Richard Blumenthal

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Mark Warner from Virginia, for his powerful and eloquent remarks on the floor less than 24 hours ago. He talked about the threat that exists now--looming larger every day--of a constitutional crisis. It is a crisis that threatens the foundations of our democracy. It involves a potential confrontation and, indeed, a legal conflagration between the President of the United States and the special counsel who has been appointed to investigate wrongdoing in our government. None of the facts that justified--indeed, required--the appointment of a special counsel has been controverted in any reasonable way by anyone since the appointment of that special counsel. Now a campaign of mistruth and misdirection has been launched against that special counsel investigation. It is a campaign that is calculated, concerted, and coordinated. It is calculated because it is planned and premeditated; it is concerted in its consistency and vehemence; and it is coordinated among officials within the government, including the U.S. Congress and commentators and individuals outside the government. The danger of a constitutional crisis is real and urgent, and we must come together in the U.S. Senate to face it and address it and deal with it. This body has come together in the past when America has faced a foreign adversary that has sought to do our Nation harm. We have come together to hold our leaders accountable when they have broken faith with the American people. We have come together when forces of dissension and misdirection have sought to undermine or weaken respect for the law and law enforcement and, indeed, the rule of law. What is at stake here is nothing less than the rule of law. Let's recognize what is happening. The President, in effect, is going down two tracks. On the one hand, he is saying that he has no present intention to fire the special counsel or to pardon anyone--yet. He adds that word very distinctly. The other track involves a coordinated, concerted, and calculated campaign that is continuing--indeed, rising-- in intensity and volume. The President's supporters, even in raising that volume, have reached extraordinary lows. Let's remember. At first, our Republican colleagues appeared to recognize that Robert Mueller was eminently--indeed, uniquely--qualified for his important task. Republican House Members called him a ``man of the utmost integrity'' and ``someone we all trust.'' Now we hear that the Mueller investigation is somehow biased. One commentator known to be close to President Trump suggested that the special counsel should not only be fired, he should be arrested. Even Members of Congress who once recognized Mr. Mueller's stellar record as a member of the Armed Forces, as well as in his capacity as the FBI Director, as a prosecutor, and as a public servant, have impugned his integrity. Indeed, they have begun to sow seeds of doubt. A chorus of defenders and sycophants has launched this campaign-- calculated, concerted, and coordinated--to smear the special counsel, to impugn the integrity of the FBI--to, indeed, directly attack this great and important institution. They have decided to do it in that concerted and coordinated and calculated way. The President, himself, has said that the FBI's reputation is in tatters. An article that appeared today in POLITICO described an effort by a House Republican on the Intelligence Committee to initiate a sustained attack on the Department of Justice and the FBI. The President's chorus of defenders and sycophants describes routine law enforcement activities as a ``coup'' and traffics in the kinds of conspiracy theories that we usually associate with fringe internet chat rooms. What is their justification for this vituperative attack on the Department of Justice and the FBI? One of the FBI agents expressed his political views in a private text to an FBI attorney, but the special counsel took swift and decisive and deliberate action to remove that FBI agent from the investigation. More broadly, let's recognize the reality here. As a Federal prosecutor, as the U.S. attorney for Connecticut for 4\1/2\ years, and then as the State attorney general for 20 years, I know--and all of us who have been prosecutors know--that investigators, like FBI agents, have political views. Some are on the right end of the political spectrum; some are on the left. The mark of their professionalism is that they leave them at home when they go to work. They park them at the door, not just because it is what they are taught and trained to do, but they believe in unbiased law enforcement because they know that a criminal investigation, ultimately, comes down to facts and law. It cannot be based on political opinions. Investigations that are biased by political opinions are doomed to disaster. Perhaps most importantly, there is not a scintilla of fact--not a shred of evidence--that the special counsel investigation has been impacted in any way by any political view of any FBI agent or, for that matter, anyone else in that investigation. There is, simply, no evidence that political views have impacted the special counsel's investigation. The simple fact that prosecutors know is that all such investigations must seek to uncover the facts and apply the law, and that is what Special Counsel Robert Mueller has done. The proof is in the results so far--two powerful convictions that have shattered the Trump Presidency and two indictments that indicate this investigation is just at its beginning, not at the beginning of the end but, simply, the end of the beginning. These trials of the two indictments will go well into next year, as will the investigation. That there will be more convictions and more indictments, I think, can be pretty reliably predicted to a near certainty. Beyond this investigation, we all know in this Chamber--and, certainly, any of us who have been involved in law enforcement--that public trust and confidence are essential. The President, himself, has said he is ``a true friend and loyal champion'' for law enforcement and ``more loyal than anyone else can be.'' He has pointed out that law enforcement officials, like our police and FBI agents and DEA and others, ``rush into danger every day,'' and he has criticized the folks who have subjected them to ``relentless criticism.'' He has promised to always stand with them. Those promises apply, apparently, to law enforcement as long as they are not investigating him. The President has said that he has no present intention to fire the special counsel, but he has far from ruled it out. For anyone who thinks it would be too outside the bounds of normal standards, remember that the firing of Jim Comey as FBI Director was regarded as unthinkable. It was unthinkable until President Trump did it. Equally important, this chorus of defenders and sycophants can undermine the Mueller investigation even if Mueller, himself, is never fired. They can poison the well of public opinion and, indeed, a jury pool. They can sow seeds of doubt regarding the special counsel and his team, and they can lay the groundwork for firing Robert Mueller as well as for issuing pardons. Let no one have any doubt. Firing Robert Mueller would create a firestorm that would be every bit as vehement as the Saturday Night Massacre. It would provoke an uprising, an outcry, and outrage in the American people and in this Chamber. The time to make that fact clear is now, not just for this side of the aisle but with unanimity and force on both sides. That chorus of defenders and sycophants may think or imagine it can prevent the special counsel from revealing his finding or reporting to the American people at the conclusion of his investigation or that it can discredit or demean those findings or that it can undermine his credibility before a jury. It would be wrong because this body and our colleagues are committed to uncovering the truth, to pursuing it wherever it leads, and to enforcing the law. That is my hope and belief, but it must not only be a hope; it must be reflected in action--in real action. That involves passing legislation that will send a message about this body's resolute and unwavering commitment to making sure that the special counsel cannot be fired, that pardons cannot be issued, and that this investigation cannot be a victim of political interference. The President has indicated that he is averse to hearing about Russia or considering its threat to this country. That aversion certainly sets back his ability to defend this country against the Russian threat by sanctions and other means and deterrents that will assure that Russia is made to pay a price so they do not do it again. In conclusion, let me just say that that aversion must be overcome. We need to send a signal, as we did by passing sanctions, that we will take action against Russia to stop it from interfering again in this election, that we will make sure that Russia is made to pay a price, and that our constituents know that we will insist on a fair and independent investigation without political interference, passing legislation that is bipartisan that has been offered by Republicans as well as Democrats, including myself, and should be moved through the Judiciary Committee and to the floor of this Congress. That message is all the more important now as this investigation penetrates the White House for the first time in the Flynn conviction, coming closer to the Oval Office itself. A real and robust congressional investigation of those efforts through the Judiciary Committee, as well as obstruction of justice, continues to be necessary, but we should combine our efforts to make sure that law enforcement and the judicial process moves forward without political interference that will undermine its credibility. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, a tax bill is a fiscal document. It is a legal document. It is also a moral document. It involves choices, much as we make choices as families when we own a car that is unsafe or a house that has a front step that is about to collapse or when a college student needs money to pursue her education. A family can make choices. A parent can go to the casino and gamble and lose the money or spend it on luxuries that are unnecessary or unwise, and nations make those kinds of moral choices as well. This tax document is a moral document. It involves choices. Will it make our country safer, rebuild our infrastructure and our national defense or, instead, in effect, squander resources of $1.5 trillion or more on a giveaway to the very wealthiest in our country? It relates directly to the tragedy that this Nation experienced outside of Tacoma, WA, just yesterday. I want to extend, first of all, my thoughts and prayers to those families and loved ones who have suffered losses. The three deaths and injuries have taken their toll emotionally as well as physically. In these dark days, we are demanding answers. Unfortunately, the National Transportation Safety Board is there, beginning its investigation. We know now that the train apparently was traveling three times the limit on speed, 80 miles an hour in a 30- mile-an-hour zone. That fact is absolutely stunning and scandalous, and the NTSB, no doubt, will present its results after its investigation. I call on the NTSB to finish that investigation as promptly and quickly as possible. As responsible an agency as it is, it often works much more slowly than taxpayers deserve. I call on it to produce its investigation, not in months or years but in days or weeks. We need to know the answers as to why this catastrophe occurred. We now know with certainty, apparently, that the train was traveling too fast. You may be forgiven for thinking it seems like deja vu. Didn't that happen also in Spuyten Duyvil, where four people were lost? Didn't it happen in Philadelphia, where eight were killed in 2015? Yes, again, three people were killed yesterday. Three hundred people have been killed in these accidents since 1970, when the NTSB first recommended impementing this new technology. It was new technology in 1970 called positive train control. Now it is old technology, but it still has not been installed in many of the Nation's railroads. The deadline for installing it was postponed from 2015--over my vehement protests and those of others on our side of the aisle in the Commerce Committee and on the floor of the U.S. Senate--until 2018. Even now, the railroads are seeking an extension to that time, saying that the resources aren't available. Well, the costs of those 300 lives lost and of the crashes that have resulted from derailments and other kinds of very severe mishaps due to excessive speed are way in excess of the costs of installing positive train control since 1970, since 2015, and if it is postponed again, the costs will exceed the expenses that we saw in the system. It is available now. It is fully ready for installation on railroads across the country. The resources aren't preventing its installation; it is the will and determination to do so. The failure of Federal authorities to require and provide support for positive train control is a moral choice this Nation has made. It is not only about dollars and cents; it is about basic moral choices, and those choices are a factor in those three deaths outside of Tacoma, WA. We know excessive speed was a factor. We know positive train control slows down trains when they are going too fast in zones where the limit is 30 miles an hour rather than the 80 miles an hour that this train was traveling. Regardless of driver fatigue or distraction, regardless of any of the other contributing sources, positive train control is there to stop or slow down trains when human error may lead to crashes. The new deadline is now 1 year away. If we do nothing else in this Congress, let us insist that this deadline be met without additional delay. Our failure to do so would be a moral failure. The dollars and cents required to install positive train control and to repair our aging and decrepit roads and bridges involve investment. To show you what is happening in Connecticut, very much like the rest of the country, we know that 78 percent of our roads are in poor or mediocre condition. That is a moral choice, not just a physical choice. It has the same kinds of consequences as failure to install positive train control. The cost per motorist annually is $864, which is needed for vehicle repairs from driving on roads that are in disrepair. Now, as a result of this so-called tax cut, a lot of people in Connecticut are going to, perhaps, see a few crumbs, a few sweeteners-- very minor deductions in their tax bill. It is nowhere near the $864 that they are now paying because of inadequate roads and bridges. That is a hidden cost. It is a moral choice because it not only creates costs in vehicle wear and tear, it also leads to crashes that, in turn, take lives and cause injury. This legislation will put America in debt by $1.5 trillion. That is a moral choice because it shifts the burden of tax breaks and giveaways now to future generations. It also deprives us right now of funds that could be applied to infrastructure--rebuilding roads and bridges. Lest you think the Connecticut situation is an anomaly or an exception, the grade for our Nation as a whole in infrastructure is a resounding D-plus. I know this may seem to many of my colleagues like an oversimplification. Yes, it is, but it is an oversimplification with real facts that support it and with real consequences to the American people. When the President of the United States suggests in a tweet, as he did yesterday after the Tacoma tragedy, that his infrastructure program will be ready ``soon,'' that is ducking responsibility. It is a moral choice because ``soon'' has meant delays, month after month, into the first year of his Presidency. He can take action today. He can disavow this shameful program that he has supported--the tax cut that slashes resources for the Federal Government--and, instead, decide that investment is the right course--investment in roads, bridges, rail, broadband, VA facilities, ports, and airports. That is a moral choice that this tax scam makes. It is a tax scam with moral consequences in terms of inequality in this Nation. It tilts the benefits in favor of corporations and the wealthiest who will receive permanent tax cuts. It will hurt working families, students, public schools, firefighters, police officers, local government, and sick people, who will receive nothing but crumbs by comparison. It will desperately hurt States like Connecticut. Our State and local taxes will no longer be deductible above set limits; $10,000 will barely cover and, in fact, will fail to cover many, many of the tax bills that formerly could be deducted. It will impose limits on mortgage interest deductions that will harm our real estate industry in Connecticut and many other States across the country. Yes, there are crumbs and sweeteners, and they are temporary. They pale in comparison to the tremendous benefits that will go to corporations and the wealthiest. It narrows our tax base, shifting the burden, in fact, from corporations to individuals. It makes the Tax Code more complicated, not less so. It grossly increases inequality, and it steals $1.5 trillion from our children and from us insofar as it deprives our national defense, as well as our infrastructure, of resources that are needed. I am a member of the Armed Services Committee, and I remember very well the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, saying, ``The most significant threat to our national security is our debt,'' which surprised me at the time. For the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to say that the biggest threat to our national security is our national debt--how could that be? Well, having watched the National Defense Authorization Act year after year, constrained by resources that are now going to be less available because of this $1.5 trillion debt--and larger, probably--that is created by this tax plan, I better understand what he meant. The Republicans are essentially pursuing two inherently irreconcilable objectives. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a man whom I respect as much as anybody in this Chamber, has called for an additional $430 billion over the next 5 years to build up our military and rebuild it. I can tell you without doubt that there is no way to increase defense spending by $86 billion every year, as the chairman has said we need, while slashing Federal revenue $150 billion every year. The math fails. It will not work. So for my Republican colleagues to say that we need to rebuild, we need to invest in our national defense and in our military and in the skill training of our warriors is a fiction. It is blatant deception, and it is a disservice to the brave men and women who have enlisted and serve us in uniform now and others who will join them in the future. We cannot have the most advanced and strongest military in the world if we use the same tax code as the Cayman Islands. This year, our country experienced a tragic loss of life--in fact, the loss of more than life, needlessly, preventably. Seventeen sailors perished on the USS John S. McCain and the USS Fitzgerald. Two of them were from Connecticut. I attended ceremonies in their honor. Those deaths are largely attributable to a lack of resources. There may have been other causes, but this tax bill is a moral choice about our military. The failure to invest in those ships, in the training and necessary rest that is required for our men and women in those positions, will be aggravated by the debt we see here. Our national security is more than just military spending in the face of Russian cyber attacks in our elections, horrific hurricanes hitting Puerto Rico and Texas and Florida, and fires still burning in Western States. We know our military alone is not enough to keep us safe and secure. Those natural disasters and those challenges from our adversaries require investment as well, and, again, the loss of this $1.5 trillion to debt that will be paid largely by future generations is something that hobbles our ability to make our Nation safe and secure. This tax scam is morally reprehensible. It cuts taxes for the wealthiest while jeopardizing programs that are essential to the safety and security of many in our Nation who are most vulnerable. Under current law, the GOP tax plan will trigger $25 billion in Medicare cuts next year alone. With this self-inflicted $1.5 trillion hole in our Federal deficit, we know what will come next: savage attacks on Social Security as well as Medicaid and Medicare. This assault on healthcare doesn't end with these programs. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate will raise premiums and eventually lead to $13 million--13 million--more uninsured Americans. Republicans are sabotaging these critical programs that provide care to the most vulnerable Americans so those at the top can avoid paying their fair share. What corporations benefit the most? There is a very simple answer. The ones that benefit the most with foreign cash that will be distributed almost certainly to their shareholders and to their CEOs are listed right here. In the red is the foreign cash, and the total is listed as well. They are the ones who are going to benefit. Apple has been singled out as the single largest beneficiary, but many other corporations around the country will benefit as well. The picture that I think was most powerful in assessing how these corporations will use this money occurred when the President's chief economic adviser asked a room of CEOs: How many of you will spend these additional resources on creating jobs? There were no more than a few hands raised in that room. This money will go to shareholders. These corporations have zero incentive to provide new jobs if there is no increase in demand and sales. The failure to provide real tax cuts--real benefits to middle-class families and to our working families--means that sales and demand will not lead to more jobs because there will be no increase in demand with the crumbs and pittance tax cuts that are complicated. So Republicans, let me say finally, are borrowing $1.5 trillion, and they are putting it on a credit card. Sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words. Here is the ``American Excess'' tax scam card. It will not buy you much because it is debt. With sincere apologies to American Express, the ``American Excess'' tax scam card can be used by our children--my children and your children-- as a symbol of what they are losing in opportunity costs, including the roads and bridges and rail that remain unrepaired; the new schools and airports that are unbuilt; the national defense that becomes far less adequate because the investment can't be made; the government programs, whether it is Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid that are in peril-- deeply in jeopardy because of this tax scam--and positive train control that can save lives and could have saved lives, in fact, in Tacoma when that train was traveling 80 miles an hour when the speed limit was 30. These opportunity costs are real. The choices to incur them are moral, and the debt that will have to be paid by future generations is equally real, and it is immoral. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I wish to thank the senior Senator from New York, our minority leader, for his very powerful and eloquent remarks on net neutrality. He has been a leader in protecting consumers in so many areas, and this one is preeminently important. We are here on a day when the FCC may well repeal the net neutrality order. I spoke at length about it yesterday, and I am struck by the mockery that the FCC will make of consumer protection if it proceeds with this very misguided and mistaken course. It is a course that will be reversed, I believe, in the courts if it is followed, and it should be reversed in this body as well. It is profoundly important to the future of the internet to have access and affordability to innovation, to our economy, and to job creation. The open and accessible internet is part of our lifeblood economically and culturally in this country. Part of what makes America great is the freedom of access and innovation.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am willing to wager that the term ``net neutrality'' has no meaning to many Americans. It is a term that refers to a practice and a set of rules that are likely a total mystery to the vast majority of the people who are affected by them. As often happens in Washington, DC, the terms of art are highly technical and obtuse and obscure, but the effects of these rules matter to almost every American, openly, and they will be of increasing importance to Americans if the current net neutrality rules are reversed tomorrow. That is why I am here. The Federal Communications Commission, under the leadership of its new Chairman, Ajit Pai, has a reckless and needless plan to repeal those rules that are vital to a level playing field and fair access to consumers of the internet content that they value and need. To put it very simply, Chairman Pai's plan would disastrously disadvantage small businesses. It would harm our economy. It would threaten the internet's incredible success, including innovation. It would harm consumers by giving them higher prices and possibly lower speeds in accessing what they want from the internet. The background here is pretty simple. In 2015, the FCC adopted its open internet order to preserve the open nature of the internet. The internet has thrived on its openness. That is, in a sense, its spirit and its great advantage. It is uniquely American in that way--open and accessible. The order created three very bright line rules: no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization. Nobody could stop access or block it. Nobody could diminish the availability--no throttling and no paid authorization. That is to say that nobody is to get a benefit from faster speeds simply because he is paying more. Those rules really put the internet at stake--the vitality and innovative energy is at stake here. Blocked sites, slower speeds, fast lanes and slow lanes, and more fees will be our future on the internet if these rules are revoked, as Chairman Pai says they will be tomorrow. Some of today's internet service providers will benefit. They already have clear conflicts of interest. They own content companies. They want their customers to spend more time on their content. Comcast, for example, owns the media giant NBCUniversal. Verizon owns Yahoo and AOL. We are having a hearing this afternoon that involves Comcast and NBCUniversal, and I am deeply troubled by the expiration of the conditions that have been put on the merger. Those conditions help to protect competition and consumers. They have a questionable effect in that purpose, but even the modest comfort or protection they provide will completely evaporate as the conditions expire. So I will ask today that there be an investigation by the Department of Justice to sustain and continue those conditions and ask that the court that approved them actually extend them to meet the needs of competition and consumers. Our current net neutrality rules prevent companies from becoming gatekeepers, toll takers, in a way that favors their own content. If they are the gatekeepers and the toll takers, they are the ones who block, and they are the ones who collect the fees. If they have the ability to pick and choose between the content providers that belong to their competitors or the content providers that are independent, they are going to choose their own content providers. They are going to favor their own over the others. Gutting the net neutrality rules, in effect, gives them free rein to favor their own content and their own political views. If the internet service providers are able to block content or charge higher fees for access, eventually the ones who will suffer will be the consumers. They will pay higher prices, or the content will be slowed in reaching them. Make no mistake. Companies that are willing to pay the toll for fast lanes will transfer those costs to consumers. They are not going to just absorb the additional expense. The folks who have no idea what the term ``net neutrality'' means--who may have never heard it--are the ones who are going to pay the freight. They are going to be the ones who suffer the consequences. These rules are for a reason. They were not simply picked out of the air. They are not some product of some overactive regulatory imagination. They have meaning and consequence for ordinary people who use the internet, which is one of the economic giants of our generation. We are, in effect, throttling, blocking, and raising prices for the people who depend on innovation and access and openness. The right thing for Chairman Pai to do is to cancel tomorrow's party- line vote and abandon this misguided plan to destroy the free and open internet. He is acting, in essence, at the behest of the economic giants--the cable companies--that stand to benefit because they will raise prices and favor their own content. No matter what he decides, the fight is only really beginning. We will no doubt bring legislation to the U.S. Senate--not an easy task to pass it. Any final action in the FCC unquestionably, undoubtedly, will be challenged in the courts. I am actually hopeful that we can avoid litigation. Litigation is always a last resort. But there will be litigation because the 2015 open internet order was actually based on 10 years of evidence in a fact-based docket. Again, it was not pulled out of the air; it was based on factfinding and thought and redrafting that then, in fact, resulted in litigation that was upheld in the courts. In fact, in the court of appeals, it was judged to be legal and rationally rooted in real fact. That is the internet order that should be sustained. I hope that Chairman Pai will postpone this misguided plan. I hope that he will abandon it. There is no need to recklessly repeal the net neutrality rules without demonstrating a significant and substantial change in factual circumstances. That is what is required statutorily-- a significant and substantial change in factual circumstances to justify revoking and repealing a rule that was based on circumstance and fact. In the meantime, millions of Americans have already given their opinions. They have weighed in. They have said to the FCC: Stop playing with the internet in a way that favors the big guys--the cable companies--the ones who will block or throttle and raise prices. We should not allow Chairman Pai to silence their comments, to ignore them, or disregard them. The FCC has a responsibility here. It is a public trust. It matters to the millions of Americans who have never heard and will probably never hear that term ``net neutrality'' and who will never understand what its consequences are until they see them personally, up close, firsthand--higher prices, blocking, throttling. That is the evil we can and must avoid. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

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

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to join my colleagues on the floor today, and I want to thank our great and distinguished leader on this issue, Senator Durbin, who has devoted so many years and so much energy and has been a model for me personally of what an advocate should be in the Senate and most especially on this issue, which has been preeminently important to me since my arrival here almost 7 years ago. For a time, I was on the floor almost every week, periodically, with a photo of another Dreamer, and the reason was to make this issue real in the hearts of the American people, to bring their voices and faces to this body. Today, I am joined in spirit by Alejandra Villamares. She is one of 8,000 Dreamers in Connecticut. I am proud of each and every one of them. She is one of 700,000 Dreamers in the United States of America, and I hope that my colleagues are proud of them in their States, as well, because they are absolutely incredible people. Nobody's perfect, but in many ways, they embody the spirit and values of America. They work hard. They go to school. They are future engineers, scientists, nurses, and doctors. They are of immense value to our economy because they work and contribute, and they will better themselves through education, through their values. And they know what it means to be an American citizen. Even though they are not, they know the value of citizenship. Alejandra came to this country when she was 1 year old. She was brought here by her parents, across the border from Mexico. Her family lived in a cramped, small house with her two uncles. They had very little money. She and her sister were bullied by students in elementary school because, of course, they had to learn English. They spoke with an accent. She told me: ``My mother told me not to give up.'' That is what she wrote me a couple of days after the President of the United States announced that he would end the DACA Program. She wrote me 5 days after the Trump administration rescinded DACA, and her story has stuck with me, haunted me over these months, just as when I have met with Dreamers--as I did just this past Monday in Hartford, CT--to reassure them that I was going to fight every day that we have remaining in this session, their stories have haunted and moved and inspired me. Alejandra was bullied, but even as she was bullied for speaking a different language--her native language--and learning English, even as her father was deported, even as her family was left without him and with even less support, they persevered. She wrote to me: ``I made it my mission to prove that I was worthy of being considered an American.'' How many of us, growing up, made it our mission to prove ourselves worthy of being an American? I daresay few of us considered that mission. Most of us take for granted that we are Americans, that we are citizens of the greatest country in the history of the world. Slowly but surely she learned English, and it became her primary language. In 2012, she got a break: The Obama administration enacted DACA. She could come out of the shadows. She could have a place, some security. That step unlocked for her--literally unlocked for her--the American dream. For all of us who take for granted what it means to be an American, who have never made it a mission to become an American, we often take for granted the American dream. Well, we belong here. No one is going to send us away. No one is going to deport us to a land we have no knowledge of, to a place away from our friends and our families. But DACA meant something else as well, more than just emotional; it meant that she could go to college, and she did. She went to Wesley, where she is now a student. For once, she had the immense luxury of not being afraid. She could go to college and study--as she is now studying--film and international relations. She felt empowered to speak up and participate in her community. She worked at Delaware Goes to College Academy and the Summer Learning Collaborative. They both promote education for disadvantaged youth. She was now not only learning and studying at one of the great universities in our country but giving back to others, enabling others to climb that same ladder, young people with disadvantages like hers to make the most of themselves and to achieve that American dream. When Attorney General Sessions, with the President's approval, rescinded DACA in September, Alejandra wrote to me: I wanted this to be my country so badly. One thing that I knew from the bottom of my heart was that I wanted to stay here, and that I was an American. Anyone who looks at Alejandra, knows her story, and hears her words has to be heartbroken that a young woman seeking so deeply to be an American, to live the American dream and American values, to give back to this country that she loves, and never to take for granted what so many of us do--we have to be heartbroken to hear those words and her story. I have heard my colleagues say: Well, why now? Why not wait until after the new year? Why not wait until March? Why not wait? Waiting until March would mean an extension of her anxiety, apprehension, and fear. It would also mean the extension of a humanitarian crisis. Make no mistake, for 8,000 young people in Connecticut and 700,000 in the United States of America, threatening deportation to them is an unprecedented message to the world and to ourselves. It says something about who we are. To leave them hanging is not only unfair, it is unworthy of us as Americans. More practically speaking, tens of thousands of DACA recipients are estimated to have already lost their protection from removal. Kicking the can down the road would mean continued anguish for those 700,000 young people, and it would mean breaking a promise. They came forward. They provided their addresses, their cell phone numbers, their tax information on the promise that it would not be used against them. It would mean instability in the job market, and it would hurt our economy. That is why employers are coming forward and urging us to act now. Companies have been forced to consider whether they should fire DACA recipients and train new employees in anticipation of the March deadline. It would churn and create turmoil if we fail to act. In fact, it already is creating chaos and confusion because looming on the horizon ominously, inextricably, is the threat of mass deportation. It would be a humanitarian nightmare, and it is a bureaucratic nightmare, as well, to wait. If the Dream Act is passed, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has work to do. They need to develop new regulations, process applications. This involves conducting security checks, biometric screening, notifying the applicants, and doing the paperwork. Experts say that this process could take up to 7 months in total. So we are already late. We are already late in beginning and accomplishing this task. If we delay our action, thousands of Dreamers will lose their protections before the law is fully implemented. Young, contributing members of our society--like Alejandra--who have done nothing wrong will be dragged back into the shadows, to lose their drivers licenses, to lose their jobs, to lose their sense of security, to fear every day the sound of police sirens, as so many do right now. The administration has literally thrown a timebomb to this body, and it is ticking. We have the power to diffuse it. We have the power to do the right thing. We have the power and we have the obligation to truly give those 700,000 Dreamers the ability to make the most of themselves and make the most of this country. Often, when I think of the Dreamers, I think of my father, who came to this country in 1935. He was 17 years old. He knew virtually no one. He spoke almost no English. He had not much more than the shirt on his back, and he was a Dreamer, although he came here legally. He became a U.S. citizen. Nobody loved this country more than my dad. I sometimes think how sad and ashamed he would be about the way we have denied Dreamers the opportunity and security that he felt coming here, escaping persecution in Germany. This country has never been perfect, but we are the greatest country in the history of the world because we are a nation of immigrants. If you are ever discouraged or down about your lives or about the country, you may want to try going to the immigration naturalization ceremonies in your State. They happen in Connecticut every week in courthouses. I go as often as I can on Fridays, when they usually occur, in Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport, because it is so uplifting. It is so very inspiring to see people who are moved and grateful beyond words--moved to tears--in becoming citizens of the United States. The judges usually give me an opportunity to say a few words, and I thank them for wanting to become citizens. I tell them ``You passed a test that most Americans couldn't pass,'' and they laugh, as perhaps some who are listening now would laugh because they know it is true. They wanted to become American citizens, so they studied and they prepared. Many of them came long distances, escaping persecution--just as my dad did--and left behind families, loved ones, jobs, careers. They wanted to be citizens. They will never take it for granted, nor will Alejandra if she is given that opportunity. She wants it too. She is a Dreamer, not only in name but in spirit. I hope all of us keep her in mind and in heart when we think about what we are going to do in the next couple of weeks. As for me, I am determined that we should not leave here for our holiday without acting on this measure. I know we can do it if both sides of the aisle are reasonable, responsible, and responsive. The vast majority of the American people are with Alejandra. They know her as a neighbor; they know her as a friend. Even though they may never have met her, they know people like her who are in their communities, and they know the immense contribution that she and others like her can make. I know so many of them who share that simple goal to become a U.S. citizen, and it begins with permanent status, a path--a path to earn citizenship. Whatever it may be called, it begins with a sense of security and belonging. I hope this body will pass the Dream Act and give Alejandra and so many like her that opportunity to accomplish the American dream. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, today I wish to recognize Maj. Regina Rush-Kittle, a dedicated veteran and law enforcement officer whose strength and commitment to her community, her State, and her Nation merited her induction into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame this November. Her life and career have been a series of firsts. She is an amazing, tenacious, goal-oriented person who sets high standards for herself and for others. She is well-regarded by her peers and recognized for her willingness to always give more than 100 percent. Major Rush-Kittle moved with her family to Middletown, CT, as a young girl. She attended Middletown High School, after which she pursued a political science degree at the University of Connecticut. She subsequently obtained a master's in criminal justice at Western New England College. While at college, Major Rush-Kittle joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, where she served for 3 years. She then transferred to the Army Reserves, where she continued to serve her country for more than two decades. During that time, she was mobilized during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Impressively, Major Rush-Kittle earned the Bronze Star Medal during her tour of duty for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, where she served as the command sergeant major of the 321st Military Intelligence Battalion of Texas. She retired from the Reserves after 30 years of dedicated service. As amazing and stellar as her career serving our country, it is her law enforcement career where Major Rush-Kittle truly made her mark. Her interest in law enforcement arose when she began working as a corrections officer at the the York Correctional Institution, a high- security women prison in Niantic, CT. Her passion for public safety and determination to knock down barriers to female advancement would lead Major Rush-Kittle to become the first Black female patrol officer for the Middletown Police Department, as well as the first Black female drill sergeant and command sergeant major in that organization. Continuing to shatter barriers, Major Rush-Kittle transferred to the Connecticut State Police, where she was the first African-American woman to become a State police sergeant, then a State police lieutenant, and then a major in the history of this proud and storied department. She also was the first to command a police barracks. Her devotion to serving the Connecticut State Police led her to enroll in the 244th Session of the the FBI National Academy in Quantico, VA. She also headed the Connecticut State Police Academy. Her studies, experiences, and devotion to law enforcement have made her a role model for her peers. Now retired from military service and law enforcement, Major Rush- Kittle is a credit to the State of Connecticut and the country thanks to her unfailing sense of duty and readiness to break barriers. I am pleased that she is an integral part of a team of military and veteran volunteers who assist me in reviewing candidates to our military academies. I applaud her many accomplishments and hope my colleagues will join me in congratulating Major Rush-Kittle for her well-earned induction into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to be here tonight. Even in moments of sadness and anger--and I feel both here--I am honored to be a Member of this body. I am particularly honored to be a Member of the U.S. Senate with Joe Manchin, whose bipartisanship and willingness to listen and to compromise and be reasonable is almost legendary. All of us, including Ranking Member Wyden of the Finance Committee, have been more than eager to be reasonable and compromise and seek bipartisan solutions. I truly want to thank Senator Wyden for his leadership on this issue, as well as his insight and his great commitment to the public interest. We had a hearing earlier this week before the Armed Services Committee about future threats to our Nation and national security, with a panel of experts who testified that more than $1 trillion dollars--maybe trillions--would be necessary for us to invest in the future of our Nation's defense. So many of us asked them whether they thought it would be possible to make that investment at the same time that our Nation is about to incur an additional $1.5 trillion in debt as a result of this misguided, maligned scam, this tax bill, and when we asked that question, they shook their heads no. The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, once said--famously now--``The greatest threat to our national security is our national debt.'' The reason our national debt is a threat to our national security is very simply that it prevents us from the kind of commitment and investment in our national defense that we on the Armed Services Committee and we in this body and we the people of America know we have to make to secure our national defense. Our national defense is about more than just hardware and even the great troops that we deploy--our service men and women who serve and sacrifice with such incredible bravery and dedication and patriotism-- it is also about the quality of our society. It is about whether we are equal, whether we give people the mobility to move and make of themselves what their aspirations are and make the American dream real in their lives and develop those skills through education and skill training that are so necessary to us as a nation. We can't produce the submarines and the F-35s and all of the extraordinary, complex hardware that we do without that skilled training. We know that in Connecticut because we produce submarines and jet engines and helicopters. We are proud of that, but we need more people with those skills. Yet this measure will enhance the divisions in our society. It will divide us from each other as Americans. It will diminish the mobility-- social and economic mobility--in our great Nation, and it will increase economic insecurity. It will not make Americans more sure about their society, more confident in its equality and justice; it will create more anxiety and anger because at its core, this measure is about benefits to a tiny, minute fraction of America. Most of the benefits of this measure go there. And it is about hitting the rest of Americans-- particularly middle-class families--with initial benefits that may even look good at first but are a classic bait-and-switch because most of those middle-class families will be worse off over the next 10 years. Anybody earning between $50,000 and $75,000 will see their taxes increase over those years. For all the reasons that my colleagues have so powerfully and compellingly outlined in this Chamber, with statistics that I don't even have time to repeat here, this measure is essentially rotten at the core in its claim to fairness. Tax reform should be about making our Tax Code simpler and fairer. This measure does just the opposite. My colleagues may say there were hearings, but compared to the mid-1980s when the last major tax reform was passed, there have been no hearings and there has been no real markup. We are now considering an amendment that was deposited on the floor of this Chamber just minutes ago--barely an hour--and will receive no serious scrutiny or oversight. It will harm our teachers and first responders, our police and our firefighters, who will have less support for their vital services. It will harm the job creators who need more resources to invest in infrastructure. It will harm our educators and the skilled trades. It will harm middle-class America. It will hit Connecticut as hard or harder than any other State because of the nondeductibility of State and local taxes and because of the nondeductibility of casualty losses. The homeowners whose foundations are crumbling will lose the ability to deduct the cost of repairs that they must make. That is so fundamentally unfair that it belies the promises that have been made even this day on this floor. We are adopting this measure literally in the dark of night--a Friday night when few Americans may be aware of what is happening here-- comparatively few. On the passthrough provision that has been added to this bill, unquestionably, some Americans will be aware, including the President of the United States. He has more than 500 LLCs as part of his organization that will benefit from this passthrough provision. So the President may be celebrating, but most Americans will rue this day. We will remember this day, all of us who are here, but we in this Chamber will rue it as well. We will remember it because of the black mark on our democracy that resulted from a guilty plea from a former National Security Advisor--a guilty plea for lying to the FBI. It is a black mark on our democracy, a sad day for our Nation, and a shadowy moment for this administration, the Trump Presidency. But we will remember it also as a self-inflicted wound for our democracy when the actions of the U.S. Senate drove deeper divisions within our society, created more insecurity, enlarged the anger and angst and anxiety that people feel about themselves, and when we added $1.5 trillion to the national debt that our children and our grandchildren will pay and thereby when we diminished our national security. The national debt may not be the greatest threat to our national security, but it is one of the largest of the dangers to our national security, and we have done nothing to alleviate it. On the contrary, we are adding to it, and that is a shame and a disgrace. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Alaska for yielding. I want to begin where he finished--on the need for a bipartisan approach, one that combines different points of view, one based on compromise. Compromise should not be a dirty word. Compromise is not a four-letter word. Neither is bipartisanship. Yet our Republican colleagues have insisted on a Republican plan--on a plan that they first rammed and rushed through the House of Representatives and now, in the same way, have sought to do on their own, without consultation or compromise with Democrats. That is why the process has reached this point. It has stalled. My Republican colleagues are scrambling for a solution to an overwhelming, oppressive debt that they would force on the American people--not on ourselves, but on our children and our grandchildren, generations to come, searching and scrambling for a so-called trigger-- another gimmick--to be inserted in this bill that already underestimates the additional debt that will be foisted on our Nation. They have estimated it at $1.3 trillion or $1.5 trillion. In reality, it is probably larger, but the main point is that they have foisted it on our children and grandchildren to pay--to shoulder the burden-- simply so that the wealthiest in this country and corporations would have tax cuts. The people of Connecticut and our country face a tsunami of economic harm. This plan, in fact, is deeply unpopular among my constituents in Connecticut. I have listened to them. What they tell me is that they cannot look their children in the eye and show them a chart like this one, which my colleague Senator King of Maine displayed earlier in the Chamber, and see how this insurmountable mountain of debt will result from the Republican plan. Very simply, Republicans voted for middle-class taxes to rise so that the President's and other billionaires' taxes can go down. Over the next decade, this plan will raise taxes on 87 million middle-class families and half of all taxpayers. This plan is a double standard. It is a bait and switch because it makes a promise that it fails to fulfill. It makes a promise of tax cuts that actually will rise over a 10-year period. It sells a false bill of goods. The promise of middle-class tax cuts is a lie, plain and simple, a scam. The President sent the Administrator of the Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon, to Connecticut to announce: ``Everyone will experience a tax cut.'' But the fact of the matter is everybody in certain brackets experiences a tax increase under most circumstances. Who is harmed? We know who benefits. The wealthiest benefit, and corporations benefit. But the ones harmed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, are the majority of people who earn less than $75,000 a year, and they will be worse off within the next 10 years. In Connecticut that means that 468,200 taxpayers in the bottom 80 percent of income distribution will experience a tax hike under this plan. The Republican tax plan ends State and local tax deductibility, which means families are going to be taxed twice. It increases the Federal burden on Connecticut families, who already pay more Federal taxes than they receive in Federal funding. Now, what I hear--again, listening to my friends and constituents in Connecticut--is that they are willing to pay their fair share. They are willing to pay even more than they may receive back from the Federal Government, if they feel the system itself is fair--not rigged in favor of the wealthy or big corporations or special interests. They are the ones who will benefit from this tax scandal. State and local taxes paid by my constituents in Connecticut are vital to supplying communities with resources that pay for essential local services. We are talking about police and school and, yes, infrastructure--rebuilding roads, bridges, ports, and airports--vital services. In Connecticut 723,773 households deduct State and local taxes. The average deduction is $19,664. Assuming somebody pays a 25- or 30-percent rate of taxes, apply that to $19,000, and we are talking about real money. The bill also abolishes a critical deduction that provides relief for taxpayers who experience losses on their property, including homeowners in Connecticut--thousands of them--who have a crumbling foundation and are uninsured for those repairs--casualty losses that, under current law, the IRS ruled just last week could be deducted. They will be robbed of those deductions under this cruel, maligned, malicious, misguided bill. The bill also hits working-class families. It expands the child tax credit, for example, but tips the scales in favor of the wealthiest families. It values a child, fortunate to be born into a wealthy family, to be worth a $2,000 tax credit. Meanwhile, an estimated 140,000 military families who have median adjusted gross incomes of $28,000 will receive a child tax credit worth only $75 or less. If you are wealthy, it is worth $2,000. If you are less well off, with an adjusted gross income of $28,000, it is $75 or less. What is fair or rational about that distinction? In fact, it epitomizes what is wrong about this bill. It increases inequality. It enhances and heightens the insecurity that my colleague from Alaska mentioned earlier. It is wrong. It betrays American values. First responders are harmed. Earlier this month, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police wrote a letter to the House and Senate leadership urging Members of Congress to protect the State and local tax deduction as is. If this deduction is eliminated, local budgets will be strained, which include the salaries and equipment that support our law enforcement. No wonder the head of the Fraternal Order of Police objects to eliminating the deduction of State and local taxes. Teachers are harmed. The National Education Association has found that gutting the State and local tax deduction will seriously harm already underfunded public education, risking nearly 250,000 education jobs. Those are middle-class family jobs in a profession that is profoundly important to our future. We talk a lot in this Chamber about the importance of skill training and education to the future of our workforce and making sure that jobs are filled by people with the right skills, and here we are gutting our educational system. Those cuts in turn will lead to approximately $250 billion in cuts to public education over the years to come. Finally, job creators are harmed--the job creators who do the infrastructure work in construction and in skill training. There is common ground here on infrastructure. There is bipartisan support for an infrastructure bank or public financing authority, and a number of those proposals, in fact, would involve repatriating funds at lower tax rates so the money parked abroad--trillions of dollars companies have put there because they want to avoid taxes on those profits--could come back. The money should come back. The money could come back at lower tax rates and be invested in infrastructure, but this proposal makes no such proposal because it is bereft of a realistic view of what is necessary for infrastructure. The sick are harmed as well. Illness is not about revenue to a State. Illness strikes any one of us at any time. The Republican tax plan will raise insurance premiums and kick 13 million Americans off their health insurance, all to pay for a massive corporate tax cut, passthroughs that benefit the wealthiest, and other reductions in taxes that are giveaways to people who need them the least. The corporations that today move overseas to evade taxes and benefit from special interest loopholes to lower their effective tax rates are going to be rewarded under this tax plan. Let's be very blunt. They will have increased incentives to move those jobs overseas. The bill borrows $1.5 trillion to enable them to have lower rates, and those billions will line the pockets of corporate CEOs. In fact, that $1.5 trillion is equivalent to all veterans healthcare and benefits payments to every single veteran in America over the next decade. With $1.5 trillion, you could increase the benefits to our veterans, enhance the quality of their healthcare, and train them for jobs that exist now, and, by the way, you could also pay off all the student loan debt in our Nation. Think of it for a moment. Think of all those young people whose lives would be different--transformed--if they were absolved of the worry about paying off those hundreds of millions of dollars of loans. For each of them, it is tens of thousands that crush their futures and drive them to jobs that were not their first choices but which they have to do simply to pay off debt. Rather than working toward bipartisan tax reform that creates opportunity for all Americans, this bill divides our Nation, it increases the division economically and, also, socially and culturally, and, yes, politically. It drives a division in this body between two sides of the aisle--literally, physically--between our Republican colleagues and ourselves. How wonderful it would be for us to take the time, to use hearings and real markups, and to do what was done in the 1980s when the last major tax reform--true tax reform--was done. The time, the consultation, the discussion, and, yes, the compromise were at the core of that work. What is at the core of this work and this bill are very simply blatant partisanship. There is no question that our Tax Code needs to be reformed. I am prepared to work on real tax reform, not the lie that we have before us but real tax reform that supports our middle class, drives our economy forward, and creates jobs. That would be the right way to do it, and that would be the way we could do it if we take a step back. It is not too late. We could do it tomorrow. It is never too late to do the right thing. I urge my colleagues to take the time and to engage in real compromise, legislation that is worthy of the name and a tax reform measure that truly is reform and benefits all Americans. I yield the floor for my colleague from New Jersey.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my distinguished colleague from New Hampshire and begin, actually, where she finished. This massive tax cut has indeed so many ticking timebombs that are unknown at the moment because it has been rushed and rammed through this body, as well as the House, without the kind of regular order that should be given--the intense scrutiny and attention that is due a historic, massive measure of this kind. The idea that it has regular order is absolutely absurd. If this is regular order, it is surely regular order lite. There have barely been the most cursory of hearings--barely an excuse for hearings--no real markup, no real opportunity for the public to be heard, no real scrutiny of the complicated and numerous provisions that will affect people for years, decades, maybe generations to come. The last tax cut was in 1985. The last so-called reform, passed in the mid-1980s, involved scores of hearings, meetings, and sessions for the public to be heard, dwarfing, making a mockery of this process. This process has been, in fact, a mockery of democracy. It is a classic bait and switch. It is a promise that is unfulfilled--a tax cut, initially, for people, which then disappears after a couple of years, when the wealthy continue to enjoy their tax cut. There are winners and losers in this measure. Let's be very blunt. The winners are the wealthy. The losers are the middle class. The winners are special interests. The losers are the American people. The winners are people who already have it made. The losers are people who want to fulfill the American Dream and make it for themselves, people who are pulling up the ladder for others to climb and to make it real for them. The measure that we have before us is the result of a promise-- middle-class tax cuts--and that promise was made by Donald Trump, who said also that he would not benefit. He sent his Small Business Administration Administrator, Linda McMahon, to Connecticut to say: ``Everyone will experience a tax cut.'' This plan is a scam. Yes, some people will receive a tax cut initially, but if you earn less than $75,000 within the next decade, you will be worse off under this plan. In Connecticut that means that 468,200 taxpayers in the bottom 80 percent of income distribution will experience a tax hike under this plan. The majority of people in Connecticut are losers, even though there may be a wealthy segment at the very top of the income distribution who are winners. Our children and grandchildren are surely losers because they will inherit the whirlwind of additional debt. The $1.5 trillion underestimates the amount of debt that will be added. I saw a cartoon in one of the newspapers that showed a rowboat filled with water, and one of the characters said to the other: Drill another hole in the bottom of the boat to let the water out. And the sea was the Dead Sea. That is what this measure does. It fills our boat--not only ours but our children's and grandchildren's boats--with additional debt. They are losers even though the wealthiest are winners. The losers include, also, first responders. Earlier this month, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police wrote a letter to the House and the Senate leadership urging Members of Congress to protect the State and local deduction as it is. This measure eliminates that State and local deduction, devastating for Connecticut but also for first responders, firemen, and police across the country, and our teachers who depend on the adequacy of Federal funding for essential services, which will be reduced. Because there is no incentive for State and local taxes--they can't be deducted anymore--States like Connecticut, New York, and California, we know are the losers and our middle-class taxpayers are losers. That is why the National Education Association has found that gutting the State and local tax deduction will seriously harm already underfunded public education, risking nearly 250,000 education jobs, including over 5,000 teacher jobs in the State of Connecticut. It will lead to about $250 billion in cuts to public education over the next decade. While we are talking about education, there is eliminating the deduction for interest on student loans. What could be more stupid at a time when we are encouraging young people to invest in their futures and we should be investing in them? Ultimately, also, the losers are our job creators, the folks who need infrastructure, which will go unrepaired. Our roads, bridges, railroads, VA facilities, broadband, airports, and ports are all desperately in need of rebuilding--not just repair but true rebuilding, modernization, and innovation. There is no requirement or opportunity here for repatriation of the trillions of dollars parked overseas. There is no provision for any sort of incentive for companies to repatriate and invest in an infrastructure bank. So we will continue to see neglect and disregard for that very important infrastructure. It is clear who will be the winners. Despite all these losers, corporations that move overseas to evade taxes and benefit from special interest loopholes to lower their effective tax rates are going to be richly rewarded. Senate Republicans have decided to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling. Those special interests are the winners. The bill borrows $1.5 trillion so those special interests and corporations can have those benefits, but it will also line the pockets of those corporate CEOs-- not just the corporations but the CEOs. That is equivalent to the cost of all veterans' healthcare and benefit payments to every single veteran in America over the next decade. With $1.5 trillion, by the way, you could also pay off all the student loan debt in America. Think of the difference in lives that would make. Think of all the young students debt free. Think of the vistas and the dreams that could be fulfilled. Think of the economic growth that would be generated. Think also of the false promises and the bait and switch. When corporate CEOs were asked by the President's chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, how many of them will create jobs with these corporate tax cuts, nary a hand went up in the audience. That is a picture that says a thousand words. I end my words now simply with a warning that Americans, far from buying this bait and switch, will see the proof in their pocketbooks and wallets. They will see the result of this consummately partisan measure run through without regular order, without real consideration, without the scrutiny that it needs and deserves, without public and popular support if we move ahead as the Republican leadership apparently appears intent on doing. Now is the time for us to show some backbone. I urge my colleagues to do it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, unlike past occasions when I have spoken on the topic of gun violence prevention, I am actually pleased to talk about some good news. A powerful alliance across the aisle has enabled us this morning to introduce a measure that will be a modest but significant breakthrough. It is a breakthrough in hopefully providing better data, more complete information for the database that provides for background checks. It is essential that more accurate and thorough data be provided in the database because background checks are no better than the information provided to them, as we have seen again and again, in Sutherland Springs most recently but also Charleston and Blacksburg, where individuals legally barred from accessing firearms were permitted to do so because of gaps in the NICS system. Each of those killers walked out of a gun store having purchased firearms from a federally licensed dealer, even though they should have been ineligible, because of gaps in the reporting system; that is, the information reported to the national system that collects that data and provides the underpinning for this program. We are a bipartisan group that says, in effect, enforcement must be rigorous, as complete and effective as possible. New laws may be sought, and we will continue to seek a broader background check law, as well as a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. We in this coalition may be divided on those issues, but at the very least, we can join arms and link together on this measure. These provisions will help enforce public safety protections that could mean the difference between life and death. Nonreporting now puts people at lethal risk, riddling with gaping holes a system that should keep guns away from killers. The Federal background check system is only as good as the information provided to it. I am proud to be part of this alliance. I look forward to the next steps--the prompt passage of this legislation and other measures that perhaps will evoke the same kind of bipartisan spirit across the aisle. I am working with a number of my Republican colleagues on a measure relating to military reporting, particularly as it concerns domestic violence. All of us who have been attorneys general, as the Presiding Officer has been, know the scourge of domestic violence and how much more dangerous it is--five times more lethal--when there is a gun in the house. More than half of the homicides in this country occur as a result of domestic violence. More effective enforcement requires steps that enable resources as well as awareness in the military and in our civilian courts. Judicial Nominations Mr. President, on the topic of effective enforcement of the law, I rise today on a related topic, which is the quality of our judiciary. Our laws are only as effective as the judges who implement them. I rise with regret because the administration is attempting to radically reshape our judiciary, to remake the bench in the image of a far-right dogma that basically contravenes what we are and where we are as a nation. This administration has proposed extreme nominees who will seek to undo decades of critically important progress in recognizing and protecting reproductive rights, LGBT rights, voting rights, workers' rights, environmental protections, and more. For the last 10 months, this administration has tried its level best to move our country backward by implementing its destructive, deeply unpopular agenda. They want to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. They want to abandon LGBT Americans. They want to make it harder to vote, harder to organize, harder to breathe clean air and drink clean water. If they fall short in carrying out this cruel agenda through Executive action and legislation, this administration has looked to the courts to do its dirty work. The Trump administration seeks to flood the Federal judiciary with judges--appointed for life--who will defend their indefensible goals. This plot is not hidden. It is not secret. It is out in the open. President Trump has made it clear. He claims to have a litmus test for Supreme Court nominees--he will nominate someone who will ``automatically'' overturn Roe v. Wade. Just last month, the Senate voted to confirm two circuit court nominees--Allison Eid and Joan Larsen--who had been listed by then-Candidate Trump as potential Supreme Court nominees, indicating that they have passed that litmus test. When I asked both of these nominees whether their records would lead someone to believe that they would ``automatically'' reverse Roe v. Wade, they both demurred. They said they did not know why they were selected for President Trump's Supreme Court short list--no idea. I don't believe it. Then-Candidate Trump laid out his Supreme Court selection criteria in clear, unambiguous terms. Yesterday we heard testimony from a circuit court nominee, Justice Don Willett, of the Texas Supreme Court, who proudly described himself in 2012 as the ``consensus, conservative choice from every corner of the conservative movement: pro-life, pro-faith, pro-family, pro- liberty, pro-Second Amendment, pro-private property rights, and pro- limited government.'' That is the way that he described himself. When I asked him what he meant by tying himself to these labels, he refused to give me a straight answer. In fact, he said, in effect, that he was just pandering to the public for votes, that that was part of his reelection pitch. Maybe he didn't believe it, but we have all been around long enough to know what these terms mean to voters and what they mean to the President of the United States. They aren't dog whistles, literally, but they represent specific ideologies. They are shorthand for specific dogma. I have no confidence that Justice Willett will be an impartial and objective implementer of the law and enforcer of the measures that we pass here. Just last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Brett Talley. He is someone who wrote that the solution to the Newtown shooting--he wrote it 3 days after that massacre--is to ``stop being a society of pansies and man up.'' He is someone who has written that the country ``overreacted'' and that ``the Second Amendment suffered'' after the murder of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown. After one of the great tragedies of this country in recent years, his reaction was that the Second Amendment suffered. He is someone who has disingenuously written that Democrats want to take away everyone's guns. Even setting aside the fact that he has never tried a case in his career, he is someone who should be nowhere near the bench, at least not as a judge. I hope my Republican colleagues will revisit their decision to support him. I want to emphasize that the compromise that we have reached today and that we are introducing in this bipartisan group takes away no one's guns if one is law-abiding and otherwise complies with the law. In fact, it provides incentives and rewards to States that do better reporting. It makes sure that a robust reporting system prevents the sales of firearms to people who are a danger to themselves or others, including convicted domestic abusers. This exaggeration, distortion, misinformation from Mr. Talley is, I think, emblematic of what kind of judge he would be. Let us not forget that we are, in fact, judged by the company that we keep. President Trump is willing to nominate someone like Jeff Mateer to a lifetime appointment on the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. He was not on the docket this week, but he could well come before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing in the coming weeks. This is someone who has called transgender children ``Satan's plan.'' He has proudly said: ``On the basis of sexual orientation, we discriminate.'' He has advocated conversion therapy for LGBT children. With these nominations, President Trump has shown the type of people he is willing to propose for lifetime appointments on the district court, as well as the court of appeals. As someone who has practiced in the district courts of Connecticut and others around the country, as well as in courts of appeals in the Second Circuit and elsewhere, these appointments have a special meaning to me and to others who are well versed in the way our justice system works. For many people in this country, the U.S. district court is the first place they seek justice. They rely on Federal judges to be above politics and to be above personal ideology and dogma of the right or the left wing. The U.S. district court is the first place they seek justice, and, for many, it is the last place. Adverse rulings for them are often the end of the line because they lack the resources to pursue appeals to the circuit court. Our district court judges are often the voices and faces of justice that the people of the United States most trust and rely on. What we see in these nominees is a pattern. They have clearly demonstrated through their actions, their statements, their temperaments, and their characters that they are, simply, unfit and unable to serve as impartial judges, especially when it comes to our Nation's most vulnerable communities. Our Nation's most vulnerable communities are often the ones who rely the most on those Federal courts. There can be no benefit of the doubt for nominees when they articulate the kinds of beliefs and dogma that these individuals have in their pasts and that they refuse to disavow in the present. I will oppose them, and I hope my colleagues will join me. I believe that on both sides of the aisle, we share a commitment to the credibility and trust of our judiciary. As I have said before on the floor, our judges do not have armies; they do not have police forces. The enforceability of their rulings really depends on the credibility and trust that the people of our Nation have in them as individuals who put on robes, because they are supposed to put aside their personal prejudices and beliefs and fairly, impartially, and objectively enforce the law. I fear that these nominees lack these qualities, and that is a tragedy for our Nation, whatever your politics. Someday, you will likely be before a judge--maybe not all, but many of you will--and you will want that judge to look at both sides of the courtroom and say that they both have an equal chance to make their cases, not tilt one way or the other because of the judge's personal beliefs. I hope that my colleagues will send a message to the President of the United States that one cannot politicize the American judiciary. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, we are at a critical juncture in our investigation into Russia's interference in last year's election and potential collusion by Americans with Russia's meddling and obstruction of justice that may have occurred. Those issues are under investigation by the Judiciary Committee, which has a unique responsibility because we exercise oversight concerning the Department of Justice and the FBI. So the firing of James Comey, among other actions that raised issues regarding potential collusion and obstruction of justice, is very much appropriate and necessary for our inquiry to determine. We also have a unique responsibility because only the Judiciary Committee can make public for the American people to know and understand what happened that may involve obstruction of justice and, equally important, what can be done to prevent it in the future. The Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate can legislate. There are other investigations ongoing involving the special counsel, who will determine criminal culpability, and the Intelligence Committees of both the House and the Senate, which have a counterterrorism responsibility, but they rarely legislate in the way that the Judiciary Committee does. I am proud to serve on the Judiciary Committee. I greatly respect the leadership of our committee: Chairman Grassley, who is a straight shooter, cares deeply about the integrity of our judicial process, and has a longstanding and distinguished record of protecting whistleblowers; and our ranking member, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who has been a steadfast champion of judicial integrity. Every week we are seeing cascading disclosures that reflect potential collusion or cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. These disclosures reflect on the obstruction of justice that is front and center of the Judiciary Committee's investigation. Just this week, through a stunning expose in The Atlantic, later confirmed by Donald Trump, Jr., himself, the American people learned of secret exchanges between WikiLeaks and Donald Trump, Jr., during the 2016 Presidential campaign. The exchanges began in September 2016--2 months before the election. Over the course of those exchanges, WikiLeaks sent literally dozens of messages to Trump Junior, who sent back at least three messages. He acted at WikiLeaks' behest at least one time, tweeting out a link to the hacked emails of John Podesta, Jr., at WikiLeaks' suggestion. He told other high-ranking officials on the Trump campaign that WikiLeaks had reached out to him in an extraordinarily revealing message. At no point did he rebuff the advances--in fact, just the opposite. At no point did he reject those overtures from WikiLeaks. And what we are seeing, particularly in the familiar tone, almost intimate nature of these exchanges back and forth, is the possibility that what we have discovered is just the tip of the iceberg in those exchanges. These revelations are stunning. They are jaw-dropping. The son of the President of the United States--then candidate--actively engaged and may have coordinated strategy with a group that the current CIA Director has called a ``hostile intelligence service.'' The present Director of the CIA, appointed by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, characterized WikiLeaks as a ``hostile intelligence service''--and that is a direct quote--and then observed that it is often abetted by hostile Nation states like Russia. Without subpoenaing Donald Trump, Jr., to testify in public, we cannot be sure we have the full record. One of the most stunning aspects of this exchange, indeed, was its very personal tone. Many who read the coverage may sense and feel, understandably and rightly, that we are reading fragments of a longer and larger conversation that may have involved other participants or relied on other means of communication. We are inevitably and inexorably left with some very key questions: How did Donald Trump, Jr., know of WikiLeaks' plan to leak Podesta's emails before they were even released? Why did WikiLeaks feel confident it could inform Trump Junior that they had hacked Podesta's emails without worrying that he would turn this information over to law enforcement? Hacking is a crime. How could WikiLeaks be in the least bit confident that Donald Trump, Jr., would not report that crime to the proper authorities? And he did not. Perhaps most crucially, why would Trump Junior see an invitation from WikiLeaks to coordinate efforts as anything other than inappropriate, unethical, and a potentially illegal act? Given the stakes, my expectation was--and the American people could likewise expect the same--that our committee would act quickly and transparently to answer those questions raised by these messages as well as the interview conducted by our committee staff of Donald Trump, Jr. That is what I was expecting when these messages were first provided to the Judiciary Committee roughly 2 months ago. My expectation was that Donald Trump, Jr., would be compelled to testify and that he would be subpoenaed to provide a full record of his communications relating to Russia's interference in our elections. Surely those subpoenas that were discussed, even issued over the summer, would now be reissued and enforced. The lack of action has been frustrating to me. Likewise, I have been disappointed that we have made virtually no progress toward scheduling a public hearing with Donald Trump, Jr., and other key individuals involved in this investigation. The subpoenas have not been reissued. I have called repeatedly for that action to be taken. The documents have not been subpoenaed. Those key documents that are so relevant and necessary to our investigation have not been subpoenaed, as I have asked to be done repeatedly. That is why I am here today to raise concerns about the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation into Russia's interference in our election, possible collusion by the Trump campaign, and obstruction of justice. The threat is that the investigation is stalling. The danger of lack of progress is depriving the American people of information they deserve. I recognize that congressional investigations must operate methodically, systematically, and in some cases confidentially until the committee is ready to release its findings. But that confidentiality can serve an important purpose if it aids an investigation--not if it engenders the kind of lack of trust that is clearly a possibility here, not if it engenders that lack of trust, not if it endangers confidence and trust in the process. There may be a need for confidentiality to encourage cooperation of witnesses, but ultimately the American people deserve disclosure. There is a need for impetus and urgency in this investigation. The American people must be made aware of key facts and issues raised by these documents and the interviews conducted so far. My hope is that colleagues will join me in asking for more progress, more disclosure, and more transparency, because the American people need and deserve that kind of disclosure. Without the exposure provided by a free and independent press, justice delayed could have extended into justice denied. That is the danger. Secrecy threatens to stall the investigation, and my hope is that we will have the kind of transparency in greater measure that is necessary for trust and confidence in this investigation. I hope my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee will join me in demanding that Donald Trump, Jr., and other key figures in the investigation testify under subpoena, in public, under oath, and that documents be subpoenaed as well. The Senate Judiciary Committee has a particularly critical role in exposing the truth. Even if criminal charges are never brought, the American people have a right to know whether their public officials have held themselves to the standard of honesty, loyalty, and integrity that they have a right to expect. This body is in the best position to provide that measure of truth--hopefully the whole truth--to the American people. There are many Members whose leadership on this issue I appreciate. As I mentioned, Senator Feinstein is sending a second tranche of letters this afternoon on this investigation. But we are allowing time to pass without progress. That opportunity, once lost, cannot be recovered with the measure of importance that it deserves. We must issue subpoenas. We must hold public hearings. We must get to the truth, and it must be done now. Thank you. I will refer these remarks to my colleagues with great respect for them and for the leadership of this committee. And I will come back to the floor. I will return to this subject because I think it is so critically important. The American people deserve more information, and they deserve better. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, we are here in the wake of yet another senseless mass shooting. Again, we continue to watch in horror a community torn apart and families seeking solace and comfort, loved ones deprived of people close to them forever. We know about that feeling in Connecticut because we had been through it in Sandy Hook just 5 years ago, almost to the month. Next month will be the fifth anniversary. Every day in America in communities across this great country, there are senseless similar acts of violence one by one, person by person. Every day there is a mass instance of people dying of gun violence. The danger is that this kind of incident will become a normal way of life in America. We cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized. We cannot lose hope that action is possible. We cannot allow ourselves to succumb to this supposed normal. We cannot surrender to fear or complacency or hopelessness. Our hearts and prayers are with the brave souls who are enduring this unspeakable grief and pain. Again, we know about it in Connecticut because I remember well that afternoon at Sandy Hook and the days that followed when families hoped for numbness. They hoped that the rawness and unimaginable pain of that loss would leave. For some, it has lessened, but it will never go away for them or for the families in Texas or Orlando or San Bernardino or Virginia Tech. The list is a long one, and it should include those families in Hartford, New Haven, Stamford, Bridgeport and in other communities--not necessarily urban, but suburban and rural--around Connecticut and around the country that have endured this same grief. Numbness is not the answer. Action is the answer--honoring those victims by action. That honor is never too soon. That sense of grief will never go away. As much as our hearts and prayers go out to those families, we must also honor them with action. Our reaction is not necessarily aimed at the last shooting or the last death by gun violence. It should prevent the future ones. The trap of the gun lobbyists is to say: Well, what you are proposing wouldn't have prevented what happened last Sunday in Sutherland Springs, TX. But we do know that 26 people might be alive today if the U.S. Air Force had done its job. Twenty-six people might be alive today if the U.S. Air Force had reported this conviction by court-martial of the shooter to the NICS background system. Twenty-six people might be alive today if the U.S. Air Force had followed the law. There is a law that requires this reporting. It was passed in 2007. It requires all courts and all jurisdictions to make that reporting. The law here is also clear that the shooter never should have had access to firearms. There are laws on the books right now specifically designed to help prevent dangerous individuals with criminal records of exactly this kind from getting their hands on guns, and that includes anyone who has a domestic violence conviction in any court, including military court. As the author of that legislation, Frank Lautenberg, said at the time: It is a very simple principle. Wife beaters and child abusers should not have guns. The statistics bear out that principle now more than they did ever before. The mix of guns and domestic violence is a toxic one. Fifty-five percent of all homicides against women occur during domestic violence disputes, and a woman is five times more likely to die during a domestic violence dispute if there are guns in the house. The law also prohibits anyone who has been dishonorably discharged from the military or convicted of an offense carrying a sentence of more than 1 year from buying a firearm. The Department of Defense has a clear legal obligation to have made that report. By the way, that obligation includes military court indictments as well as convictions, because they may disqualify someone from obtaining guns. We know today that the shooter in Sutherland Springs, TX, also was involuntarily committed to a mental health facility after sneaking guns onto an Air Force base and trying to kill his military superiors. That person should never have been anywhere near a firearm, let alone having the ability to buy one from a licensed firearm dealer, as apparently occurred. The Air Force's lapse is shocking and inexcusable. It is a lapse that may have contributed to, if not directly caused, that shooting because, otherwise, that shooter would have completely lacked access to the firearms he used so lethally. The American people deserve to know why the gunman's conviction was not reported in the background check database. The American people also deserve to know what immediate steps the Department of Defense will take to ensure that every court-martial indictment or conviction is reported to the FBI when they disqualify someone from accessing guns. The American people deserve action. So I have written to the Defense Secretary James Mattis urging him to take immediate action to ensure that guns are prevented from falling into the wrong hands. That means taking specific, concrete steps to identify an individual whose convictions and court-martial disqualify them from obtaining a gun and making sure those records are submitted to the FBI. I want to know what system there will be for identifying those convictions. I am also planning to introduce legislation because enforcement of that law should be done and reemphasized and reinforced so that there is no question in any mind of anyone in the military about their obligation. They must ensure that people who are convicted of disqualifying offenses in military courts are reported to the national background check database so they are prevented from having access to these firearms by purchasing them from licensed firearms dealers. As of now, the background check law applies only to those licensed dealers. We need to extend it to include all firearms sales. We need other commonsense measures to prevent and stop gun violence, but at least the military can be compelled to honor this obligation. I know its heart is in the right place, and I know they will diligently reform what they need to do largely on their own because they recognize that obligation. We have an obligation, as well, to enforce all of these laws more diligently. As a law enforcement person, one who was the State attorney general for 20 years and the U.S. attorney before then, I am proud of the State of Connecticut for classifying domestic offenses so they can be disqualifying under the law. Connecticut is only one of a handful-- perhaps three States--that have that disqualifying classification, so the States need to do better as well. The simple, commonsense fixes to help enforce laws that are already on the books to keep America safe will enable the law to be real and effective. If it is unenforced, it is dead letter. It must be enforced. We need better enforcement, and we also need better laws. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join in this effort, and I hope this new legislation will be bipartisan, just as we grieve together regardless of party. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, the magnitude of this moment should be apparent to all. A sitting U.S. President's campaign chief and his protege have been indicted for conspiring against the United States. Another campaign adviser has pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI about meetings with Russians. At those meetings, he illegally discussed obtaining dirt on the President's political opponent and emails that had been stolen. Two points need to be underscored for the American people. First, these indictments and conviction are a sober, shattering moment in American history. Second, all of us on both sides of the aisle should come together to support the work of the special counsel and assure that he is able to follow the facts and the law and all of the evidence, wherever they may lead. This moment will stand as a landmark in American history, just as many of the moments in Watergate did. This investigation has proceeded more quickly than Watergate did. John Mitchell was indicted in 1974 for conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice. He was convicted a year later. That indictment took a year and a half of investigation. These indictments have occurred just 11 months after the election and barely 6 months after the beginning of the investigation. We know that the President's campaign hired two alleged criminals and one admitted criminal. Two of them were foreign agents, and the campaign was run by a Russian agent, unregistered, now charged with conspiring against the United States. He was supported by another Russian foreign agent who was also charged with the same 12 criminal counts. These two individuals, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, were significant people in the Trump campaign. In the case of Gates, his influence continued through the early months of the new administration. Manafort ran Trump's campaign at its most critical point, and he organized and directed the 2016 Republican National Committee convention, including the critical delegate- corralling effort against a potential ``Never Trump'' insurrection, securing the Republican nomination for Donald Trump. Under Manafort's leadership of the Trump campaign, the Republican Party stripped language from their platform that would have called for arming Ukraine against Russian aggression. Ahead of the convention, Manafort also offered to brief a Russian billionaire on the state of the 2016 race. The convention he helped organize became a venue for a meeting between Attorney General Sessions and the Russian ambassador, after which the Attorney General misled Congress, implying--indeed stating--that it never took place. The Trump campaign also worked extensively with George Papadopoulos, a foreign adviser whose actions constitute the most significant indication of possible collusion--so far the most significant--between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Papadopoulos was named a foreign policy adviser in March 2016 and began communicating with Russian nationals the next month. He met with a professor for breakfast in London. They discussed stolen emails from Hillary Clinton and subsequently shuttled messages to the Kremlin and back for the Trump campaign. He worked with officials at the highest level of the Trump campaign. His direct boss, in fact, was Jeff Sessions, who was then the head of Trump's national security advisory committee, and he is now, of course, the Attorney General. He communicated extensively with the campaign manager and members of the national security team. President Trump tweeted today that he was a ``young, low level volunteer,'' but the President sang his praises at a meeting with the Washington Post editorial board in March 2016, calling him an ``energy and oil consultant, excellent guy.'' These revelations are stunning. Now the President is at a critical juncture. He can choose the course of cooperation or confrontation. He is literally teetering on the brink of a decision that could prove disastrous for himself and for America if he chooses a constitutional confrontation. We are at a moment very much like the one that occurred in Watergate. It is still memorable to many of us in this Chamber, although we were not here at the time. Our Nation could be careening toward a constitutional crisis. Some of the actions the President has already taken, such as firing Jim Comey as FBI Director, may be evidence of obstruction of justice in the investigation by the special counsel. As part of our oversight responsibility, the Judiciary Committee must continue its work in investigating that firing and other actions that may constitute obstruction of justice. Firing the special counsel himself is something only the President could try to do. It would be the ultimate act of contempt for the rule of law that is rightly seen as the actions of someone who has something to hide. At stake is more than just this President or this special counsel. It is literally the rule of law. To this President, the rule of law may be meaningless, a facade or a fiction, but that is exactly why Congress must give the judicial branch specific, enforceable power to stop the President from firing the special counsel. That is the purpose of legislation I have introduced, along with colleagues. I am here to call upon this body to support and pass the Special Counsel Independence Protection Act. I called for the special counsel to be established in February of this year and was joined by 10 of my colleagues in that call. It was based on credible allegations that the Trump team had colluded with the Russian Government. The Special Counsel Independence Protection Act, which I have cosponsored along with colleagues, seeks to forestall the kind of potential constitutional crisis raised by the President's threats not so long ago and his labeling the investigation a hoax and a witch hunt. The Washington Post reported today that advisers close to the President are urging that, in fact, he take more aggressive action against the special counsel. The specter of Presidential action against Robert Mueller, designed to stop or stymie a virtually unavoidable and necessary criminal investigation of the President himself, makes safeguarding the special counsel more urgent and necessary now than ever before. Rather than encouraging Presidential abuse of power by inaction, the Congress must move forward right away to check potential malfeasance and abuse before it occurs. Even the threat of such political interference constituting potential obstruction of justice undermines the special counsel's investigation. It makes witnesses less likely to cooperate. It discourages the agents and investigators working for the special counsel. It creates unnecessary confusion in the American public. Only judicial review can provide the check against such abuse and ensure confidence that the special counsel will proceed methodically and systematically to uphold the rule of law and follow the facts in evidence, wherever they may lead. That is what the American people want him to do. That is what we should guarantee that he will do. Make no mistake, this investigation will continue and conclude fairly and fully. The only question is how much turmoil and how much damage is done in the course of that investigation. Clearly, like any investigation and prosecution, this one is a mosaic, consisting of many different diverse pieces and already it is coming together on the Trump campaign's contacts with Russian officials. They include, for example, campaign adviser Papadopoulos's contacts with a Russian agent who claimed he had ``dirt'' on Hillary Clinton; Donald Trump, Jr., and the campaign aides' Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents to obtain information on Clinton; Jared Kushner's meetings with sanctioned VEB Russian bank CEO Sergey Gorkov; Sessions' meetings with the Russian Ambassador; the Cambridge Analytica CEO's outreach to WikiLeaks to obtain Hillary Clinton's missing emails; and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's dining with President Putin in Moscow. Those pieces of the mosaic are only the beginning. We are at a critical stage--the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. As a former prosecutor, I know investigations take time. The best investigations are done without deadlines. In an important case like this one, and in a complex and challenging one, we must allow all the time necessary to assemble that full mosaic and put together the pieces of this puzzle. The Watergate scandal took 2 years to unravel, from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's first piece in the Washington Post in June of 1972 to Nixon's resignation in August of 1974. We are less than a year into the Trump Presidency and fewer than 10 months into this investigation. The first individuals to be indicted in the Watergate scandal were considered to be generally outside the President's inner circle. They were E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, and the Watergate burglars in September of 1972. No one knew--and many denied--the conspiracy that involved the President and his top lieutenants at the time of those first indictments. In these cases, too--in these first indictments and conviction--a lot more is to come. We cannot wait until the President potentially shuts down his special counsel to come to his defense. Already, the rule of law is under threat. On Sunday--the day before the indictments were handed down--the President tweeted: ``DO SOMETHING!'' with regard to the Russia investigation. Although his reference was unclear exactly what he meant and whom the message was targeting, it certainly was an indication that some kind of action might be taken to thwart the investigation. Any interference in this investigation will be a red line for me and for others in this Chamber. Let the President hear that message loud and clear. There is a red line that cannot be crossed. It is political interference or intrusion in the special counsel's investigation, and it will be met with a firestorm, I hope, on both sides of the aisle. My conversations with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle indicate they would share our outrage and outcry if there is an effort to stop and stymie this investigation or if there is any other kind of political interference in it. Senators Graham, Booker, Whitehouse, Coons, and I have cosponsored measures that will help protect the special counsel. There are two measures now, but they are so closely similar that they should be brought together, and conversations are underway to do so. I expect we will have a single bill in the very near future. We should stand with one voice against obstruction of this investigation. I ask that my colleagues go on the record now to state that they will absolutely resist and oppose any interference by the executive branch into this investigation or investigations that are underway by our congressional committees--on the House side, the Intelligence Committee and, in the Senate, the Judiciary Committee along with our Intelligence Committee. The congressional committees have separate purposes. In the Judiciary Committee, we have the unique responsibility of oversight over the Department of Justice and the FBI. We have the unique responsibility to prevent the obstruction of justice and to uncover it, as is indicated by the firing of Jim Comey. My hope is that investigation will proceed and that it will be bipartisan, so we will have hearings and subpoena witnesses with public testimony under oath and eventually some report to the American people. That is my hope, and that will be our decision here. The decision we cannot and should not make is what the outcome will be of the special counsel investigation. We must guarantee--and we have this responsibility in the Congress--that there is adequate funding and authority for the special counsel, that there is no effort to either cut resources or limit the purview of the special counsel or place constraints on the time it may take for this probe to conclude. There should be no firing and no pardons, and we should speak out and stand up to assure that message reaches the White House loud and clear. This moment is one of historic magnitude. I cannot emphasize how strongly I feel but also how deeply my colleagues have expressed to me their own feelings about our responsibility in this moment. The grand jury that is bringing these indictments is an arm of the courts, which should be independent of both the executive and legislative branches. That independence gives the special counsel some new measure of permanence and protection, but the President can still try to fire the special counsel. He cannot fire the grand jury or the U.S. District Court judge who impaneled the grand jury. Judicial review of any firing of the special counsel, which is the core principle of our measure--the Special Counsel Independence Protection Act--would add a highly significant protection to not just deter misguided and deeply mistaken actions, throwing our Nation into turmoil, but also assuring that confidence and trust remains with the special counsel, and he can follow facts and the law with the full support of the American people. The American people can put their trust and faith in him and in our courts. We should assure that we uphold that faith and trust. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

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

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I thank my colleague from Rhode Island for that very pertinent question. Before I answer it, I thank him for his service as his State's attorney general and his State's U.S. attorney. He has as much experience as I do, and I know he appreciates that there are countless examples of exactly the kind of predicament he has so well described. The harm to each individual may be measured in tens of dollars, but the harm nationally to consumers may be measured in millions of dollars. If each of those consumers is forced to arbitrate, the result at best would be a few dollars to each of them, and most of them will abandon the claim because the services of an attorney or even the time they have to take to appear before a panel of arbitrators simply won't be worth it. The harm is not only to them, as my friend and colleague from Rhode Island has implied so well, it is to the consumers of the future because without public knowledge of the defective product or the predatory lending or the sexual harassment, that same harm will happen again and again. To take the topic of the day, sexual harassment, many of those employment clauses had the forced arbitration requirement that led to settlements and secrecy. For years and years, that harm was repeated to women who suffered because they were unaware of the harm about to befall them. It is a human tragedy, not just a financial tragedy, that often befalls consumers because of those fine-print arbitration clauses that consumers very often never even consider because at the time they sign the contract, they are not thinking about what can go wrong; they are buying a car or a product that seems just fine, or they are entering into a new job, or, as in the case of a veteran, they are signing up for a for-profit college, and they scarcely expect they will be, in effect, victims of these forced arbitration clauses. So the answer to my colleague's question, as he knows because he himself is such an expert in consumer protection, is a resounding yes. This rule is necessary to protect consumers against those kinds of harms, which, when added nationally, can be tremendously costly to our Nation as a whole.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Exactly right. I think that is the essence of what the effect will be today of this vote if it is to roll back this rule and, in effect, enhance the overweening power of companies and corporations that force consumers to engage in arbitration that they do not know will be the result and cannot change because it is a fixed term, even though it is in the fine print, and eventually rips them off. I thank my colleague for those extraordinarily insightful questions. I yield the floor.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my colleague from Minnesota, who has made many of the same arguments very eloquently that my colleagues have made as we approach a vote literally in the dead of night. There is a reason for the timing of this vote. My Republican colleagues would much rather have it done past the deadline for the newspapers, out of the public eye, because most Americans would be repulsed by the idea that they are losing fundamental rights, and what could be more fundamental than the right to go to court. That is the right that will be lost to countless Americans if this vote in favor of S. J. Res. 47 succeeds tonight. It would literally repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's arbitration rule using the Congressional Review Act. Most Americans will discover this repugnant step when they go to their lawyer's office, and they state their grievance, their harm, their cause of action, and their lawyer looks at a contract or some other piece of paper, which has in fine print a forced arbitration clause. That forced arbitration clause, in effect, blocks the courthouse door. It denies them their day in court. It compels them to go before a group of people--often, the majority selected by the big company they want to sue. At best, the result is to give them less to remedy the wrong against them than they suffered in harm. Often, the lawyer will say: You know, this effort is going to cost you more than you will gain. In good consciousness, I must tell you that you will not recover as much as you have to pay me, and that is because those consumers cannot join together in arbitration as they can in a class action. Often, it is because the cost of going to court individually, even if they win, will be more than they would gain in arbitration. It is done in secret, when their case is arbitrated, so others cannot be warned about a similar harm in a product or a service they are about to purchase and suffer the same harm or wrong. A vote in favor of this resolution is a vote in favor of predatory lending. It is a vote in favor of wage theft. It is a vote in favor of sexual harassment. It is a vote in favor of medical malpractice. It is a vote in favor of denying millions of Americans a fundamental right to a day in court. Without the promise of justice from the courts, few consumers can even think about undertaking the cost of an attorney or take on the tremendous effort of bringing those individual actions against service providers. The harm falls, tragically, particularly on our veterans. I commend and thank Holly Petraeus for her profoundly significant work to alert our veterans and all of us to those harms. These abusive practices harm our veterans more than others because they trust the abusive pitches that come at them as they are about to leave Active Duty or sometimes while they are on Active Duty or shortly after they leave. They have no control over where they are deployed or even where they are based, but the con artists and big corporations can come after them. They know where they are. They are targets of opportunity. In one stunning example--just to give one--documented by the New York Times not long ago, a sergeant in the Army National Guard who was serving in Iraq said that men came to his house and improperly repossessed his car, threatening his wife with jail time if she didn't give them the keys. Appallingly, this sergeant received no restitution. His case was discarded because his contract with the auto lender included a forced arbitration clause. That is the practical harm resulting from these causes. Wells Fargo has been mentioned as an example of how contracts, in effect, are forced on people without their knowledge for accounts, contracts for insurance that were put on their loans without their knowledge. Equifax, in the height of arrogance--the remedy offered to consumers had a forced arbitration clause as part of their acceptance of a remedy for the harm done by Equifax itself. You can't make this stuff up. You cannot create the fiction that matches this reality for abuse and harm to consumers. Repealing this rule strips consumers of one of their only avenues of relief from careless negligence or a slow response to harm. In the case of Equifax, unfortunately, it probably will not be the last. The CFPB rule draws a line in the sand. It puts consumers on a level playing field. It eliminates a provision that in law school was often identified as a contract of adhesion, where one side has such power over the other that they can dictate the terms, inherently unfairly, to the consumer. It demands that those consumers be treated fairly. Repealing this rule would allow companies like Equifax and Wells Fargo to have their run of the contracts in America, repeat the harms that have caused such widespread consumer harm, and let them off the hook. I urge my colleagues to reject this dangerous rollback of rights. It may be welcomed by some corporations, but in their hearts, as well as their minds, the vast majority of companies want to do the right thing. The outliers are the ones supporting this rule. It would not eliminate arbitration where both sides feel it is in their mutual interests; it would simply eliminate that fine print that enables those rip-off clauses that harm our veterans--people who fight for our fundamental rights. One of those fundamental rights--access to justice--is barred by this resolution. I hope my colleagues will reject it, enable consumers to hold financial institutions accountable, and continue the work of the CFPB in making sure that consumers really receive a fair shake when they enter into a contract. I yield the floor to my colleague from Rhode Island.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I appreciate my colleague's question. That is absolutely right. Arbitration panels do not have the power to issue injunctions--it is that simple. They do not have the power to grant injunctive relief even in the worst of circumstances. That is one of the reasons forced arbitration clauses exist: There is no danger of a court ordering increased disclosure or fairer terms going forward or an end to deceptive and misleading practices. I see we have been joined by another of our colleagues, Senator Cornyn of Texas, who served as attorney general before he began his distinguished career here, and he knows well that, as attorneys general, we often insisted on injunctive relief because we wanted to protect people going forward. That is a remedy that arbitration panels simply cannot award, and it is enormously consequential.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. That is exactly right. It is not infrequent in class action cases and not infrequent in individual cases where a plaintiff is willing to persist and takes it, as a matter of principle, that he will go to the nth degree legally and spend whatever it takes, if he or she has the resources, and some have done it as a matter of conviction and conscience to vindicate individual consumer rights, even though their ultimate payback in monetary terms may not have actually been worth it. But injunctive relief is often the key to fairness and justice.

Mr. BLUMENTHAL

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I want to begin by paying tribute to the people of Puerto Rico, who have been through unimaginable disaster--a natural disaster not of their making and a financial disaster that is not any more their fault than the hurricane they have endured. They have persevered and, indeed, now are surviving and even thriving, despite the hurdles placed in their way by the humongous storm that destroyed parts of their island. In fact, even now, at least a quarter of their water is undrinkable, more than 80 percent of their electricity is down, many of their roads are unpassable, their schools are largely closed, and their island is paralyzed or, at least, largely paralyzed as far as economic progress and job creation are concerned. They don't deserve this fate. They are Americans. They fought in our wars. I have been privileged to spend time with the Borinqueneers and led the effort to award them a Congressional Gold Medal as a sign of their patriotism and their dedication to our country. They are not only Americans; they are patriotic Americans. So, too, are the first responders, military, and others from States around the country who have gone to Puerto Rico to help with relief. I want to recognize their courage, sacrifice, and service to our Nation. The National Guard from Connecticut has gone to the island to help with National Guard from at least 13 States. There are thousands of them now, and they are working with men and women on the ground from FEMA, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security generally, and our military. They deserve our thanks. Yet, for all that heroic work, this Nation is failing Puerto Rico. Americans are on the verge of failing fellow Americans. Puerto Rico has a population of about 3.4 million people, roughly the size of Connecticut. If the humanitarian crisis now ongoing in Puerto Rico had occurred in Connecticut, there would be an outcry and outrage of unprecedented proportion, comparable to a public surge of criticism unseen before. Yet the people of Puerto Rico endure this humanitarian crisis seemingly without response. The President of the United States gives himself a 10. I agree. He deserves a 10 if the grading scale is 1 to 100 because barely one- tenth--in fact, less than one-tenth of what this Nation owes to Puerto Rico--has been done for them. I flew over the island of Puerto Rico in a Sikorsky Black Hawk during a recent bipartisan trip and saw out of the side of that Black Hawk the devastation and destruction I never thought I would see in America. Whole towns were flattened, homes razed to the ground, community centers destroyed, power lines dangling and down. I heard from the Corps of Engineers that there is no timetable to repair those lines, to restore electricity, which is the lifeblood of civilization and essential to bare economic functioning, let alone progress going forward, which is what the island needs. From what I hear, which families have told me, the shortages of food, water, and medicine persist. The hospitals depend on generators that are sometimes nonfunctional, and medicine is lacking in those hospitals. What is at stake in Puerto Rico is really our humanity. In the midst of this humanitarian crisis, what is challenged is our humanity, not just the legality or the protocols but our basic instinct to help fellow Americans when they need it. This Nation should not have a double standard for disaster relief. The Americans of Puerto Rico deserve what Connecticut would receive. I have stood in Connecticut with our Puerto Rican community. We are proud of the fact that we have more Puerto Ricans per capita than any other State in the country. That community has given back to Connecticut and has contributed to our quality of life. And we are proud of all of our Puerto Ricans who came from the island in past generations or recently. I stood with Gladys Rivera, who lived in Connecticut, went to Puerto Rico, and has just come back; with the Bermudez family, who have deep ties and family there and here; with Jason Ortiz, who is in charge of the Puerto Rican Agenda. And I could list many others. They have given me a picture of the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico that speaks to my heart--families who continue to suffer and endure these hardships. The measure we are passing today is a tiny downpayment on what is needed for Puerto Rico. It is a short-term, very small sign of what we owe. It is a downpayment that must be followed by a much bigger long- term commitment, a Marshall Plan that will enable the island to not just repair the power lines or the roads but to rebuild with different kinds of power--renewables and solar--and not be dependent on diesel or coal. It will enable them to build stronger, more resilient structures, whether homes or commercial buildings, that can withstand future hurricanes. What is needed in Puerto Rico is not just repair but true rebuilding and recovery--and not just the physical structures but the sense of financial stability and pride. So the pittance in this supplemental for Puerto Rico is the least we can do. In fact, it is less than the least we can do because it actually adds to the debt Puerto Rico now has. It adds $5 billion to the $74 billion that is owed by Puerto Rico. It does nothing about the bankruptcy of PREPA, the power company. It in no way alleviates the financial burdens of debt; in fact, it adds to it. Instinctively, we in this Chamber know we have an obligation to do more. There have been enough reports to fill this Record today about the courage of Puerto Rico and about the burdens it has to endure. We have seen and heard enough to know that a longer term plan is necessary, a Marshall Plan. Stronger leadership is necessary. Leadership has been lacking. I have proposed a disaster relief czar who can cut through the redtape and the bureaucratic lack of cohesion and get this job done, someone who can tell the Corps of Engineers what the deadlines are and bring together the leadership of Puerto Rico and give them the empowering authority in resources, not just in words. I also call for the CDC to be engaged more actively and effectively because Puerto Rico now faces a potential epidemic of mosquito-borne diseases: Dengue fever, Zika, chikungunya. The standing pools of water throughout the island--and I have seen them--pose a real public health threat at a time when the island is ill-equipped to deal with it. I have begun working with my colleagues on a longer term plan because this measure must be followed by stronger, more robust steps. The damage done to the island was in the range of $100 billion. That is a rough estimate. That $100 billion must not only be reinvested, it must be used to provide resilience--real investment, real rebuilding. That is what is necessary for Puerto Rico. I hope to return and visit again shortly, but in the meantime, the voices and faces of our fellow Americans there come to us clearly through my friends and neighbors in Connecticut who have joined with me in this call for real action and real rebuilding and real investment much more than this short-term downpayment which will shortchange the island if we do no more. It must be simply a first step that we owe our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.