Roy Blunt

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, Missourians and many of our closest neighbors waiting for the life-changing moment that happens when you have a liver transplant now have to have one more hurdle in the process that they have to go through to make that happen. There is a new, and I think terribly flawed, organ allocation policy. Senator Moran and I have really led an effort to slow this down. We have both been the chairman of the Health and Human Services Appropriations Committee. We understand how that agency is supposed to work and how some of these healthcare issues are supposed to be handled. Frankly, I don't think either one of us think this one has been handled in the right way. With the policy we see today, nearly half the country is disadvantaged by a new policy that has been put in place. It used to be that when someone donated a liver, those organs were matched with the transplant candidates, first at the local level, then regionally, and finally at the national level. It is my belief, and I think Senator Moran's belief, that when you know your neighbors are going to benefit from that decision, you are more likely to make the decision that you want to be part of that organ donor community. In the neighborhood where we live and where the Presiding Officer lives, I think people have approached this in a pretty dynamic way, wanting to be part of that. In Missouri, 17 percent of people are organ donors or at least willing to be organ donors. Other States in the Midwest and the South and, frankly, the rural parts of the country just simply have the highest donation rates of people who are willing to be an organ donor. That is not the case everywhere. In New York, for example, 32 percent of people are organ donors. There is a big difference between 73 percent and 32 percent. I don't know how much of that difference relates to the fact that in Missouri and Kansas and Arkansas and other places, people look at this and they think: If I am willing to be an organ donor, then people I know--people whom my kids go to church with, go to school with, people we go to church with, people we see in the grocery store--have a better chance, if they have that crisis in their life, to benefit from it than others do. On February 4, a new policy went into effect that will take livers that were specifically donated by Missourians and allocate them to other parts of the country. You will no longer know, if you are an organ donor, that the people who live closest to you have the greatest chance of getting that organ that you have been willing to donate. The change in liver allocation means that roughly 32 percent fewer liver transplants will happen in Missouri than will happen otherwise. Senator Moran is joining me here on the floor. We have both talked about this a lot. We had the group come into our offices. They are supposed to be making this system work. In Missouri, we have six transplant centers. We currently have 109 people on the transplant list--10 of them are younger than 18 years old--and they simply will not have as good an opportunity or likelihood to have a transplanted, lifesaving liver than they would have had before. It is not just Missourians who suffer. As much as 40 percent of the country will see a decrease in what was available to them. In my view, this was not decided by transplant experts. Most of them have talked to us, in fact, about their concerns about having to transport--in this case again, livers--longer distances, having to take more time and expense to get that organ than they would otherwise. It was decided by what appears to be an unaccountable government contractor--at least unaccountable to us. We have talked to them about this. We have been trying to make a case that makes sense and trying to make them not rush through this, but they did. The contractor in this case serves as the administrator of the organ allocation system and is the determiner of who gets the organ. It seems to me that there is a conflict there. Contractors held a contract for nearly 35 years. Again, it seems to me that competition might be a good thing here. This policy became a policy without due process, without transparency, and I think without fully evaluating the consequences. I think it was rushed. In fact, even the Department of Health and Human Services--I will mention again, Senator Moran and I have chaired their appropriating committee, and we shared our concerns on this. They failed to fully exercise the authority they had. I turn to Senator Moran now. I think we can do that based on how we asked for this time. I join him as he talks about his concerns and my concerns. We had people come to us and talk about this and how important it is. I am glad to join him on the floor today. I am disappointed for people in both of our States and in our part of the country, really, who are going to be disadvantaged by this new policy, where significant donors where we live are going to be having their donations sent to States where people simply don't sign up to be part of this process. If they did, there would have been no interest in changing the other system.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, this policy is shortsighted and wrong, and it was rushed to its implementation. There was no reason for any of those things to happen. 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. President, later today I will vote to acquit the President on the charges of the two Articles of Impeachment. A not- guilty verdict, as every Senator on this floor has known for some time, was always what would happen in a House-driven, partisan impeachment process. Less than a year ago, the Speaker of the House said that we should not go through this process unless something was compelling, unless something was overwhelming, unless something was bipartisan. I think the Speaker was exactly right then, and I hope all future Speakers look at that guidance as we think about this process of impeachment. In the first 180 years of the Constitution, individual Members talked about impeachment of Presidents--maybe of almost every President--but the Congress only seriously touched this topic one time--one time in 180 years. In the last 46 years, Presidential impeachment has been before the country three times, and each case has been less compelling than the one before it. We don't want partisan impeachment to become an exercise that happens when one party--not the party of the President--happens to have a majority of the votes in the House of Representatives. Impeachment is fundamentally a political process. The Members of the Senate meet no standards for a regular jury. The jury can override the judge. Two-thirds of the Senate is necessary to remove the President. We really have no better term in the Constitution, I suppose, to use than ``trial,'' but in any classic sense, this isn't a trial. In any classic sense, a partisan impeachment isn't any kind of a real indictment. Maybe, first and foremost, the House has to do its job. Part of that job would be to create a case that would produce a bipartisan vote on the articles in the House. If you haven't met that standard--going back to the Speaker's standard--you should work on the case some more and then wonder, if you can't meet the standard, what is wrong with the process you are going through. Part of that job is to do everything necessary to have Articles of Impeachment that are compelling and complete. The House has time available to it to consider impeachment as they go about their essential work. They can continue to do the work of the Congress. They have weeks, months, if they choose to have, even maybe years to put a case together. They can call witnesses. They can go to court to seek testimony. They can determine if this is an impeachment question or just an oversight question. The House can do lots of things, but once the Senate gets the Articles of Presidential Impeachment, they become for the Senate an absolute priority. Both our rules and reality mean we cannot do anything else, realistically, until we are done dealing with the case the House sent over. That was fundamentally what was so wrong with the House sending over a case that they said needed more work. If it needed more work, it should have had more work. You can be for strong review of the executive. You can be for strong congressional oversight and still support the idea of executive privilege. The President has the right to unfettered advice and to know all the options. In fact, I think when you pierce that right, you begin to have advisers who may not want to give all the options to the President because it might appear they were for all the options. But the President's advisers need to see that the President understands all the options and implications of a decision. The President, by the way--another topic that came up here several times--the President determines executive policy. The staff, the assistants, and whoever else works in the executive branch doesn't determine executive policy; the President determines executive policy. The staff can put all the notes in front of the President they want to, but it is the President's decision what the policy of the administration will be. Sharing that decision with the Congress, sharing how he got to that point--or later, she got to that point--with that decision is a negotiated balance. Congress says: We want to know this. The President says: No. I need to have some ability for people to give me advice that isn't all available for the Congress. So this is balanced out, and if that can't happen, if that balance can't be achieved, the judiciary decides what the balance is. The judiciary decides a question and says: You really must talk to the Congress about this, but you don't have to talk to them about the next sentence you said at that same meeting. That is the kind of balance that occurs. The idea repeatedly advanced by the House managers that the Senate, by majority vote, can decide these questions is both outrageous and dangerous. The idea that the government would balance itself is, frankly, the miracle of the Constitution. Nobody had ever proposed, until Philadelphia in 1787, one, that the basis for government was the people themselves, and two, you could have a government that was so finely balanced that it would operate and maintain itself over time. The House managers would really upend that balance. By being unwilling to take the time the House had to pursue the constitutional solution, they decided: We don't have to worry about the Constitution to have that solution. To charge that the President's assertion of article II rights that go back to Washington is one of the actual Articles of Impeachment--that is dangerous. The legislative branch cannot also be the judicial branch. The legislative branch can't also decide ``here is the balance'' if the executive and legislative branch are in a fight about what should be disclosed and what shouldn't. You can't continue to have the three balances of power in our government if one of the branches can decide what the legislative branch should decide. In their haste to put this case together, the House sent the Senate the two weakest Articles of Impeachment possible. Presidents since Washington have been accused by some Members of Congress of abuse of power. Presidents since Washington have been accused by some Members of Congress of failure to cooperate with the Congress. The House managers argued against their own case. They repeatedly contended that they had made their case completely, they had made their case totally, they had made their case incontrovertibly, but they wanted us to call witnesses they had chosen not to call. They said they had already been in court 9 months to get the President's former White House Counsel to testify and weren't done yet, but somehow they thought the Senate could get that person and others in a matter of days. These arguments have been and should have been rejected by the Senate. Today, the Articles of Impeachment should be and will be rejected by the Senate. Based on the Speaker's March comments, these articles should have never been sent to the Senate. They were not compelling, they were not overwhelming, they were not bipartisan, and most importantly, they were not necessary. One of the lessons we send today is to this House and to future Houses of Representatives: Do your job. Take it seriously. Don't make it political. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chief Justice.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk on behalf of myself, Senators Hawley, Wicker, and Capito.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk on behalf of myself, Senators McCaskill--McSally, rather--Lankford--it was a terrifying moment--on behalf of myself, Senator McSally, Senator Lankford, Senator Gardner, Senator Capito, and Senator Wicker. This is a question for the President's counsel.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, today I stand to recognize the 150th anniversary of Missouri University of Science and Technology. Part of the University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T was founded in 1870 in Rolla, MO, as one of the first technological institutions west of the Mississippi and continues to be one of the top technological research institutions in the nation. Originally established as the University of Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, Missouri S&T has grown from its original mining focus to offer 99 degree programs, while maintaining its leadership in engineering and the sciences. In fact, Missouri S&T is consistently ranked as one of the top engineering schools in the nation. Missouri S&T was chartered on February 24, 1870, and classes were first called to order on November 6, 1871. Since that time, more than 60,000 men and women have gone on to carry their status as ``miners'' into successful endeavors all over the world. Missouri S&T alumni consistently achieve some of the highest average starting salaries in the Midwest, and the university is ranked sixth in the Nation for annual return on investment. The campus boasts a Center for Infrastructure Engineering Systems, a Materials Research Center, a Center for Biomedical Research, and several other centers generating world-class discoveries. Faculty, staff, and students produce research on everything from bioactive glass and bioactive ceramic scaffolds for regenerating bone to advancing treatments for traumatic brain injury. Partnerships with hospitals, the U.S. Army, and local businesses that are industry leaders have strengthened and grown already successful programs and put Missouri S&T at the forefront of solving difficult problems. The commitment of Missouri University of Science and Technology to educate young men and women and push for solutions to some of our most difficult problems is to be commended. I extend my sincere thanks for everything the faculty, staff, and administrators have accomplished over the last 150 years. Congratulations to Chancellor Mohammad Dehghani and all Missouri S&T faculty, staff, students, and alumni on this important occasion.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, was killed by U.S. forces last week. That has already been well discussed and well understood. The failing regime in Iran has done everything it could, between his death and right now, to make the most of it, to make him a martyr to the cause of terrorism. I think we should all understand that the cause of terrorism was his cause. He is not a general in any traditional sense of what that would mean. He has been described a number of different ways. He has been referred to as Iran's top general. Don't think for a minute that means anything like almost any other country's top general. One newspaper called him Iran's ``most revered military leader.'' That might be true, but remember Iran's purpose as a State is to encourage terrorism all over the world. I heard one news broadcast where he was referred to as ``an irreplaceable figurehead,'' though they went on to explain that he was a significant person. There apparently are no editors anymore because the term ``figurehead'' doesn't mean what they were suggesting. If they meant he was an irreplaceable figure, I hope that he is. I think he is hard to replace, and I hope he is hard to replace. I would like to think that in many ways he will not be able to be replaced, but that doesn't mean he deserves our sympathy, respect, or our grief. He was, in fact, a bad person. He spent his career largely outside the boundaries of what any civilized nation would consider a military context. He led Iran's terrorism agenda around the world. Iran funded and provided weapons to the Shia militias in Iraq. They provided arms depots and military forces to the Assad regime in Syria. They supported Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. They provided advanced weapons to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Hundreds of U.S. military personnel in Iraq were either killed or injured by the IED attacks encouraged and funded by Iran in Iraq. That is what the Soleimani agenda was all about. Over this past year, Iran has continued its campaign of aggression against the United States and our allies. In almost every report of these activities, Soleimani was one of the persons mentioned as, again, structuring, masterminding, encouraging, or taking credit for these things as they happened in some cases and denying responsibility in others for activities for which he and Iran were responsible. Last June, Iran shot down a U.S. intelligence drone flying in international space. In July, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps captured a British-flagged commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran was behind the attack on Saudi oilfields last September using drones and cruise missiles. Iran was been behind an earlier attack on a Saudi airport used by civilians. The Quds Force also launched a crackdown on Iranian citizens who protested oil prices and are vigorously seeking out others who are complaining about the failing economy in Iran's failing system. Someone has already been named to replace Soleimani as the head of the Quds Force, but hopefully no one really can fully replace him. I am not at all sympathetic to the idea that this action to eliminate this individual somehow came out of the blue. I think the President has been presented multiple times with this option as one of the things we could do if we wanted to send the clearest possible message to Iran. The President was criticized last year because when going down the list of things I mentioned, he was hesitant to act--until last week. The same exact critics in many cases decided, after a year of thinking what would be the best response, that when the President did act it was suddenly a hasty action. They went from calling his actions hesitant to calling this hasty, looking for a way to criticize the President. The President took this action after an American contractor was killed by forces associated with Iran and Soleimani, after the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was attacked and weapons were used to get into the building. There have even been some suggestions that we shouldn't have done this because we should be afraid of how Iran will react. We do have to be thinking about how Iran would react. We need to be thinking about what their next aggressive act might be. It would not be their first aggressive act, and I have already gone down a pretty long list that others can expand upon of the aggressive acts Iran has done up until the last few days. We do have to be thinking about what is an appropriate response, but maybe it is now time for Iran to be thinking about what our next response may be to their next aggression. The aggressive list is long, the response that the U.S. Government took was significant, but we can't fail to act decisively just because it might upset our terrorist enemies. We can't fail to act decisively just because it might upset the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, Iraq. Soleimani was not a high-ranking military official in any acceptable military structure. If your idea of a leading general is a general who leads in terrorist efforts, I think you have the wrong idea of what a military leader is supposed to do. Soleimani was not a high-ranking government official in any job that a responsible government would have. Soleimani was the mastermind of terrorist activities of the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the world today. Soleimani has been eliminated and hopefully will be impossible to fully replace. I would say, in response to that decision, good job to the U.S. forces that executed the strike, and good job, Mr. President, in being willing to make the call. A bad person and a determined enemy of freedom and democracy in the United States of America has been eliminated. It is time for the Iranians to be thinking about what our next action might be instead of quietly and vigorously planning on what their next action might be. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I am glad to finally be here today, talking about the final conclusions we have reached on the appropriations bill generally but, specifically, the Labor and Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill. We are now a bipartisan Congress, with Democrats in control on one side, Republicans on another. On this side, of course, we always have to have 60 people to go forward on these bills. We generally have had to have a bill here that would appeal to enough Democrats or enough Republicans to make this happen, but we have come to the conclusion of what is normally the hardest bill to negotiate. It is about 30 percent of all the spending after you take defense off the table. Defense is half of the discretionary spending; then you have 11 other bills that have the other half of that spending. This bill has 30 percent of that half. It has lots of things that you could argue about and, frankly, lots of things that you would just say ``If we can't all be happy about this, we won't move forward,'' which would mean you wouldn't move forward. This is a bill where Senator Murray and I and Congressman Cole and Chairman DeLauro on the other side had to decide if we were going to have a bill or not, and we decided we were going to have a bill. We decided at the end of the process, with some help from others, that we wouldn't have things in the bill that hadn't traditionally been there. This is the place where much of the language that we debate in the appropriations bills occurs--what can happen and what can't happen. Things like the Hyde amendment have been in the appropriations bill for a long time, and it is in this one. Other things that have not been there in the past are not there, and that was one of the things that allowed us to move forward. Again, we had one body controlled by a different party, and we had to come to a bipartisan consensus, and I think we have. There were lots and lots of competing programs, some of which we are all for, but maybe our priorities are different. In fact, it could be that we just have more priorities on one side than on the other. But these programs range from workforce training to early childhood education to infectious disease control. That is a pretty big span of things to try to come to a conclusion on. Then, from our colleagues, we had 7,800 different requests--not necessarily requests that would be considered ``I want you to spend this money in my State'' but 7,800 requests that said ``We think this program should be increased'' or ``This program should be decreased.'' So with all of those requests and that broad span, we came together with a bill that I am going to vote for tomorrow and look forward to voting for tomorrow. It is not exactly the bill I would have done if I had been doing it by myself, but by the very definition of both democracy and the Congress, you don't get to do these by yourself. The bill, which will reflect the priorities of both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol, invests in those priorities. We expand medical research--something that has been one of the things at the top of my list as the chairman of this committee. This is a moment when medical research is so critical, when we know so much more than we did about the human genome, so much more than we knew about immunotherapy just 5 or 6 years ago. This is a topic that wasn't on the radar screen of treatments. Now, for many cancers, it is one of the first things you think about: Does it work if we get this person's body focused in a way that it fights back this cancer that is trying to overcome it? Often, that produces a great result now that wouldn't have been happening 5 or 6 years ago. The opioid epidemic is one that we deal with in this bill. Investing in high-quality early childhood care and early childhood education and education generally are in this bill--trying to make college more affordable with things like Pell grants that not only work for people who don't have the income to do this without some help, our government has decided, but also now work year round for about the third year, when, once you get started, you can keep on going if you have a pattern that is working. We spent a lot of time in the last year talking about what to do in this growing economy, where more jobs are available than people looking for work. What do we do to better match the people looking for work with the jobs available? More importantly, how can we anticipate that that will happen in the future? For the fifth straight year, after 12 years of no increase, the National Institutes of Health in this bill will get a significant increase, an additional $2.6 billion, which increases them in the last 5 years over 40 percent--again, at a time when this investment can mean so much to so many people. We specifically targeted the investment toward Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's and dementia are the things that taxpayers pay the most on in order to help, and taxpayers don't pay nearly all of the costs that families have with Alzheimer's and dementia. The President's Childhood Cancer Data Initiative is here. Precision medicine, combating foreign threats to research, addressing the facilities backlog on the campuses, all of those are here. Our investments in NIH are making a difference for families and making a difference, we hope, for the future. That NIH-based research has helped raise life expectancy. It has vastly improved the quality of life for many Americans. It has lowered healthcare costs. It has very dramatically decided, in some healthcare situations, either how invasive you need to be or how much pain has to be involved in getting you headed in another direction but also, by the way, on the opioid front, understanding that the complete elimination of pain is not necessarily a good thing unless you are sure you are going to be able to deal with that pain medicine and that moment later. The bill fully funds the President's request to do everything we can in the next 10 years to eliminate the HIV epidemic. It would have been hard to imagine 5 years ago or 10 years ago saying that we would be in sight of a vaccine and eliminating HIV as an epidemic problem in our country. We spend money on that, but we have fully funded what the President and others believe would be necessary to achieve that goal. We spend $20 billion a year right now on direct health expenditures on HIV prevention and care. Our goal in the next 10 years will be to reduce the number of new infections of HIV by at least 90 percent every year. Third, this bill, the fiscal year 2020 bill, continues our commitment to the opioid epidemic, providing money to do that, providing money for prevention, for education, for research, and for treatment, as well as recovery programs. In this bill we put new flexibility in for the opioid epidemic to where those things you may go to after you have become addicted to opioids, like meth, can also qualify for the kinds of help that people need if they are trying to escape their addiction to pain medications or other things that they have become critically linked to. This bill includes new and substantially expanded investments in Head Start, in high-quality early childhood care; programs that provide more flexibility to school districts to use the limited resources they have, whether that is title I, if you are a school person and know what that means, or title II, supporting effective instruction State grants; IDEA, the ability to help people with disability education issues; Impact Aid in communities that have significant Federal investments in military bases or a national forest or things like that. These are all things we deal with in this bill. We also target STEM education, including the focus on computer science. We are also trying to bring focus for young people to make them more quickly understand what the options are out there. Clearly, the college path that has been so pervasive in the last two decades isn't the right path for everybody. And even if it is the right path for everybody, if it doesn't hurt to go to college--I am the first person in my family to graduate from college. If it doesn't hurt to go to college, it might not necessarily get you a job unless you know what job it is you are thinking about as you put your college life together. Even that might not give you the job that you really would like to do. So part of what we are trying to do here is to connect people earlier with the opportunity to do that. If they do go to college, we are increasing Pell grants for the third year in a row by about 2.5 percent. We are increasing programs--the so-called TRIO Programs--for people who haven't had members of their family go to college before, to help them get ready for college, get them thinking about what they need to do to be the first person in their family to go to college, to help them figure out how to stay in college, because nobody in their family can give them the exact advice they might need on how to stay in college, and how they can get prepared to get a job out of college and avoid the kinds of loans they cannot afford to pay back. There is something I call lost equity. I have talked to so many people in the last 2 years who are about 28 years old, and over and over again, the story was so similar. They went to college for a year or a semester and then held a series of jobs that were not too hard to get but didn't lead anywhere. They were landscapers or Uber drivers or bartenders or whatever else, with no sense that that was a career and not the underpinnings they would like to have. Then finally, in their midtwenties, somebody tells them or they figure out on your own that they have to have something that can support them the way they would like to be supported and help them with a family, might have retirement and certainly has benefits. We are trying to do what we can to be sure that focus comes earlier as they begin to think about what they like to do and what they find fulfilling. Let's talk about the jobs that are out there, whether it is STEM education or health services. Let's talk about the difference between a nurse practitioner and being a doctor. Let's talk about the difference between being a doctor and a specialist. Let's talk about where the job opportunities are in physical therapy, occupational therapy, or health tech. All of those things are a way to a great career if you know what you are doing. If you missed that launching point, if you missed those 10 years, that lost decade, it is pretty hard to ever catch up to your schoolmates who understood what they wanted to do and maybe had no more resources or capacity than you, but they had an extra 10 years on you in preparing for the career they would like to have and the work they would like to do and where that might lead them. The President really has been focusing on apprenticeship programs. An apprenticeship is a good way to learn firsthand and see firsthand what you want to do, whether it is an apprenticeship program or community college or traditional college or skills you learn in the military that you should be able to immediately transfer into a private sector, nonmilitary opportunity. We need to spend some time and some money on that, and this bill does. The bill continues to try to do what we can to be looking carefully at reducing fraud, reducing waste, and seeing that tax dollars are being spent properly, and a lot of them are spent right here in this bill. We prioritize programs that really will provide benefit to, we hope, large groups in our country. The bill reflects compromises on both sides. The people of this country send 100 different people to the Senate and 435 different people to the House to vote and to make decisions that reach conclusions. This bill does that. All 12 of these bills we will vote on sometime in the next 3 days do that. They allow us to defend the country and to meet the obligations that people have asked the government to look at for them and hopefully do that in a way that produces real results. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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, on Monday I spoke at the annual meeting of the Missouri Farm Bureau, and, in our State, as in, frankly, almost every other State, the No. 1 economic activity in terms of value produced is agriculture. Where we live in the middle of the country, we do better in an economy that focuses on growing things and making things than we do on an economy that focuses more on giving advice--not that we don't want to give a lot of advice, but the truth is we don't want to get a lot of advice, either. So there is nothing wrong with a service-based economy, and there is nothing wrong with an important service sector in our economy, but America, in so many ways, was built on a productive economy, on an economy that produced something and something tangible. I think we have a chance to see those things happen again. Where we are located, almost exactly in the middle of the country, the Mississippi River Valley is the biggest piece of contiguous agricultural land in the world. Compared to the near competitors in size, it is the only one of them that has its own built-in, natural transportation center. In fact, there are more miles of navigable river in the Mississippi River Valley than in the rest of the world put together. I didn't say more river than the rest of the world put together because that wouldn't be true, but more miles of river that you can actually navigate--river you can use as an avenue of transportation and commerce than everywhere else in the world put together. For an economy that is trying to reach out to the world or trying to efficiently compete, that is a big advantage. So at the Farm Bureau meeting, at least three of the things the people I talked to were most interested in were regulation, transportation, and trade. When it comes to regulation, Missouri farm families understand that many of the best things that have happened to them in the past 3 years have been the things that didn't happen. There was a terrible regulation proposed--waters of the U.S.--in which the EPA was trying to decide that their authority over navigable water would be authority over all the water. Suddenly, navigable water had become, under the Obama EPA, any water that could run into any water that could run into any water that could run into any water that eventually would run into navigable water. If that is how we want to define it, the Congress should decide that, not the EPA. I stood on this floor many times during that terrifying time when the EPA was about to take over anything that related to water, from the new sidewalk in front of your house to whether you pave your driveway to whether you could set a utility pole without EPA approval. With the Farm Bureau map of Missouri, I think 99.7 percent of our State would have met the new EPA definition of the water the EPA would regulate. The other 0.3 percent, I think, were sinkholes that went directly back into the middle of the Earth. So virtually 100 percent of all Missourians would have been affected by that. It would have slowed the economy in an incredible way because the EPA could never have exercised effectively the jurisdiction they were asking for. The good news is, it didn't happen. The Trump administration moved forward with a Clean Water Act that made more sense. They listened to rural America. They listened to the people who build houses, to the people who provide power, and to the people who provide jobs, and they said: We are not going to go in that direction. Then there was the Obama Clean Power Plan, which sounds like a good thing. Clean power--I am not opposed to that, and I don't know anybody who is. We want power to be as clean as you can reasonably expect it to be. But the Obama Clean Power Plan was so aggressive in its approach that where I live, the average utility bill at home and at work would have doubled in about 10 years. Well, lots of things work at today's utility rate--or some gradual increase of today's utility rate--that just frankly wouldn't work if the utility bill doubled. That didn't happen either. In fact, we reversed course, and there is now an affordable clean energy rule making its way into law and regulation that really understands that. Again, if you at home write your utility check and then write it out of your checkbook again, a lot of things that you would do at your house you wouldn't be able to do if you had to pay your utility bill twice. Frankly, the job you may have may not be there if you had to pay your utility bill twice. Also, when thinking about making something in America today--and I think there is a lot of interest in bringing manufacturing that has gone overseas back to this country for lots of reasons, but when you think about making something in America today, the first question you would ask yourself would be this: Can we do what we want to do and pay the utility bill? The second question would be this: Does the transportation work for what we want to do? If the answer to either of those questions is no, then there is no reason to ask a third question. There is no reason to talk about workforce. There is no reason to talk about tax structure in the place you are thinking about locating. There is no reason to ask any other question if you can't do what you want to do, pay the utility bill, and still have some profit. There is no reason to talk about--if you can't do what you want to do--having a transportation system that allows you to do what you want to do. Those things are critically important, and they were critically important at the Farm Bureau meeting. They certainly understood it takes good highways, good State roads, and it takes a strong understanding of connecting highways, roads, railroads, and water together that will allow you to compete. The last continuing resolution on this issue that we passed just a few weeks ago actually funded the fifth year of the highway bill that was passed 4 years ago. It provided for 5 years of authority but only 4 years of money. That $7.6 billion allows the transportation systems in our States and many things in our communities to happen. It allows county bridges to be built. Missouri would lose $350 million in Federal highway funds if we hadn't figured out how to fund that fifth year, which we did figure out just a few days ago. Knowing that is going to happen allows people to begin to look forward to other things.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Leighton Grant, who is the military fellow in our office and has been this last year, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the Congress.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, a lot of things have been said today, and some things will be repeated, but as I sit here, it occurs to me that the mark of a truly great legislator and a great friend is how many people have an individual story about Johnny Isakson. That helpful word at a right time, the ability to come in and solve a problem and get a piece of legislation passed or to get over a particular bump in a piece of legislation--those are the kinds of things that define a great legislator. All of us have our own personal stories about Johnny Isakson. My first memory of Johnny Isakson is long before I met him personally. In 1992, I was hiring a new pollster who also happened to be Johnny Isakson's pollster. After I hired that pollster, Linda Duvall, she brought in somebody she likes to work with in campaigns. I was looking at some campaign commercials they put together, and there was Johnny Isakson playing basketball with a bunch of seventh grade boys. If you can play basketball with seventh grade boys, you can do almost anything. I am going to come back to the seventh grade boys in a minute. Linda called me a few days later and said: We have been trying to figure out which of our clients you remind us of. She said: We have decided you remind us of Johnny Isakson. So in 1999, 2 years after I got to the House, when Johnny Isakson ran for the House, I was eager to meet this guy whom Linda said I reminded her of. It didn't take me very long to find out that Linda had misjudged either me or Johnny and that Johnny set a different standard than the standard most of us are able to set, but it also encouraged me to want to spend more time with him. When he got there, I had been there 2 years. I was the chief deputy whip, and our 20 years of close friendship began then. Then I became the whip, and I asked Johnny to become one of the deputy whips. Johnny had the worst whip card in the House. All the people he whipped were not the worse people to whip, but he definitely had more than his share of the hardest people to whip. Whoever was the most impatient with everybody else somehow couldn't resist becoming patient with Johnny. Beyond that, Johnny somehow was always able to take the time needed. I said that Johnny was one of the three whips we had in the House who could take however much time it took to explain an issue to whomever he was explaining it to, in whatever level of information they needed to hear it in. He could be very simple and basic in his explanation if that is all that was necessary, and he could be incredibly detailed if he had that unique Member who wanted to know everything before they made up their mind. But he was always ready to do what had to be done. Back to the seventh grade boys. If you could teach a Sunday school class for 30 years that has one group of seventh grade boys after another going through that Sunday school class, you are truly ready to have the patience to be in the U.S. Congress, to be a Member of the House, and then to be a Member of the Senate and to let that become part of your extended family. Johnny has such a great family who is his own family. He and Dianne have a great partnership. Dianne leads in community projects. When there is a First Lady's lunch, Dianne always does the artwork for the First Lady's lunch. One of things you benefit from on occasion in the Congress is the ability to travel together. That has been mentioned here, some of the travels that Johnny has headed--the D-Day operations and other things. Not long after Johnny came to Congress, he, Dianne, and I had a chance to travel together. You could just tell their enjoyment in each other and their enjoyment in the people they were getting to know better. Johnny's work at the VA is incredible--the VA MISSION Act, the determination that veterans would have more choices in where they get their healthcare, realizing that young veterans didn't always look at healthcare decisions the same way older veterans did, realizing that people wanted more choices than they had before, realizing that we could make that happen, and also realizing there was a standard of care that we could insist on. Johnny passed the legislation that allowed us to do that. His advocacy for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta--we have our annual discussion. I chair that committee now, and we have our annual, very subtle but, for me, almost irresistible discussion-- somehow the Centers for Disease Control doesn't quite yet have everything they need, and we can do better. Then there is the Ethics Committee. When Johnny announced he was going to retire, I happened to be speaking to our conference at lunch that day, to the Republicans in the Senate, and I said: The bad news is that Johnny is leaving. The really bad news is that someone else has to be the chairman of the Ethics Committee. If there is a job in the Senate that you don't want, it is the Ethics Committee job. If there is a job in the Senate that you need to have exactly the right person in, it is the Ethics Committee job. Somebody has to be chairman. In one of my favorite books, ``To Kill A Mockingbird,'' the neighbor across the street, Miss Maude, is explaining to Scout why her father is having to do what her father is doing. I think the best I can remember that quote is that she says someone has to do the jobs that have to be done and that nobody wants to do. Johnny Isakson has always been willing to do the jobs that have to be done, and he does them in a way that you wonder why everybody doesn't want to do them because he makes them look like they are a lot easier than they are. We will miss you here, Johnny, but we are not going to miss your continued friendship. We all are already planning on how we can come up with a reason to go to Atlanta. For me, it is to check in on the CDC. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your friendship.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, first of all, let me say that I totally agree with my friend from Montana on the importance of, after a year of deliberation--or maybe ``deliberation'' is too strong a word--more than a year since all three countries agreed on an agreement, that we still have not gotten a chance to vote on this agreement on the Senate floor; we have to wait for the House to do that. I want to do everything that I can to encourage the House to move forward with this. I think better trade policy can turn a good economy into a great economy, and we need to be working on that great economy.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, on that topic, of course, all Members of the Senate have said they are preserving the coverage of preexisting conditions. It is sort of like the same speech our friend from Connecticut said he was tired of hearing about supporting the troops when you don't do everything you can to pass the Defense bill. It is at least as old as that--maybe older--and often as tiring.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, first of all, I want to say how much I appreciate Senator Ernst. When she talks about veterans, she talks about her own experience but also the veterans she has served with and sees every day. This goes to the heart of her great dedication to the people who are currently serving. Veterans Day is a day that we come to celebrate every year. It is a national holiday, but in so many ways, it is uniquely a local holiday. Events across Missouri and across all of our States are dramatically different based on where you are and the way that community, over time or maybe on a special occasion, has decided this is going to be the way they are uniquely going to celebrate Veterans Day. These ceremonies often include gestures of respect that are repeated over and over again, and that is exactly what you should do with respect. Respect doesn't wear out. We lay wreaths. We play music. We pledge to the flag, I think in many unique ways on Veterans Day, as we think about those who have been willing to defend that flag at all costs. There may be a 21-gun salute. There may be a parade. There are lots of different ways we celebrate, and every community honors its own neighbors in a different way. If you grew up in that community and you look at the wall with the community members' names or you look at the register at the courthouse with the names of those who gave their lives in one of our wars, you recognize those names. They are the last names of the people you went to school with. They are the last names of the people you grew up alongside of. They are often the names of families who still live in that community. I was thinking about this, and I thought about a name that was given to one of my good friends. His middle name was after his uncle who had died in World War II, and he didn't particularly like his middle name. One day, he said to my dad: ``I hate that name. I don't like my middle name. I wish it wasn't my middle name.'' What he didn't know was that my dad was on his uncle's basketball team. My dad quickly pointed that out. He said: ``Your uncle was one of the finest young men I ever knew, and he never got to be an older man because he gave his life in World War II.'' When my friend was born 15 years later, his family wanted to remember the name of that person who served and made the ultimate sacrifice. Those are the kinds of things we think about in communities on Veterans Day. I will be going to several events--one at Camdenton High School in Camdenton, MO. They will be recognizing 32 veterans at that event. They will also be recognizing the new Junior ROTC Program at the high school. When talking about local character, that is sort of what we are talking about. In Camdenton, they are honoring not only those who served and sacrificed previously but also a new generation that is stepping up and willing to serve among those being recognized on Veterans Day. I am going to go to a ceremony in Wright County, which is just a little bit down the road, just an hour and 15 minutes away from Camdenton. In that ceremony, they are dedicating a new Wright County Patriots Memorial in Hartville. The memorial honors people from the area who served and died in every conflict from the Civil War to the War on Terror. The organizers have made it clear that this is a day of celebration and honor, not of sorrow. It is a day to celebrate those who served. Some got their names on the wall. Others didn't give their lives in conflict but were willing to put on the uniform and go through the training and in many cases into dangerous situations. Maybe they didn't have to make the ultimate sacrifice, but on Veterans Day, we recognize veterans who were willing to serve. That is exactly what Veterans Day should be. This will be the 100th anniversary of the first Veterans Day, which was originally called Armistice Day. It was Armistice Day because it commemorated the end of World War I. World War I was called The Great War, and it was called The War to End All Wars. That is not what happened, but that is what people thought, in the hours after World War I, might have happened. It was so horrible, so terrible, and so many lives were lost that they thought it might be the war to end all wars. It ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 100 years ago. The United States lost 116,000 people in the relatively short time we were in that war. We got in the war late. We made a difference in the war, but 116,000 people were lost in that period of time, in that truly grueling battle in World War I. Another 200,000 U.S. troops were wounded in that war. The first Veterans Day 1 year later was not about what was lost; it was a celebration of what was won. It began with the end of the war. It reaffirmed a commitment to democracy. On that first holiday 100 years ago, President Wilson said that ``the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for victory.'' We remember the heroism of those who were lost and all who were willing to serve, and, as on that first anniversary of the end of World War I, we remember the victory that was achieved. We use this occasion to honor and remember our veterans with pride and gratitude. I am glad we are continuing to build new memorials, like the one in Wright County. I am glad we continue to honor people who are willing to serve, like the recognition of the new JROTC Program at Camdenton High School. A lot of things have changed in the 100 years since the end of World War I, but the point is, Veterans Day hasn't changed. This is not something Americans used to do; this is something we continue to do, and, as Senator Ernst said so well, it is something we need to do every day. Veterans Day is a special day of recognition, but we need to ensure that veterans have what they need while they are serving, and once they become veterans, we need to make sure they have everything they were promised and then some, including every access to healthcare that they were promised. I think we have successfully expanded not only the kind of healthcare people can get but also the way they can get their healthcare, respect and appreciation, remembrance of what they did and how that might have led to a behavioral health challenge or a health challenge of some other kind, and a country willing to step up for those who were willing to step up for us. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

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

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Portman for his comments about what we have tried to do to provide the money, but let me tell you, having been involved in that part of it, really, before we began to pass legislation, nobody was more vigorously active than Senator Portman to try to continue to point out the size of this problem and that something had to be done. He was out there talking about how big a problem this was for the country before other people were. Thanks to Senator Ernst for bringing this group together today to talk about this critical issue as we figure out better ways to deal with this terrible scourge of addiction and activity that preys on people who have become addicted. More than 47,000 lives were lost due to opioids in the United States in 2017--47,000 people. More people died of opioid overdoses than died in car accidents. The No. 1 cause of accidental deaths changed dramatically in the last handful of years. For everybody who died, there were hundreds of others who were risking their lives by misusing prescription drugs or illegal drugs or, even worse, illegal drugs that they had no idea what was in them. The fentanyl challenge is so big and so dangerous. It seems to me it would be a pretty poor business model to try to have a drug so powerful, a product so powerful, that there is a good chance the person you are selling it to will never be a customer again because they are going to die from taking this drug, often knowing it is an incredibly dangerous moment to try to get on a drug-induced high that defies anything that has happened to them before. Of course, once you cross that line, there is no other line to cross because you are no longer a customer. Your life is gone. Your dependency on these drugs, no matter how it began, whether it was a high school cheerleading accident or a car accident or a running accident or a dental appointment--all kinds of ways--and in past decades, people believed prescribing these opioids had no danger of addiction and, boy, did we find out that was wrong. Now, 3.4 percent of our entire gross domestic product--almost $700 billion--was impacted and lost by the ongoing opioid crisis in 2018. Every State has a problem. Our State, Missouri, has a problem. We have seen a steady increase in synthetic opioid use over the last several years. This seemed to be moving from east to west, and I was hoping that by the time it got to us we would have more information, more thinking about it. I think that actually may have happened, but it is still bad. We had a 40-percent increase in fentanyl-related overdoses from 2016 to 2017. Health and Human Services Secretary Azar and I were in Kansas City together at the Truman Medical Center to talk about this epidemic-- Truman Medical, the No. 1 provider of uncompensated care in our State. We went to the neonatal area and saw babies who had neonatal abstinence syndrome, which is affecting a number newborns now, and looked at how they were dealing with newborns who were born addicted. Truman doctors and leaders there, as well as leaders in other area health centers in Kansas City, talked to us about how they were dealing with this. We have learned, even in the context of one urban area, that there is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all way to deal with this, which is why we have tried to focus our money at the Federal level on giving States the maximum flexibility they could have, within their State and in their State, to come up with what worked in the communities they were trying to work with. We have provided the money. We haven't found every solution yet, but we are on the way, I think, to doing that. We have included flexibility for the States to use in funding for treatment, funding for prevention, funding for recovery from opioids, and other stimulants. In Missouri, Federal funding in the last year has treated 4,000 people who wouldn't have been treated otherwise. Narcan is more and more available at workplaces and other places. There is simply more work to do. We need to continue our focus on targeting resources toward opioid addiction but also toward behavioral health issues. I have said a number of times as we have dealt with this that if you don't have a behavioral health problem before you are addicted, you absolutely will have one after you are addicted. One of the things we have found to be a big advantage in our State is that we had the good fortune to be part of this eight-State pilot program in which, in a number of locations in our State, regarding excellence in mental health, we are treating behavioral health, mental health, as we would treat any other health problem. That means you would treat it as long as it needs to be treated. There is no 14-day limit or 28-day limit. You can be treated just as you would for a kidney problem or another cancer problem or any other problem, as long as you need it. We are finding great success in combining not only the medicated assisted therapy with getting off opioids but also the ability to have that mental health component as long as it needs to be there. We are hoping to continue to work on the facts we have put together to determine what happens when you treat behavioral health issues like all other health issues, to determine other healthcare costs that people have. We are hoping to extend that pilot another 2 years, not to make it a permanent Federal responsibility but to be sure that States and communities in the future will have the level of evidence they need to look at, that there will be enough evidence compiled to show what really happens because everybody understands that treating mental health like all other health is the right thing to do. I think these pilot projects are compiling the evidence to show you that not only is it the right thing to do, but actually it is the financially responsible thing to do as well. Attacking this problem from all levels is critical. We are way beyond where we were 5 years ago. We are not where we need to be yet. States are trying things, sharing things that work and sharing things that don't work and why they didn't work in the communities that tried them. So we are going to continue to move forward with this. I know Senator Capito is going to speak after me. She is also one of the early advocates for doing something about what she saw were significant problems that had developed in her State. I was grateful to have her advice and her driving this discussion in the way she did. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Reserving the right to object, I would like to object. I would like to talk about this bill for a minute. In March, the House passed a bill that would give the Federal Government unprecedented control over elections in this country, despite the fact that, for more than 200 years, we have had a history of State-run elections. That diversity is part of the strength of our system. I objected to the request at that time to pass that bill. S. 949 appears to be almost exactly the same bill. Apparently, the powerful special interests that my friend, Mr. Merkley, talked about are the State governments because that is where we are taking authority from here. We are taking authority from the State governments. The For the People Act is really the For the Federal Government Act. It represents a one-size-fits-all Federal power grab that would take control of election administration away from the States, at the great expense to the American people. It requires all the States to fit into, frankly, what House Democrats saw as a narrow view of what elections should look like and, just as frankly, what House Democrats for 20 years have had in mind that would in every case, in their view, give them an advantage in the election process. The security of our elections comes, in large part, from the very diversity of the way they are set up and the way they are administered. This bill would really undermine that decentralized system. I spent 20 years as an election official, part of it as the chief election authority in what was then the third largest county in our State, and the rest of it was as the secretary of state, the chief election official. I know for a fact that people who conduct these elections are unbelievably focused on a fair process before an election day and on election day. I also know for a fact that the very fact that they can't blame some faraway regulator on their inability to do what needs to be done makes a difference. I have seen that happen at 6 o'clock in the morning. I have seen it happen at 12 midnight as the last precinct comes in. I have seen it happen as people were doing everything they can to be sure that people that are trying to vote are able to vote. I have seen the development of the provisional ballot system that the States all use now if someone for some reason believes they should vote and the records aren't there to allow that. So there are a lot of things that Senator Merkley understands better than I do. I am sure there are a lot of things that Senator Udall understands better than I do. I look forward to the times when I have and will continue to seek advice for them on those issues. I am pretty sure that this is an issue that, at least from the point of view of the strength of the local election system and the State election system, I have reason to have confidence. In fact, former President Obama expressed the same view when he said: ``There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections, in part, because they are so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved.'' He said that late summer, early fall 2016. I think that was true when he said it; I think it is true now. This bill tells States how to run every aspect of their elections. It takes away the authority of the States to determine their own process for voter registration. In fact, it requires online voter registration. If you are trying to focus on election security, online voter registration would not be at the top of that list. It requires automatic voter registration. It requires same-day registration. It requires States to accept voter registrations from people who are not old enough to vote yet. It dictates the criteria that people can be removed from the voter rolls or can't be. It tells the States what kind of election equipment they must use, how their ballots must be counted, how the ballot counts must be audited. It even goes so far as to tell the States as to what kinds of marks must be made on ballot-marking devices and what kind of paper their ballots must be printed on. It tells States they must offer early voting sites. It tells them those early voting sites where they must be and what hours they must operate. The bill doesn't stop at election administration. It tells States how they redistrict, how they establish redistricting commissions, who can be appointed to that commission, how the lines are drawn. This would be a major Federal takeover of a system that would not benefit from that takeover. It also creates a program for public financing for elections, tax dollars to politicians to run elections with. And so, Madam President, I do object to the unanimous consent request, and I think for good reason.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I might just respond by saying that, if States are adopting these things because they think they are a good idea, that is one thing. For Washington, DC, to tell them they have to do it because we think it is a good idea, that is another thing. If my friend from New Mexico is right and States are adopting many of these changes, I guess there would be no particular reason to have the bill. I am pleased that this is a bill that is going to take further study before it is ready to come to the Senate Floor.