, where their jobs are, and where their health care is. The economic impact of that Interstate System that comes together in so many ways in Missouri shutting down is something that clearly, once we get beyond the immediacy of dealing with the flood itself, we need to look at and see how we can prevent that problem from happening again. I don't know of a time when any two of those highways were closed at the same time before, but I know Interstate 70 and Interstate 44 were closed at the same time, and it had a real impact economically on people traveling east to west or economic things happening east to west anywhere in the country.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I was also able to talk about some good news. I am not sure how much good news we are going to hear over the next few days, but certainly there is the good news of stepping up and looking at health care research and the impact it can have in the country. There are things that are beginning to happen in mental health and things that we are trying to do to respond to prescription drug abuse and opioid abuse in all areas. In health care research, the National Institutes of Health hadn't received an increase in their research funding since 2003. There was an effort made right before that to make a substantial increase. The fact that the Congress and the administration stopped research funding had always been frustrating, but we were able to see an increase this year for the first time in 12 years. That meant we had to create a priority. For too many people in government, when there is a discussion about funding priorities, a lot of our colleagues hear that and think that means we have to fund anything anybody has ever convinced the government we are interested in. Being interested in something doesn't make it a priority; it just makes it something that, if everything was going along the right way, maybe this is something to look at. But in funding NIH at a new level, we totally eliminated 18 programs, zeroed them out. We didn't eliminate the authorization for them, but we eliminated the money to run those 18 programs. Congress and eventually the President accepted the argument that for the greater good, these 18 programs did not need to continue. The President asked for 23 new programs that also did not receive funding, but that allowed us to make a commitment and to set priorities. Why set a priority? The first funding increase in 12 years was 6.6 percent. We went from spending $30 billion on health care research last year to $32 billion this year. Hopefully this is a first step toward trying to solve health care problems. There are many changing developments in health care, from smartphone technology, to individual medicine, to knowing more about the human genome. How did we find out about the human genome? We found that out through NIH research. If we hadn't had NIH research, it is likely that the human genome would still be a mystery to us. It had been a mystery on the planet until just a few years ago. The reason that happened was the National Institutes of Health and the Congress decided it would be helpful to figure out how all of us are different from each other, which also means trying to figure out a different approach to curing diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, and heart disease. What difference does it make? Why is it a priority to spend taxpayers' money in this way? One reason is the clear impact health care research is having every day on individuals and families who no longer are dealing with problems they would have been dealing with 10 years ago. Moving forward, let's see if we can find ways to meet the challenges for families and caregivers. Let's see what we can do there. Generally, for taxpayers, even if you aren't the individual beneficiary, estimates are that the Medicare system will be absolutely overwhelmed between now and 2050 by things such as Alzheimer's and cancer. If we can figure out a cure or delay onset of Alzheimer's by 5 or 7 years on average, the impact on the cost of that devastating disease--both the real cost to taxpayers and the emotional and psychological costs to everybody involved--will be overwhelming. The Medicare system won't be able to withstand the projections of how much money will be spent if we don't find ways to deal with these new challenges. As people get older, Alzheimer's and cancer are more likely to end life than heart disease and stroke. That doesn't mean we don't need to be focused on neurological research or on heart research. All of those things are important, and a relatively small investment by the Federal Government on health care to try do something about that matters. It is generally understood that health care will dramatically change in the next 10 or 20 years. Where the research is done is likely to be where the jobs and economic impact of that research occurs. I don't want to be going to the Chinese 10 years from now saying: Will you tell us how your investment in research has paid off? We are better at this than anybody else in the world, and we need to continue to be better. There are reasons for us to be better. I do visit some of the places where this research is being done. I was at the Siteman Cancer Center on the campus of Washington University, one of the premier cancer focus centers in the country. Washington University is where one-third of all research was done to understand the human genome. I have met with the Alzheimer's Association and the American Cancer Association. I met with the family of a young man who lost his fight with cancer before he was 10 years old. His mom and dad formed the Super Sam Foundation to encourage other families and to encourage research. They were there with his sister representing the Super Sam Foundation. The Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopment Disorders at the University of Missouri is another place where we are looking to see what we can do to intervene earlier and help solve problems. The new chancellor at the university, Hank Foley, was with me, as was the director of that center, Dr. Stephen Kanne. They are doing good work and will continue to do so. In Kansas City, I met with an organization, MRIGlobal, that is doing incredible work in the field of environmental and cancer research and is making a big difference. The head of that company, Thomas Sack, was there as we were talking about what they were doing and what they hoped to do. My hometown of Springfield is also the home location of the Alzheimer's Association Missouri Chapter. I had a chance to talk with them. I also met with the people from the Alzheimer's Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Diabetes Association, and I then went on to Southeast Missouri State University, another autism center that is working to figure out how we can deal with autism disorders, including early detection. I visited Truman State University in Kirksville, where I had the opportunity to learn more about the university's efforts to create an interprofessional autism clinic. I was able to hear stories about how frustrated young researchers have been with just a 6.6-percent increase--the first increase in 12 years. During that 12 years, the buying power of the research dollar went down by 20 percent. We restored a little of that 20 percent. The Federal Government has been involved in research at least since the founding of the Department of Agriculture in 1862. Whether it is health care research or ag research or environmental research or energy research, there is a level of that research which should and will be done by the private sector, but there is another level of research by the Federal Government that benefits everybody by sharing the results of that research. In mental health, there is a lot of excitement in Missouri and around the country about the potential of being one of the pilot States in excellence of mental health. Senator Stabenow from Michigan and I introduced legislation a few years ago that would combine--that would treat behavioral health, treat mental health just like all other health. This is another way to save money, because of that mental health situation. By the way, the National Institutes of Health says that one out of four adult Americans has a diagnosable and almost always treatable mental health issue. If that mental health issue is being treated, whatever your other health issues are, they are likely to be treated in a much more effective way. We are looking for more choices to deal with the issues suffered by our Vietnam veterans to our youngest veterans, giving them more options and more choices. Eight States are going to be doing that and 24 States have applied. Senator Stabenow and I will be talking more about what happens and what we might do to encourage those other 16 States. The President says he wants to spend more money on mental health. It really doesn't matter how you share your mental health information or what your provider last told you or how many mental health care providers you have if there is no place to go and if there are no access points to treat behavioral health like all other health issues, and that is what excellence in mental health does for patients. I will close with one final area. I think there has been a lot of response to understanding and addressing the opioid epidemic and the drug issue. Deaths from prescription opioids and other pain-related drugs quadrupled between 1999 and 2013, claiming more than 145,000 lives over the past 10 years, but a substantial portion of those deaths occurred over the last couple of years. These overdoses cost the economy an estimated $20 billion in medical costs and lost work productivity. Some people die from overdosing, and many other people have to be treated by their health care provider. There is a personal loss to those individuals who become addicted to prescription drugs. I mentioned that I had a chance to talk to the Missouri General Assembly last week, and I talked about how our veterans are often the victims just because of the serious injuries they sustain and the painkilling drugs they are given to help deal with the pain of those injuries. But that then leads to an addiction to that drug and other drugs. Approximately three out of four new heroin users abused prescription drugs before switching to heroin. We have made a new commitment to this issue with new programs that are targeted to combat opioid abuse at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration with almost three times the investment that the country made before. This is truly becoming an epidemic, and we need to deal with that epidemic sooner rather than later. Many of our Members and their States have talked effectively about fighting heroin and drug addiction but also about dealing with the transition from taking drugs that they were prescribed to drugs that they shouldn't have. We are looking at new opportunities there. The new Republican-led Senate is looking at how to deal with these opportunities in new ways. I hope we haven't made those successes for the spending year we are in now a one-time only event but a new commitment to try to solve the problems early so that society and the programs which taxpayers fund aren't overwhelmed by those problems later. 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. Madam President, I am here today to talk a little about the bill we saw posted late last night--a bill that I think has better results than the process itself would have suggested we might have. There is no question that we have to get back to the process of bringing these bills to the floor. Bring them to the floor one at a time and let everybody challenge every penny of spending, to spend it in a different way or don't spend it at all. I am disappointed, as every citizen in the country should be, that we didn't do it that way. I hope we have the opportunity next year to get back to where these bills are dealt with one at a time. The other area I am disappointed in is the inability to use this bill to have the kinds of policy victories I would like to see. The rule on the waters of the United States--the courts consistently appear to be saying the EPA absolutely doesn't have the authority to do what they are trying to do. In my State, the fourth most dependent State on coal- powered utilities, the rule on electricity will double our utility bill sometime between now and 2030, and for some Missourians, their utility bill will more than double. There is the rule that makes it difficult for financial advisers to give advice to small investors and people with small savings, small retirement accounts. If this financial adviser's rule--the so-called fiduciary rule--is allowed to go into effect, it will have dramatic impact. The joint employer rule upends the franchise model of doing business--a model of doing business which is around the world now but is uniquely American in its capacity to bring people into the middle class and allow them to rise into the middle class. So I am disappointed about all of those things. But when we look at the bill as a spending bill, when we look at the bill as a bill that is supposed to do what this bill does, which is to decide how to spend the country's money, there is a significant reprioritization here. One of the things I have seen even more in recent years than I think used to be the case is that when so many of our friends in the House and the Senate--and maybe even more so in the Senate--talk about how important it is to fund our priorities, what they are really staying is that it is important to fund anything any of us are for. That is not the way to set priorities. The way to set priorities is to decide what is important for the government to do, decide what the government can do better than people can do for themselves or maybe couldn't possibly do for themselves, and then set those priorities. In that case, I think this bill makes significant steps in the right direction, with dramatic changes in areas that had been a problem for several years now, at least the last 5 or 6 years, and in the case I want to talk about first, the last dozen years, but nobody has been able to do anything about it. Nobody has ever said those aren't our priorities; they just said: Well, we have all of these priorities--which meant every line in the appropriations bill, the best I can tell. Let's talk about the Labor-HHS bill. It is about 32 percent of all the money after defense. If I have any time, I might talk about the Defense bill because it does great things for veterans, great things for cyber security, great things that support those who serve, and one of those things is encouraging our allies on the frontlines in the War on Terror. In Labor and Education and particularly in Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, where so much of our health care research is generated--a little of it is done in every State. Some States have great institutions. Certainly Missouri does--the University of Missouri, Columbia, Washington University, Children's Hospital. Hospitals all over our State have unique opportunities to do research. Health care research is something that, frankly, just isn't going to happen the way it should happen unless the government steps forward and says: We are going to be a leader here. From about 1996 until 2003, the Federal Government doubled NIH research--in less than a decade, doubled NIH research. Since 2003, there has been no increase. There has been no increase in over a decade. As that money didn't increase, the buying power of the money decreased. We can certainly argue there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 percent less buying power, so really in terms of what they are getting for research, there is less buying power by about 20 percent to 25 percent. Young researchers are frustrated at never getting that first grant, never getting the truly experimental grant to see if something will work that nobody may have thought of before. This bill increases NIH research by almost 7 percent. It takes that $30 billion Federal commitment to research and makes it a $32 billion commitment. It begins the process of catching up. Why do we need to do that? What are the reasons we need to do that besides the fact that the government has done research of all kinds for a long time, from ag research, which I support, to health research, which I support? I can think right offhand of about three critical reasons we should be concerned about health research. One is the individual impact that the failure to do this has had. As people live longer, more and more people die from Alzheimer's and its complications or cancer and its complications. Fewer people die from a heart attack because we have done great things there and can still do more through treatment and prevention to make heart attacks even less likely. But as people survive heart attack and stroke, they are more likely to die from Alzheimer's or cancer. This creates great stress for families, particularly Alzheimer's, which can create years and maybe decades of stress for families. So to try to prevent or postpone that, to work with families--I would say that is priority reason No. 1. To save money for taxpayers would be priority reason No. 2. The projection is that by 2050, through Medicare, the Federal Government will be spending $1 trillion a year on Alzheimer's and Alzheimer's- related health care. That is about as big as this discretionary budget. I think this budget is about $1.15 trillion. So take all the money we are spending today on discretionary spending, and suddenly, in just a few decades, that is the same amount of money we will be spending because of Alzheimer's. So that is a good second reason. A third reason is that health care is about to revolutionize everything from smart phone technology to the individual health care that is possible now that we know what we know about the human genome, the things we know about that make me as an individual different from everybody else and everybody else who is hearing this different from everybody else. What kind of unique cure can we find? What kind of designer medicine cure can we find to solve a problem for you, and then how do we make that scalable so that, with minor variations, we can make the same thing possible and affordable for other people as well? And where that research is done-- the smart phone technology applications, the focus on the brain, the focus on designer medicines--where that is done is likely to be where many of those jobs turn out to be. So certainly health care is and will continue to be a big economic driver. The multiplication of economic impact in a positive way with what we invest in health care is pretty dramatic. So that is a big increase. Fighting opioid abuse--this is where people take prescription medicines. The Presiding Officer is a veteran, having just retired from her long military service. Many of those who serve are the most likely to have this problem because of injuries they sustained, accidents they were part of, attacks they were a victim of which create pain. So they take heavy amounts of appropriate things to ease that pain but then get addicted to it. This is an area people weren't talking about at all long ago, but deaths from prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999--actually, more than that because they quadrupled between 1999 and 2013. Overdose of prescription drugs costs the economy an estimated $20 billion in work loss and health care costs every single year. The lives of families are impacted when a successful person, a responsible person, or someone who has not achieved either of those things yet but is a loved part of your family, becomes a victim of opioid abuse. We have a commitment in this budget to $91 million. It is not the biggest line item in the budget, but it is almost three times what we have been spending. Many of our Members have been real leaders in talking about this. Senator Ayotte from New Hampshire, Senator Portman from Ohio, and Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire are all very focused on this problem. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act benefits here as we move toward hopefully less Federal control on education but more ability to help local schools deal with people who have individual challenges. Rural health is a big issue in my State and a big issue in the Presiding Officer's State. It is handled here in a different way. Job training is an important thing we do. But what do we not do here? This is my final addition to this: What are we not doing? We would have liked to have not funded over 40 programs, which was the bill that the Appropriations Committee sent to the floor months ago that was never debated. That would have been the chance to debate all 40 of those programs. I think there were 43 programs that cost about $2.5 billion. Debate all 43 of those programs and decide if the committee is right or not--we can't do that if we don't get it here on the floor. But we still eliminate 18 programs. Those programs currently were more than a quarter of a billion dollars of spending. The President asked for 23 new programs that were $1.16 billion of spending that were not done in this bill. The Independent Payment Advisory Board under ObamaCare, where there would be a board rather than you and your doctor who decided what your health care is going to look like--that is not funded, so that won't occur. And there won't be a big transfer from other accounts with some other label to insurance companies, because all of the expectations from ObamaCare have turned out not to produce the kinds of results its supporters thought it would. Hopefully we have made a big difference in how we prioritize the spending of the people's money, of the taxpayers' money, and hopefully we have also made a renewed commitment to do this the right way. We have done it this way since, frankly, the control of the Senate changed half a dozen years ago. The new majority was totally committed to getting these bills to the floor. They were all ready--all 12 bills-- for first time in 6 years, most of them ready about the end of May, the first of June, but with only a couple of exceptions were they allowed to come to the floor, and that was at the very last minute when it was too late for this process to work the way it should. Let's hope for more transparency, more debate, and more challenges. I am chair of this one committee I have been talking about today, but certainly there have to be other ideas that other Members who aren't on this subcommittee have, who aren't on the Appropriations Committee have. They do their best to get those ideas in by talking, in this late process and during the year, about what should happen. Let's do our best to make this happen the way the Constitution envisions and the way people have every right to expect. I hope for a better process but realize that this process does significantly change the priorities the Federal Government has been stuck with for the last 6 years and heads in a new direction. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I wish to talk for a few minutes today about mental health. It is a topic that gets a lot of attention every time somebody does something that we don't think makes sense, when people do harm to others in ways that we don't seem to be able to rationalize in any other way but to say that we are almost 100-percent sure that this is a person who has a significant mental health problem. Before I go any further with that idea, I wish to say that if you have a mental health problem, you are much more likely to be the victim of a crime than you are to be the perpetrator of a crime. But when we see things happen in schools--whether it is an elementary school such as Sandy Hook or a community college--and when we see things happen on a military base such as Fort Hood or in the last week at a holiday party, there is no way to explain those things except to say that something has gone dramatically wrong in somebody's life. But it does bring us to a topic that seems to be brought only by the worst of circumstances. Fifty-two years ago President Kennedy signed the last bill he signed into law, which was the Community Mental Health Act. On the 50th anniversary, the last day of October 2013, Senator Stabenow and I came to the floor to talk about that. When you look at the Community Mental Health Act, there were lots of great goals to be set for the country. Almost none of those goals have been achieved. The goals of closing facilities that people were concerned about, which they thought didn't meet the mental health needs in the best possible way, were often achieved, but replacing those facilities with other places to go to and get care didn't happen. In fact, surprisingly, the worst partner in behavioral health is the government. We have mandated that some of these issues be taken care of by private insurance in what we would consider mental health equity or mental health parity, but seldom have we mandated that the Federal Government step up and treat behavioral health issues in the same way. While we have done that, we have largely turned to the law enforcement community in the country and emergency rooms and said that is our mental health program. The truth is we never said that. We just allowed that to happen. The biggest program for dealing with a behavioral health issue is the local police and the emergency room--neither of which is the best place to do this or the right place to do this. Sometimes that is the only option, and it is understandable when it is the only option. But it doesn't have to be the only option so much of the time. The National Institutes of Health says that one out of four adult Americans has a diagnosable and almost always treatable behavioral health issue. This is not something that we don't have any relationship with. By the way, they don't say that one out of four adult Americans has a diagnosis and is undergoing treatment. They say that one out of four adult Americans has a diagnosable behavioral health issue and it is almost always treatable. In a hearing we had a year or so ago, they went on to say that about one out of nine adult Americans has a behavioral health issue that impacts the way they live every day, many times in a dramatic way. We need to do something about this. The Congress took a big step to do something about it over a year ago when we passed the Excellence in Mental Health Act. What did the Excellence in Mental Health Act do? The Excellence in Mental Health Act set up an eight-State pilot where in those eight States the facilities that met the requirements that the act specifies--community health centers, federally qualified health centers, community mental health centers that have the right kind of staff and have that staff available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and meet other criteria--in those centers and in those eight States, behavioral health would be treated like all other health. What I think we will find out that happens in those eight States is that there is no increase in cost. There are a few studies that would lead me to believe that. They are going on around the country right now. Nobody will argue that if you treat behavioral health like all other health, the overall societal cost is going to more than pay for whatever you invest in treating that mental health issue. But I think what we are likely to find out, and what studies are beginning to prove, is that even with the health care space itself, if you treat behavioral health like all other health, your overall health spending doesn't increase. It decreases because the other issues are so much easier to deal with. If you are taking your medicine, if you are feeling better about yourself, if you are eating better, if you are sleeping better, if you are seeing the doctor, suddenly the cost that was being spent on your diabetes or the cost that was being spent to deal with hypertension gets so much more manageable that your overall cost goes down. What we think will happen is that the eight States that move in this direction will never go back even though it is a 2-year pilot. We think all the facts are going to show that it should be a permanent commitment. In fact, what happened was that we didn't have just 8 States apply or 10 States apply or even the 20 States that the Senator from Michigan and I were told would be the maximum if we made this mandatory for the whole country from day one. We might have as many as 20 States that would be willing to participate, but 24 States applied to come up with the framework to hope to be one of the 8 States. Those 24 States have all been given a little planning money. They will have a few more months to come up with a plan that says: Here is what we would like to try to prove--that if you treat behavioral health like all other health, good things happen, and it is the right thing to do. The more I talk about that and the more others talk about that, the more I think we all wonder why would we even think we have to prove this. But these pilot States are going to prove that. I am beginning to wonder why we don't figure out how to make all 24 States pilot States. A very small commitment leads to a very big result. What we would find out is that doing the right thing produces the right kind of results. If half the States in the country not only went on this 2-year pilot program but find out that this is really what you need to do, half the States in the country would permanently be on a program that for the first time begins to achieve the goals of the Community Mental Health Act. There are great discussions going on in both the House and Senate about how the Senate bill can focus on expanding some of the grant programs that will encourage people to become behavioral health professionals. The House legislation talks about how we can get families more involved so they are able to keep up with the family member who has a behavioral health challenge. However, none of those things actually matter very much if they don't have anywhere to go. We can have all the mental health professionals we can imagine we would want to have, but if there is no access point for mental health treatment, it doesn't do any good to have all those mental health professionals. What the Excellence in Mental Health Act does and will do is create an access point where everybody can go. Based largely on the community federally qualified health center model, those expenses will be submitted to the person's insurance company or they may have some other capacity to pay. Some individuals will have a copayment for every visit, which is part of that system. They can use whatever government program they might apply for, and then the difference will be made up when they submit their legitimate expense, and those payments will be carefully audited. The goal of the federally qualified center is year after year to get the money back that they have invested in treatment so that it then becomes an access point for those people. I wish to point out that the access point is what really matters here and is the underpinning for everything else. There is no reason to have a big debate about how they share somebody's record with the people who are closest to them if they don't have anywhere to go and get that analysis. There is no reason to think about how many mental health professionals we could use in the country if there is no facility for people to go to so they can meet their mental health professional. This is a real opportunity for us. Congress has agreed to do this. I will be searching--and I hope my colleagues will join me in ways to search--to see what we can do to not only have an 8-State pilot program but to see if we can expand it and have a 24-State pilot program, assuming that all 24 of those States come back with a credible plan on how we can meet the goals of not just the Excellence in Mental Health Act but, frankly, the goals the country set for itself 50 years ago on the last day of October in 1963. We are still woefully short of meeting the potential we need to meet in order to bring people fully into society based on what happens if you treat their behavioral health issue the same way you would treat every other single health problem they may have. There is no reason not to do that. We have the capacity and ability to do that. We have the program Congress has agreed to, and suddenly the number of States that are taking this seriously exceeded everybody's estimation of States that would want to be a part of this program. I think one could argue that 50-plus years later, we may have finally come to a moment when everybody is willing to talk about this issue and do something about it. We shouldn't miss this moment. It is never too late to do the right thing. We are not doing the right thing now. Treating behavioral health like all other health issues and fully utilizing the skills and potential of mental health caregivers by giving them just a little more assistance than they currently have will enable those suffering from a behavioral health issue to become a full part of a functioning society. I am proud that my State has always been forward-leaning on these issues, whether it is Mental Health First Aid or trying to involve different kinds of care that work. I hope my State will be one of the pilot States. Frankly, I would like to see every State do this that wants to do this and can put together a planning grant that shows they have made the local investment that is necessary so they, too, can be a part of the program that is moving forward to improve behavioral health issues. We still have one or two opportunities this year. We have the rest of this Congress if we don't get it done this year, but let's not miss this moment to improve mental health issues. We are already 50 years behind. Let's not get any further behind when there is a chance to do the right thing for the right reasons at the time we have to do it in. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

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