Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. CARPER. Reclaiming my time--boy, I am glad I yielded. Thank you so much for those words and for the opportunity to participate in this process. Isis Mr. President, I want to change gears to talk about another battle going on in another part of the world, and it is a battle to degrade and destroy ISIS. Recently on the Senate floor, I heard a couple of our colleagues in the majority, I believe, claim that the President, the current administration, is not doing enough to fight ISIS. However, I say to my friends--and they are my friends, they know that--that the majority are forgetting some of the key facts, and I just want to revisit that. The truth is, they are taking the fight to ISIS, and we are making serious progress in the battle to degrade and destroy them. As I like to say, it is not time to spike the football. We are not in the end zone. Maybe we are in the red zone, but progress is being made. I want to talk a little bit about that today. I want to start by directing my attention to this map. For folks who are trying to figure out what this map says, it says that this is Iraq, a big part of this area here is Iraq. Right down here is Iraq. Right here is Baghdad. That is Syria over here. We have Turkey up here, and Iran is over here on the other side of Iraq. A couple of years ago, these folks in ISIS decided they were going to establish their own caliphate, if you will, a country. That would be a theocracy guided by their perverted view of Islam, not the view held by most Muslims in the world. Islam is one of the great religions of the world. The more I learn about it, I am struck by the similarities between the faiths. I am Protestant. I am not sure what our Presiding Officer is, but we are here and are people of different faiths. Whatever your faith happens to be, almost any faith in the world--I don't care if you are Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist; even Confucius used to embody and embrace the Golden Rule to treat other people the way you want to be treated. There is a section in the New Testament, Matthew 25, where we read about the least of us: When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me a drink? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was a stranger in your land, did you take me in? When I was sick and in prison, did you come and see me? There is a passage in the Koran that is actually very similar to what we have in the Bible, the New Testament. Nonetheless, the folks who have this perverted view of Islam launched an effort about 2 years ago in this area that we see here--I am going to call this a salmon-colored area, and the area that is more of a green color is the area that ISIS seized control of 2 years ago, and there are other pockets around these two countries, Syria and Iraq. That is what they took over--rolled right over the Iraqis. A lot of the Iraqi military units fled and left, and the leaders did too. We had a fight on our hands. The bad guys got within 20, 25 miles of Baghdad, and they got no further. The President of our country has helped lead the way to put together a 60-nation coalition. Some are Arab; some are Protestant or Catholic--mixed religions. A lot of different religions represent the coalition. Some are democracies; some are not. Some have a King or a Queen. It is an interesting group and a diverse group. But 60-some nations were put together. I mentioned before that I spent a fair number of years of my life as a naval flight officer, 5 years in a hot war in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war and another 18 years beyond that right up until the end of the Cold War. I had the opportunity to participate in missions that involved U.S. naval assets aircraft like the P-3 aircraft, which I was a flight crew member of. I worked with submarines, U.S. naval submarines with the U.S. naval ships, and it is not always easy to do that. Communications are difficult. Conditions are difficult. When we tried to introduce and work with units from other branches of other countries' military units, other naval units, it was even more difficult. Imagine trying to put together a coalition and 60 different nations speaking different languages with different modes of operation, different aircraft, different ships, different artillery and trying to get us all to pull in the same direction to take on this battle. It has taken a while. You know what is happening now? Here is what has happened. The land that ISIS took over 2 years ago has been cut by almost half--47 percent, almost half. While the area of Syria controlled by ISIS is a lot smaller than the land in Iraq, 20 percent of that land has been recaptured from ISIS. Last year, Iraqi counterterrorism forces, backed by U.S. air support, scored key victories in Ramadi to the west of Baghdad, 30, 40 miles to the west of Baghdad. And then a place called Tikrit--we remember Tikrit because it is the birthplace where Saddam Hussein grew up. In the last couple of weeks, there was some more good news. Fallujah, which is right here--these three cities, Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tikrit, make up what is called the Sunni Triangle. It is where a lot of Sunnis in Iraq live. It was once controlled by ISIS, and they have now fallen to the alliance, our forces. As we speak, Kurdish, Iraqi, Syrian democratic forces backed by U.S. Special Forces are training and making preparations to retake other key ISIS strongholds. Here is Baghdad. You go to the north, northwest, up here next to the areas controlled by the Kurds, which are part of Iraq but controlled by the Kurds, and over here--almost due west from Mosul, over here to Raqqa, which is the spiritual capital of ISIS. Those are where the fights are headed next. For weeks American airpower has conducted scores of airstrikes on these two ISIS strongholds, Mosul and Raqqa, in order to clear the way for our Iraqi and Syrian partners on the ground. We are using F-15 and F-16 aircraft--in some cases, carrier-based and out of the Persian Gulf. We are using drones and A-10s. We are using B-52s, which are being staged in a variety of places, including Qatar and as far away as a couple of thousand miles, I am told, to conduct precision strikes all over the planet to target ISIS. All in all, the United States and our allies have taken about 25,000 ISIS fighters off the battlefield and killed more than 120 key ISIS leaders since the beginning of this conflict. Recent reports indicate that coalition allied forces kill an ISIS leader every 3 days on average. Last week, coalition airstrikes killed the ISIS deputy minister of war and ISIL military commander in Mosul. We haven't done it by ourselves. We have done this with a lot of partners. As I said earlier there are 60 in all. Our President, his administration, and our military folks have built an anti-ISIS coalition that consists of 60 countries, including some you expect to hear, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Germany, but, frankly, a lot you would not expect to hear about. The coalition also consists of some of Iraq's and Syria's Arab neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Egypt, just for starters. As a result of these partnerships, we have not only taken territory away from ISIS, but we have also cut off its main sources of supplies, its reinforcements, and its funding. In recent weeks, anti-ISIS forces have surrounded a place called Manbij, Syria, which is up here, just north of Raqqa, and cut off the route through Turkey that ISIS previously used to smuggle oil, money, and move fighters. As of June 29, less than a month ago--maybe a couple of weeks ago--about 300 airstrikes against the Islamic State's oil network in Iraq and Syria conducted over the last 2 years have cut the terrorist group's oil revenues by at least half. It is estimated that ISIS now collects about $15 million each month, down from $30 million and $42 million each month at its peak. Cash reserves held by ISIS have also been hit hard. Over the past year, coalition airstrikes have destroyed $500 million and $800 million in ISIS funds--cold cash. Our partnership has helped to keep ISIS from getting reinforcement from outside of Iraq and Syria too. The flow of foreign recruits has been dramatically reduced from a high of about 2,000 a month in 2014--coming from all around the world to joining the ISIS team--to 200 a month in June. It went from 2,000 to 200 over the course of the last year. About a year or so ago in the United States, we had 10 Americans per month leave the United States to join the ISIS folks. Last month there was about one--one per month. This has happened because people all around--and certainly people in the United States--are learning the truth about ISIS. They don't want any part of it. In cyber space, over 125,000 pro-ISIS Twitter handles have been taken offline. For every pro-ISIS Twitter handle, there are now six anti-ISIS handles challenging ISIS's twisted ideology and criticizing its actions. That is a real game changer. At home, the FBI is cracking down on recruits as well. Over the past 2 years, the FBI has arrested nearly 100 individuals on ISIS-related charges. Just because we have made clear progress on these fronts, it does not mean there is not more work to be done, because there is. There is a lot more work that needs to be done, and it is not going to be done by us. It is a shared partnership and the United States helps in a lot of ways, but this is not our responsibility alone. The recent ISIS-related attacks in Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh show that ISIS still has the ability to mobilize its followers to carry out attacks on soft targets. The terror attack in Orlando last month serves as a reminder that disturbed and mentally imbalanced young Americans are susceptible to the twisted propaganda of ISIS. In November, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, renowned counterterrorism expert Peter Bergen told the committee that ``every American who's been killed by a jihadi terrorist in this country since 9/11 has been killed by an American citizen or resident.'' Think about that. Every person who has been killed by a jihadi terrorist in this country--in America--since 9/11 has been killed by an American citizen or legal resident. Think about it. The threat doesn't come from Syrian refugees or those who travel here as tourists or on the visa waiver programs. The greatest threat to our country now comes from within--from American citizens and legal residents. When these young Americans carry out attacks in ISIS's name, much like the Orlando killer appears to have done, they help to project the image that ISIS is all-powerful and ever present. We need to do a better job of countering ISIS's narrative here in the United States. Right now, ISIS portrays a winner's message, or at least they sought to, even though the results on the battlefield are beginning to show otherwise. We need to make sure the truth is told about ISIS and all the defeats they are beginning to absorb. They are cowards, not heroes. They are oppressors and killers of Muslims. They imprison and enslave women. They are not protectors of Islam. As we help the Sunni Arab world free itself from the horror and oppression of ISIS, we must also ensure that the truth about ISIS gets out in order to undermine ISIS's recruitment propaganda. Congress can strengthen our ability to fight the ISIS narrative by empowering the Department of Homeland Security to build partnerships here at home. The Senate Homeland Security Committee passed legislation that I had worked on, along with others, that empowers the Department of Homeland Security to build partnerships with the Muslim community here and with faith leaders, civic groups, and other nonprofits. These partnerships will help to develop local solutions for countering ISIS messages and to stop the recruitment of young Americans. I will say in conclusion that the battle to defeat ISIS is far from over, but I think we are on the right track. We need to make it clear every day that ISIS is not the winning team they present themselves to be. They might have been 2 years ago, maybe even a year ago, but not today. In fact, they are well on their way to becoming a losing team, and if we keep working hard and pulling together in the same direction with our coalition partners, they will be a losing team. All of us, Democrats and Republicans, have a role to play in making that clear to all Americans, especially those who are susceptible to ISIS's silent song. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will keep that in mind as we go forward. I hope we can also work together without the partisanship of this election cycle to come up with constructive ways to help enhance the ability of this administration and our military men and women to join with the other 60 or so nations to finally defeat ISIS. With that, as I look around the floor, I believe one of my colleagues from Oklahoma is poised to address us, and I will yield for the Senator. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, before they leave the floor, I want to say a special thanks to Senators Klobuchar and Collins for their leadership on this issue. This is one that hits close to home for me and my sister and my family. Our mother had Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and her mother and grandmother. So this is one I care a lot about, and I applaud their efforts to work together on a hugely important issue on a personal level as well as a financial one. For a long time, I thought Medicaid was a health care program for mostly moms and kids. As it turns out, most of the money we spend in Medicaid is to enable elderly people, many with dementia, Alzheimer's disease, to stay in nursing homes. The lion's share of the money is actually for seniors, many of them with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. So there is a fiscal component and a personal human component. I thank the Senators for this. I have written down the information about their bill, and I will be researching it through the night to see if I can join them as a cosponsor. I thank them both, and I really appreciate what they are doing.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Good afternoon, Mr. President. For more than a year now, I have come to the Senate floor on a pretty regular basis. One of our colleagues sitting here I think is the Presiding Officer's relief, and he has heard me come and talk about some of the great work that is being done by some of the 225,000 men and women who work for us at the Department of Homeland Security. As you know, the Department of Homeland Security is made up of some 22 component agencies, has more than 220,000 employees all over the world. These men and women perform some of the toughest jobs in the Federal workforce, including from stopping drugs from crossing our borders to protecting our cyber networks from hackers, to securing nuclear and radiological materials. The Department of Homeland Security has a diverse, complex, and difficult mission. In fact, they have a lot of really tough missions. Each and every day tens of thousands of Department of Homeland Security employees work quietly and diligently behind the scenes to achieve their mission which, at its core, is helping to keep 300 million of us in this country safe as we go about our daily lives. One of the smaller teams within the Department of Homeland Security-- and one that punches above its weight--is called the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. Let me say that again. It is not one we heard of very much. It is called the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. As you might imagine, we have an acronym for them. It is called D-N-D-O, but I am not going to use that acronym today because I don't like acronyms, especially ones that are rarely used. The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office has a staff of only 125 people out of the 220,000 that make up DHS, but they are responsible for keeping all of us safe from the threats posed by radiological and nuclear materials. From tracking known radioactive materials to supplying detection equipment to Federal, State, and local law enforcement, to conducting research and building better detection technologies, the men and women at this office play an integral role in our Nation's effort to, No. 1, detect radiological materials and, No. 2, to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. Very shortly we will see to my left some images of just a few of the technologies that are used at this agency and also a few of the employees who work there as they try to detect and track some of the most dangerous materials that are known to mankind. On the top half of this poster, we will see a couple of images. One is a field agent who is using mobile detectors mounted on a jeep to determine if a substance is radioactive or not. The other shows radiation portal monitors. These are right over here. Some of you have been to our border. At the border crossings between this country and others, you will see them, and you will see them at our ports too. The second image is the radiation portal monitor, these tall yellow posts that are stationed at the ports of entry and exits that can passively scan. They can scan cars, they can scan trucks, and they can even scan shipping containers as they pass through between those tall yellow posts at our borders. The men and women at the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office are charged with detecting and reporting unauthorized attempts to import, possess, store, develop, or transport nuclear or radiological material. They rely heavily on strong partnerships with local, State, Federal, and tribal law enforcement to achieve this mission. They act as a force multiplier as they equip thousands on the frontlines with the resources and with the knowledge they need to protect our communities from nuclear and radiological threats. One of the individuals who takes on this task every day is a fellow named Brian Kuleski. As an operational support program analyst, Brian oversees detection operations in eight States and one U.S. territory. Brian Kuleski makes sure that first responders have the training to coordinate and carry out detection operations, whether at a major event or in a sudden emergency. Through regular training, exercises, and strategic planning, Brian Kuleski gives our first responders the tools they need to protect some of our most vulnerable areas from the threat of nuclear materials. Before joining the Department of Homeland Security, Brian worked for the Florida Department of Transportation as a State police officer. In that role he was supporting to detect and track radiological materials throughout his State. He conducted radiological and nuclear detection operations at over 18 large-scale events, including the 2009 Super Bowl, the 2008 World Series, and the 2008 Republican Governors Association conference. Throughout Brian's career, he has earned the respect of his colleagues and is recognized as an authority on radiological and nuclear detection. Through his thoughtful leadership and, I am told, a little bit of humor along the way, Brian has helped Federal agencies and State and local law enforcement work together as one team to protect against terrorist attacks. To Brian and to his team, we want to say a very big thank you today and every day. While Brian and his team are hard at work tracking nuclear material and stopping it before it enters our borders, others within the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office are working to track the sources of these materials so they can cut off the pipeline before it ever becomes a threat in the United States. When Brian or anyone in the Federal Government detects and confiscates nuclear materials, they are delivered to the National Technical Nuclear Forensic Center at this agency. The experts there use advanced technologies to break down and analyze the origins of nuclear and radiological materials. In the bottom half of these images to my left, you can see some of the sophisticated technologies in these two frames right here. We can see some of the sophisticated technologies that we need to analyze the materials and track their sources. By the way, operating this state-of- the-art scientific equipment and instruments requires years of training and education. With the right information, employees of this office can track materials to their source, find out who produced those materials, and arrest the criminals who buy, sell, or transport them. This is an essential part of our efforts to keep nuclear and radiological materials away from terrorists whom we know would like to use them in an attack against our country. One Domestic Nuclear Detection Office employee charged with making sure that we are the best in the world at tracing the origins of nuclear material is Amalie Zeitoun. Amalie serves as a program analyst with the National Technical Nuclear Forensic Center, overseeing nine university and National Laboratory initiatives. Amalie is responsible for hiring the best and the brightest in the field of nuclear forensics. Since 2008, Amalie has hired 42 Ph.D.s for our nuclear forensics workforce. These individuals work every day to improve our technologies and to help us track down the sources of these dangerous materials. Her continued work will ensure that we continue to attract and retain some of the top scientists in the world. Partnering with our detection experts in the field, like Brian and his team, the forensics experts hired by Amalie help State and local law enforcement track down and bring to justice those who seek to traffic nuclear material and sell it to criminals and to terrorists. Without Amalie's efforts to keep our technology and expertise moving in the right direction, detection experts in the field, such as Brian, and countless first responders and law enforcement personnel across our country would have a lot more material to track and a much harder job ensuring the safety of our communities. Amalie's colleagues describe her as the ultimate team player. She works tirelessly to bring together government agencies in the academic community to make sure we are the best in the world at tracking nuclear material. She is intently focused on maintaining our abilities and reaching the goals set for her program, knowing that failure to reach them will make it much more difficult for Brian to achieve his goals. As a country, it is to our benefit that many say Amalie rarely takes no for an answer. Both Brian and Amalie are the ultimate team players. With just 125 employees, the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office can't be everywhere at once. It requires everyone--Federal agencies, State and local law enforcement, emergency planners, and even the academic and scientific community. Together we can do more with less, continuously improving our training and equipment, and staying one giant leap ahead of the bad guys who seek to use these materials to harm Americans here at home. To Brian, to Amalie, to all of the folks with whom they work at the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and to everyone around the country who helps detect and track nuclear and radiological materials, we thank each of you. We thank the members of your team, and we thank you for coming together to keep the rest of us safe. To all of you, we say thanks, and God bless. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Reserving the right to object----

Mr. CARPER. I will be very brief. My hope is that at the end of the day, we pass what Senator Collins and Senator Heitkamp have worked on, but I would also come back and consider some other issues where we could actually save more lives. That is my commitment, and I am sure it is one the Senator from Texas shares as well. Thank you.

Mr. CARPER. I am not going to object. Mr. President, I was just walking through, seeing what was going to go on later this afternoon. I heard my colleague and friend from Texas talking. He is very thoughtful and knowledgeable of the law. He is a former supreme court justice, as I recall, from the State of Texas and a very good Senator, and he is trying to reach across the aisle to get things done. I commend Susan Collins for her work, as well as Senator Heidi Heitkamp and others who are trying to get us closer to a no fly, no buy approach. I would have us keep in mind that I am the son of a guy who was a big hunter and a buyer and trader of guns--my dad, who is now deceased--but he was also a big believer in using common sense with respect to guns as well. I think most Americans find it troubling, certainly, the idea that somebody could be denied the right to fly on an airplane and then turn around and go buy a gun. I think most Americans agree that is crazy. I hope we are going to take at least a small step in the right direction. The other thing I find especially troubling--this came from a Bible study group that met here earlier this afternoon with the Chaplain. We talked about the idea that somebody could go to a gun show and be a convicted felon, they could be somebody with a serious mental illness-- --

Mr. CARPER. If I could have 1 more minute, I will be done.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I appreciate the chance to follow the Senator from Maine this morning. If I could, I wish to briefly talk about the appropriations bill for the Departments of Commerce and Justice and major science agencies, including the National Science Foundation. I commend the senior Senators from Alabama and Maryland for their bipartisan work on what I think we all know is important legislation. I have been told that it was reported out of the Appropriations Committee on a unanimous vote. They have worked hard to juggle many competing priorities, from keeping our country safe, to creating jobs through trade, economic development, science, and innovation. This legislation provides critical resources and needed oversight for many issues that are important to the Committee on Homeland Security, which I serve on as the ranking member. Just one example of many in this appropriations bill is the Census Bureau. The 2010 census was by far the costliest census in the history of our country. It faced serious technology failures, and that is why it is critical that we learn from the last decade's mistakes and make sure the 2020 census is on time, on budget, and most importantly, accurate. I am encouraged that the Bureau has provided a plan for the 2020 count that could save $5 billion and reduce the cost per household by almost 30 percent compared to the 2010 census--30-percent savings. Now we need to do our job here in Congress by providing the resources and oversight necessary to help the Census Bureau achieve those goals, and if we do our job, they can and they will. This appropriations bill also funds the FBI, our domestic counterterrorism agency. As we know, the FBI is on the job not just 8 hours a day, 5 days a week; they are on the job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are on the job around the clock, and they do this to keep all of us in this country safe from terrorism and violent crimes.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, on a totally different subject, my wife and I had the opportunity to go to New York last Saturday. We were invited up by our oldest son to visit with him and his roommate. We visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum. For anybody who has a chance to go to New York City and visit that memorial, I urge that they do that. It was a walk back in time to 9/11 and the horrors of that day and the days and the weeks that followed, but out of that terrible disaster, our country came together. Our country came together in rather remarkable ways. Instead of pointing fingers at each other, we decided to join hands and work together under the leadership of George W. Bush, and we created a 9/11 Commission, chaired by Republican Tom King of New Jersey and cochaired by Lee Hamilton, Congressman from Indiana, former chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee. It was a bipartisan Commission. There were 9 or 11 people. They went to work. They had a great staff, and they worked for months to drill down on what went wrong, what led to 9/11-- that catastrophe and how could it happen--and came up with a whole host of recommendations. I think there were about 40 recommendations. They were unanimous. They adopted them unanimously and gave them to us. They came before us and came before our committee, the Committee on Governmental Affairs, and we adopted about 80 percent of them pretty much unanimously. It was a time that rather than us being divided as a country, it was a time we came together on the heels of a terrible disaster. When I look at the political back and forth that seems to flow out of the tragedy in Orlando and I compare that with what existed when we lost maybe 60 times as many lives 15 years ago, I would hope we would remember, as a people--I hope those of us who serve in this body and those who would like to lead our country will remember the words right over the Presiding Officer's head. I don't know a lot of Latin, but the Latin words inscribed over the chair where the Presiding Officer sits, ``E pluribus unum,'' from many, one. From many, one. We are strong when we are united, and we need to be united just as we were 15 years ago. We need to be united as a nation today. George Voinovich, if he were here, would remind us of that. Since he is not, I wanted to.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I come here with a solemn message today, and I come here remembering a Republican colleague who served in this body for 12 years--George Voinovich. George was a former Governor of Ohio and a former mayor of Cleveland. I think, in his time, he was county auditor. He was Lieutenant Governor, I believe, and mayor of Cleveland. He was the chairman of the National League of Cities. As a two-term Governor of Ohio, he was also chairman of the National Governors Association. I had the privilege of serving as his vice chairman and, later on, as his successor, as the chairman of the NGA. Then George came here. He was elected in 1998, and he took office here in the Senate in 1999. He served for two terms and is, I am sure, remembered by everybody who served with him as smart, kind, principled, hard-working, and straight-talking. He was everything an elected official should be and could be. He and I went to Ohio State together but not at the same time. He was in law school and a year or two older than me. I was an undergraduate, and so I never got to know him at that point in time. But we shared a lot of bonds. I got to know his family well, his wife Janet. She and my wife Martha, as we were Governors together, were spouses together and were very good and close friends. I liked George. You know sometimes when you meet someone and you just like them right away? I don't believe anybody in Ohio history ever won all 84 counties, and with something like almost two-thirds of the vote. He did that. That was in 2004. I think in 2006, I won every county in Delaware. We have three. He has 80 or so counties. I would joke with him: Well, we both won every county in our State. It was a little harder for him. He impacted this place, as I think relatively few people do. We served together on the Environment and Public Works Committee. We served together on the committee that was initially called Governmental Affairs and later Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He was one of the leaders in each of those committees. George was one of those people who had the courage to keep out of step when everyone else was marching to the wrong tune. As a Republican, at a time when we had a Republican President--and by 2007 the war in Iraq was not going well--he very bravely, within his own caucus, called on President George W. Bush to begin a phased withdrawal of our troops. He basically said the Iraqis ought to be able to do a little more for themselves, fend for themselves. We will help them, but they should do more for themselves. He was one who believed we needed to match revenues with expenditures, and he was a guy who really knew how to squeeze a dime. He was very fiscally very responsible. He was a big believer that States should be fiscally responsible--and cities. He became mayor of Cleveland when they were basically bankrupt. He helped guide them back to prosperity and helped to rekindle the economy there and helped to foster an extremely strong economy. That is how he won every single county in Ohio. George was a guy who would actually vote against a tax break when he thought it wasn't fiscally responsible to do, if it would further erode our revenue base and enlarge our budget deficit. He was a very courageous--very courageous--elected official and someone you just liked. You know sometimes you meet people and it is all about them? Well, it was never all about George. He was a guy who had every reason to be pompous and proud and everything, but he was not that way at all. How do I describe him? He had the heart of a servant. He understood that his job was to serve, not be served. He was humble, not haughty. He came from a humble background and never had a lot of money--he and his wife Janet--until the day he died. George died in his sleep earlier this week, almost at the age of 80, just 2 days before my wife and I were supposed to have dinner with him and his wife here in Washington, and with other friends, to celebrate his impending 80th birthday. I said earlier that George had the courage to keep out of step when everyone else was marching to the wrong tune. How do I say this? When faced with the dilemma of maybe voting with his caucus or voting with the President on something he just thought was wrong, he was amazingly brave. He would say: What is the right thing to do? I heard him say this more than a few times, as Governor, chairman of the National Governors Association, and here. He would say: What is the right thing to do? He wouldn't say: What is the easy thing to do? What is the expedient thing to do? But what is the right thing to do? He was a person of deep faith. We have a Bible study group that meets here every Thursday, just upstairs, not far from this floor. There are about seven or eight of us, who, I like to say, need the most help. It is Democrats and Republicans. It is not just all one religion or the other. It is a meeting he came to just about every Thursday. He was a person of deep faith. George felt that the most important rule of law for us to follow, regardless of what religion we were--whether Protestant or Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist--they all have some version of the golden rule. Even Confucius in China had something like the golden rule 2,500 years ago, which goes something like this: Don't do to others what you don't want to have done to you. But George was really the embodiment of the golden rule: Treat other people like you want to be treated. He had a temper, but, frankly, he lost it when he should have. He lost it when he should have. Today we had a roundtable, and the roundtable included someone from the Government Accountability Office. Every 2 years, as the Presiding Officer knows, GAO puts out a high-risk list. I describe it as high- risk ways of wasting taxpayer money. They lay out all these different things that should be done in agencies and that, if done, would not only provide better service for citizens of this country but also do so in a more cost-effective way. George was always really interested in how we get better results with less money. He was always interested in that. At this roundtable today, when we convened it, I said: Let's hold this roundtable today with the Government Accountability Office and with representatives from across the Federal Government who are working to get off GAO's high-risk list. In order to do that, you have to figure out how to address the concerns raised by GAO and their reviews of agency operations. We talked about some of the areas where Senator George Voinovich worked--in one case with Senator Danny Akaka from Hawaii--to address a number of areas of expenditures and practices that needed to be addressed. Subsequent to the roundtable, I left there and came here to the Capitol Building and went to the office of the President pro tempore, Senator Orrin Hatch, where he was signing a document relating to the adoption of legislation the Presiding Officer and I and others had worked on, which is focused on how we do a better job in this country when we transition from one administration--this President, the current administration, President Obama--to the next administration. How do we do that in a way that we just don't drop the ball and get further behind, stop making progress in particular areas, and undermine our national security? How do we transition in smarter ways? That legislation has been named after two people--in honor of two people. One is Senator Ted Kaufman, who was Joe Biden's successor here. Ted was our Senator here for 2 years following Joe's departure to become Vice President and before Chris Coons was elected and joined us here in the Senate. During the 2 years Ted Kaufman was our Senator from Delaware, one of the pieces of legislation he offered was to make possible better transitions, more effective transitions, and smoother transitions from one administration to the other. Another person who had thought about that a whole lot was a fellow named Mike Leavitt, former Governor of Utah and later a Cabinet Secretary in George W. Bush's administration, and a friend of mine. I succeeded George Voinovich as chairman of the National Governors Association, and Mike Leavitt was the vice chairman, and he then became the chairman. We were all very close friends and colleagues then and right up until George's death. But we went over, literally, to the President pro tempore's office and signed the documentation. We had Senator Kaufman there, Governor Leavitt there, and we remembered George Voinovich, because when the first version of that legislation was passed, Ted Kaufman was the Democratic lead and George Voinovich was the Republican lead. That is just one of dozens of examples where he provided leadership for this country, as he did for Ohio in the roles he held there. I really loved George Voinovich. I just loved the guy. I think when we think of leaders, sometimes people in leadership positions say to others: Do as I say. George actually said: Do as I do. He was a big believer in leading by example. The other thing I loved and respected about him was that he was very tenacious. We have all met people who could have done something, gotten something done, and been somebody, and they gave up. They gave up. George never gave up. He was one of those people who, when he knew he was right and he was sure he was right, he never gave up. Tomorrow, people from all over Ohio--actually from around the country--will gather in Cleveland not far from the home where George and Janet and their family were raised and where they lived for many years--where Janet still lives. It will be sad, but there will also be a sense of joy. There are probably not many good ways to die--but to die at the age of almost 80 and to die in your sleep without pain and suffering, and to have a legacy of wonderful children--children any of us would be proud to call our own--and a bunch of grandchildren--the same thing, whom any of us would be proud to call our own. That is a great legacy if you just stopped right there. But the legacy goes well beyond that in terms of the way Ohio is governed today by Governor John Kasich, who is another close friend. John Kasich and I came to the House together in 1983, and I am delighted he has had the opportunity to serve as Governor there--a worthy successor to George Voinovich. Frankly, I might add--and I will probably get in trouble with my caucus for saying this--he would have been a great nominee for our friends in the Republican Party. But apparently that is not in the cards. So I won't go on much further, but when people say bad things about elected officials or unkind things about elected officials, I think it is too bad they didn't know the Presiding Officer and they didn't know George Voinovich, because they wouldn't feel that way if they knew him or had any idea of his commitment and his dedication and his sacrifice and his leadership. I will close with this. A fellow who used to serve here was a fellow named Alan Simpson. He was a Senator from Wyoming. We remembered him today because he was the coauthor of the Bowles-Simpson plan, the fiscally responsible deficit reduction plan of probably about 6 or 7 years ago. It was established by President Obama. It was a good roadmap then, and I still think it is a good roadmap today. Alan Simpson was the Republican part of that, in tandem with Erskine Bowles. Alan Simpson used to say a lot of very funny things. He was probably as humorous as anybody who ever served here, but he also said some serious things here too, and one of them reminds me of George Voinovich. Senator Alan Simpson used to talk about integrity, and he would say: Integrity--if you have it, nothing else matters. Integrity-- if you don't have it, nothing else matters. Think about that. Integrity, if you have it, nothing else matters. Integrity, if you don't have it, nothing else matters. George Voinovich did not have a partisan bone in his body, but he had a world of integrity--just a world of integrity inside that body of his. The other thing I would say, I like to think that as important as integrity is--and it is--the other thing that is as critically important for the success of any organization, whether it is a State or county or business or school, this body, the most important ingredient for the success of that entity, any of them, is leadership, principled leadership, committed leadership, enlightened leadership, and George Voinovich embodied those. So to the people of Delaware who supported--not Delaware. Delaware is a little town just north of Columbus, OH. When I was a student at Ohio State, I used to think Delaware was a town just north of Columbus. I later found out it was a whole State. When I got out of the Navy, I moved there. They were good enough to let me serve in a couple different capacities, including here. The people of Ohio were smart to elect him and smart to share him with us. We were just blessed that they did that, really blessed that they did that. I felt the presence of George Voinovich today at our roundtable working on the issues he loved. I felt his presence at the signing ceremony in the President pro tempore's office, when we signed into law the transition legislation he originally cosponsored a number of years ago with Senator Ted Kaufman, and I feel his presence here today, and it is a good presence. While we mourn his loss and his death, we just appreciate so much his life.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I thank my colleague from Connecticut for inviting us here and encouraging us to have this conversation. Many of our colleagues have come from a briefing by three of the top officials in this country who deal with homeland security and law enforcement. One of the questions that was asked deals with the ability of someone who is on a terrorist watch list to be denied the opportunity to fly on an airplane and then whether that same person on a terrorist watch list can be denied the opportunity to buy, for example, an assault weapon. The answer is, I think, shockingly disappointing. A person who is on a terrorist watch list can and will be denied the opportunity to fly on an airplane. That makes sense. But what doesn't make sense is that same person who is denied the ability to fly on an airplane because he or she is on a terrorist watch list can then go into a gun show or a gun store and buy a weapon, including an assault weapon. That just makes no sense to me. That makes no sense to me. I would add maybe two other quick points, if I may, and then I will stop and yield to others, including the Senator from Wisconsin who was kind enough to allow me to say a few words. The number of people who want to leave this country and go to link up with ISIS and be a fighter, that number has dropped and continues to drop dramatically, down to one per month now. In the United States, it is down to one per month. The reason that number continues to drop, and drop dramatically, is because ISIS is on the run. ISIS early on was thought of as a winning team. No more. They are being regarded, I think appropriately, as a losing team. I asked the question of the Secretary of Homeland Security: Is it true that since 9/11 every American who has died in this country at the hands of a jihadist terrorist--have they died at the hands of someone from another country who has somehow slipped in secretly or covertly? The answer is, every person who has died in this country since 9/11--an American citizen--has been killed by someone who is a U.S. citizen or someone who is a legal resident here. The Secretary of Homeland Security is pleading with us to give his Department the ability to create counterviolent extremism capability within the Department to improve it. That would enable us to establish partnerships with the Muslim communities, faith organizations, and other organizations to be able to reach out to work with them to reduce the likelihood that folks who are already here and could be radicalized will not be radicalized. I appreciate the chance to share a couple of those takeaways from what I thought was a very important briefing. I again say thank you to the Senator from Wisconsin for allowing me to slip in at this point in the discussion.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, it is good to see the Presiding Officer this afternoon. This past weekend, Saturday, my wife and I went to New York City at the invitation of one of our sons. We visited the 9/11 Memorial in New York, literally erected on the site of the World Trade Center. I must confess it was emotionally charging, very saddening, and at the same time uplifting and inspiring. I never imagined that within the space of less than 24 hours we would see dozens of our young have their lives taken from them. I remember walking through the 9/11 Memorial--and for those who have not been, I urge you to go. For those who have, you probably remember going through parts of the memorial and literally seeing the faces of 3,000 men, women, and some children whose lives were snuffed out that day some 15 years ago. Every one of them had moms and dads. They had grandparents. A number of them had children, spouses, brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, and nieces. Those families struggle even today with their loss. The young people who died Saturday night, Sunday morning in a nightclub in Orlando, like those many folks whose faces we saw on Saturday, also have moms and dads, grandmoms, granddads, brothers, sisters, and cousins. Their families are mourning today just like others did 15 years ago. What I want to do is preface my remarks by reaching out across the miles to the families who are mourning, trying to deal with their losses, and let them know that we want to take you in our loving embrace. To the best of our ability, we also want to make sure we continue to take steps in this country to ensure we reduce the likelihood that these kinds of attacks are going to occur and that when they do, if they do, we are better prepared to deal with them. The killer, the man who took the lives of 49 people, demonstrated an act of hatred--in part, an act of terrorism but really an act of hatred. The question is, What do we do about it? Some would have us close our borders, the ability to come here even on a short-term basis: If you happen to be Muslim, we are going to keep you out. That is exactly what ISIS would like for us to do. There are 3.3 million Muslims in this country. The idea of somehow turning them against the rest of us, that is the kind of thing happening in some parts of Europe. Unlike Europe, we are a country where we accept the people who come to our shores. We accept them. When you were a stranger in my land, did you take me in? For us, for years, for decades, and for a couple of centuries, the answer has been yes. That doesn't mean we shouldn't very carefully check and test the backgrounds of the people who come here to make sure they are who they say they are, that they are not on a terrorist watch list. We have a bunch of those. We want to make sure our agencies and our terrorist watch lists are coordinated. We want to make sure our intelligence agencies are in close communication with one another. Part of the goal of ISIS is to make this a clash between the United States and the Muslim population here, 3.3 million people, and around the world. That is not what we should do. We should be smarter than that. One of the things we need to do is to continue the work that was begun from last year--I have said it often, I am going to say it again--to degrade and destroy those who would do us harm. Those who would do us enormous harm are trying to set up a caliphate. They are somehow using their religion, bastardizing their religion, and making it say things it doesn't even begin to say. What we need to do is make sure they get no further. The progress that has been made in terms of rolling them back was with the help of a coalition that includes 15 nations--16 nations. We are taking back a lot of the land and about to--I hope--take Fallujah and Mosul and continue there. When ISIS wannabes pop up in other countries, the idea is to work with our coalition in the countries that ISIS is trying to get a foothold in and make sure they are not successful. So it is a little like Whac-a-Mole--but it is not a game--and it is one we want to make sure they don't get a chance to get started there. If you look at the amount of money--ISIS used to make a lot of money selling oil. They take over oil refineries and oilfields, and they sell the oil on the black market. We have greatly diminished their ability to do that and greatly diminished their ability to make money. In some cases, we have figured out where they are keeping their cash stored, and we have gone in and destroyed literally hundreds of millions of dollars in their currency that they were harboring. There are a number of people coming from around the world to go to that part of the world--Iraq, Syria--who want to be ISIS volunteers. It is greatly diminished from what it was. It is down from 2,000 a month this time maybe last year to something that is just a fraction of that. In the United States not that long ago, early this year, maybe six people a month were going from the United States to the Middle East to be part of ISIS, and they are down to maybe one per month. It is still one too many, but we are headed in the right direction. The people who are being radicalized here by ISIS, ISIS is not sending people here to radicalize them. ISIS is basically trying to do this through social media, to use the Internet, and they are pretty good at it, but one of the things that will make them not so effective is once we demonstrate--and I think we are on our way to doing that-- that ISIS is a losing team. The people who are apparently claiming credit for it--or the killer in this case who killed all of our folks over the weekend, he was looking for a winning team. He is not a person who had a lot of wins in his life, and he wanted to be a part of a winning team. Our challenge is to make sure that anybody who is looking for a winning team or thinks they can, through radicalization, attacks, and terrorism--we need to make sure they know they are barking up the wrong tree. ISIS is a losing team. One of the ways we can do that is--the Presiding Officer along with me and a number of others on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs have been all over this issue for years. It led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. We continue to stay right on this issue, and we will probably be doing that for as long as any of us are in the Senate. Part of what we should be doing, aside from degrading and destroying ISIS--if we are smart, one of the things we need to do is reach out to the Muslim community in this country, unlike what has happened in places in Europe, where you have a lot of Muslim folks who are all segregated. They are not part of the culture. They are not welcomed so much in those countries. One of the things about us in America is we are a melting pot. We have been a melting pot forever. When I was a stranger in your land, did you take me in? For years, we said the answer is yes. The Department of Homeland Security has asked for authorization to be able to create our community partnership, to reach out to Muslim communities across America, to meet with parents, with young people, not so young people, face the community, and make it clear they are a part of this country, make sure they say to their own people, their own young people: Don't do this. Don't do what this guy did over the weekend in Orlando. That is not part of our religion. It is not part of their religion. Don't go there. The third thing we can do and ought to be doing is to strengthen our defenses at home. We had an active shooter situation for hours into the wee hours of Saturday evening to Sunday morning, an active shooter situation. It is not the first active shooter situation we have faced. They are not easy to deal with. One of the things the Department of Homeland Security can do, is doing, and ought to be doing more of, if given the resources, is doing active shooter training in police agencies all over the United States. If they ever face a situation such as this, they know what to do and they are able to be effective and save lives. The other thing I would mention in terms of resources, as the Presiding Officer knows, we put a fair amount of resources toward a fusion center. Sometimes people used to call them confusion centers, but actually they are a fusion center. They give the ability to State and local law enforcement agencies to work with the Feds to better ensure that information gathered locally works its way up the channel, up through the chain of command, to be shared nationally with other States and with the Federal Government, and to make sure the converse is true, to the extent that we gather useful information at the national level, international level, that we bring it down and we funnel it back into individual States through fusion centers so they act on that actionable intelligence. We need to work with energy in this regard. We need to work with a sense of urgency. We need to make sure, as we go through the appropriations process in the Senate in the days and weeks ahead, that we are putting resources, financial resources, where they need to go. A number of folks have asked me in interviews yesterday and today: What should we be doing about gun control? How does all of this relate to gun control? The answer is, I am not sure how this is going to affect the way we view guns. I believe in the Second Amendment right. I am sure the Presiding Officer does, a former Army colonel, retired colonel. I am a retired Navy captain, a Vietnam veteran. My dad was a chief petty officer in World War II and served for a long time as a chief petty officer in the Reserves after that. My dad was a hunter. He came from a family of hunters and taught me to be a hunter and a fisherman. One of the proudest possessions I own is a shotgun my grandfather gave me before he died. When I was in the Navy, I used to go back on leave from Southeast Asia, go visit my parents near Clearwater, FL, and stay in a guest bedroom. In the guest bedroom, under my bed where I slept, were guns. I opened the closet in the guestroom for my clothes, and there were guns. My father, in addition to being a hunter, actually bought and sold guns. He would basically sell them to people he knew. He felt they were not people who were mentally unstable or people who were felons, but he believed in the Second Amendment right. My dad also believed in common sense. My dad is now deceased, but if he were alive and he heard that people who are on terrorism watch lists can literally buy weapons, including assault weapons, automatic weapons, he would say: That doesn't make any sense. If he found out we could go to a gun show, and a person who is mentally unstable, has a history of mental illness, and maybe someone who is a convicted felon could actually walk into a gun show and go to a federally registered gun dealer, be denied the ability to purchase an assault weapon, and then go to the next table over with someone who is not a federally registered gun dealer and purchase the same weapon they had just been denied, in terms of what makes sense and doesn't make sense to my dad and frankly to me--his son--those situations don't make a whole lot of sense. Those are areas we ought to agree on. One of our colleagues, as the Presiding Officer knows, Senator Enzi from Wyoming, likes to talk about the 80-20 rule. It is a great rule. It says there is about 80 percent of the stuff we agree on and maybe 20 percent of an issue we don't agree on. What we should do is focus on the 80 percent we agree on. My hope is--most Americans get it, in terms of making sure that folks who are on the terrorist watch list don't have access to buy weapons. They get it. I think they also get the idea that this gun show loophole is something that ought to be closed as well. I close by saying, in a sense, this is a test of our character as a nation. I said earlier our tradition has always been that we welcome people from disparate places, in some cases people fleeing oppression, lack of freedom, lack of religious opportunities and freedom of worship. That is the way we operate as a country. You don't open and read the Constitution--it doesn't say Matthew 25 because we decided we are not going to establish a religion here. If we did, Matthew 25 says: When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me to drink? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was a stranger in your land, did you take me in? I think we have a moral obligation to the least of these, including those who are fleeing oppression in other places looking for an opportunity for a new life. I think we have a moral obligation to welcome them, but we have a moral obligation to those who live here, to make sure that as we welcome people from other places, we do not imperil them by those who arrive from other shores. The last thing I would say is, we need the kind of leadership in this body that seeks to really do what it says right over the Presiding Officer's head, where the Presiding Officer is sitting. The Latin words--I don't know a lot of Latin words but ``e pluribus unum''--from many, one. Those are words that we would be wise to remember from this day as we go forward. I think that is pretty much what I wanted to say. As this week goes on, I ask that my colleagues and I find out as much as we can, learn as much as we can, find out what went right and what went wrong, and do more of what went right. And at the end of the day, let's make sure we are true to the values on which this country was built. I thank the Chair.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, for some time, including times on this floor, I have said that the choice between a clean environment and a strong economy is a false one. Some people say you can't have a clean environment and a strong economy at the same time. I just don't think that is correct. TSCA is an acronym for Toxic Substances Control Act. The TSCA reform legislation that we approved in this body last night is proof of the fact that we can have a cleaner, safer, and healthier environment and also have a strong economy. They go together, and maybe, when I finish my remarks, folks will understand why that might be true. Every day in this country manufacturers use a variety of chemicals. I am told there are tens of thousands of chemicals on this planet. It is in the air, in the ground, in the water, and in our bodies. Manufacturers use these chemicals to make everything from carpets--like the carpet we are standing on--to cosmetics, water bottles, and dish washing soap. Former President Gerald Ford signed the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 and said it was landmark legislation. He said that this is huge legislation in terms of protecting the environment and public health. He said it was intended to give the EPA the authority to monitor, test, and regulate the chemicals that pose a risk to human health or the environment. That was the deal. Over the past four decades, since Gerald Ford signed that legislation into law, the Toxic Substances Control Act has never worked as intended, leaving the public at risk for toxic exposures and the private sector with a broken regulatory process that has undermined innovation. Frankly, it led to a lot of uncertainty and lack of predictability. As a recovering Governor, I know that among the things we need in order to have a better and more nurturing environment for job creation and job preservation is to make certain that businesses, whether large or small, have predictability and certainty. When the Toxic Substances Control Act passed 40 years ago, it did not provide that predictability and certainty. In fact, for the last 40 years, I think the EPA has fully vetted six toxic substances. Imagine that--six in 40 years. In the last 20 to 25 years, there were none. In the meantime, States have stood up and said: If the Federal Government is not going to do it, we will do it. Now we have a patchwork quilt of State requirements. We have businesses--not just chemical businesses but a wide variety of businesses--in this country that are trying to comply with laws in dozens of States, and the Federal standard that we set 40 years ago just does not work. For a while, the Toxic Substances Control Act has been broken. That is a polite way of saying it. Over the past 39 years, we have learned a lot more about toxic chemicals. We have learned about how they can cause harm to our environment. They can cause harm to public health, and we also learned how best to identify and protect against these risks. More than 3 years ago, two of my colleagues--one a Democrat, Tom Udall of New Mexico, and the other a Republican, Dave Vitter of Louisiana--wrote something called the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. That is a mouthful, isn't it? Frank R. Lautenberg was a Senator from New Jersey for many years, whose birthday I remember to this day. He is now deceased, but his birthday is January 23, and the reason why I know that is because that is when my birthday is. This is an issue we actually shared a strong interest in doing something about. My recollection--it is hard to remember when people move around from desk to desk--is that his seat was back here behind where I am standing today. My colleagues Tom Udall and David Vitter wrote a bill and named it after Frank R. Lautenberg because this is an issue he cared a lot about. He tried several times to write legislation that could be enacted to take the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act from 1976 and bring it into the 21st century and help it become effective and make sense for the digital age. The bill written by Senators Udall and Vitter reforms the old Toxic Substances Control Act, and it does it in ways to better protect the public--to protect us, our families, our businesses, and so forth. It is also designed to create a more manageable regulatory framework for American businesses and innovators so they have some predictability and certainty with what they are dealing with. Whether they happen to be doing business in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Wyoming, Idaho, or California, they would have some certainty as to what the rules of the road were going to be for toxic substances or the chemicals they might be using in their processes. After the bill was introduced by Senators Vitter and Udall, I worked closely with both of them for more than a year as a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. We led a number of meetings, had many discussions, and we were always focused on securing enhanced protections for public health and the environment while providing certainty and predictability for American businesses. I focused especially on language to secure provisions that would protect children, pregnant women, and workers from toxic risk. The provisions I especially focused on included ensuring that the EPA had access to information in order for them to assess safety risks. A third area that I looked at was to enact something to allow States to enforce Federal toxic safety law. If the EPA wasn't doing its job, could there be a State backstop in a way that made sense? I think that was not an unreasonable thing to ask. We did that in Dodd-Frank with respect to nationally chartered banks. If the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in nationally chartered banks is not making sure consumers are being looked after, then we allow State attorneys general--not to write regulations or their own law but to enforce Federal standards and laws. I wanted to make sure that in the event that someday we had an EPA that frankly wouldn't enforce a new version of the substance control act, then States could enforce it for them. Chemical manufacturers and consumers alike deserve legal clarity, a timely review process, and the ability to trust that products people use every day are safe. I might add that when Senator Udall and Senator Vitter started to introduce this legislation and started to gather cosponsors--I don't mean to be presumptuous, but my guess is the Presiding Officer probably ended up as a cosponsor. At the end of the day, we had 30 Democrats and 30 Republicans. The idea was to add a Democrat, add a Republican, add a Democrat, add a Republican--a little bit of a look at how a bill is made or should be made. It is almost a textbook example of how legislation could be formed or should be formed, even on a difficult and contentious issue like the one I am talking about today. I was involved at the very beginning in the initial efforts to rewrite the Toxic Substance Control Act. I was involved with David Vitter and Tom Udall and also the chairman of the committee, Jim Inhofe. But I got to a point where I said to the coauthors of the legislation--they were looking for cosponsors, and I said: I will be willing to cosponsor your version of the rewriting of the Toxic Substance Control Act, but there are 10 changes that I would like to consider making. They said: What are they? I said: Well, here they are. And I gave them some idea of what they were. They asked me to put them in writing, so I put them in writing in a letter to Senators Vitter and Udall and said: These are the changes I would like to see made in the bill you have introduced. If you will make these changes or agree to these changes, I will cosponsor your bill, and not only will I cosponsor your bill, but so will 10 or 11 other Democrats. We all signed the letter. This was probably about a year and a half ago. The letter was more to Senator Vitter than Senator Udall; I think it went to both. But to his credit, Senator Vitter and his staff went through it piece by piece, proposal by proposal--all 10 of them. At the end of the day, they agreed essentially with all of them, and they said that they would incorporate all 10 of the proposals in the bill. They said: Now will you cosponsor the bill? And I said: Yes, I will. And so did the rest of us who signed the letter--all 10 of us. When I said that I would cosponsor the bill, I also said there were three areas that still needed some work. My passion for pushing for this legislation will be tempered somewhat by your willingness to also act on subsequent changes in the bill in these three areas. I will not go into those three areas, but I will say that later on, some of my colleagues--Senators Cory Booker, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Jeff Merkley, and Senator Ed Markey--sort of stepped up and said: We are interested in those three areas, and we want to see further changes made in the bill. With those changes, we added even more cosponsors, and finally we ended up with 60. We said: Let's take that bill to the Senate. It reported out of committee and eventually worked through the Senate. It was not easy, but we finally got it done. We went to conference with the House, and, lo and behold, we passed a conference report unanimously last night by unanimous consent, and nobody objected. Considering how controversial this bill has been for years, that is amazing. At a press conference we held today with the principal Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, one of the House Members came over. Senator Tom Udall talked about how he felt elated to be able to unanimously pass a contentious bill after all these years. He likened it to standing on a mountaintop. He is a mountain climber. In New Mexico they have some tall mountains, and he said it was like standing on a mountain top. He said: I feel elation when I climb to the top of a tall mountain and stand atop the mountain. And he said this morning at the press conference that he felt elation as well. Then, when I spoke after Senator Udall, I said that in Delaware we don't have tall mountains. Delaware is the lowest lying State in America. We really worry about climate change and sea levels rising. Besides that being some theory, it is something that we worry about. So the highest part of land in Delaware is a bridge. Every now and again, if I want to go up high and climb something, I can climb the bridge, but it is not really that high. The thing that gave me elation in Delaware when I was Governor--and before that the State treasurer and all--was when we all worked together. Delaware has a tradition; we call it the Delaware way. It is where Democrats and Republicans work together, set aside partisan differences, and just ask: What is the right thing to do? Delaware is a small State. We can get pretty much the key stakeholders in a room and work out a lot of our differences within a couple of hours. It is pretty amazing how it works sometimes. I share with my colleagues today an African proverb. The Presiding Officer has probably heard this before, and he has probably used this one before. It goes something like this: ``If you want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to travel far, go together.'' Let me say that again. ``If you want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to travel far, go together.'' That is especially true in the Senate. In order to get anything of any consequence done, you need 60 votes. We are at about 55 Republicans, and roughly there are about 45 Democrats with maybe an Independent in there somewhere. So we have to figure out how to travel together. We have been traveling a long way over the last 4 years or so, but we finally got to our destination, and I think we finally came to a good outcome in terms of the policy we have adopted. For the first time, the legislation that has been agreed to by the House and Senate and will be sent to the President will require that every product used in consumer products will be assessed for safety. Let me say that again. Every chemical used in consumer products will be assessed for safety. At the same time, our legislation will offer businesses a predictable and manageable regulatory framework--not a whole bunch of different regulatory frameworks, but one--for chemicals that do not pose a safety hazard. As I said, we have been struggling and negotiating this bill in the Senate for a long time--maybe as much as a half dozen years. There has been a lot of give and take on both sides of the aisle to get to where we are last night and today. We are where we are today because both sides worked together to compromise on policies without compromising on our principles. I mentioned that Frank Lautenberg used to sit at one of these desks behind me, and so did Ted Kennedy. I will never forget going and having a lunch with him when I was fairly new in the Senate. I wasn't sure that we had the kind of interpersonal relationship that I wanted, and as the Presiding Officer knows, this place works a lot on relationships. I said to him: Maybe someday I can come to your office and just sit and talk with you for a while and have a cup of coffee. He said: Why don't you come to my hideaway, and we will have lunch together. I said: Really? He said: Yes. After about a week or two, we went to his hideaway, and we had lunch together. His hideaway was an amazing place. It was almost like a museum in terms of all the things about the Kennedy family and his brothers and his own life. Among the things we talked about that day was his ability to find compromise and consensus with one of our current colleagues, a guy named Mike Enzi--a wonderful guy named Mike Enzi who the Presiding Officer knows is one of two Senators from Wyoming, a former mayor of Gillette, an accountant--I think maybe a CPA. When I was presiding over the Senate years ago, I remember Mike Enzi coming to the floor of the Senate and speaking about the 80-20 rule and how the 80-20 rule allowed the folks in a committee he served on as the senior Republican called the HELP Committee, or the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--Ted Kennedy was the senior Democrat on that committee. It was an incredibly productive committee. There were all kinds of bipartisan legislation coming out of it. Later on that day I asked Senator Enzi off the floor: How do you and Ted Kennedy manage to get so much done in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee? How do you do that? He said: It is the 80-20 rule. I said: What's that? He said: Ted Kennedy and I agree on about 80 percent of this stuff, and we disagree on the other 20 percent. What we do is we focus on the 80 percent where we agree, and we set aside the other 20 percent to another day and we will figure that out some other time. When I talked to Ted Kennedy about the same thing, he said: I am always willing to compromise on policy, process, but I just don't want to compromise on my principles. He and Mike Enzi managed to have an incredibly productive partnership on that committee and here in the Senate. Senator Kennedy had a similar relationship with Orrin Hatch, who now chairs the Finance Committee, as we know. But we are where we are today because both Democrats and Republicans have worked together to compromise on policy without having to compromise our principles. The final product is a testament to a robust and a transparent committee process. I think it is a textbook example of how we ought to legislate around here. If we can get something that difficult, that complex, and that controversial behind us in an appropriate way and get support from environmental groups, business groups, Democrats and Republicans, maybe there are some other things we can get done, and God knows we need to. I am proud of the work we have done together to reach this historic agreement. In addition to thanking Senator Udall, Senator Vitter, and the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Inhofe, I also want to say a special thank-you to the members of our staff. I think those of us who serve or are privileged to work here as Senators work hard, but on this issue--and some of us worked hard on this issue, but the folks who really worked hard on this issue are the members of our staff. I will not go through the names of all the folks who worked with this Senator and that Senator, but I just want to say to those of you who know who you are, thank you. You have done great work, and you have enabled us to do the people's work. I would say to a fellow who was a member of my staff for the last maybe 3 years and who worked day and night on this legislation--a fellow named Colin Peppard who now works for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority out on the west coast--a special shout out to him and a special thank-you to him for all his efforts. Mr. President, I think that is pretty much it for me today. It looks as though the Senator from Minnesota is here and has a hungry look on his face. He hungers to share something with all of us. With that having been said, I will yield the floor to Senator Franken of Minnesota.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President I want to take another few minutes--I think I have the time. I don't see anybody waiting to speak. I want to take a minute and say something about a fellow named John Koskinen. John Koskinen is the Commissioner of the IRS. In 2013, at a time of great tumult at the IRS, President Obama turned to John Koskinen to lead the IRS because of his reputation in the public and private sectors as a go-to manager of troubled enterprises. He was 74 at the time. He agreed to take this on. He did not need to do this. He needed to do this job like he needed another head, but he said that he would do it. He agreed to do it because the President asked him to serve our country, and they needed a strong leader at the IRS. Prior to his service at the IRS, he held the position of Non- Executive Chairman at Freddie Mac from September 2008 to December 2011. During that time he served as the interim CEO at Freddie Mac--that was a tumultuous time, a very difficult time for our country--and as the principal financial officer after the death of Freddie Mac's acting CFO in April of 2009. He retired from the Freddie Mac board in 2012. I want to mention another thing or two about John Koskinen's service prior to coming on board in the last decade to help us in the public sector. Prior to serving on the Freddie Mac board, Koskinen served as the president of the U.S. Soccer Foundation from 2004 to 2008. He also previously served as deputy mayor of the District of Columbia, the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, and the Chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion. Prior to entering government service, John Koskinen worked for 21 years for the Palmieri Company, as vice president, president, CEO and chairman, working in the realm of turnarounds--a person helping to turn around large failed enterprises. Earlier in his career, he served as the administrative assistant to then Senator Abraham Ribicoff, legislative assistant to Mayor John Lindsay, and Assistant to the Deputy Executive Director of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. He practiced law with the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and clerked for Judge David Bazelon, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He got his bachelor's degree from Duke University and his law degree from Yale. I mean, what a resume. At the age of 74, as somebody who helped turn around a lot of failed enterprises, our President reached out to him and probably said: I know you are 74, an age where a lot of people are more interested in slowing down and taking life easy. He took on one of the toughest challenges of all. He is one of the finest people I know in public service. There are some folks in the Congress who have been asserting that he is unfit for service. I just want to say: They could not be more mistaken. This a good and decent man. I was raised to treat other people the way I want to be treated, to figure out the right thing to do, and to treat others the way I want to be treated. Given the sacrifices that he has made with his life at this stage of his life, rather than taking brickbats, he should be taking bouquets. So I would say to you, John Koskinen, if you are out there listening: I know you have other things to do rather than listen to wrapups here in the Senate before we begin the Memorial Day break, but I want to say thank you for a lifetime of service, and thank you especially for your service as our leader in the IRS. God bless you and your family. Thanks to them for sharing with us a very good human being. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter dated May 23, 2016, from John Koskinen, Commissioner of the IRS, whom I was just discussing, to the Honorable Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, as the Presiding Officer knows, he is stuck with this Senator on the floor on many late afternoons. It seems that when everybody is packing up and heading for home, the Presiding Officer has to listen to this Senator, hopefully waxing eloquently, talking about some of the very good people who work for the Department of Homeland Security. When looking at people who do important work for our country, there are a lot of valuable agencies, a lot of very valuable and hardworking people. But some of the best and brightest folks work for the Department of Homeland Security, trying to protect us and our families and our businesses and our country. I have come regularly to the floor now for a couple of years to highlight some of the great work being done by the men and woman who serve us at the Department of Homeland Security. As you may recall, the Department of Homeland Security was sort of cobbled together roughly a dozen years ago. We took 20 different component agencies with over 220,000 employees stationed all over the world and said: We are going to make you the Department of Homeland Security. It has not been easy, but I think it is a work in progress. But when you consider that the Department of Defense was created right after World War II and they still struggle at times to function as effectively as we would like, we should not be surprised that the Department of Homeland Security has gone through some growing pains, if you will, in learning how to work together. We are proud of the work they do and grateful for the work they do. But they have some of the toughest jobs of the folks who work in Federal workforce. From stopping drugs from crossing into our borders to protecting our cyber networks from hackers to securing nuclear and radiological materials, the Department of Homeland Security has a diverse, complex, and a difficult mission--really, a combination of missions. Each and every day, tens of thousands of Department of Homeland Security employees quietly and diligently work behind the scenes. They work to achieve the mission, the core of which is keeping over 300 million Americans safe as we go about our daily lives. It is easy to forget that despite all it achieves each day keeping Americans safe around the world, the Department of Homeland Security is still a teenager. I said earlier that it came together in 2002, almost 14 years ago, following the attacks on 9/11, when it became clear that we needed a centralized agency to pool and share information--about what?--about the threats to our country and to coordinate the efforts to keep these threats at bay. In 14 years, the Department of Homeland Security has done an exceptional job, integrating nearly 20 agencies from across from the government, with different histories, different cultures, and different capabilities and expertise. Senior leaders in the Department--chief among them now are Secretary Jeh Johnson and Deputy Secretary Ali Mayorkas--work each day and every day to make the Department of Homeland Security more than the sum of its part. They stand on the shoulders of those who came before them as Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries of this Department. I am proud that just yesterday the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, on which I serve as the senior Democrat, approved bipartisan legislation to support the Department's efforts by authorizing its Unity of Effort Initiative. That initiative successfully brought agencies within the Department together to pool resources, to deepen coordination, and more effectively to tackle their joint missions together. I like to say that if you want to go good fast, go alone. If you want to go far, travel together. What we see happening at the Department of Homeland Security is the creation of a cohesive unit of what were very many different disparate agencies. One component agency within the Department of Homeland Security that not only serves a critical mission today but has a long and storied history is called U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In 1789--1789-- before some of our pages were born, the U.S. Customs Service was established, and a fleet of vessels set out patrolling our shores to prevent the shipment of illegal goods--1789. Then in 1924, nearly 92 years ago to the day, the U.S. Border Patrol was established. Later in 2003, the Customs Service and the Border Patrol merged to create the modern Customs and Border Protection agency that operates within the Department of Homeland Security today. Today, Customs and Border Protection performs a number of duties on the frontlines of the battle against threats such as terrorism, drugs, and human trafficking. They work to secure thousands of miles of border and coastline around the country. They work to facilitate travel, to inspect ships and cargo at our ports of entry. They work to stop illegal drugs and other contraband and violent criminals from entering into our country. Today alone, its 60,000 employees are hard at work welcoming nearly 1 million visitors to our country--just in 1 day--screening more than 67,000 cargo containers for hazards and customs violations, and stopping more than 12,000 pounds of illicit drugs from entering our country. I am not talking about what they do in a year, or a month, or even a week. That is what they do in a day. Think about that--in one day. The key resource that our Customs officials on the frontlines count on is the support of CBP's Air and Marine Operations. Air and Marine Operations uses a fleet of 256 aircraft and 286 marine vessels to detect, to track, and to apprehend criminals in places that agents can't reach on foot or in cars. From fast interceptor boats to Huey helicopters to P-3 aircraft, like the one I flew in during most of my 23 years in the Navy, Air and Marine Operations provides critical support to CBP agents. They often do important and dangerous work. Air and Marine agents are also key in helping to find and rescue people on our borders who may be in danger, saving countless people who are found lost or injured in some of the most remote parts of the country. One CBP Air and Marine Operations agent who goes above and beyond to help secure our borders and keep people safe looks a lot like this fellow. His name is Oscar Peru, like the country. He is pictured here to my left. Oscar Peru is a CBP aviation enforcement agent based out of Tucson, AZ. He was raised in Tucson. Oscar joined the Arizona Army National Guard after college. He served his State and his country as a guardsman for 10 years, including by fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom. After working for the State of Arizona on their Joint Counter Narcotics Task Force, he joined the Border Patrol as a senior patrol agent in 2003. After 5 years as a Border Patrol agent, Oscar joined the Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit. As a trained emergency medical technician, Oscar was able to provide lifesaving care to countless men, women, and children who were lost or injured in some of the harshest environments along the southwestern border of our country. At all hours of the night, Oscar has conducted searches to find and save those in need. Oscar also performed the difficult and--I am sure-- heartbreaking task of retrieving the bodies of those who have perished so they can be returned to their families and given a proper burial. Since 2008, Oscar Peru has served as an aviation enforcement agent, coordinating efforts across Federal agencies. Working with State and local law enforcement, Oscar conducts operations to identify and stop criminal activity along the border, from drug smuggling to human trafficking to rescue operations. Oscar's work has saved countless lives, arrested countless criminals, and kept countless pounds of drugs from ever reaching our communities. Oscar, I would say that is one impressive day's work. We are grateful to you for doing it. Those who know Oscar routinely describe him as a man who shows incredible compassion for everyone that he encounters, both in his personal life and in his work. Through his years of dedicated service, Oscar has earned the trust of his peers, who rely on him as a leader during risky operations and dangerous missions. As a certified master and instructor in helicopter ropes and suspension techniques, Oscar uses his experience to train others in skills necessary to operate safely in a dangerous environment, often leaning out of the door of a helicopter hundreds of feet up in the air. It is no wonder his colleagues describe Oscar as courageous and as an inspiration to those around him. So, Oscar, my friend, we say thank you. Thank you for your remarkable and continued service to our country and to your community in Tucson. A special thanks for all of the lives you have saved and will continue to save through your heroic work. To Oscar's wife and four children, we say thank you for sharing with us a good man, your husband and your dad, for letting him do the important work that he does every day to keep Americans safe along the southern border and really around our country. To the 1,200 men and women of the Air and Marine Operations and the 60,000 employees at Customs and Border Protection, thank you for your continued service to our country and for your dedication to the safety and security of so many others. As I said earlier, more than 200,000 employees at the Department of Homeland Security have some of the toughest jobs of any of our public servants, working outside the spotlight to tackle difficult challenges and to protect our community and our families. To each of you, I just want to say again, as I say here every month: Thank you. Keep up the good work. May God bless each and every one of you.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following people, Marian Gibson, Debra Prescott, Eric Hanson, and Tim McCrosson, detailees to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, be granted privileges of the floor for the remainder of the second session of the 114th Congress.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, while our colleague from Florida is on the floor, I thank him for being a loud and vocal proponent and for taking swift action. I thank the Senator for leading the fight.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise in support of emergency supplemental funding for Federal efforts to combat the impending threat of the Zika virus. Reports of the spread of this virus are concerning. Actually, they are troubling, not just for public health officials but for many Americans who are reading about it in the paper and seeing coverage of it in the news almost by the hour. Families are reconsidering vacations they had planned, especially to more tropical locations. As we approach the mosquito season, people are understandably worried about how this outbreak will affect them and their families, not just to go on a vacation and camping but literally to go outside and have a cookout or eat out on the porch. We need to continue working to fully understand and combat the health risks that are posed by Zika. Just like our response to Ebola, our response to Zika must be an all-hands-on-deck effort. In February, President Obama submitted a $1.9 billion emergency supplemental funding request to Congress to bolster programs and activities which would curb the spread of this virus. Given the real threat posed by Zika, I support the funding level requested by the President. I intend to vote for the amendment offered by our colleague from Florida, Senator Nelson, which would fully fund this request. With that being said, I understand that a bipartisan agreement on funding has been reached between Senator Blunt and Senator Murray, which would provide $1.1 billion toward the Zika effort. I appreciate their hard work in negotiating this language. I am going to support their amendment as well so our Nation's public health officials can take all necessary actions to combat the spread of this virus. As we have heard, the Zika virus has spread explosively throughout Central America and South America. In fact, it has already reached Puerto Rico, other U.S. territories, and is expected to spread further north as the weather continues to warm. Researchers have learned much about this virus in just the last couple of months. Their findings are indeed troubling. Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced there is now enough scientific evidence to confirm what many have long speculated--the Zika virus is the direct cause of severe birth defects. Further complicating matters, it now appears that the mosquito primarily responsible for transmitting the virus has a wider presence in the United States than we had originally thought. I have two maps. We will look at the first one. The blue color is not good. Orange is less dangerous, less threatening in terms of the mosquitoes. The combination of the blue and the orange is troubling. If you look at the combination of blue and orange, it means that the two most worrisome mosquitoes are going to be covering the southern half of our country this summer. The areas to the northeast and the Midwest, to the northern part, are somewhat less troubling, but my State of Delaware is right here. Arizona, the State of the Presiding Officer, is right over here. Senator Nelson's State is right here. The only person on the floor whose State looks like they are going to escape is Maine. Senator Collins is here. Maybe she is in the clear, but she is here to help lead the fight to make sure we are all in this together and we are looking out for each other. I wish to show another map. Major cities across the East Coast, including in the District of Columbia, could be hit hard by the Zika virus. With mosquito season upon us and with more than 500 travel-related cases already diagnosed within the continental United States, we must be prepared for the possibility of outbreaks in some parts of this country. That is why I was glad to see President Obama and his administration take an early and proactive role in addressing Zika. Some of the actions already undertaken by Federal agencies include assisting State and local governments in mosquito-control efforts and ensuring that local health officials have the equipment they need to test people for this disease. We also know that promising advances are being made in medical countermeasures and vaccine development. To date, these efforts have required the transfer of resources from other priorities, as we know, including Ebola. Last month the Obama administration announced it would redirect, on an interim basis, almost $600 million from other public health accounts to pay for Zika-related activities. I believe the President made the right call in light of the circumstances and the dire threat that is posed by the Zika virus. Now, however, it is time for this Congress to do our job. It is my hope that we can come together in passing an amendment offered by our colleague from Florida, Senator Nelson. However, if we are unable to fully fund the President's request, I believe the funding provided by the Blunt-Murray amendment will go a long way toward supporting the many efforts currently being undertaken by the administration to combat Zika. I urge my colleagues to join me in providing the funding needed to stop the spread of the Zika virus. Mr. President, I will close with this: When the President gave his State of the Union speech--I think right after the 2014 election--he had up in the Gallery sitting next to Mrs. Obama some of the folks who helped lead the fight against Ebola in Africa. There were doctors, nurses, and other people who developed vaccines and that type of thing. It was a proud moment for our country about 3 months after the election, the early part of 2015. We were not directly threatened here by Ebola. They lost 40,000 people in Africa, in the western part of Africa. For the most part, there were a lot of scare tactics about Ebola used in the runup to the election here in this country, but the actual threat, in hindsight, was not that great. What we did was we reached across the world and we invested a lot of taxpayer resources to help people who were in a terrible situation. We helped save literally hundreds of thousands of lives--their lives; not so much our lives but their lives. This is different. This is different. What we have at stake here is our lives and the quality of our lives and the ability of women to bring healthy babies into this world. It is not just us, it is our friends to the south of us in Mexico, Central America, South America, the islands of Puerto Rico and Cuba. We are all in this together. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment, and we need a good team effort. The Senate is going to vote today on whether we are going to be a full partner in that effort, and we need to be that full partner. We need to do our job. And this is one of those days that I am confident and hopeful that we will. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I note the presence of the Senator from Hawaii, which hopefully will not be affected by this virus. I am happy to yield to her. I thank the Chair.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, just a short note. I think it is important, especially for those who are privileged to live in the First State--the first State to ratify the Constitution. Delaware ratified the Constitution on December 7, 1787, before any other State did so. For 1 week, Delaware was the entire United States of America, and then we opened it up to Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Louisiana, and others. It turned out pretty well. It was a great week. I think that because our State is remarkable in starting the whole country, we have a lot of ships--submarines or aircraft carriers--named after it. It has been decades since there has been any naval vessel named after the First State. A couple of years ago, Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the Vice President, and I joined Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to announce that work would begin in a few years from that point--work would begin building a fast attack nuclear submarine. It would be called the USS Delaware, and the number of the ship would be SSN 791. This Saturday in Newport News, VA, Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the Vice President, who is officially the sponsor of the submarine, will be there to join Secretary Ray Mabus. I will have the good fortune of joining them for the keeling, which is the first step in the construction of a brandnew vessel, the USS Delaware, SSN 791. These submarines are not built in a day. This is a project that will take a couple of years, but a very good thing for our State and I hope for our country is about to begin; that is, the adventure of building a submarine that will help defend our country, help keep the sea lanes open, and better ensure that we remain a nation that is brave and free. I mentioned earlier in my brief remarks that I spent some years of my life in the Navy--5 years in a hot war in Southeast Asia as a P-3 aircraft mission commander, and toward the end of those 5 years as a P- 3 aircraft mission commander I was a naval flight officer. Then, for another 18 years, I was a P-3 aircraft mission commander in the Reserves, chasing Soviet subs all over the world. We would train with American submarines, and we would track fast attack boats. It is a fast attack boat that will be built and named after Delaware. We would track ballistic missile submarines, American submarines. We would also track those from other countries, especially those from the Soviet Union. It wasn't that hard to find them, to track them, to know the location of Soviet nuclear submarines that were on deployment. They weren't easy to find, to locate and track, but they were a whole lot easier than tracking our own. ``Run Silent, Run Deep,'' and that is exactly what our submarines did and still do. We have the best submarine force in the world. I am very proud of all of them, and they are delighted to be joined by SSN 791 in a couple of years, and we get to kick it off in 2 days in Newport News, VA. I wish everybody a good recess. The pages are going to be in charge until we get back in about 8 or 9 days, and I am sure they will do a good job. Thank you so much. I suggest the absence of a quorum.