Richard Burr

Mr. BURR

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I yield back all time.

Mr. BURR

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I thank Senator Daines and my colleagues who have come to the floor and spoken. It was my intention to come and ask unanimous consent for the Senate to consider a 60-day extension of the Land and Water Conservation Fund in terms of its configuration. I will not be doing that. I think we are making progress toward unanimous consent in the Senate, which is the best way to get things done. So I will refrain from asking for that UC at this time. If we don't act now, this program which has been successful for over 50 years will expire today--tonight at midnight. This program has delivered on its promise to conserve and enhance our natural landscape. LWCF was set up for three reasons; No. 1, to protect areas within our national parks' and national forests' existing boundaries. Let me emphasize that--the existing boundaries. There are some who claim the Land and Water Conservation Fund is only to create new national parks or to expand our current national parks. In many cases we have in- parcels that have been owned by individuals and we have waited for generational change for the opportunity to complete that footprint of our historic treasures. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is that seed money to go in and match it with private dollars to get that in- parcel and buy it from a generation that also believes it should be protected. No. 2, it provides the buffers for national trails and parkways, wildlife refuges and military battlefield parks--and I would also add military bases, such as Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg--I call it the ``Pentagon of the Army''--in Fayetteville, NC, actually received conservation awards for the last several years for how they have treated the buffer zone around active military bases. Everybody is in conservation to some degree. It also was designed to provide matching grants to States and local governments for working forests, State and local parks, as well as recreation projects, what Senator Collins talked about. A lot of my colleagues on the other side of the Capitol have said: We don't want to reauthorize this because it does not do anything. This ought to all go to State and local. Boy, I don't know how to do it any fairer than to let those who are really involved in conservation every day decide where the most valuable leverage of those dollars can go. As you notice, I am tongue-twisted because we always have a tendency here to say Federal dollars. These are not Federal dollars. These are dollars that were designed as royalties of the exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf. They should come to about $900 million a year. But the Land and Water Conservation Fund, when they go through this gauntlet of appropriations in Washington, seems to only get somewhere between $300 and $400 million a year. On a continual basis, they have been cheated from what the American people embraced and said: We want you to have this. Imagine, what they could have done if they had the money. But that gets thrown into the general fund and dissipates. Some have said: You don't need to reauthorize this today. There is $20 billion in the Land and Water Conservation Fund. No, I hate to tell you, America. It is sort of like Social Security. We have used that money for something else. There is an IOU in there, but it has been designated for general funding reasons. So, it is important that we not decouple the funding mechanism, which is the royalty, from the authorized program. Now, some have said: This is a land grab. Let me suggest to my colleagues that this is a land solution. This is actually one of the Federal Government programs that I can honestly say works. LWCF has supported 41,000 projects across the country in its life. In my State alone, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has protected over 900 sites, from the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge to Mount Mitchell State Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Pisgah National Forest. In North Carolina, outdoor recreation contributes $7.5 billion to our State's economy and supports 95,000 jobs. This is not just about conservation. It is about the economy. It is hard for me to say to somebody from the West that the most visited national park in America is the Great Smokies, in Tennessee and North Carolina, where most Americans would think it is out where you are. The most traveled national treasure, the Blue Ridge Parkway, is the entry point to North Carolinas from Virginia. More Americans travel that road than any road in our Federal park system. Now, let me just suggest that Senator Daines is not the only one that has pictures. This is from the Pisgah National Forest, where we have many spectacular sites. But without the LWCF, we would not have protected this piece--an unbelievable environmental component. Now, they get better. This is a recent one--Catawba Falls. It is an LWCF success story. It was acquired in 2010 through LWCF money. It made this fall open to the public. So for my detractors who say LWCF shuts it down, it becomes part of the Federal Government, and nobody can use it, no, LWCF's mission is to open up treasures such as this for the use of the American people. In the case that we put it to States, hopefully States convert that to access for hunters and to recreational use. As to the last one, I don't think Senator Daines has one that looks like this--Chimney Rock. How do you not protect something like this? Chimney Rock is in North Carolina. The site is a good example of a project that will be suspended if LWCF is not renewed. It is probably one of North Carolina's most loved monuments, but expansion of the site will halt eventually if LWCF does not receive support. You see, the Land and Water Conservation Fund is dollar-for-dollar the most effective government program that has ever existed. It is hard for me to believe, with as much support on both sides of the aisle as this fund has, that it would be so difficult to get a unanimous consent request. But I am committed to work with my colleagues who still have reservations for some reasons to try to work through those reservations and then to shorten our differences with our brethren on the House side who might not see this in the same light as I do. But I think when most Americans see a picture like this, they see something to save, something to protect, something that is enjoyed not by Federal bureaucrats but by average folks who travel there over the Blue Ridge Parkway and end up at Chimney Rock, who go on the Blue Ridge Parkway and end up at the Great Smokies. They were not acquired because of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, but they are protected, in many ways, because of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. So I urge my colleagues, let's have a unanimous consent request. Let's pass this and send it to the House, and let's at some point in the not-too-distant future talk about a permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This should not be an exercise that we have every predetermined number of years. It should last as long as the revenue source, which is our ability to explore our natural resources. Those natural resources fund the preservation of these historic and significant landmarks of America. I thank the Senator for his time. I yield the floor.

Mr. BURR

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, we are here today to engage in an honest and open debate about the nuclear agreement that the administration has brokered with Iran. Let me at this point commend Chairman Corker for the way he and his committee have handled a very difficult process that has not been coordinated with the administration, where their consideration was for Congress to be cut out. I think Chairman Corker has done a wonderful job and inserted the Senate of the United States where it should be, as part of this agreement. I am here to tell you that this deal is not based on absolute value, absolute knowledge of Iran's activities or its intentions--including its nuclear ambitions--but it is naively and dangerously based on faith and hope. Our national security should not be based on faith and hope. Our Nation's security is too precious to be based on faith and hope alone--faith that we will detect any Iranian efforts to cheat and hope that the Iranians will not cheat. Secretary of State John Kerry told the American people in June that ``we know what they did,'' ``we have no doubt,'' and ``we have absolute knowledge of the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program.'' Let me say that again: ``We have absolute knowledge of the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program.'' As chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I can tell you we don't have absolute knowledge of anything. Our intelligence is good, but it is not perfect, and it is disingenuous for Secretary Kerry to suggest otherwise. We must accept the self-evident fact that Iran has a horrific record of complying with nonproliferation commitments. When our best tools are faith and hope, we are putting our own national security, as well as our allies', at risk. I respectfully ask my colleagues, as you consider your vote on this agreement, to think about the following questions: Do you know where every potential nuclear facility is located? Do you know the location or activity of every nuclear-related laboratory, whether it is in a military facility or a university campus? Do we know whether Iran intends to purchase sensitive nuclear materials from a rogue nation or whether we will detect the sale or the transfer of that nuclear material? Do we know the intentions of the Supreme Leader or what he and his successor may be thinking in 10 years? Do we know everything about Iran's past culpability, its future intent or ability to conceal illicit, nuclear activities? Have we assumed too much about Iran's willingness to abide by the agreement? Unlike Secretary Kerry, I do not believe that we know everything about Iran's past nuclear efforts. I do not have faith that we know, with any degree of certainty, this regime's intentions, as he suggests. Our intelligence community does amazing things, and I am continually impressed with the dedication, drive, and the capability of its people. Our intelligence community regularly provides our civilian and military leadership insights and assessments on the toughest national security problems, but they never--they never--claim--and I wouldn't believe them if they did--to have absolute knowledge of any issue. Again, intelligence is imperfect. Secretary Kerry told the American people and the Members of this body: No part of this agreement relies on trust. It is all based on thorough and extensive transparency and verification measures. With all due respect, the Secretary is oversimplifying the very complex and difficult world of treaty compliance and verification. The Secretary should come clean and truthfully state that this agreement does not rely on trust; it relies on hope and faith--faith that we will detect any Iranian efforts to cheat and hope that Iran will not cheat. My colleagues should be mindful before casting their votes. Your eyes should be wide open to the uncertainty we as a nation are accepting with this agreement. If the IAEA and our intelligence community are not 100 percent certain and our collective assumptions respect wrong and we get caught unaware or we are surprised, the consequences will be significant. They could be disastrous and we will, without a doubt, regret entering into this agreement. The agreement the administration has negotiated with Iran is based on faith that we know everything about the nuclear program today and hope that the Iranian regime will abide by the terms of this agreement. The administration is displaying misguided faith that Iran will not use the billions of dollars soon to be available to continue its efforts to fund terrorist proxies worldwide. I call my colleagues' attention to recent comments by National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who said: ``we should expect'' that some of the money Iran gets under sanctions relief as a result of the nuclear deal ``would go to the Iranian military and could potentially be used for the kinds of bad behavior that we have seen in the region.'' Again, this deal ignores the facts and instead hopes that it will work out. Iran is the world's central bank of terrorism, and this additional income is not likely to be solely dedicated to streamlining their postal delivery routes in Iran. Secretary Kerry testified in July that ``they [Iran] are committed to certain things that we interpret as terrorism.'' The administration is relying on faith that the IAEA and our intelligence community will be able to detect any trace of nuclear material and any prohibited activity and has hope that the IAEA will continue to have ``access'' to Iranian nuclear sites--``access'' that in some cases is being defined as ``the ability to deliver things to Iranians at the gate of a facility, so they can conduct their own surveillance''--anytime, anywhere to deliver the equipment to the Iranians and ask them to do self-inspections inside the gate. If the IAEA is prevented from gaining the necessary access to declared or suspected facilities in a timely manner, we will be at a significant--significant--disadvantage, and the sanctions pressures we have obtained over years of efforts cannot be remade overnight. Our reliance on the IAEA is now also tied to two side agreements with Iran that Members of this body have not yet been provided. I will remind my colleagues that when the President signed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the law required him to provide to Congress the agreement and ``all related materials and annexes,'' and that has not happened. Yet the administration asked that we have faith that these will not have a material effect on the agreement and our ability to ensure Iranian compliance with its terms. It raises additional questions. Do we have absolute certainty that we know what those agreements include? Do we understand how they may affect Iran's activities, assumptions or willingness to abide by the terms of its agreements with the United States? Do we know without a doubt where every potential nuclear facility is located? The President argued: Although it may take 24 days to finally get access to [a] site . . . high school physics will remind us that that [nuclear materials] leaves a trace. And so we'll know that, in fact, there was a violation of the agreement. I don't have absolute certainty that this is true and question the administration's willingness to give up a requirement for anywhere, anytime access. If Iran isn't hiding anything, why wouldn't they offer that access? Do we trust Iran's claim that they don't have a covert facility? Do we have faith that they do not? Are we hoping that they do not build one? Do we or can we have absolute certainty on this issue? A former IAEA deputy director stated in 2013 that ``if there is no undeclared [nuclear] installation today . . . it will be the first time in 20 years that Iran doesn't have one.'' Ultimately, I believe this deal is built on a foundation that is far more unstable than the administration would have us believe. While I realize that all the parties involved in this deal have been trying to spin the narrative to their benefit, I cannot believe that a deal as tough as the administration would have us believe would be referred to by the Iranian President as a ``legal, political, and technical victory for Iran.'' The administration has chosen to trade all of our economic leverage-- leverage that was working--for a near-term possible delay in Iran's breakout timeline. No doubt we will still have leverage, but it will be limited, perversely, given the President's statements about opponents of this deal to military action, something we have tried to avoid for many years as it relates to Iran. The administration hopes that it will not have to use military action. Can you tell me with absolute certainty what the Supreme Leader's intentions are? Can you tell me what he is thinking or what he will be thinking in 10 years when Iran will have rebuilt its struggling economy and will be nearing the end of what limited restraints may remain on its nuclear research and development activities? Did we just enable a regime based on a false choice that we didn't fully understand? One of the President's chief criticisms, typical of his straw-man approach to debate, has been to suggest that opponents of the deal only want a military action. Oddly enough, it is the President's own agreement with the Iranians that has stripped us of all leverage except military action if the agreement is not adhered to. The strategic decision to engage Iran in the resulting deal cannot be based on absolute certainty of Iran's nuclear programs or its intentions. The agreement is based on questionable assumptions, allows far too much maneuvering by Iran, and naively trusts the regime that has a history of evasive activities and false declarations to the very body, the IAEA, entrusted with enforcing the agreement. Do we know without a doubt what is going on in every laboratory in Iran, whether it is on a military facility or a university campus? I applaud the efforts of our negotiators, our intelligence community, and our diplomats, but I am sorry to say that they were sent on a fool's errand by the President. They were provided a false choice between this agreement and war. The narrative just doesn't add up. I have spent the better part of 15 years as a member of the House or Senate Intelligence Committee. I understand the nature and the nuance of intelligence work, and I know that there are no absolute certainties in this business. This deal is based not on an absolute knowledge of Iran's activities and its intentions, as the administration would have us believe, but as you can see, it is naively based on faith and hope. I, for one, will not vote to enable a regime that supports terrorism, evades international inspections, disregards U.N. Security Council resolutions, and is opposed to the very existence of another nation in the region. The United States has effectively led the international community and enacted sanctions that have restrained the hostile regime, and it now looks as though this administration will undo those years of efforts and enable the same regime by filling its coffers with badly needed resources. I don't know with absolute certainty where this agreement will lead, but I do understand that there are too many unanswered questions to move forward. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing this agreement. I yield the floor.

Mr. BURR

Mr. BURR. I think the answer is there have been millions of Americans whose private data has been breached for numerous reasons. The Senator from Arizona is correct. We have an obligation to do what we can to minimize that loss.

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I want to thank my good friend and vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein. She has been in the trenches working on cyber security legislation longer than I have. Her passion is displayed in the product that has come out. There has been no person more outspoken on privacy than Dianne Feinstein. There is no person who has been more outspoken on the need for us to get this right than Senator Feinstein. Daily, she and I look at some of the most sensitive intelligence information that exists in this country. We are charged as a committee--15 individuals out of a body of 100--to provide the oversight to an intelligence community to make sure they live within the letters of the law or the boundaries set by Executive order. Every day we try to fulfill that job. We are sometimes tasked with producing legislation, and that is why we are here today with the cyber security bill. It has been referred to that we are here because OPM got hacked. No. We are here because the American people's data will be in jeopardy if government does not help to find a way to help minimize the loss. So where is the threat? The threat is to business, it is to government, and it is to individuals. There is no part of America that is left out of this. The legislation we are proposing affects everybody in this country--big and small business, State and Federal governments, and individuals, no matter where they live or how much they are worth. I think it is safe to say today that business and government have both been attacked, they have been penetrated, and data has been lost. In some cases that intent was criminal; in some cases the intent was nation-states. It was towards credit cards on one side or Social Security numbers, and on the other side it was plans for the next military platform or intellectual property that was owned by a company. But we are where we are, and now we have a proposal as to how we minimize. Let me emphasize this. You heard it from the vice chairman. This bill does not prevent cyber attacks. I am not sure that we could craft anything that would do that. What this bill does is for the first time it allows us a pathway to minimizing the amount of data that is lost and for the first time empowering government, once they get the pertinent information, to push out to the rest of business and to individuals and to governments: Here is the type of attack that is happening. Here is the tool they are using. Here is the defensive mechanism you can put on your system that will provide you comfort that they cannot penetrate you and provide the company that has been attacked comfort that it might be able to minimize in real time the amount of data that is lost. So, as the vice chairman said, these are key points on this piece of legislation: It is voluntary. There is no entity in America that is forced to report. It is a purely voluntary system. To have participation in a voluntary system, you have to listen to the folks who are the subjects of these attacks as to what they need to act in real time and to provide pertinent data. It is an information-sharing bill. It is not a surveillance bill. I say to those who have characterized it that way that we have done everything we can to clarify with the managers' amendment that there is no surveillance. The only thing we are after is minimizing the loss of data that exists. Here is how it works. I want to break it into three categories. This bill covers private to private. It says that if I am a private company and my IT system gets hacked and I get penetrated, I can automatically pick up the phone and call the IT people at my competitor's business, and I am protected under antitrust, that we can carry out a conversation so that I can figure out whether they got hacked, and if they did but they did not get penetrated, what software did they have on their system that secured their data. I can immediately go and put that on my system, and I can minimize the loss of any additional data. So we protect for that private-to-private conversation only for the purposes of sharing cyber information. We also have private to government. We allow any company, in real time--at the same time they are talking to a competitor, they can transmit electronically the pertinent data that it takes to do the forensics of what happened. What tool did they use? They can transfer that to government, and they are protected from a liability standpoint for the transfer of that--the vice chairman got into all of this, so I do not want to rehash it--with the correct protections of personal data. The company is required not to send personal data. Any government agency that is the recipient of this data, as they go through it, if they see personal data that is not relevant to the determination of what type of attack, what type of tool, what type of response, then they have to minimize that data so it is not released. In addition, we have government to private, which is the third leg. It amazed me that the government did not have the authority to push out a lot of information. What we do is we empower the government to analyze the attack, to determine the tool that was used, to find the most appropriate defensive software mechanism, and then to say to business broadly: There is an attack that has happened in America. This is the tool they used. This is the defensive mechanism that will protect the data at your company. If you ask me, I think this is what we are here for. This is what the Congress of the United States is supposed to do--facilitate, through minor tweaks, a voluntary participation to close the door and minimize potential loss. That is all we are attempting to do. I want to loop back to where the vice chairman was. We are now at the point where we are asking our colleagues for unanimous consent to come to the floor and actually take up this bill. Moving to the bill allows our colleagues to come to the floor with relevant amendments to the bill, where they can be debated and voted on. I actually believe, Vice Chairman, if we could do that now, we could process this entire bill and all of the amendments that are relevant by this time tomorrow. That would mean we would have to work and we would have to talk and we would have to vote, but we could do it because I think when we look at the array of relevant amendments, they are pretty well defined. Some of them are duplications of others that people have planned to talk about. But to suggest that this is a problem, which it is--we have seen it with over 22 million government workers whose personal data and in some cases, because of the forms they had to fill out for security clearance, their most sensitive data has gotten out of the OPM system. Just because OPM was the last one, don't think that somebody wasn't serious. Don't think that Anthem Blue Cross wasn't serious. Don't think that some of the attacks that only acquired credit card information aren't serious. What we are attempting to do is to minimize the degree of that loss. All we need is the cooperation of every Member of the Senate to say: I am willing to move to the bill. I am willing to bring up amendments-- relevant amendments--willing to debate them and willing to vote on them. Process is where we are. At the end of the day, we can determine whether this is a bill that is worthy to move on. It is not the end of the road because once we get through in the Senate we have to conference the bill with the House of Representatives. As the vice chairman pointed out, they have produced multiple pieces of legislation. It is the Senate that is now holding us back. I urge my colleagues: Let's agree to move to the bill. Let's agree to relevant amendments, and let's process this cyber security bill so that when we come back from August, we can actually sit down with our colleagues in the House, conference a bill, and provide the American people with a little bit of security, knowing that we are going to minimize the amount of data that is lost, because of a voluntary program between the private sector and the government. I think the vice chairman shares my belief that we are not scared to have a debate on relevant amendments on this bill. We understand there are more views than just ours. But we have to get on the bill to be able to offer amendments, to be able to share what we know that might not necessarily support the amendment. Right now, we are sort of frozen because we cannot offer amendments, including the managers' amendment, which I would say to my colleagues-- and the vice chairman said this in a very specific way--if you will read the managers' amendment, a lot of the concerns that people have will vanish. Nobody will call it a surveillance bill because we have addressed the issues that people were concerned with. Although we didn't think they were problems before, we clarified it in a way that it is limited only to cyber security. I could make a tremendous case that through the cyber security forensic process, if we found another criminal act, the American people probably would want that reported-- without a doubt.

Mr. BURR. I am pleased to yield for a question.

Mr. BURR. I thank the Senator for the question, and I think he knows the answer. We should dispose of this. The easiest way, as I shared earlier, is that if we get on this bill and we process amendments, if we really wanted to, we could finish tomorrow. The reality is that it doesn't take a long time to debate amendments, to vote on amendments, and to be done. At the end of the day, every Member would have to make a decision as to whether they are supportive or against the bill. But not getting on the bill, not offering amendments cheats the American people.

Mr. BURR. Well, this is very much a bipartisan bill, and I think it is a bicameral effort. It is not as if this is a limb we are walking out on and the House isn't already out there. Emphatically, I implore my colleagues: Let's get on the bill. Let's come and offer relevant amendments, and let's process those amendments as quickly as we can. I think we can accommodate both, the need to leave for August and to go see the people we are married to and get away from the people we see every day who influence us in numerous ways--I am speaking of the Senator from Arizona right now, and I know he is anxious to go somewhere other than here--and to process this bill, which is to do our work. To not get on the bill, to not offer amendments is to ignore the responsibilities that we have.

Mr. BURR. I thank the Senator from Arizona, who has worked closely with us since the beginning to try to move this bill together. Hopefully, at our lunches today, we will have an opportunity to talk to our Members in the hopes that we can come back from lunch and maybe get started on this bill. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. BURR

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 4, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``A Way Back Home: Preserving Families and Reducing the Need for Foster Care.''

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 4, 2015, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``JCPOA: Non-Proliferations, Inspections, and Nuclear Constraints.''

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 4, 2015, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nominations.''

Mr. BURR. 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 August 4, 2015, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the Bureau of Prisons: First-Hand Accounts of Challenges Facing the Federal Prison System.''

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 4, 2015, at 3 p.m.

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Superfund, Waste Management, and Regulatory Oversight of the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 4, 2015, at 9:30 a.m., in room SD-406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of Litigation at EPA and FWS: Impacts on the U.S. Economy, States, Local Communities and the Environment.''

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 4, 2015, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. BURR

Mr. BURR. Madam President, in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson, when the ESEA was passed, said this: Financial assistance to school districts serving areas with concentrations of children of low income should be the target of it. We have never successfully targeted all of those kids in poverty. Let me say to my colleagues, if your State is in red, your poor students lose under the current formula. Now, we have come to a compromise, and though I don't think it reflects the best policy, compromise is at the heart of this institution. Therefore, with $14 billion worth of appropriations in title I-A today, this new formula would not take place until we have reached $17 billion, meaning for the next years--probably 10 based upon historical numbers--there would be no change in the distribution in any States. But after that point, this body, for once--for the first time in 50 years--would have the money follow kids in poverty, represented by the red States we see on this map. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. It is the right thing to do. I yield the floor.

Mr. BURR

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from South Dakota for highlighting the real benefits of doing away with No Child Left Behind, breaking down the national school board, and saying to States and localities across this country: We ought to put you in charge of K- through-12 education. That is where the responsibility needs to be. That is where we will have decisions closer to students. And I don't think there is disagreement among Members of the Senate or Congress or Republicans or Democrats or people from the North or the South--we want to make sure K-through-12 education works. Every child should get across the goal line to graduation, and every child with a diploma should be marketable either to higher education or to a job with a skill that has a paycheck. I will say that the Federal Government's role is not to micromanage the education system; it is to be a financial partner to K-through-12 education, to be a partner without strings, and to be a partner that provides equity across the board. So I am here to talk about the Full Education Opportunity Act of 2015, which I hope will be an amendment to this bill. Title I-A is the Federal Government's central financial assistance to 21 million poor children in America. They attend school districts with high levels of poverty, and the kids come from low-income families. They define exactly what the Federal Government should be focused on. It has served as the cornerstone of the Federal Government's education funding for K through 12 since elementary and secondary education was first signed into law in 1965. At the bill signing, President Lyndon Johnson said that the assistance provided under ESEA would serve to assist in the ``full educational opportunity'' of low-income students and to provide ``financial assistance to school districts serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families.'' That summed it up in two sentences. That is what the Federal Government's funding source was designed to meet. So what has happened since 1965? Like every other funding formula in the Federal Government, as the population shifted somewhere else in the country, money never seemed to follow it. We had this debate several years ago on HIV-AIDS when we woke up one day and realized how much we were investing in the war against HIV-AIDS to keep people alive and find a cure, and we found towns like Washington that were getting a phenomenal amount of money but their HIV-AIDS population had gone down, and throughout rural America, we had an explosion of HIV-AIDS, primarily in African-American women. We worked and we worked and we worked, and we finally changed the legislation to reflect what the intent was so that the money followed the population it was intended to help. Today, there are individuals across this country in rural America who are now getting the drugs they need to either hold in check the disease or in hopes to slow its progression. Well, I am here today because in 1965 Lyndon Johnson said that is the Federal Government's role--to make sure we target low-income families, kids in poverty. Despite recognizing that these formula funds were not fully targeted at high-poverty areas, Congress has simply taken the easy route and added more formulas to title I-A in hopes that by putting more formulas out there, eventually it would help the people who were affected. Well, what it has done is it has compounded the problem. The inadequacies in how we target poverty today just aren't right. My amendment attempts to end this practice and creates a simple, highly targeted program toward poverty with a new formula. First, what does it do? It is important to make clear that this amendment only addresses title I formulas. It is not the overall funding--that is for appropriators to determine--but it is to structure the formula. I am a strong supporter of title I funding, and I believe, regardless of the amount at which title I is funded, it should be distributed fairly and targeted to its intended population, which is kids in poverty, low-income families. Simply adding more funds still allows the inequities in the formula to persist. That is why I am attempting to fix the formula once and for all. This amendment consolidates all of title I's formulas into one simple formula called equity grants. Let me say this. It simplifies I-A so that the calculation, put very simply, is equity grants equal the State's number of poor children times the national average of educating each child. It ends the policy that awards a wealthy State with title I money simply because they are able to spend more on education and therefore they get a higher allotment as a result. For decades, this has penalized poorer States that spend high shares of their tax revenue on education but don't spend as much in absolute terms as wealthier States. This change ensures that poor children born in a poor State aren't penalized because of their ZIP Code and for not living in a wealthy State elsewhere in the country. Why will equity grants work and where are they targeted? Very simply, this formula takes the number of low-income children in a State, multiplies that by how equitably a State spends its own money on helping low-income children, and then sends the amount to the school district in the State, while placing heavy weights on the school districts that exhibit the highest levels of poverty--embraced in the 1965 initiative of President Johnson. Current law rewards States that spend a much higher amount of money on their students than poorer States that, despite spending large shares of their overall budget on education, cannot compete with wealthier States in absolute dollars. Essentially, as long as you are above the national average in spending, you get a very large title I bonus payment. For example, the national average per-pupil education spending in the country is $11,014. For States such as Pennsylvania, it is $13,864; Massachusetts, $14,515; and Connecticut, $16,631 per pupil. This has been a pretty good deal for them. For States such as Mississippi, it is $8,130; North Carolina, $8,090; and Utah spends $6,555--not so good a deal. Who gets cheated? The kids in poverty, kids from low-income families. Rewarding wealth over poverty is also contrary to the original purpose of title I-A funding. This has a real impact on how much a formula child will receive based upon the State in which he or she lives. For example, a child in Guilford County, NC, is only worth $1,128. A poor child in Albuquerque, NM, is only worth $1,158. A poor child in Seattle is only worth $1,240. On the other hand, a poor child in Philadelphia is worth $1,986. A poor child in New Jersey is worth $1,838. A poor child in Boston, MA, is worth $1,847. This is a highly inequitable and unfair formula to the poor children in most States. Because of the changes in this amendment, these disparities go away. They are almost completely eliminated. Eliminating this provision has been suggested by organizations like the Center for American Progress, the Formula Fairness Campaign, the Rural School and Community Trust, and others. These are not conservative groups. These are very left-of-center groups who said equity is important. No States should get a bonus payment just because they spend more or they are wealthy. The focus since 1965 was supposed to be kids in poverty. If you have more kids in poverty, you should receive a larger Federal share. This amendment also addresses the bonus that very large districts that might have small numbers of poverty have enjoyed. Under the current law, a district must meet a $6,500 formula child threshold to receive concentration grants. This has typically resulted in purely large and not necessarily high-concentration impoverished districts receiving large grant awards. This hurts smaller, mostly rural districts with large percentages of poverty but not necessarily high numbers. To fix this, we impart a 20-percent poverty test within the equity grant for large districts to show that they have a concentration of poverty. Now, this is a novel approach. We have a formula that is targeted to be a Federal partner in money, targeted at kids in poverty, and all of a sudden we are asking them: Show us that you have that population. Under the current law, districts also receive title I-A dollars for merely meeting a small threshold of 10 formula kids or just 2 percent of their overall population being poor. This has meant that schools in Loudoun County, VA--I am sure there are some in here who might have graduated from Loudoun County schools or have kids in Loudoun County schools--have only 3 percent poor children. It is one of the wealthiest counties in America. It receives about a $1 million as part of an overall nearly $1 billion budget. This is about half the entire spending of the State of South Dakota, which the previous speaker is from. Now, should he be cheated because they do not spend as much as Virginia, though he has kids in poverty, low-income families, individuals to whom in 1965 the Congress and the President said: This is who we should target--we the Federal Government on behalf of taxpayers. Well, this hurts smaller, rural districts with large percentages of poverty but not necessarily high numbers. Under current law, it is not going to change. We should do our best to send the money to districts in States that are truly in need by focusing the formula on poverty. Now, sometimes it is easier to see than it is to listen. This is the amendment--the Full Educational Opportunity Act. What do we do? It treats all low-income children the same. I think that is what the Federal Government is supposed to do--to target the poorest communities. That was the spirit of the 1965 law--to prioritize equity, meaning everybody should be treated equal, that you should not disadvantage a poor child in one area to advantage a system in another area. Is it fair? A title I child versus a title I child? Denver, CO, $1,218; Boston, MA, $1,847; Miami, FL, $1,212; Philadelphia, PA, $1,986; Albuquerque, NM, $1,158; New Haven, CT, $1,717; Portland, OR, $1,292; Camden, NJ, $2,083; Seattle, WA, $1,240; New York City, $1,839--if I am over here, I think this funding formula is awfully good because we are getting rewarded whether we have poverty kids or not. Over here, who is being hurt? It is not the States. People have come down to the floor, and they have beaten me up on this amendment for the last few days. Oh, how could you do this? How could you take away something that we have already got? It is real simple. You don't have low-income poverty kids or at least you don't have as much as here. If you did you would qualify under the new formula. But it gets worse. Fair? Florida has the same number of low-income students, 690,000, as New York, 686,00. What is the distribution of title I funds? It is $774 million, $1.1 billion--the same population but New York receives $400 million more than the State of Florida. How can that be fair? Now, you can be greedy and say: We deserve it; that is what the formula said. You cannot punish us because this is not equitable. Well, maybe we can. But for once, Congress can do the right thing and fix the formula. That is all I am on the floor attempting to do with my amendment--to fix it. Since 1965 we have not had the backbone to do it when we figured out it was wrong. Well, when we see this, if it is targeted for low-income kids and they have the same numbers, they ought to get the same money. But no, some believe that $400 million is worth it because they have always gotten more. Here is New Mexico versus Massachusetts. There are 107,000 low-income students in New Mexico and 80,000 low-income students in Massachusetts. New Mexico receives $116 million. Massachusetts receives $116 million. It is the same amount of money, but there are 27,000 more low-income poverty kids in New Mexico. What do you say to a child in New Mexico that just happened to grow up in a poor family? You don't get to get as good an education. You should be have been born in Massachusetts. This is the Federal Government doing it with taxpayer money, and we don't have a problem with this. My God, this is at the heart of what the Federal Government is supposed to do. There are individuals who come down here and talk about equitable treatment all the time. This is the most unequal thing that can exist. Yet some would block this amendment from coming to the floor. Is this fair? This is title I-A allocation per poor child: Florida, $1,284; New York, $1,611; Minnesota, $1,189; Massachusetts, $1,453; Oregon, $1,149; Maryland, $1,585; Washington, $1,127; Connecticut, $1,447; New Mexico, $1,093; Pennsylvania, $1,517. It does not matter how you slice it. They get more. They get more if they do not have the population to support it. So who is getting more than their fair share? Boy, pictures speak louder than words. Look at that. The green States get more money. The white States, even though they have kids in poverty, they do not get an equitable distribution of Federal money through the title I-A program. It is embarrassing. It is embarrassing to Congress that we did not change this a long time ago. For poor children who lose under the current formula, this is the reverse. Now, it is the kids who live in the States that are red that get cheated. They get cheated based upon the 1965 initiative under Lyndon Johnson, signed into law after Congress passed it--the Early Childhood Program, elementary and secondary education. I do not think I have ever seen an issue that broadly affects America where there was this much disparity in equitable distribution of Federal dollars. As a matter of fact, I would say it could not happen. But not only did it happen, people argue that this is fair. Well, all I can say is that if you say this is fair, then you are not focused on what this formula was designed to do, and that is to target low-income kids in poverty. But you know it does not stop there. Let's go further. Let me take my State of North Carolina, with 391,000 low-income students. We get $417 million in title I-A money. Pennsylvania has 357,000 low-income students. They get $542 million in title I money. So I have 34,000 more low-income children, but I am asked to be satisfied with $125 million less in money to target low-income kids in poverty. Now, I think I am being pretty diplomatic when I come down here and show things like this. This is what America hates. This is what makes them sick. This is what they think is a great example that we don't have a sense of reality. What do you say to a kid in North Carolina who struggles through K-through-12 education when you say: You are worth $125 million less if you are in poverty than the investment we are going to make in Pennsylvania. Well, it is only appropriate that the Presiding Officer would be from Colorado, which has 143,000 low-income students and receives $150 million. Maryland has 124,000 low-income students and receives $196 million. There are 19,000 more low-income students in Colorado, but you get $46 million less. I am sure the Presiding Officer has the same hard time I do going back to Colorado and saying: Don't worry; this is fair. This is fair because it has been this way for 25 years. The money is supposed to follow the population we are targeting to be invested in. In this particular case, it is the most at-risk in our country, from getting the tools they need to getting a job that has a paycheck. Fair? Nevada, the minority leader's State has 102,000 low-income students. They get $116 million. Connecticut has 80,000 low-income students. They get $116 million. Well, if I were from Nevada, I would be furious at this. You would think that if you get the same amount of money, you should at least have the same amount of kids in poverty, because that is what the formula was designed to do. But no, wealthy States have found ways to game it by getting bonus payments. Fair? Indiana, the State of the previous Presiding Officer before this one, has 235,000 low-income students. They get $256 million in Indiana. There are 228,000 low-income students in New Jersey. They get $331 million--7,000 more low-income students in Indiana and somehow New Jersey gets $75 million more than Indiana. This is sort of embarrassing. Some find no shame in this: We are just out for as much money as our State can get. Let me say to my colleagues that I don't know what the outcome of this amendment is going to be. But let me ask you for 1 minute to put the windfall your State is getting aside and ask yourself this: Do we have an obligation, based upon how elementary and secondary education was perceived and conceived in 1965, to actually make sure that the money follows where kids in poverty are? If not, don't come down here and talk about equity on every other funding formula. Don't say that money should follow people, when you have the most at-risk population, kids in poverty, and we are talking educating them to where they can function in society, to where they can get a job and a paycheck and not be a ward of anybody, where they can be independent and enjoy every opportunity this country has to offer. Well, you cannot be for that and be against this amendment. You cannot be for those kids and not fund them where every State is red. It cannot happen. But over history, just like other things, this creates winners and a lot of losers. But let me suggest to you that you take these lines away, and you just see the United States of America. Who should be the winners? Every kid in poverty. Every kid born into a low-income family should be the recipient of title I-A money in an equal capacity because they should have as good an opportunity and a future--an economic future--regardless of the State they live in, regardless of the ZIP Code. Regardless of whether they are in rural America or urban America, there shouldn't be a discrepancy. This rights a very bad wrong. This makes it work for all kids in poverty--not some kids, not school districts that are wealthy, but all kids in poverty. Let me just say for my colleagues that it is not going to happen unless we have a backbone that is strong enough to actually bring an amendment up and vote on it. I am willing to do that. I am willing to roll the dice. Look at the number of States that benefit from this--and I said that wrong. Look at the number of kids that benefit from this change. This is not about States, and it is not about parties. This is about kids. It is what this act was created for in 1965, and I can't find the reason as to why Congress didn't fix it before 2015. But the fact is that we are talking about reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It happens about once every 10 years. We have an opportunity to fix this inequity now. I don't want to look back and say: I had an opportunity to fix it, but, you know, that was hard. It was difficult. It meant that there were winners and losers. Everybody cannot be a winner when some take advantage of the system like this has. Well, there is only one way to make everybody a winner, and that is to fix the formula. Regardless of how long it takes us to work out of it, we can fix it from this point forward. I urge my colleagues, if given the opportunity to vote on the Burr- Bennet Full Educational Opportunity Act, to support it. I can't believe I am in the Senate saying ``if, if, if'' we are given an opportunity to actually bring up a germane, relevant amendment that affects every kid in poverty in the United States. I can't imagine the Senate is not willing to debate and vote on that amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. BURR

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I call for regular order with respect to amendment No. 1569.

Mr. BURR. I send a second-degree amendment to the desk.

Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BURR. I yield the floor.

Mr. BURR

Mr. BURR. Will the Senator entertain a question?

Mr. BURR. Will the Senator yield for a question?