Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CARPER. Good afternoon, Mr. President. For more than a year now, as the Presiding Officer knows since he has had the good fortune--or bad fortune of drawing the short straw--of sitting there when I come to the Senate floor just about every month to highlight the extraordinary work that is being done by the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security--I am here to do that again today. The agency has so many talented folks, and they do incredibly important work, so there is no shortage of material. As the Presiding Officer knows, the Department of Homeland Security is made up of 22 component agencies and employs over 200,000 people. These men and women work around the clock, and the work they do is designed to protect all of us--protect our families and protect our country. Last month we were reminded of just how crucial the work they do is when terrorists attacked a train station and airport check-in area in Brussels, Belgium, setting off bombs that killed 32 people and wounded hundreds more. Our thoughts and prayers have been and remain with the families, loved ones, and victims of these horrible attacks. Just 6 days before these tragic attacks, I spoke on the floor about the difficult but critical work performed by the 59,000 employees of the Transportation Security Administration, affectionately known as TSA. These men and women work every day. They do so to ensure that all of us--Americans and tourists who visit--may travel around our country and around the world safe from harm. The attack in Brussels shows us once again just how important these efforts--performed by the men and women at TSA--are to every single American and to our visitors. It also reminds us how important it is that TSA has the tools and resources needed to effectively carry out their mission. To help ensure that the TSA is well equipped to protect the public, I worked with a number of our Senate colleagues last week--Democrats and Republicans alike--to include amendments to a bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration. Our amendments will help make airports and transit hubs across our country safer for travelers by doubling the number of teams--called VIPR teams--of Federal agents and bomb-sniffing dogs that patrol our airports and subways to deter and identify potential attackers. These amendments will also make security improvements to public areas in airports and train stations and ensure that the men and women patrolling those areas can effectively respond to the types of active shooter incidents we have unfortunately seen more frequently in recent months. These commonsense amendments are just one of the many ways we can support the men and women at TSA and throughout the Department of Homeland Security who work on the frontlines every day screening passengers, guarding our ports of entry, and patrolling our transit hubs. One part of the support we need to extend to these brave public servants is world-class training and education. By expanding and improving training opportunities for our law enforcement personnel, we can make sure they have the knowledge and make sure they have the capability to respond to every situation that may arise. That is why one of the best tools in our homeland security arsenal is the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. As my staff knows, I don't like acronyms very much, but this is a pretty good one. It is called the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. It is located in Glynco, GA. It goes by the acronym F-L-E-T-C, and we affectionately call it FLETC. I am not crazy about acronyms, but that is a pretty good one. We call it FLETC. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is tasked with teaching the men and women we deploy to the frontlines how to best utilize the technologies and techniques needed to protect Americans here at home and around the world. They provide training to literally dozens of Federal agencies, State law enforcement personnel from across our country, and our international partners, who travel from all over the world to learn from the best right here in America. From active shooter trainings, to advanced forensic techniques, to methods to counter human trafficking, FLETC instructors provide training in nearly 100 courses. They host the training academies for a number of other agencies, including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Coast Guard. Recently, TSA announced that they would be establishing a new, permanent academy for transportation security officers at FLETC's main facility in Glynco, GA. Having their training centralized at FLETC will allow TSA to better ensure uniform training for all of their officers and better collaborate with other components of the Department of Homeland Security. Providing world-class training and instruction to tens of thousands of law enforcement officers each year requires bringing together some of the most highly qualified professional instructors from across our country. The more than 1,000 men and women from across law enforcement who serve at FLETC utilize their personal experience in the field to create and to lead effective trainings that help law enforcement professionals keep us--Americans and our guests--safe and secure each day. One of FLETC's world-class instructors is Greg King, pictured right here to my left. For nearly 10 years, Mr. King has been an instructor at FLETC, utilizing his own experience to train Federal officers deployed around the world. Before coming to FLETC, Greg served his hometown of Cleveland, OH, working for the Cleveland Police Department for 28 years. If he is listening, I would just suggest that I have been thinking that Greg may have started when he was about 10. He looks pretty good for a guy who has been doing that for this long. He has a career spanning nearly three decades. Greg did everything from working undercover as a street crimes unit detective, to investigating financial crimes, murders, and crimes against children. For those 28 years, Greg has dedicated his life to protecting the community of Cleveland and giving back to the town in which he grew up. Today, Greg serves as a senior instructor at FLETC, working as program coordinator for the Case Organization and Presentation Training Program, the Internet Investigations Training Program, and as assistant program coordinator for the Intelligence Analyst Training Program. Greg has a wealth of knowledge in these areas. His colleagues call him--this is a quote, their words, not mine--a real ``subject matter expert'' with the kind of expertise that can only come from real-world experience. Through the lesson plans and course materials he develops, Greg strives to impart the firsthand knowledge he gained on the force to his students so that when they leave his class, they are able to effectively build cases, conduct investigations, analyze information, and ultimately catch the bad guys. At FLETC, Greg's colleagues also refer to him as an ``Energizer bunny.'' Some of my colleagues have referred to me in those same terms. I think it is a compliment--I hope so--and in his case, I am sure it is. His energy and his passion for his work inspire other instructors and keep his students engaged. Given his dedication to his students and to the FLETC mission, Greg has earned the respect of his peers and FLETC leadership alike. It is no wonder, then, that Greg King was named FLETC instructor of the year for 2015. Think about that--instructor of the year for the entire school. It is clearly a well-deserved honor. When Greg isn't training law enforcement professionals, he spends time with his family--his wife Shelley, their two daughters Lela and Shayla; and their son Rayshawn. I want to give my special thanks to Greg's wife Shelley and to their two daughters and their son for sharing him with us--with the people of Cleveland and now the people of the United States--for not just 28 years but 38 years in all. He has dedicated countless hours, I am told as well, to his community and to his country in addition to that. In his 10 years at FLETC, Greg King has helped train countless law enforcement officers, who have used the valuable lessons from his courses every single day to arrest criminals, to protect our fellow citizens, and to help keep Americans safe around the world. FLETC has four core values that the agency and their employees attempt to abide by, and I am going to mention those today: No. 1, respect; No. 2, integrity--one of our former colleagues, Alan Simpson, the Senator from Wyoming, used to say about integrity: If you have it, nothing else matters. If you don't have it, nothing else matters. Integrity is the second value I want to mention for FLETC. So respect, integrity, service, and excellence. I like to say that one of the things we need to focus on is to have excellence in everything we do as a country, here in the Senate and across the country. If it isn't perfect, make it better. And that is one of the core values for FLETC. Respect, integrity, service, and excellence. I have mentioned that those values actually look a little bit like some of the values we embrace in the office from the State that I am privileged to represent. Greg has lived this one, using his own experience, to make the next generation of law enforcement officers and our country even better prepared to face the threats of tomorrow. Greg is just one shining example of the critical work being done by more than 1,000 instructors at FLETC. These instructors make it their own mission to ensure that law enforcement personnel across our country are well prepared for whatever they might face on the job. So to Greg, to all of the men and women at FLETC, and to everyone at the Department of Homeland Security, I thank you for your hard work day in and day out, I thank you for your service to the people of our country, and I urge you to keep up the good work. Some of us travel on trains. Some of us travel on buses. Some of us travel on airplanes and helicopters, in our own cars, trucks, and vans. I do a combination of those, but I do a fair amount of travel in the air. I was a naval flight officer for many years. I am a retired Navy captain. I spent a lot of time in Navy airplanes. I love the Navy. I loved serving in the Navy. But now they don't let me--they let me ride in a commercial plane. Sometimes we get to fly in military planes, too, which is a kick. But when you fly commercial aviation, at the airport you generally go through a security check, and they want to make sure you are not carrying anything in your luggage or anything on your person that is inappropriate or illegal. And you have to be confronted by usually a series of TSA officers. I just want to remind us all that they are there to protect us. That is their job, to make sure the planes we get on, whether they are going 200, 300, 400 miles or 2,000 or 3,000 miles to go from one side of our country to the other side or one side of the world to the other side--the job of the TSA officers is to protect us. They have a very tough job, and there is actually a tension in the job that exists because of the work they do. On the one hand, every day there are tens of thousands of travelers, maybe hundreds of thousands of travelers, pulsing through our airports, trying to get from a terminal, from a gate, onto a plane in time to catch their flights. In some cases, they have had to recheck their bags. They have had to go through maybe unloading their suitcases and showing that what they have in their suitcases is not inappropriate or illegal. There is a rush to get through to try to catch their flights. TSA is there. In some cases, they slow down that traffic, that flow, and they slow down that flow of traffic in order to make sure that what all of us passengers every day are carrying in our suitcases or briefcases or purses or on our bodies is not inappropriate and is not illegal. They do it to protect all of us. Sometimes the TSA folks get a little bit frazzled. I would say we would, too, if we had to do the work they do. A lot of times, when I fly commercial and when I go through the check-in, after they check my ID or whatever, I take it upon myself to say to the TSA officers--I tell them who I am, that I am a senior Democrat on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and I thank them for what they do. I say: We value your work and we appreciate it, and I just wanted you to know that. I can't tell you how many times a TSA officer has said to me: Nobody has ever thanked me before. Nobody has ever thanked me before. Sometimes we can't pay people enough for the work they do, and they work hard for their money. I would ask others, when you see somebody, especially TSA officers who go out of their way in spite of all of the hustle and bustle and pressure on them--they manage to still be polite, courteous, and helpful--thank them. It might be the first time. You may become the first person who has ever said ``thank you'' to them. At the end of the day, one of the things that means a lot to me is whenever people thank me for my service to our country, whether it was in uniform or as Governor, Senator, or here today. So I urge you to do that. When I do that, it makes me feel better and it makes them feel better too. Mr. President, I am looking around the Senate Chamber, looking for Democrats or Republicans who are rushing to get to the podium to say something. I don't see anybody rushing. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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, 21 years ago this week, the families of 168 people--19 of those 168 people children--received some of the worst news of their lives. That news was that a beloved member of each of their families had been killed in the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. We all watched the news that day, that night, the next day, and that week and beyond, as we took in the devastation caused by that blast. That horrible crime was carried out by a radical, anti-government extremist. It remains the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism in our Nation's history. For the families who lost a loved one that day in 1995, there is no way to fill the void left by a life taken too soon, but I know that our government's pursuit of justice for the lives lost that day serve as a small source of comfort for the people who were left in mourning. At the time of that heinous crime, Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court, was the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. He immediately flew to Oklahoma City to lead the criminal investigation and supervise the prosecution of the bombers. In fact, he insisted on being sent. He didn't just volunteer. He didn't just say: Well, OK, I will go. He told his supervisors they had to let him go. He was the highest ranking Justice Department official on the ground in Oklahoma City following the bombing. He helped oversee every aspect of the investigation and the subsequent trial. His colleagues at the time have attested to Judge Garland's commitment to following the letter of the law in every aspect of that investigation. He refused to take any shortcuts that could somehow compromise the integrity of the case that he and his team were building. Through their tireless efforts, his tireless leadership, his deep understanding of the law, and scrupulous attention to detail, Judge Garland ensured the prosecution had an airtight case. Ultimately, both bombers were convicted, giving the families of the 168 victims not their sons, their daughters, their children, their moms or dads back again, but at least providing a small measure of vindication for the losses they had incurred. Judge Garland's work was so appreciated by the families and friends of those victims 21 years ago that last year, on the 20th anniversary of the bombing, the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum awarded Judge Garland its annual Reflections of Hope distinction--not the year after the bombing but 20 years after the bombing. Judge Garland has established an unparalleled reputation as a brilliant, dedicated prosecutor and jurist. He has received strong bipartisan support in the legal community, including from Alberto Gonzales, the former U.S. Attorney General and White House Counsel in the administration of President George W. Bush. So today it is not just discouraging that most of my Republican colleagues are refusing to consider Judge Garland's nomination to serve on our highest Court; personally, I believe it is outrageous. I served for 8 years as Governor of Delaware, a State that is renowned for its own courts--supreme court, court of chancery, superior court--courts that play a national role, not just on a State level. As Governor of my State for 8 years, I nominated men and women to serve on those courts. In every one of those nominations there were hearings held, whether they were Democrat or Republican. I think during that period of time I nominated an equal number of Democrats and Republicans to the judiciary. That is the constitution of our State, and, frankly, that is a great example because in Delaware we have one of the highest regarded judiciaries. My obligation as Governor was to nominate outstanding candidates for these judgeships as they became vacant. The role of the State Senate in Delaware was to consider them. They never waited a year and left a seat vacant for a year awaiting the end of my time as Governor or any other Governor's time. That would never happen. We wouldn't waste 10 months. State senators in our State wouldn't wait 10 weeks. They did their jobs. They did their jobs. We are not doing ours, and we need to. The fact that we haven't is outrageous. When we elect Presidents to this country, we elect them for 4 years, and if they are reelected, then it is for another 4 years. They are not Presidents for 3 years and 11 months; they are not elected to a term of 3 years and 10 months. We elect them to a term of 4 years. They need to be on the job for 4 years. Our President is doing what he is supposed to do, and that is sending us the names of exceptional people who serve in incredibly important positions like the Supreme Court. He has done his job. I very much want to do mine, and I want to be joined by Democrats and Republicans in doing our jobs. Every Member of this body has taken at least one oath to uphold the Constitution--some of us, many times over. At 17 years old, not much older than the young interns who are sitting here in the Chamber, I took my first oath as a midshipman. I was a freshman at the Ohio State Navy ROTC, where I was privileged to go on a Navy scholarship. Four years later, I took another oath and raised my right hand as an ensign in the Navy. I took an oath to defend the Constitution and the country and headed to Pensacola, FL, to become a naval flight officer right in the middle of the Vietnam war. I ended up serving three tours over there during that conflict. As a Congressman, I took an oath to defend the country and Constitution. As Governor, I also took a similar oath to defend our country's Constitution--at least to defend our State's constitution. Then, as a U.S. Senator I have taken an oath any number of times. I am regarded by my colleagues as one of the least partisan people here, but I think the refusal of the majority to even consider this nomination is more than an abdication of our responsibility. I believe it is an example of playing politics with the very Constitution we have sworn to uphold. For those who don't know, Delaware is known as the First State. We are known as the First State because on December 7, 1787, before any other State had ratified the Constitution, we did. I joke with people that for 1 week Delaware was the entire United States of America. We opened things up and let in Maryland; we let in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and eventually Louisiana--even Iowa. I think for the most part it has turned out pretty well, but the idea of playing politics with the Constitution that we have sworn to uphold is deeply troubling to me. I hope that is not what is going on here, but I fear that it is. The right and just way to proceed is to begin consideration of Judge Garland's nomination, not next month and not some other year, but now-- first in committee and then on the Senate floor. We have something we call the Delaware way. We are focused on the three C's--communicate, compromise, and collaborate. That is a good example for 49 other States, and I think it is a good example right here. After all, we have been sent by the people to this hallowed place, this Senate Chamber, to put democracy into action, to protect liberty and to protect justice for all. Nearly 50 years ago, former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative--I believe he was from California and was appointed or nominated by Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican. Former Chief Justice Warren Burger said, ``A sense of confidence in the courts is essential to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people.'' He went on to say that ``inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value.'' I think the shorthand version of that is justice delayed is justice denied. Justice delayed is justice denied. By dragging our feet and trying to get into a new Congress, maybe with a new President--certainly, with a new President--that is delaying justice, I believe. In the face of the prospect of any number of potentially 4-to-4 divided verdicts in the Supreme Court with only eight members, we cannot just stand aside and let that happen. Justice Burger was right when he said those words all those years ago, and he is right today. Mr. President, I think it is time to stop this delay. It is time for us to serve the people. It is time for us to deliver justice. It is time for us to give this President's nominee the consideration demanded of us by the Constitution, which we are sworn to uphold. Mr. President, I see no colleague seeking recognition, and with that I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Thank you, Mr. President. It is good to see the Presiding Officer on this St. Patrick's Day, and I am pleased to have a chance to rise and to urge my colleagues to confirm two very important nominees. Some of my colleagues have scattered across the country to go home for a 2-week recess, but the Presiding Officer is here. Hopefully, the words that I am saying here today will find their way to our colleagues wherever they are or wherever they are headed. One of the nominees is a woman named Beth Cobert, who has been nominated to be the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, and the other is Michael Missal, who has been nominated to be the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Like many of my colleagues, I have grown frustrated over the years as, too often, senior positions in the Federal Government have been left vacant or filled by someone serving in an acting capacity for far too long. A lack of critical leadership at agencies can--and oftentimes does--undermine the effectiveness of Federal programs. I know all of us want Federal agencies to work more efficiently to provide the most value to American taxpayers, and having strong leadership in place is key to that effort. I hope we can move to quickly confirm both of these nominees when the Senate returns after the recess. Let me start with a few words about Beth Cobert. I don't know if the Presiding Officer has had a chance to meet with her. She is one of the most impressive leaders of this administration or any administration whom I have had the privilege to know. She is an excellent nominee to head OPM. Right from the start, I have been very impressed with her work, with her leadership, with her work ethic, and with her ability to get people to work together at OMB and now during her time at OPM in this acting capacity. Before that, she was Deputy Director for Management within the Office of Management and Budget. I just think we are really lucky in this country that she is willing to continue to serve in this capacity as well as serving in her previous capacity. She comes out of the private sector, from McKinsey & Company, a brand new California operation. She did that and had a number of senior positions within that company and a great career. The Office of Personnel Management performs critical functions affecting the entire Federal workforce. What they do every day has a direct impact on the quality of work at all executive branch departments and agencies. As my colleagues know, Ms. Cobert's time at OPM began in the aftermath of one of the worst cyber attacks committed against our government last year. One result of that incident has been a major effort to overhaul the information technology infrastructure, which requires great levels of management attention and expertise. Even before she came to OPM, Ms. Cobert was deeply involved in the OPM response to the breach from her Senate-confirmed role at OMB. If you look at her management and technology experience in the private sector, her experience at OMB, and the time she has already spent leading the Office of Personnel Management, she is the ideal candidate to lead OPM at such a critical time. I am only one of many who have been impressed by Ms. Cobert. In addition to receiving a unanimous vote from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on her nomination to lead OPM, she has the support of Chairman Jason Chaffetz at the House and of Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, who lead the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Representatives Chaffetz and Cummings sent a letter to Majority Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Reid supporting Ms. Cobert's confirmation. Here is a taste of what they had to say about her: ``[Ms. Cobert] is a qualified and competent choice to lead OPM, which is in need of strong leadership, and we urge the Senate to approve her nomination swiftly.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the full letter.

Mr. CARPER. Ms. Cobert is a highly qualified nominee. We are fortunate indeed that she is willing to serve in this capacity and take on the many challenges that are currently facing OPM. I urge my colleagues to quickly confirm her so she can continue to do the good work that she is doing at OPM. I have known people who are show horses and folks who are workhorses. This woman is a workhorse--I like to think people look at us as workhorses as well--but she is focused on getting the job done. She is especially good at surrounding herself with terrific people. She did that at OMB, she did that at OPM, and she did that before when she was in her very significant position at McKinsey & Company. Let me just turn the page and talk about Michael Missal. I want to talk about him and thank him for his willingness to step up and serve as the inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served 5 years of Active Duty in a hot war as a naval flight officer in Southeast Asia and another 18 years as a P-3 aircraft mission commander in the Navy right up to the end of the Cold War. As Governor for 8 years in Delaware and commander in chief of the Delaware National Guard, we send people from Delaware. Right now we have people in Afghanistan. We have sent people over the years to any number of places where they are in harm's way. I care a lot about veterans. My dad was a veteran. A bunch of my uncles were veterans. One of them got killed in World War II, the victim of a kamikaze attack on his aircraft carrier in the western Pacific. So veterans' concerns run deep in my family. As we all know, our inspectors general play an extremely important role in our government. Their work helps us to save money while also revealing and prosecuting wrongdoing, promoting the integrity and efficiency of our government, and hopefully increasing the confidence and faith that the American people have in their government. I believe the work of inspectors general, along with that of GAO, is invaluable with respect to the work of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in which I am privileged to serve, and the whole Senate as we look for ways to get better results for less money and further reduce our Federal deficit down from $1.4 trillion a half dozen years ago to about close to a quarter of that--which is still too much. We are making progress, but we need to make more. The IG is a big part of helping us to meet that goal. I think it is critical that we have qualified, experienced people in place to serve these important roles. This is tough work. We are blessed by the many IGs we have. We have seen far too many IG positions, including the one Mr. Missal has been nominated to fill, sit vacant or be filled by someone serving in an acting capacity for far too long. In fact, the VA, of all agencies, given the concern we have heard and seen across the country in recent years--the IG vacancy at the VA--has been without a permanent, Senate confirmed inspector general for more than 2 years. In the past several years, I have joined all the members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in sending letters to the President, urging him to nominate people to fill all the IG vacancies, including one letter that specifically pointed out the importance of the one I am talking about today, the inspector general position at the VA. Our committee held a hearing last year on IG vacancies and pointed out the importance of having permanent IGs in place to ensure the independence of this office. I want to thank the President for responding to our committee's letters. He has done this by sending the Senate a number of well- qualified nominees, including Mr. Missal, for our consideration. These words have been heard in the last couple of weeks. He is doing his job, and now it is time for us to do our job with respect to these nominations. I was pleased that both the Veterans Affairs' Committee and our committee, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, were able to move quickly to consider Mr. Missal's nomination. I want to thank my colleagues on our committee for making it a priority. However, since early this year, there has been no action by the Senate on Mr. Missal's nomination. This is an inspector general vacancy in Veterans Affairs, where we know there have been hospitals and facilities across the country that are troubled, and we need the best leadership we can find at the VA in this position. Again, I think the President has given us a very good person. He is willing to do the job. We need to get him confirmed. As we know, the VA has been facing significant challenges over the last couple of years. I believe that confirming a permanent IG at the VA will help provide much needed oversight, while helping to point out and resolve some of the problems at the VA that are negatively impacting the lives of our veterans every day. Leaving this position vacant impedes much needed progress on identifying and addressing serious issues at the VA that impact our veterans. If we want to do more to fix the VA, we need a strong and independent inspector general to be our partner in that effort. Delaying this nomination also delays improvements to the services that our veterans receive. Permanent leadership of the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General is long overdue and will go a long way toward providing stable leadership and oversight of the agency. I urge my colleagues to quickly confirm Mr. Missal so he can go to work on behalf of our veterans and the American people--not in a couple of months or later this year; we can do it now, as soon as we come back from the recess that begins tomorrow.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, in closing, I want to do something I think the Presiding Officer has heard me do before. I try to come to the floor once a month and talk about some of the employees who work at the Department of Homeland Security. They work for us across this country and really around the world. This is the youngest Department, if you will, that we have in the Federal Government. It is about 12 years old. It sort of formed on the heels of 9/11. Twenty-two agencies that have some commonality in their focus or the way they touch the security of our homeland and the people who live in it kind of glommed together. The morale in the Department has not been good. There has been a great, sustained effort--and certainly we are trying to support it in our Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs--to turn a corner and let people know that not only is the work they do important, but we appreciate their efforts. I wish to say a few words today about some of the men and women who work tirelessly to keep us safe and secure, often without a lot of recognition and thanks. I am talking about the good people at the Transportation Security Administration, now led by retired Coast Guard Admiral Neffenger, Peter Neffenger, a very able and impressive leader. As the Easter holidays approach, many Americans will be traveling to spend time with their families around the country and even around the world. If you head to an airport, as many of my colleagues, their colleagues, and their constituents will be doing very soon, chances are you will interact with some of the hard-working men and women of the TSA who keep our skies safe. Nearly 59,000 people work at TSA. Many are focused on securing our aviation system, while others work to protect our service transportation networks, such as the train I took to work this morning and will be jumping on later today to go home. TSA's work is not only carried out by frontline employees whom we see at the airports as we check in and go through security, have our bags checked, our bodies checked, there are also many dedicated people who are hard at work behind the scenes. We never actually see them, but they are there keeping us safe too. These men and women perform the critical work of gathering and analyzing intelligence in order to identify potential threats to our transportation system and to mitigate them in real time. I would like to use the remainder of my time to highlight the outstanding efforts of some of these individuals. I learned about them yesterday while meeting with Admiral Neffenger, who happened to be in a meeting that we had in my office and was with me again today for a secure briefing in the SCIF. He shared with me something I was very happy to learn about. He told me of six members of the current intelligence team within TSA's Office of Intelligence and Analysis and how they recently received the 2015 Intelligence Community Counterterrorism Award for Education and Training from the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. That is a mouthful, but it is quite an award, quite a recognition. These six individuals--three men, three women--developed a counterterrorism threat briefing for all frontline employees who man our checkpoints and transit systems so they can better understand the connection between intelligence and TSA security operations. In essence, these individuals are helping TSA frontline officers understand the ``why,'' if you will, behind their work. According to the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, these six or seven men and women ``exemplified the essential attributes of the counter-terrorism community: expertise, integration, collaboration, and information sharing.'' While I cannot state their names here, maybe for obvious reasons, I do wish to say to all of you out there--you know who I am talking about--thank you for the work you do every day to ensure that your fellow Americans, people who work here and the people we represent, can travel safely and that our transit systems are secure. Thank you for the work you have done to ensure that your fellow TSA employees have the tools they need to carry out the critical work they do. Your dedication and your invaluable service are appreciated by me, by all of our colleagues in the Senate, our staffs, and by millions of Americans who travel throughout our country every single day. With that, I have probably said enough. I will say to the Presiding Officer, the staff, and everybody who might be tuned in, happy St. Patrick's Day. We hope good fortune shines on all of us and on our country, not just over this holiday and upcoming recess and a special day today but for a long time after that. Some of the people we have talked about today--their job is to make sure we are not just lucky, but that we are safe, secure, and successful going forward. There is an old saying: The harder I work, the luckier I get. I am talking about some people who work very hard so we can be fortunate and blessed in this country. I bid you a happy St. Patrick's Day. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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, I wish to take this opportunity to talk about an issue that is both concerning and tragic; that is, the rapid spread of the Zika virus in Central and South America in recent months. This is a virus we have known about ever since I was born, and that has been about 69 years. I think the first time somebody detected this was maybe on an island in the South Pacific. It has ebbed and flowed over the years, and now it is flowing big time. Every day researchers are discovering more about this virus and its potential impact, particularly on pregnant woman and their unborn children. The findings are not good. In fact, they are deeply troubling. There are strong indications that the virus is connected to a developmental birth defect that can lead to underdeveloped brains. We have seen the photographs of smaller heads in too many children. Additional studies are also examining a potential connection between the Zika virus and other health concerns. With the World Health Organization estimating that as many as 4 million people could be infected in the region this year, it is clear that we must act swiftly to combat this threat. That is why I was pleased to see President Obama and his administration take an early and proactive role in addressing the Zika virus. For example, a coordinated Federal response led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with State, local, and international public health partners to step up mosquito control efforts and to ensure that health officials have the equipment they need to test people for this disease. To further these efforts, President Obama has recently submitted a supplemental funding request to Congress. These funds would go toward developing vaccines, mosquito control efforts, and diagnostic testing, among other things. The Senate should take a long, hard look at the President's request in the coming days and weeks and consider what measures we need to take to ensure we are ready for Zika and for other future outbreaks.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, last month I came to the floor--in fact, I come to the floor just about every month--to highlight the great work being done by the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security. Last month I focused on the folks who work at FEMA, which is one of 22 agencies that collectively make up the Department of Homeland Security--the newest, youngest Department in the Federal Government. Just a few days before my speech, much of the east coast was inundated, as you may recall, by one of the largest snowstorms we have had in a long time, and on that day FEMA was working around the clock to prepare for and respond to what could have been a much more devastating storm. We were hit hard, but we would have been a lot worse off if not for the preparation and the training FEMA had done in not just the days, weeks, and months, but literally years ahead leading up to the storm in order to make us better prepared. For more than a year now, I have come to the floor and I have focused on a different agency within the Department of Homeland Security. It will take about 2 years to knock them all out, but we are making some progress, and I have done so to highlight the exemplary and important work done by more than some 200,000 people who comprise the Department of Homeland Security. They work around the country, and they work outside our country--in Mexico, Central America, South America, Europe, and all over the place in order to make us safer in this country. These men and women perform a wide range of vitally important work, and they do it every day. They inspect the fruit and vegetables that arrive at our ports of entry, much like the Port of Wilmington in my State. It is the top banana port in the country. They patrol our borders, like the Border Patrol agents dealing with increased migration from Central America. They defend our computer networks in cyber space, responding to a new and growing 21st-century threat. They keep our Presidents and Vice Presidents and their families and former Presidents and their families, as well as candidates for those positions, along with visiting foreign dignitaries, safe from harm. They have a lot of work to do. The work of these DHS personnel deployed at the frontlines is made possible in part because of the dedicated work of the men and women behind the scenes at the Department of Homeland Security's Management Directorate. As my colleagues have often heard me say, management really does matter. I will say it again: Management really does matter. And there are few places where that is more true than at the Department of Homeland Security. The Management Directorate works to support the missions and employees of all 22 component agencies which together comprise the Department of Homeland Security. They rent field offices, they buy essential equipment and vehicles, and they help to ensure that Department employees receive the paychecks and benefits they have worked for and earned. Within the Management Directorate, the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer works to ensure that the Department is doing what is best for its employees, while providing the Department managers with the guidance and resources they need to help DHS take care of their own. One member of the Management Directorate is an especially committed fellow whose name is Phil Nowak. He is committed to DHS employees--his fellow colleagues. He is the Chief of Staff in the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer. Phil grew up not in Iowa or Delaware, he grew up in San Francisco, not far from where I served in the Navy for a while. He joined the U.S. Coast Guard right after college. After serving in the Coast Guard for 20 years, he retired as a commander. I was once a commander--my favorite rank. Both of us served and exchange salutes all the time, Madam President. But Phil retired as a commander in 2007 and joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help coordinate disaster response. In 2010 Phil moved to the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer, and in 2013 he took over as Chief of Staff. As Chief of Staff, Phil supports the work of the Chief Human Capital Officer in managing the workforce of the third largest Cabinet agency in our Federal Government--the third largest. With 22 component agencies and DHS employees stationed literally around the world, Phil and his team of 200 men and women certainly have their work cut out for them. Supporting the Department employees and providing them with the resources they need to excel and grow in their work is critical to maintaining a motivated, effective, and capable Department. With some notable exceptions, we know many of the components of this relatively young Department have struggled with employee morale almost from its inception. Each year the Partnership for Public Service releases its ``Best Places to Work in the Federal Government'' survey, and each year the Department of Homeland Security ranks at or near the bottom of all the agencies when it comes to overall employee morale. With Congress imposing shortsighted budget cuts across government, imposing pay freezes, and just last week threatening a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security in the middle of our fight against ISIS, it is no wonder that sometimes DHS employees feel unappreciated. We probably would too. Despite these setbacks, leaders such as Phil Nowak are working every day and every night to right the ship and improve morale at DHS. And a bunch of us here in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans, are trying to be helpful in that regard. In providing leadership and direction for human capital management for the Department, Phil Nowak makes sure that the Department's efforts to improve morale translate to each of the 22 different component agencies of the Department of Homeland Security and are felt by each of its 240,000 employees. To help do this, Secretary Jeh Johnson has created what he calls a Unity of Effort Initiative to bring the Department of Homeland Security components together and make the Department greater than the sum of its parts. Phil leads one of the Unity of Effort Initiatives. It is called the Human Capital Leadership Council, which brings together human resources managers from across the Department. Through this coordination and other Unity of Effort Initiatives, Phil's team works hard to better ensure that the Department's 240,000 employees feel like part of a larger DHS family. In such a large agency, with so many people with diverse talents and backgrounds spread around the world, it is easy to focus on the broader mission and lose sight of the individuals who help the Department achieves its many missions, but Phil, I am happy to say, hasn't lost sight of them. Phil and his team do yeomen's work, and they focus on the value that each and every employee adds to the Department's mission. It is fitting, then, that Phil's colleagues describe him as caring deeply for them and for other employees throughout the Department. His commitment to them is clear, it is welcome, and it is unwavering. In his own life, Phil values professional resilience, and in a job that is sometimes overlooked, yet incredibly important, I think that is a necessary trait. It is also a fitting quality for a runner, and Phil is an avid runner. I like to run, but this man, Madam President is the real deal. He has completed both the Marine Corps Marathon and the JFK 50 Mile ultra-marathon twice. I am not fit to carry his running shoes. When he isn't running, Phil is building or fixing something around the house, cheering on those San Francisco 49ers and the San Francisco Giants--I hope it is not when they are playing my Detroit Tigers--and spending time with his wife of 26 years, Cristy, and their three children, Sam, Elizabeth, and Andrew. We are grateful to them for sharing their husband and their dad. Phil Nowak is just one example of the thousands of men and women at the Department of Homeland Security who work behind the scenes every day to support their colleagues and make our country safer for all of us. Phil and his team focus on individuals, they bring together components through a unity of effort, and they work tirelessly to improve employee morale. Management really does matter, and without Phil and his colleagues at the Management Directorate, the Department's mission to protect our homeland would suffer. To Phil Nowak and to his team in the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer, to every other hard-working employee at the Department of Homeland Security and at the Directorate for Management, I want to say a couple of words: Thank you. Let me say them again: Thank you. This past week I was doing some traveling and going through some airports. We usually try to use the TSA precheck, which goes a little more smoothly because people have been prescreened. At one place we were flying out of, they advertised TSA precheck was open, but it wasn't, so we had to be regular, ordinary people. At each of those places, the folks at TSA--right there at the frontline trying to protect us as we fly around the country, around the world in these airplanes--they were doing their job. It is a hard job, and I would say probably a thankless job. Everyone wants to get through. They do not want to take their shoes off or their belts off or have to take their toiletries out. They want to get through there, get on the plane, and go someplace, but not get harmed and arrive safely. When I fly, a lot of times I will tell the folks at TSA who I am and the committee I serve on just to let them know we appreciate the work they do for all of us. Every now and then--including over the weekend-- a TSA officer will say to me: Nobody has ever thanked me before. How about that. Nobody has ever thanked me before. So I say: Well, let me thank you again. And keep doing your job well, and hopefully you will get a lot of thanks. But to all the folks at DHS who are taking on a hard job and doing it well, we thank you for what you do every day to protect our country, the land of the free and the home of the brave. And may God bless you.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, this is a day-night double header. That was the day game, and what I want to do now is focus on the second half of the story as long as time will allow me to do that. As the Presiding Officer knows, I come from the State of Delaware. Delaware is noted for a number of things, and one of the things we are noted for is that before any other State ratified the Constitution, we did it. For 1 whole week, Delaware was the entire United States of America. We opened it up and we let in Maryland and New Jersey and Pennsylvania, ultimately Iowa and other States, and I think it has turned out pretty well most days. But we were the first to ratify the Constitution. My family and I live in northern Delaware, and just up the road from us is Philadelphia. That is where the Constitution was first debated, and folks from throughout the 13 Colonies came and argued for and against different provisions and how we should set up the structure of our government. One of the hardest provisions they argued on and debated was whether there should be a legislative branch at all, and if there should be, should it just be unicameral--just one entity, one body within that legislative branch--or should there be two. Should the number of votes and the power that States have be in accordance with the size of their State, how many people they have, or how would they balance things out. Some of them worked out the Connecticut Compromise that said that every State will have two Senators--the same number--and they will be part of the U.S. Senate, and the House of Representatives would be comprised such that the more people who live in a State, the more Representatives they would have. That was the Connecticut Compromise. It was worked out. It was maybe not a perfect compromise in the eyes of some, but it enabled them to move forward, and most people think it is fair and reasonable. Another really tough issue they wrestled with in those days was with respect to the third branch of government. We have the executive and the legislative and the judicial branch. The question was, What are the judges going to do, these Federal judges? How are they going to be appointed? Who is going to pick them? And if it is the Chief Executive Officer, should the President be able to name by himself or herself who the judges are going to be, the Federal judges and the Supreme Court Justices? Should it be left up to the Senate? Should it be left up to the House of Representatives? Should it be a joint effort by the House and the Senate? Should there be some role for the President, the Chief Executive, to play? How should it work out? Time and again they voted on this issue at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Finally, after a number of votes that were just not successful--they couldn't come to a successful conclusion-- they actually called out for clergy to come in and called on Divine intervention to get over this issue on how to pick, how to select Federal judges. I don't know if it was Divine intervention, but at the end of the day the deal said: The President shall nominate--not appoint, not name, but shall nominate--folks to serve as Federal judges, including the Supreme Court, and the Senate would have an opportunity to provide advice and consent to the President. We have argued a lot over the years about what advice and consent should be, but it makes very clear that the President has a job to do with respect to the naming of judges. I believe we have a job to do as well. About 300 yards from the tavern where the Constitution was first ratified on December 1787 in Delaware, with one hand on the Bible I raised my other hand and took an oath to defend the Constitution as Governor of Delaware. I had never thought very much about what kind of qualities I would look for in a judge. With my Republican opponent in the Governor's race, a wonderful guy named B. Gary Scott, in 1992, we had 35 joint appearances together, debates. In all those forums, no one ever asked: What quality would you look for in the people you would nominate to be a supreme court justice for the State of Delaware or a member of the court of chancery, which is a court that has a national and international role to play? The superior court also hears not just Delaware cases but national cases as well. In all those forums, nobody ever asked me: What would you consider? As it turned out, that was a very important part of my job. I am proud to say the Delaware judiciary is one of the highest regarded of any State judiciaries that we have. We have a very unusual system where there has to be an equal balance between Democrats and Republicans on the judiciary. It is not a spoils system. If there is one more Republican than a Democrat and there is a vacancy, you have to name a Democrat. That is the way the system works. When I was Governor, we had a person who had been chancellor of the court of chancery, which is a high honor. He decided he was going to leave. So we had a vacancy to fill. I named a Republican. In that case, I actually had the flexibility to name a Democrat or Republican. I wanted to name the best person that I thought was interested in serving. The criteria I used in nominating people to serve on the judiciary in Delaware was that I wanted people who were really smart. I wanted to nominate folks who knew the law. I sought to nominate people who embraced the Golden Rule, who treat other people the way they want to be treated, so that folks who came before them in a courtroom received fair and equal treatment. I wanted to nominate people who worked hard. I wanted to nominate people who had good judgment. I sought to nominate people who were able to make a decision. Sometimes people can have a lot of those qualities but have a hard time making a decision. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to have people who could do all those things. My hope is that this President will look at Democrats, Republicans, and Independents and find among them the man or woman who meets all that criteria and more. That is the President's job. I was up at the Detroit Auto Show. I know the Presiding Officer has a lot of assembly and supply operations in his State. Delaware used to, until fairly recently, build more cars and trucks per capita than any other State. So I care a lot about who is running GM and Chrysler. We lost both plants a few years ago when they went into bankruptcy. But I still go back to the Detroit Auto Show most years to keep in touch with the industry. This last January, a month ago, I was in Detroit. It was the opening day of the Detroit Auto Show, with tens of thousands of people converging on the Detroit Auto Show, going this way and that way to see the different reviews and different vehicles, concept cars or new production vehicles that are going to be launched maybe later this year. During the afternoon, I was looking for a restroom. I found one and so did hundreds of other people--in and out of this one restroom. I noticed an older gentleman who was a custodian standing with his cart, his mop and bucket, and his broom, outside of the mass of humanity. I walked in. In spite of all of those people, the place was remarkably clean. I figured he was the janitor who had responsibility for this restroom. When I came out, I said to him: I just want to say, sir, that this is a really clean restroom. With all the different kinds of people you have coming in and out of here, I don't know how you do it. I just want to say thank you for doing your job really well. He looked me in the eye and said: That is my job. He said: This is my job. And he said: I try to do my job well. He said: Everybody has a job, and everybody should try to do their job well. I thought to myself: Wow, wow, what insight, what a message. Under the Constitution, the President has a job. Apparently he is moving--not with haste, but I think with dispatch--to try to meet his responsibilities. I know we have had any number of times when Presidents have nominated Supreme Court Justices in a Presidential election year. I know a dozen or more times it has happened. I think every single time we had hearings for that nominee. There has been the opportunity to debate the nominee, question the nominee, meet with the nominee, debate here on the floor, and vote on the nomination up or down. I don't know of any time when we have not done that, even when a nominee came to us during a Presidential election year. I know we are in a crazy election season. It is still 8 months, 9 months before the election. But I hope that, at the end of the day, just like that janitor at the Detroit Auto Show intent on doing his job, the rest of us have the feeling that we have a job to do and that we should be in town doing our job. We have that need. We have that responsibility. I hope we will fulfill it. (Mr. COATS assumed the Chair.) Mr. President, the other thing I want to say is ``baseball.'' When the Presiding Officer and I were House Members together, we used to play baseball. We played in the congressional baseball game maybe 10 years ago--me on the Democratic side, him on the Republican side. For a year or two, I was almost selected as the most valuable Republican player--and I am a Democrat. So I wasn't always a great player, but I gave it my best. I was in Florida for an event over the weekend, and last week in Florida and Arizona something wonderful happened. What happened was that spring training camps opened. Pitchers and catchers reported, and then the full teams started to report. When they start the spring training games in a day or two--maybe tomorrow--teams will take the field and they will take the field with nine players. When Justice Roberts was going through his confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee, he was asked: What is the job of the Supreme Court? How would you describe it, in a simple way? He said: Our job basically is to call balls and strikes. When baseball teams take the field, they have nine players in nine positions. When the Supreme Court is in session, they have nine justices--or at least they did until the death of Justice Scalia. Just like you can't have a baseball team take the field without the shortstop or without the catcher or even without the second baseman or the center fielder and play well and do their job, at the end of the day, the Supreme Court is a team. They need nine--not players but nine justices--to be able to do their job well. Let's keep that in mind. The last thing I would say is that the American people are frustrated with us and our inability to get things done. Sometimes I can understand why they would feel that way. We have a great opportunity to get something done. I hope the President will nominate a terrific candidate, and I hope our Republican friends will at least have the courtesy of meeting with that man or woman, give him or her a chance to present themselves and explain what they are about, have a hearing on that person, and then give them the honor of a vote. I think they deserve that. Mr. President, I yield the floor for my friend from Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Leahy.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, the Senator, my colleague from Delaware, and I are close friends and we ride the same train together a lot of days, coming and going to Delaware. I would like to think that we think alike and share a lot of the same values. It was interesting to listen to his remarks about Vernon Alston, which actually reflect and track very closely with what I am prepared to say. But there are some differences. I am happy to be here with him, and I think it is great that we are here. I think we are also speaking for John Carney, who is our Congressman, and who would, if he could speak on this floor, join us today as well. Mr. President, I also want to join Senator Coons and the Presiding Officer, who presides in the chair almost every time I speak on this floor. I don't know how this works out, but it is good to see the Presiding Officer and this new group of pages who have joined us this week to tell you about a man you never had a chance to meet who was a Capitol policeman for almost 20 years. Senator Coons talked about him. I am going to say a few words about him, and then we will probably head for the train and head home. Let me just say a few things about Vernon J. Alston, Jr. His Dad is also Vernon J. Alston. As Senator Coons said, he passed away at the age of 44. We did have a big snowstorm. We had a lot of snow. We had a couple of feet here and almost that much in parts of Delaware. When Vernon died, he had actually just finished helping a neighbor shovel out after the snowstorm, and that sort of epitomized his life. He was always helping other people, not asking for anything much in return but setting a good example to every one of us. But in life and death, Vernon epitomized the best of our country--people who put their lives on the line to protect and serve in this Capitol Complex and those of us who live and work in this part of the Nation. The U.S. Capitol Police are some of the finest men and women in uniform. I say this as a former naval flight officer and a retired Navy captain. We have wonderful men and women who serve us and all the folks who come from all over the world to visit this place throughout the year. But each day these officers perform perhaps the most important jobs here on the Hill--protecting those of us who are privileged to work here either as Members of the Senate and the House or staff and also the millions of visitors and folks who travel here from not just the 50 States but from a lot of places around the globe. Whether these officers are patrolling the ground to prevent or detect mischief, investigating suspicious activity or responding to emergencies, their mission is the same. Their mission is to protect one of our country's principal symbols of democracy--the United States Capitol. Their mission is not one that comes without sacrifice. Just 17 years ago, I remember this to the day, in 1998, two of our Capitol Police officers, not far from the sound of my voice, were gunned down in the line of duty when a gunman opened fire, trying to force his way into the Capitol. Vernon, in his service with the U.S. Army Reserve, with the National Guard, and with the Capitol Police force, consistently exhibited unwavering courage, devotion to duty, and, above all, honor. In the way he lived his life and how we remember him, Vernon reminds each of us just how good we can be and ought to be. Vernon Alston was born in 1971 to his mom Barbara Alston and Vernon Alston, Sr.--and not in this country. He was born in Vincenza, which is a town in Italy where his dad Vernon, Sr., was stationed in the U.S. Air Force. Vernon spent the first 10 years of his life in Italy before his father was transferred to Dover Air Force Base in Dover, DE. There Vernon attended grade school on the Air Force base and later graduated from Dover High School, a school that I have been privileged to visit many times. He went on to attend Howard University in Washington, DC, and graduated from there about 20 years ago in 1995. Vernon was still a student at Howard University when he answered the call of duty, following the footsteps of his dad Vernon, Sr., and his grandfather David Alston, who was a U.S. Army World War II veteran. In 1991, Vernon--this is the son--joined the U.S. Army Reserve, and he served in the Army Reserve until 1994. After graduating from college in 1995, Vernon joined the District of Columbia Army National Guard and served as a member of the Army National Guard for another 10 years. I am sure our Presiding Officer spends time with his Guard troops in his home State. We do, too. We have an Army Guard and an Air Guard in Delaware. We are very proud of the literally thousands of men and women who serve our country. I think 300 are in Afghanistan. We will welcome some folks home this weekend. We are welcoming some folks home this weekend. But this is what Winston Churchill used to say about people who serve in the Guard or Reserve and have their own day jobs. Winston Churchill said they are twice the citizen. Think about that--twice the citizen. I know a lot of people who are in the Army Guard who used to be in the Army, and a lot of folks in the Air Guard in Delaware who used to be in the Air Force. They have their day jobs, and they serve our State and our Nation through the Guard. They are two-times the citizen. So was Vernon. He began his service with the Capitol Police Force 20 years ago, and for those 20 years he protected and served the Capitol Complex and its community, including folks such as us here: Senators, staff, our pages sitting here at the dais today, members of our families, staffs, members of their families, and millions of folks who visit our Capitol throughout each year. Vernon's positive energy, which Senator Coons has alluded to, and his attitude made a lasting impression with his Capitol Police colleagues. In the latter part of his career, most recently Vernon was stationed at the Capitol powerplant, which provides steam and water that is used to heat and cool buildings across the Capitol Complex. At that plant, it was his responsibility to check visitors and staff at the door and work to keep that facility safe and secure every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, throughout the year. According to his colleagues, he always found time to ask others: Well, how are you doing? And he possessed the all-too-rare quality of being a patient listener. My dad used to say to my sister and me that God gave us two ears, one mouth, and we should use them in that proportion--listen a lot more than we talk. I always admire good listeners, and Vernon was one of those. One of his fellow officers described Vernon as a ``beacon.'' A beacon of what? Well, a ``beacon of positivity,'' a positive force. No matter the mission--an early morning for a Presidential inauguration or a late night for the State of the Union Address at the other end of the Capitol--Vernon always wore a smile on his face. In 2008, while Vernon was on the job and patrolling the Capitol grounds, he ran into a woman whom he had actually run into before named Nicole Davis. Despite attending Howard University at the same time, Vernon and Nicole never really knew each other. But earlier this week, I talked to Nicole, who for years also made the commute from Magnolia, DE--just south of Dover--to serve not in the Capitol Police but to serve our country in another capacity here in our Nation's Capital. She told me their love story or an abbreviated version of it. When they were at Howard University at roughly the same point in time, Vernon would see her from afar and would admire her. He never really summoned the courage--if you will, the temerity--to go up to her and say: Here is who I am; who are you? But he sort of admired her from afar and wished he could get to know her. Many years later, while he was on patrol, I think at the corner of First and Independence, guess who comes walking along--that same woman whom he had admired from afar all those years ago. They struck up a conversation, hit it off, and went out on a date together. The rest is history. Six months later they were married. I know some people who married that quickly, and I am one of them. Vernon and Nicole knew what they were looking for. They were looking for each other, and they found each other. They have a wonderful family they have raised. Later when they were onboard the Spirit of Washington, they became husband and wife. After they married, they moved, in this case to Delaware. As I said, people in Magnolia--their claim to fame is that Magnolia, DE, is a little town that is the center of the universe. There are probably other places where people think they are the center of the universe, but the Alston family lived in Magnolia, the center of the universe, for a number of years. Nicole, as Senator Coons said--not only did Vernon get up and drive to work every day, so did Nicole. And they didn't carpool many days; they each drove separately. They both loved Delaware, but they wanted to work here and to serve our Nation in different roles. Nicole served and worked for a number of years at the Smithsonian's National Zoo, while Vernon was keeping things safe here in our Capitol. Together they have five children: Brittany, a sophomore at Delaware State University, the home of the Hornets in Dover; Yasmeen, a senior at Polytech High School in Delaware, the home of the Panthers, just south of Dover; Brandon, a sophomore at Paul Public Charter School in DC; and Israel and Breyden, who are both in preschool. I am close to closing, but I want to share a story that we heard from Vernon's mom the other day. It deals with the time when he was in the fourth grade. Vernon's principal told Vernon's parents that he was a great example to his peers, to other students. The principal said he knew he would come to learn about Vernon's accomplishments and achievements in the newspapers years down the road. Think of that. I don't know what my principals were thinking about me when I was in the fourth or fifth or sixth grade, but I don't think any of them thought that I would end up in the Senate or that they would be reading about me in the newspaper or watching me on television. But when Vernon was not even 10 years old, his principal knew he was a guy who was on his way to being somebody his parents could be enormously proud of. I think it is clear through the outpouring of love and accounts of so many others after Vernon's untimely passing that Vernon's principal was right. If he is out there listening somewhere and if his teachers are out there listening somewhere, I thank them for helping--along with Vernon's parents--raise a remarkable young man. Today I rise to commemorate Vernon, to celebrate his life with Senator Coons by my side, and on behalf of Congressman John Carney, our at-large Congressman from Delaware. We want to offer to Vernon's family--particularly to Nicole, their children, their friends, and family--our support and our deepest sympathy on their tragic loss and really the loss to all of us here. We consider Vernon and those with whom he served as part of our family. I asked my staff to see if they could find a couple of people who serve in the Capitol Police who might have something to say about Vernon, and I want to quote them and maybe close my remarks with their words. These are the words Officer Scott McBane said about Vernon Alston: Vern Alston was an outstanding human being. To know Vern was to love him. I was privileged to work with Vern for three years at the Traffic One checkpoint of the House Division [on the House side]. He treated everyone he met with patience, good humor, and remarkable kindness. A great talker who told very funny stories, he also had that rare quality of being a sympathetic and a patient listener. We heard that before, didn't we? Continuing: Smart, positive, and always supportive, people would stop by all day to see Vern and share their stories with him. A warm and sympathetic friend to so many, Vern will be greatly missed by all who knew him. Thank you, Scott McBane, an officer with the Capitol Police, for sharing those memories of Vern Alston. I have one more from another Capitol Police officer who knew and worked with Vernon. This officer's name is Michael Woodward. Michael said these words about Vernon Alston: Of all the people I have had the honor to work with Vernon Alston was by far the most positive, warm, friendly and outgoing person I have ever met. Let me just stop there. How many people in the world do you suppose there are who would say those words about us? Whether we happen to be Senators, our staff, our families, those are wonderful words for someone to say about us, that we were the most ``positive, warm,'' or ``friendly and outgoing person'' that someone ever met. What a compliment. He continues: He was always one to greet you with a smile, and ask how you and your family were doing. It doesn't matter what was going on--if we were coming in early for the Inauguration or staying late for the State of the Union--he always had a smile. I never heard him speak a negative word or raise his voice. He treated everyone as a close friend and was a beacon of positivity. His passing leaves a hole that cannot be filled. Senator Coons closed with a little Scripture from the New Testament. I think it was Galatians, if I am not mistaken. I will try to paraphrase a little something maybe from Luke and from the Book of James: People may not believe what we say; they will believe what we do. We lead by our example. And in our lives, it cannot be do as I say, but really do as I do. Throughout his life, Vernon was a great example, not just for the people with whom he worked on the police force here, not just for all of us who came into contact with him throughout the day or week, but for some of those millions of people whose only lasting impression of our country that they took home with them wherever they came from around the world was this wonderful Capitol Police officer who took the time to talk with them, to listen to them, to be patient, to be helpful, and to be friendly. There is a great lesson for all of us in that--a great lesson for all of us. For that, Vernon, we thank you. God bless you. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, as the ranking member of the committee on homeland security, I rise in opposition to this amendment. Our friend who is offering this amendment today indicates that Federal agencies are always promulgating regulations, and we never stand any of them down; we never retire them. As it turns out, about 5 or 6 years ago, President Obama said to Cass Sunstein, who runs OIRA, part of OMB: I want you to begin a top-to-bottom review of regulations. Find the ones that don't serve a purpose, and let's get rid of them. Over the next 5 years, that effort will bear fruit. It is not like saving a couple of million dollars. Over the next 5 years, it is going to save $22 billion. So we actually do have a process, and this is one that has really been provided by leadership from the administration. The other avenue was provided by our Democratic leader from years ago when he authored something called the Congressional Review Act. It is not always effective; it doesn't always work, but it is actually a way to stand down regulations that we don't want to see stood up. So there are two ways to do this. We always have an opportunity whenever regulations are proposed. We can speak to them. We can testify to them. We can urge that they be changed while they are in production. I urge us to vote no on this amendment.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, those are some things I didn't plan to say but I felt compelled to say as a warmup to what I really wanted to say, and that is to talk about the agreement we struck with Iran and some of the things that have been happening since then with us, the United States, and five other nations. Over the past couple of weeks, the Obama administration's decision to engage with Iran, along with these other five nations, through diplomacy instead of military action has faced key tests. The results are in, and the agreement that we struck--the United States, the Brits, the Germans, the French, the Chinese, the Russians, and the Iranians-- appears to be working thus far, and, God willing, we may actually be on our way to being safe as a result. This test began on the high seas 2 weeks ago when the United States and Iran faced a crisis that could have ended tragically. Two U.S. Navy vessels carrying a total of 10 crewmembers strayed into Iran's territorial waters. They were detained by Iran, and as many of us know, they appeared on Iranian television. The American vessels were somewhere they should not have been. It was a mistake. As a former naval flight officer who served 5 years in a hot war in Southeast Asia and another 18 years--right up to end of the Cold War-- as a P3 aircraft mission commander, I know this is a mistake we never want to make. Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged that the error had been made, and the sailors were released unharmed within 24 hours of being detained. Flashbacks of past hostage crises and destabilizing tensions were on all of our minds as we watched this story unfold. However, thanks to a more cooperative and productive diplomatic relationship with Iran, the sailors were released within 24 hours. As the week came to a close, we saw additional encouraging validations that the administration's Iran strategy is beginning to bear fruit. Following months of the most intrusive nuclear inspections in history, international weapons inspectors concluded that Iran had indeed followed through on its pledge in the nuclear deal to dismantle the parts of its nuclear program that were clearly not intended for peaceful purposes. The International Atomic Energy Agency certified that Iran had reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium by 98 percent and that the remaining uranium was only enriched to levels consistent with peaceful energy uses. The inspectors certified that nearly 15,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium have been dismantled. That leaves Iran with only its least sophisticated centrifuges, which can be used solely for peaceful purposes. The inspectors revealed that a special reactor for producing the kind of plutonium needed for a nuclear bomb in Iran will produce no more. It has been filled with concrete instead. Finally, the nuclear watchdogs certified that the inspections and monitoring systems of Iran's nuclear facility and nuclear supply chain have been stood up to ensure Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal. All of this happened much faster than most of us would have expected. It certainly happened faster than I expected it would. In fact, some critics of the nuclear deal said that Iran would never live up to the promises it had made--never. Yet, despite that skepticism, today we see an Iran that has taken irreversible steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in order to make good on its pledges. Amid the nuclear deal's implementation, the United States achieved another diplomatic breakthrough with Iran--one that I and a number of my colleagues had a hand in. The Iranians released five individuals--all dual U.S.-Iranian citizens--that they had been detaining in Iran for some years. Their release was the result of intense diplomatic negotiations. Secretary Kerry and his team of negotiators worked overtime to secure their freedom. They deserve our appreciation and our thanks. I had never forgotten about these Americans, and neither had my colleagues. Whenever we spoke or met with senior Iranian officials in recent years, we consistently called on them to release our unjustly detained citizens. The end result is that these Americans are free to rejoin their families in America instead of rotting in an Iranian prison. The events and achievements that occurred during these 6 days were a remarkable validation that the Obama administration and those of us in Congress who voted to support the nuclear deal had made the right choice. But our challenges with Iran have not vanished--not by a long shot. Iran continues to support terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. Iraq props up the Assad regime in Syria. Iran tests and develops ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Another American, former FBI agent Bob Levinson, disappeared 8 years ago in Iran, and the Iranian government needs to do all it can to help return him to his family or, if they can't do that--if he is no longer alive--at least help find out what happened to this American. Also, of course, Iran refuses to recognize Israel's right to even exist. Addressing these problems with Iran will not be easy. They will require the same kind of intense negotiations and pressure that helped to bring about an end to Iran's nuclear weapons program and the release of the detained Americans. That means our relationship with Iran will not always be composed of carrots. There may very well be times when sticks are needed to try to convince that Nation's regime to change its behavior toward us and our allies, including Israel. Perhaps no action better illustrates these dynamics than the United States' recent move to increase sanctions on Iran for its illegal testing of ballistic missiles--something that is a clear violation of the sanctions. At the same time that the U.S. was lifting nuclear sanctions on Iran as part of the nuclear deal, the Obama administration was leveling sanctions against 11 entities for their role in supporting Iran's ballistic missile program. Addressing our challenges with Iran over the long term will also require this administration, along with future administrations and Congress, to adopt a forward-thinking foreign policy that looks beyond the rhetoric of Iran's current regime. I have a chart here that I want to share with everyone tonight. It is a collage of photographs. I believe these photographs were taken in the aftermath of the decision to approve the agreement--a decision reached by the United States and our five negotiating partners and the government of Iran. This is a collage of photographs that indicates the measure of joy the Iranian people are reacting to this successful negotiation with. I just want to say Iran is little understood by most Americans. They have 78 million people there today. The average age of those people is under the age of 25--a lot like the young people we see in these photographs. For the most part, they are all educated. The lion's share of them don't remember the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the taking of American hostages at our embassy or the cruel Shah whom we supported until his ouster. This is a population, reflected in these photographs, that appears more focused on building Iran's troubled economy than pursuing antagonizing military activities favored by the Supreme Leader and by many of the Revolutionary Guard. In the weeks ahead, this new generation of young Iranians will head to the polls--sometime in the month of February--to choose the country's next parliament, as well as an entity called its Council of Experts, which I believe is the body that will help to choose the next Supreme Leader of Iran. At stake for these Iranians is the choice between the policies of engagement and economic revival being vigorously pursued by President Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif, and their supporters, as opposed to the politics of antagonism and destabilization that are apparently favored by the Supreme Leader and many in the Revolutionary Guard. We have seen photographs this week of President Rouhani meeting not just with Pope Francis--the first meeting between the leader of Iran and the Pope in close to 20 years--but also of his meetings throughout Europe, calling on countries, calling on businesses in order to try to solicit and pave the way for investments not in weaponry, not in aid to Hezbollah, but investments in roads, highways, and bridges--things that we need, but they need them a whole lot worse. Their roads, their highways and bridges, their airports and trains make ours look like the 21st century. They need to invest in those things. They have a lot of oil. They have the ability to pump a lot more. I think they pump about 300,000 barrels a day. By the end of this year, they will have the ability to pump as much as 1 million barrels of oil a day, and they are not going to do that without enormous investments in their oil infrastructure. They have a great need to do that. These young people know that. That is where they would like to spend that money. We should help make the upcoming parliamentary elections in February for these voters and others an easy choice. We should continue to show the people of Iran that their cooperation and their commitment to peace will be rewarded. How? With economic opportunity and the shedding of Iran's status as a pariah in the international community. We ought to listen to these people. They are not much older than the pages who are sitting here in front of us this evening. They are interested in their country changing for the better. They are interested in reform. A number of them have relatives who live over here in our country, and there are a lot of Iranian Americans who live here. For the most part, they are very valued citizens, and people would be proud to call them Americans. We need to listen to these young people who are calling for reform and who want to reconnect Iran to the international community. Frankly, it would be wise of us to do so for the sake of our security and for the sake of the security of our allies and for stability in the Middle East. Mr. President, I see no one waiting to be recognized at this time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to talk a bit about developments that involve our Nation, Iran, and the other five nations that joined us in negotiating the joint agreement. And we are encouraged that it will reduce--maybe substantially--the likelihood that Iran will build a nuclear weapon in the near future or even a good deal beyond that. I came to the floor to talk about that subject, but after hearing the previous speaker, I felt compelled to say a few things. I am a recovering Governor. I was the Governor of Delaware for 8 years, and we balanced our budget 8 years in a row, cut taxes. I have been told that more jobs were created during those 8 years than at any other time in Delaware history. I chaired the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. We worked closely with GAO. We actually worked very closely with the Bowles-Simpson folks about 5 or 6 years ago. They came up with three ideas for deficit reduction and to make sure that we do it for the long haul. The Bowles-Simpson Commission was formed at a time when deficit was $1.4 trillion. For those who are following it, the deficit is still too high, but it has been reduced by more than two-thirds--I think it may have even been close to three-quarters--and that is good. There are things we need to do for further deficit reduction. No. 1, we need to really consider what we do with our entitlement programs. The Bowles-Simpson Commission suggested that we make some changes and that we make them in ways which do not harm older people and which will save these programs for our children and grandchildren. I think that is very important, and that is one thing we need to do. No. 2, we need some additional revenues. We actually had four balanced budgets in a row during the last 4 years of the Clinton administration. If you look at revenues as a percentage of GDP in those 4 years, it was 20 percent. Revenues as a percentage of GDP for the 4 years we had a balanced budget was 20 percent. When you look at spending as a percentage of GDP during those 4 years, the last 4 years of the Clinton administration, it was 20 percent. During that time we had a balanced budget. In fact, we had a little surplus. But all of that got away from us in the 8 years that followed. After we had a change in administrations, the deficit piled up to $1.4 trillion. Well, we have been ratcheting it down, and now we are recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Can we do better than that? Sure we can do better than that. In terms of deficit reduction, entitlement reform actually saves money, save these programs for our kids and our grandchildren, and doesn't harm old people and poor people. The third thing we need is tax reform that generates revenues and hopefully reduces some rates, especially on the corporate side, where we are out of step with the rest of the world. The fourth thing we need to do is look at everything we do in order to find ways to save money. I will always remember a woman who came to one of my townhall meetings early in my time as a Congressman years ago, and her message to me, which I have never forgotten, was ``Congressman Carper, I don't mind paying for additional taxes; I just don't want you to waste my money.'' That is what she said. ``I don't mind paying for additional taxes; I just don't want you to waste my money.'' I think most people in this country feel that way. As it turns out, one of the jobs of GAO--the Government Accountability Office--as a watchdog on spending for us is every 2 years they provide to the Congress a high-risk list of ways we are wasting money. When Tom Coburn and I led the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, we used that as kind of our shopping list that we used to offer changes in spending and changes in revenues--especially in government collection--that would actually further reduce the deficit. We have taken action on a bunch of the ideas from GAO, and we need to find additional steps to take that provide part of the blueprint. Every major agency has inspectors general, and many of them regularly give us recommendations on how to save more money. Those reports should not just go up on a shelf somewhere but should be an action plan for us. So there is work for all of us to do. The last thing I will say is that health care costs as a percentage of GDP in my time as Governor--actually, after I stepped down as Governor in 2001--which was pretty flat during the mid-to-late 1990s, started to rise again and continued to rise until right around 2010, 2011. At that time health care costs as a percentage of GDP in this country had risen to 18 percent. When I ask a friend of mine how he is doing, he says: Compared to what? Well, how about comparing it to Japan? In Japan health care costs as a percentage of GDP are about 8 percent. We were 18 percent and they are at 8 percent. They get better results, longer life expectancies, and lower rates of infant mortality. They cover everybody. Four or 5 years ago, we had 40 million people going to bed without health care coverage at all, and we didn't get better results and we were spending 18 percent of GDP. The good news is that since the Affordable Care Act--I wrote parts of it, and I am proud of the part I worked on. But there are things we need to change, and my hope is that some day we get to a point in time where Democrats and Republicans, instead of just trying to kill and get rid of it, will say that there are some good things in this legislation and some good things that will be coming, and one of the good things that is coming is that health care costs as a percentage of GDP are not 18 percent anymore. They are coming down. The impact on deficit reduction is actually quite positive because of this legislation.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, in 2014, I began coming to the Senate floor almost every month. I came here to highlight some of the great work done each and every day by the men and women who serve us in the Department of Homeland Security. I continued that effort throughout much of last year and plan on coming to the Senate floor every month in 2016 with a new story to share. There is simply so much good being done across the Department by the employees, our public servants who work there. I don't think I am going to run out of material anytime soon. As you know, the Department of Homeland Security is made up of some 22 component agencies and employs over 200,000 Americans. These men and women work around the clock to protect all of us, our families, and our country. One part of the Department is called the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We call it FEMA. It has the unique task of keeping Americans safe when everything around them has been thrown into chaos. In times of crisis, the men and women at FEMA coordinate rescue operations, provide emergency medical care, and give shelter to those who lost their homes. Simply put, they bring hope back to Americans whose towns and cities have been swept away by floods, destroyed by a fire or torn apart by a tornado. Ten years ago, in the days after Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act. That law completely overhauled FEMA from top to bottom. It increased its authority and stature within the Department of Homeland Security and provided it with needed new resources. This legislation also required FEMA to bolster its regional offices and to build stronger relationships with State, local, and tribal governments. Taken together, these reforms have improved our capability at all levels of government to respond to disasters, while also improving FEMA's capacity to support State, local, and tribal governments as they rebuild. Over the past 10 years, the men and women of FEMA have worked countless hours to improve our preparedness for, response to, and recovery from disaster. Bad things still happen. In the aftermath of a tornado, wildfire or even a snowstorm like the nor'easter we saw on the East Coast this week, we still see the images of destruction and lives turned upside down on our television screens. Most of the work that the men and women at FEMA do 365 days a year to prepare for these events and make them less damaging rarely ever get discussed. Every day the men and women at FEMA create evacuation plans, stock emergency shelters with food and medical supplies, and they partner with law enforcement and first responders in every state to improve preparedness through exercises and drills. In addition to training first responders, one of FEMA's top priorities is to educate and train all of us on what to do in case of disaster. The more you and I and our families know, the more likely it is that we will be safe and will stay together during a disaster. Milo Booth One FEMA employee charged with helping some of our most vulnerable communities prepare for disaster is a fellow named Milo Booth who serves as FEMA's tribal affairs officer. Milo is an Alaskan Native from Metlakatla, AK. It is an Indian community on the southernmost tip of Alaska. After graduating from Oregon State University with a bachelor of science degree in forestry and minor in economics, Milo returned home to serve as the Metlakatla Indian community's director of forestry and land resources, working to protect his hometown for the next 16 years. After 2 years with the U.S. Forest Service, Milo moved to FEMA to serve as the National Tribal Affairs Advisor, and that is what he does today. In this role, Milo works to communicate disaster preparedness to reservations, Alaskan Native villages, and tribes across the country. These communities, some of the most remote and isolated in the country, are also most at risk in times of disasters. Ensuring that these communities are educated in preparedness helps some of the most vulnerable among us. As a FEMA liaison and an advisor to Indian Country, Milo doesn't just help the communities prepare for disaster. He also educates senior FEMA officials in the Department of Homeland Security tribal affairs staff on how FEMA could better prepare for and respond to hazards. In times of planning, Milo leads workshops and trains FEMA staff. He advises the senior leadership on tribal policy, and he works every day to build strong relationships between FEMA and tribal leaders and their communities. In times of crisis, when disaster strikes, Milo coordinates with tribal emergency managers and FEMA regional managers on the best ways to help and support these communities. In only 2 years at FEMA, Milo has visited more than 2 dozen reservations and Alaskan Native villages and has met with more than 100 tribes at trainings and regional tribal meetings. Perhaps more important than any of this technical work that Milo does in planning is the work he has done in building relationships and earning the trust of tribal leaders. When asked their thoughts on Milo, tribal leaders described him as accessible, responsive, and understanding, but most importantly, they described him as trustworthy. They trust that in Milo, their communities have a voice at FEMA. When Milo isn't working in Washington, DC, he returns home to Alaska with his wife and two children, where he enjoys spending time with them outdoors. One of his favorite activities these days is going trout fishing with his young son, who says he wants to grow up to be just like his dad. Milo is just one shining example of the thousands of dedicated men and women at FEMA who work to protect hundreds of communities across our Nation, treating every one of them as if it were their own hometown. The Presiding Officer will remember that Pope Francis addressed a joint session of Congress last September at the other end of this Capitol Building. He invoked the words of Matthew 25, which call for us to help the least among us, saying: I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me. These have become known as the works of mercy or the acts of mercy. Milo Booth and all of his colleagues at FEMA perform these acts of mercy each and every day. They protect our children and our homes, saving lives and doing truly remarkable deeds. And for the thousands of civil servants at FEMA and the tens of thousands of others across the 22 components of the Department of Homeland Security, these acts of mercy are their life's work. For all these things you do, for all these things all of you do, to each and every one of you, I wish to say thank you from all of us. God bless you. The Senators from Alaska and Wyoming are on the floor. Good to see them both. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, the terrorist attacks that we have seen over the last couple of months, including those tragically in Paris and San Bernardino, CA, have made it all too clear that terrorists' threats to Americans and to our allies are very real. I believe the best way to combat the threat of ISIS across our globe is to continue to degrade and destroy their forces overseas and show the world that they are not as powerful as they claim to be. Our success will not only rob them of their safe haven but will also undercut their recruitment narrative that ISIS is on the rise. But in addition to destroying ISIS overseas, we must also focus on defeating the threat of ISIS here at home. I realize that many Americans and many of our colleagues are concerned about terrorists traveling to our borders as refugees from Syria or maybe some other country. As many of my colleagues may recall, late last year we debated the question regarding the resettlement of 4 million Syrian refugees and whether we in this country should open our doors to even a small fraction of them. We debated it right here on the Senate floor, as some of you recall, and we debated it in our committees, including the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where I serve as the senior Democrat. During that debate, I was reminded of the words of Pope Francis's historic and moving address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber last fall when he reminded us of the Golden Rule--to treat other people the way we want to be treated, to love our neighbors as ourselves. He also invoked Matthew 25, which deals with ``the least of these'': When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was thirsty, did you give me drink? When I was a stranger in your land, did you take me in? I think we have a moral imperative to provide for ``the least of these,'' but at the same time, we have a moral imperative to protect Americans from extremists who seek to come to the United States to cause us harm. As we learn to address this tension, our Nation has rigorous screening procedures in place for all refugees, as well as enhanced screening for refugees who might be coming here from Syria. It is a process that takes an average of 2 years to complete. For those who aren't familiar with the process, people--in this case, 4 million refugees--are left for fighting in Syria to try to get away to save their lives. They are in refugee camps in that part of the world, and the United Nations has a special mission which includes to vet them, to get to know them, to talk with them, and to see if they would like to stay in a refugee camp or try to get settled into some other country. In vetting the 4 million refugees, a small fraction of those are folks who indicated that they would be interested in maybe resettling in this country. At the end of the day, after winnowing down from 4 million refugees, I believe the U.N. sent us 7,000 names. Out of the 7,000, we selected 2,000--mostly kids, mostly young families, mostly old people, and not very many men of fighting age, if you will. But the President has called for increasing that 2,000 to something like 10,000 over the next year--of course, this year. Think about that. Out of 4 million, what percentage of 4 million is 10,000 people? Even if we took all 10,000, it is one-quarter of 1 percent. That is what it is: one-quarter of 1 percent. There are obviously concerns about whether any of those people are dangerous-- pose an imminent danger to our people. Keep in mind that 2,000 have come in the course of the last year, and not one has been arrested, not one has been convicted of plotting or trying terrorist activity. One of the reasons that happens is--if I were an ISIS person and I were in Syria and wanted to get over, I sure wouldn't spend 2 years trying to come through with the refugees. That is the most stringent vetting of any group of people who want to come to this country. They have to undergo biometric checks. They are interviewed by people who are trained not just by the U.N. but also by us overseas, and they are vetted by people, interviewed by people who are trained to detect deception. We have the ability to check these people against any number of the databases that relate to potential terrorist activity. If I were an ISIS person wanting to embed myself with a terrorist group, I am not going to wait 2 years to do that and face the most rigorous of vetting processes for anyone trying to come to this country. For those of Syrian descent, the process could be even longer than that. It is a long time to wait for terrorists if they were going to try to use the refugee program to access the United States. If I were a terrorist trying to come here, the last thing I would do is go through those 2 years of vetting. While I understand my colleagues' concerns, the refugee bill that we dealt with today would do little to address our Nation's security needs. That is why many of my colleagues joined me in opposing this bill. The bill that was before us would require the head of top national security agencies to personally certify that each refugee from Syria and Iraq poses no security threat before admission to the United States--not now, not ever. If this bill had passed, it would have served as a backdoor way to shut off the refugee program by requiring our national security leaders--the head of the FBI, Director of National Intelligence, Secretary of Homeland Security--to promise something they would never promise. As currently drafted, this bill would require these three national security leaders to guarantee that the refugee will never, never become a security threat. That is not how these leaders or their organizations evaluate security threats. They don't have a crystal ball, and they cannot predict the future. Simply put, the SAFE Act would effectively stop the resettlement of fully vetted refugee women, children, families, and older folks from Syria and from Iraq and would weaken our national security. Again, that is one of the reasons I believe we must focus our attention on threats that pose a greater risk to our homeland. Democrats put forward a series of commonsense solutions-- alternatives, if you will--that will strengthen our security and help protect us against ISIS, a couple of which I had the pleasure of coauthoring. Instead of vilifying refugees, the proposals that we put forward impose tough new sanctions on financial institutions if they knowingly facilitate transactions with ISIS. That particular proposal closes loopholes that would let terrorists legally buy guns. This bill improves intelligence sharing with our allies who join us in the fight against ISIS. The bill also includes several provisions to better protect the homeland. For example, the bill--our proposal--strengthens the security of our airports. The bill provides better training for law enforcement to respond to active shooter incidents. The legislation also makes several improvements to the security of low-level radiological material so that potentially dangerous material does not fall into the hands of terrorists who might use it to create a dirty bomb. One particular area I want to focus on, though, is countering violent extremism. As the tragedy in San Bernardino, CA, underscores, some of the greatest threats we face are homegrown terrorism and self- radicalization. That is why the Democratic alternative includes language from the legislation I introduced that would strengthen the Department of Homeland Security's ability to counter violent extremism here in the United States. This proposal authorizes a new office charged with helping communities across the country--Muslim communities across the country-- stop their young people from being recruited by ISIS. The legislative proposal would also create a grant program that would help the Department of Homeland Security connect with nonprofits, with local officials, with religious leaders and youth groups to work together to counter the narratives proffered by terrorist groups like ISIS. If you look in recent years at the folks in this country who are inspired by ISIS to commit terrorist activities against those of us in this country, you will not find them having come over embedded, to my knowledge, with any refugee organization or any refugee group. The biggest threat to us is not necessarily the people coming through on the Visa Waiver Program, student visa programs, or tourist visa programs. The biggest threat to our security is from folks who in many cases were born here or in some cases folks who could have come from Syria, Iraq, or some other place, but they became radicalized after coming here--maybe after becoming a citizen here. Those are the threats that I think pose the greatest danger. We call them lone wolves. One of the best ways to address those folks is to look around at maybe our history and look at what is going on in Arabic and other countries and ask if there is some way to reach out to those people who are actually in danger of becoming radicalized or a lone wolf, if someone could reach out to them and reduce the likelihood of having them become radicalized and prevent them from taking out their frustration or anger on people in this country in harmful ways. In my last year as Governor of Delaware, I was involved in a foundation that was called the American Legacy Foundation. It was funded by a tobacco settlement between the tobacco industry and all 50 States. The idea behind the American Legacy Foundation was to use the $1 billion that was provided to the American Legacy Foundation to develop ways to message and communicate with young people in this country who were either smoking or thinking about becoming smokers. Some of us remember from our youth--and when I was a kid growing up, the idea of smoking was thought to be a desirable thing. Early on, we were not aware of the health consequences to it. We would see all kinds of people in commercials on television advertising smoking, and you would think that would be a cool thing to do. The American Legacy Foundation came along in 2001 and developed a countermessage to all of that, and we called it the Truth Campaign. The Truth Campaign was a multimedia campaign that was included in radio and TV commercials, as well as on the Internet and in magazines and that sort of thing, that young people read or listened to. The narratives and the messaging communications were not developed in boardrooms or by someone like me or the paid staff of the American Legacy Foundation; they were developed by young people who could have been 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, or 18 years old who developed an area and said: This is a message you need to send out through all of these different mediums to try to convince them not to smoke or if they are already smoking, to quit. And that is what we did. If you look at the incidence of smoking for people who were preteens and teenagers in this country in 2001 and what it was by the end of the last decade, it is amazing how well it worked. It was called the Truth Campaign. The messaging and the messages developed by our target audience were hard-hitting. There was a saying when I went to business school: Talk to your customer and ask them what they want. And in this case, we talked to our customers. A lot of them were about the same age as our pages who are sitting here today. The Department of Homeland Security is attempting to start up an office called the Office of Community Partnership. It is an office that would work with Muslim communities across the country, including families, religious leaders, and other young people, in order to try to make sure young people do not become radicalized and undertake activities that are going to harm other folks in this country. I think it is a very promising initiative. The folks leading this community partnership office at the Department of Homeland Security are going to work with the American Legacy Foundation to see what worked and really changed the game with respect to young people smoking and using tobacco in this country. We may be able to apply some of those lessons to deter the likelihood of people of Muslim faith who are somehow convinced that their faith directs them to undertake these violent activities. I am encouraged by this prospect. The last thing I will say is that we have 1\1/2\ billion people around the world who are Muslims. I am Protestant, and there are people of different faiths in this body. There are Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and others. Among the things we have in common, as well as with the Muslim faith, is something I mentioned earlier--the Golden Rule. Almost every major religion on Earth has several things in common, but one of the things they have in common is the Golden Rule, which is to love your neighbor as yourself and treat other people the way you want to be treated. I don't care if you are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim, somewhere in your Sacred Scripture is that idea, that notion, that directive. There are some people who take my Christian faith and turn it on its head to say and do things that we would never do and should never do. We take the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and instead of embracing Matthew 25--the least of these, when I was a stranger in your land, did you take me in--we are basically saying: We are not going to let any people in this country who are, say, of the Muslim faith. That is not a Christian thing to say or do. People take my religion, my faith and turn it into something that it is not even close to being, and, not surprisingly, there are some people who do that with the Muslim faith. We need to counter that and help the vast majority of folks in this country who are Muslim to better counter them in ways which, frankly, I could never do but which people in Muslim communities and of that faith across the country would like to do and want to do. We need to be a good partner and help them to be successful in that effort. Frankly, that is a whole lot better alternative than the legislation that was before us today, and that is one thing we ought to be able to agree on. I hope my colleagues-- Democratic, Republican, and Independent--will find a path to join me and others who think this is a good idea and make it happen. With that, I will pass the baton to my friend from another big State, Rhode Island. I thank the Presiding Officer for the opportunity to speak today. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I mentioned to the Presiding Officer in our brief conversation before I came to the podium that one of the things I try to do every month or so is come to the floor, usually when things are slower and there is not a lot going on, to talk about some of the folks who work for us and serve our country in the Department of Homeland Security. Earlier this week, as my colleagues may recall, an outfit called the Partnership for Public Service released an annual report in which they rank the best places in which to work in the Federal Government. The report is based on surveys that are conducted literally by hundreds of thousands of Federal employees. This year it showed an increase in overall employee morale for the first time, I think, in 4 or 5 years. That is good news. Despite the progress that appears to have been made in a number of Federal agencies, not all but many components of the Department of Homeland Security continue to struggle to make their employees feel good about their work and what they do for the rest of us. I know the Secretary of the Department, Jeh Johnson, and his team have taken a number of significant steps to make the Department a better place to work for current and future employees. They do outreach and get input from their employees as to what needs to be done to enable them to feel better about the work for greater job satisfaction, to make them want to come to work. I would also say today that the Congress--those of us who serve in the Senate and the House--also has a responsibility to help improve morale, not just at the Department of Homeland Security but in the Federal Government at large. Considering the fact that we began 2015 with a fight in this body right here over whether we should even fund the Department, I don't believe those of us in the Senate or in the House are doing all we can do, that we are doing our part well. As I said earlier, that is why I come to the Senate floor on a number of occasions throughout the year to highlight some of the extraordinary work done every day by the dedicated men and women at the Department of Homeland Security. Today I rise to recognize no one individual. Usually I pick one or two people who have done extraordinary things with their lives, but today I am going to focus on a whole team of people who do important work every day to defend our Nation from the growing and evolving threat our country faces in cyber space. It seems as though we don't go a week without hearing about another major breach at a business or a government agency. We are under unrelenting attack from all over the world--in some cases from sovereign nations, in other cases from criminal organizations, and in other cases just from pranksters. Over these past few years, we have seen major attacks on the Office of Personnel Management, on a great many banks and other businesses, and even the email of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. These attacks make clear that the threats we face online are complex, and unfortunately we will be struggling with how to deal with them for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, in Congress we have been making some progress combating these cyber threats through legislation. Last year we passed cyber security legislation--four bills in fact--out of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. These four bills were aimed at strengthening the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to perform their cyber security mission. Among those bills was one to update how our government protects its own networks. This bill includes language clarifying the role the Department plays in overseeing and enhancing security and other agencies. Two other bills gave the Department some of the tools it needs to strengthen its cyber security workforce, and just last month the Department of Homeland Security announced that it now seeks to hire up to 1,000 new cyber security employees over the next 6 months using the new authorities we have given them. We also passed legislation that codified the cyber operations center at the Department. It is called the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, affectionately known as the NCCIC. Our legislation--which former Senator Dr. Tom Coburn and I coauthored, supported by many in our committee and outside of our committee--gave the NCCIC the strong legal foundation it needs, that it lacked, in order to do their job and engage with the private sector in a joint effort to better secure critical cyber networks. I think we have made real progress on cyber security legislation this year as well. I think we are maybe poised to do even more. I would like to use a football analogy. The team flips a coin and somebody receives and somebody kicks the ball. Receiving takes the ball maybe deep in their own territory, and then they march down the field across the 50- yard line into the other team's territory, then they get to the 20-yard line, and then moving closer to the other team's goal line, they would say they are in the red zone. In terms of our march on cyber security legislation here and in the House, thanks to the good work of the Intel Committee here and the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs as well, we are not just in the red zone, we are inside the 10- yard line and it is first down and goal to go. Unfortunately, the clock is running out and we don't have forever to get the job done, but if we are smart and don't give up, we can have a real success for the American people in strengthening our cyber defenses in a real way. The legislation we passed this fall was called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, and it represents a collaboration on a number of cyber security issues. In the bill the Department of Homeland Security plays a central role as they interface between industry and the government. The bill also includes provisions to enhance the cyber security program at the Department of Homeland Security known as EINSTEIN, which uses classified threat intelligence to protect all of our civilian agencies. I am mentioning all of this legislation to show the critical role or underline the critical role the Department of Homeland Security plays in security for our Nation. At the center of the Department's cyber security operation is the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which is also known as US-CERT. To my left is a picture of our President, and the handsome fellow he is speaking to is a fellow named Jeh Johnson, who is the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, a role he has filled for I believe most of 2 years now. I think he is doing a splendid job, with the great support of the Deputy Secretary there, Alejandro Mayorkas, and a couple of thousand people who are committed to defending our homeland. This is a picture of the President addressing, along with Secretary Johnson, the employees at US-CERT. I think it was taken earlier this year. Again, US-CERT--the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team--is the main operational team within the NCCIC. It is the operational team within the NCCIC itself. What do they do? They pool information and they share that information throughout the Federal Government. The US-CERT also shares information with our partners in the private sector across the country and with our allies around the world. It is an important job. It is not a job that is done for 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. It is a 24-hour-a- day, 7-day-a-week operation, and these men and women work to stay ahead of the bad actors who are trying to steal our personal information and trying to really harm our economy. In some cases they are plotting to damage our critical infrastructure such as our electric grid, our financial systems, and our communications systems. US-CERT was established 12 years ago as the Department of Homeland Security was first being stood up. The mission of US-CERT is simple, I think: to make the Internet a safer place for everyone by helping to improve cyber security across the country. I will say that again. The mission of US-CERT is very simple--not easy but simple. It is to make the Internet a safer place for everyone by helping to improve cyber security across our country. To do this, US-CERT operates a wide variety of programs. These programs include several information sharing collaboration programs, incident response teams that provide onsite assistance to attack victims, programs such as the EINSTEIN intrusion detection and prevention system to protect Federal agencies, education and awareness programs, and deeply technical forensic analysis. The US- CERT partners with a wide variety of organizations. Among them, they partner with powerplants and utilities, they partner with financial institutions, they partner with software companies, with researchers, and they partner with certain teams in other countries and other cyber operation centers such as those over at NSA, the National Security Agency, and the FBI as well. When a major attack occurs in the Federal Government or the private sector, the men and women at US-CERT mobilize to travel to the victim's location. They help mitigate the attack. They help to strengthen the victim's cyber systems, and then they communicate with their partners so everyone can secure their systems against similar attacks. We learned from that bad experience, and hopefully we can help reduce the likelihood that someone else will suffer a similar fate. Earlier this year, when the Office of Personnel Management discovered a data breach of personal data belonging to millions of Federal employees, they called the NCCIC and asked for its team of experts. US- CERT was deployed to play a central role in, first of all, investigating the attack but also in responding to that attack. For the next 4 months, the team worked literally around the clock at OPM to assess and to monitor Federal networks and to develop new protections against this type of intrusion that OPM had experienced. Now, once US-CERT realized that other Federal agencies were also vulnerable to this kind of a breach, they immediately shared the indicators of the attack with network analysts across the Federal Government. This allowed other Federal agencies to scan their systems and to make sure they had not been compromised by the same hacker and to be on alert for that hacker's attack. Because of the scale and impact of the OPM breach, which I think actually ended up affecting more than 20 million people, the US-CERT team worked long hours to make sure they could provide guidance to Federal agencies as quickly as possible so they could protect their networks from similar attacks and prevent the attacker from using the information they obtained against us. Their work not only strengthened the Office of Personnel Management's cyber security posture, it also bolstered cyber security across the entire Federal Government. US-CERT and all the cyber warriors at the NCCIC work tirelessly every day to out-think and out-innovate our cyber enemies. The legislation we enacted last year and the bill we are working hard to send to the President this year with great bipartisan support here in the Senate and the House as well puts the Department of Homeland Security in the spotlight and entrusts them with ever-greater responsibility for years to come. We in Congress recognize the critical role US-CERT plays in strengthening our Nation's cyber security, and we must continue to support these hard-working men and women in their mission. Mr. President, I will close by telling a story. I have told this story before, but it is a good one, and it is certainly germane to what we talked about here today. A couple of years ago, I was listening to a radio station on my way to the train station in Delaware, and I caught NPR news right at 7 a.m. as I made my way to the train station in Wilmington. On the news that morning, they gave a report about an international survey that was taken where they asked thousands of people in different countries and here: What is it about your work that you like? What is it about your work that makes you like your job or not like your job? Some of the people who were asked said: Well, the thing I like about my job is I like getting paid--not that they are in it for the money, but they like getting paid. Others said they like vacations. Some people said they had health care. Others said they like the folks they work with. Other people said they like the environment--a beautiful place like this in which they work. But what most people said they liked were really two things: No. 1, they knew the work they were doing was important, and No. 2, they felt as though they were making progress. Think about that. They knew the work they were doing was important and they felt as though they were making progress. Well, there is probably nobody in our country--at least working within the Federal Government--who does work more important than the folks at the Department of Homeland Security. The House and the Senate have worked in recent years to strengthen the ability of the Department of Homeland Security, including the US-CERT team, to be able to do their job even better. My hope is that in years to come, as we hear these annual reports on best places to work within the Federal Government, that we are going to find that the people at the Department of Homeland Security, including NCCIC and US-CERT, will be saying more and more: I like working here because I know the work I do is important, and I feel as though we are making progress. This Senator would just say to everyone at US-CERT, thank you for all the good you do for us. Thank you for your service to this country. And to each of you, we wish you happy holidays and Merry Christmas. We would also say, here is hoping that we will all have a more peaceful new year. I think the American people are ready for that. I know the Presiding Officer is, and so am I. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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, it has been quite a week. I think we have all learned a bit about Syrian refugees, the challenges they face, and the potential challenges they create for us in this country. One of the things we have learned is that it is not easy to come here as a refugee to this country. In fact, it is pretty difficult. It is not something one can do easily. If you want to come over thinking that you might wait a couple of weeks or a couple of months--you might wait a couple of years. You have to go through a vetting process with the United Nations. You go through a vetting process overseas with the U.S. folks. You have to have your information go through any number of databanks to determine whether you are a person of special interest and could potentially be a problem. It is a long process. I will be honest. If I were a bad guy over there, one of these ISIS folks trying to get into the United States and create mayhem, there is no way I would want to wait 2 years, go through a refugee program, and probably get bounced out somewhere along the line through all these background checks and access to intelligence databanks and personal interviews. I think I would find another way to get here, and there are other ways to get here. We have been talking about that more recently today and yesterday. One of the potential ways to get here is through what is called the Visa Waiver Program. It is an agreement we have with 38 different nations. The Visa Waiver Program started a number of years ago, and it has now grown to include 38 countries. It started off as a travel facilitation program, kind of like the TSA precheck or the global entries we have at the airports here in the United States. It started off as a travel facilitation program, and over time it has turned into an information sharing partnership with 38 different foreign countries. The idea is to make it a little easier for folks who we believe are trusted travelers to get into this country from several dozen nations. One of the things we don't focus on very much in this program is we believe it is to our economic advantage to facilitate travel and tourism for those visiting our country. That is hard to argue with. It also facilitates tourism and traveling to the other 38 countries. We didn't just enter willy-nilly into this agreement with these other 38 other countries. There are certain requirements we have in terms of access about the people who would like to come to this country under the Visa Waiver Program. We have any number of different kinds of access to intelligence data files and databases, and we insist on that before we allow these countries to participate. If they don't want to do that, they are not part of the Visa Waiver Program. If they change their mind during the course of our relationship with them as part of the Visa Waiver Program and become not very good partners in this, we bounce them out, they are no longer part of the Visa Waiver Program, and then those people have to go through the regular visa process. Anyway, that would provide another option. It is probably a more favored option for somebody who is anxious to get over here from Syria or for anybody who wants to do mayhem. That might be an option if they live in one of those 38 countries. People can go to U.S. consulates all the time in other countries. They ask to come here. Sometimes they ask to come here on a visa. It could be a tourism visa. A lot of people want to come to the United States as a tourist. It could be that they want to come here to study. Those may be perfectly legitimate, but in some cases they may not be. Folks come here in many other ways. We had an interesting hearing today in the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. We had two witnesses from the Federal Government, and then we had five witnesses from a variety of different backgrounds. One of the things we asked were: Where do the real threats lie for our country? It could be Syria. It could be ISIS people from Iraq. It could be folks who have been radicalized from other countries who have gone to Syria to fight and have become jihadists and want to somehow get into our country and create not just mischief but mayhem. Everybody who testified said the primary concern should not be the Refugee Resettlement Program. Why would anybody want to go through that? It wastes 2 years. Maybe they will get through it, maybe not. If you are lucky, you get through it 2 years later. The 2,000 people or so who have come through that program from Syria this year, I am told they were mostly women and children, older men-- very old men. Out of the 2,000, in terms of the folks who are male and of fighting age, only about 2 percent fall into that category. They all have to provide family connections of the people they are related to and will be reunited with over here. That is part of the deal for getting in. It is not like every refugee who comes here would even be someone who would be expected to be of fighting age. One of the other things most of the folks agreed on was that one of the greatest concerns we ought to have for folks getting into our country and doing mischief here would not necessarily be folks from other countries. The concern is about the folks who are already here and may be natives to the United States who have become radicalized. We heard that again and again and again. That is a major concern, and that is something we have to be serious about. One of the best ways we can reduce the likelihood that folks living here would be radicalized and want to be a part of the ISIS army overseas or right here is to do what we are trying to do as a country; that is, to degrade and destroy ISIS militarily. And that would be not just us by ourselves--us using our air superiority, us using our ability to gather and disseminate intelligence, with direct strikes, and to provide help to the people on the ground, to the boots on the ground--not us--but to help other countries that are doing that sort of thing. My guess is--and this was confirmed by most of our witnesses today-- that the folks who most likely want to be a homegrown jihadist, be affiliated with ISIS, and do their job here in this country as opposed to over in Syria want to be on the winning side. They are not interested in affiliating with a loser. So the question is, What can we do to make sure that ISIS is degraded and destroyed? I will mention a couple of things that happened in the last couple of weeks that would suggest to me that at long last the coalition of 60 nations is beginning to get its act together and make progress on the ground. Over the past year ISIS has lost 25 percent of its safe haven in Syria and Iraq. Our coalition has conducted more than 8,000 airstrikes against ISIS. We have killed ISIS fighters at a rate of 1,000 fighters a month. The Iraqi Security Forces have now liberated Tikrit, which is a city in Iraq that is Saddam Hussein's old hometown. It has been liberated from ISIS now. About 70 percent of Tikrit's pre-ISIS citizens have been returned to the city. With Syrian Kurdish forces on the ground and the United States in the air, the Syrian town of Kobane was kept from falling to ISIS, despite the fact that most analysts thought the town would fall within days earlier this year. Just last week in Iraq, Kurdish forces supported by the United States in the air took back the key town of Sinjar from ISIS. That strategic town sits on the top of a key roadway that connects ISIS's stronghold in Mosul with ISIS's capital in a place called Raqqa. Now these Iraqi Kurds are working with the Syrian Kurds, an Arab coalition, and the United States to fully sever that key supply line and isolate Mosul and Raqqa. In August, a U.S. drone strike killed a fellow named Junaid Hussain, one of ISIS's online propagandists who had helped to direct the homegrown attack at Garland, TX, last May. Just last week, a U.S. drone strike also killed Jihadi John, ISIS's chief executioner. Jihadi John has publicly executed dozens of people, including at least three Americans--James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig. Last week, an American airstrike took ISIS's leader in Libya, a guy named Abu Nabil. Now, is that the ball game? No, it is not. Is that encouraging? Yes, it is. It has to be discouraging to folks with ISIS, and it has to be discouraging to fans here in the United States. The idea is to degrade them and ultimately destroy them, and I am encouraged that we finally seem to be on the right track to accomplishing that. The other thing we heard from our witnesses today is that there is a Federal program run by the Department of Homeland Security called the Office of Community Partnerships Countering Violent Terrorism. The idea there is to work with the Muslim communities throughout the country-- and there are a number of them--to counter the social media message that some find so alluring that is put up by ISIS. Part of the ability to compete with that and to degrade that message is to degrade ISIS on the ground. The other way to do it is to do what the Department of Homeland Security is doing in conjunction with Arab communities and Muslim communities throughout our country and in conjunction with, for example, the district attorney in Minneapolis, to develop a good partnership in saying: Let's see if we can't convince our young people living there not to want to go to Syria, not to want to go to fight, not to want to go anywhere, but just to live their lives and not to be jihadists in this country. It is a good program. It seems to be bearing fruit. It has been well accepted, I am told, by many in the Muslim community. We are being asked to help fund that through the appropriations process, and it is very important that we do. I will close where I started. It has been a bit of a wild and crazy ride this week. Every now and then I feel--when I was raising my kids, my boys, I would just say, why don't we just take a deep breath and chill for a little bit, and then figure out what to do. Given everything that has come across in the media and the scare that has been visited on so many people, it is probably a good time for us to just take a deep breath and to think about some of the things that I have said, some of what we learned in our hearing today. There are threats to this country that are real. They are probably not posed by the refugee problem. We are reminded by the Pope that we have an obligation to follow the Golden Rule and treat other people the way we wanted to be treated. We have an obligation, as we were reminded just two months ago by the Pope on the other side of the Capitol when he addressed a joint session of Congress. He told us to remember Matthew 25: 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? He posed to us sort of a moral dilemma and certainly reminded us that we have a moral obligation to the least of these in our society. We also have a moral obligation as leaders here in the Congress to make sure that we are not only trying to be true to that moral obligation to the least of these but the obligation that we have to protect the people of this country. The question for us as we approach Thanksgiving--maybe in the spirit of Thanksgiving--is that it possible for us to be true to both of the moral imperatives, to the least of those in our society and, frankly, outside this country, and the moral imperative to our country men and women to protect them. I think we can do both. As we leave here today to head for our homes and for Thanksgiving, I am encouraged we can do both, and that if we are smart about it, we will do that. I wish the Presiding Officer and all of our pages and all of the staff here a blessed Thanksgiving holiday. Thank you all for your service. I will see you in about 10 days. God bless you. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, as my colleague from Alabama prepares to leave, I want to wish him and his family a happy Thanksgiving holiday and I look forward to seeing him in 10 days.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, let me start by congratulating our colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee on which I serve, as well as the banking, commerce, and finance committees, where I also serve, on the recent appointment of a House-Senate conference to attempt to produce a final product for a multiyear transportation plan for our country. I am a strong supporter, as are many of my colleagues, of investments in our Nation's roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems. I have been so for 15 years as a Senator, for 8 years before that as a Governor, and for years before that as someone who focused an economic development and job creation within the State of Delaware. I am pleased on one hand that after too many years of short-term extensions in transportation funding, we are set to make rebuilding and modernizing our country's transportation system a long-term national priority again, and God knows we need to. However, I regret that I still have deep concerns for how Congress has decided to pay for these investments. For decades we have paid for our transportation systems-- roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems--through the use of user fees in the form of Federal excise taxes and, in some cases, on gasoline and diesel fuel to support the funding of our Nation's transportation system for over a half century--over 50 years. I believe that approach remains the fairest and most efficient way to fund transportation projects. However, since 2008, we have strayed from a user-pays approach. Instead, we rely on $75 billion worth of budget gimmicks, unrelated offsets, and debt to prop up our transportation trust fund to pay for transportation investments. Rather than right our course, both the House and Senate transportation proposals rely on tens of billions of dollars in additional budget gimmicks and unrelated offsets to fund this bill over the next 6 years. That is not the right way to pay for our infrastructure. I think it is the wrong way. It is not unfair, in my view, to ask the businesses and people who use our roads, highways, and bridges to help pay for them. We have done that for 50 years, we know how to do it, it is a reasonably simple system, and I think it is a fair system. We can adjust the earned-income tax credit in order to offset any increase in the user-fee cost that would have an impact on lower income families because this kind of increase in the tax could be seen as not progressive. Having said that, that is not what we are going to do, and what we are going to do instead is do what we have done for the last 7 years and use gimmicks and things that have nothing to do with transportation to ostensibly pay for transportation funding. All that being said, this is a course that Congress has voted for, and despite my misgivings over the funding, there is still much to commend in both the House and Senate legislation, particularly on the authorization side that comes out of the Environment and Public Works Committee and out of the Transportation Infrastructure Committee in the House. Among the areas that I believe should be supported and should certainly be preserved in Congress is a robustly funded freight program, competitive grants for major projects, funding to reduce dangerous diesel pollution, and research grants to explore alternatives to user fees--the gas and diesel tax. I hope these provisions are retained in whatever bill emerges from the conference committee. Other provisions, such as caps on investment of freight funding in rail, port, and water transportation projects and cuts to public transit funding in Northeastern States should also be dropped. Finally, Congress will face the question of how to balance the benefits of long-term investment predictability with the urgent project investment needs around our country. While the long-term predictability is certainly important, we must consider the significant unmet investment needs around our country and the huge economic benefits that transportation investments offer to America's businesses and families. This legislation would best serve our country by maximizing annual investment levels for all service transportation programs over a shorter authorization period, and instead of having an inadequate amount of money to go to pay for transportation improvements over 6 years, I would hope our conferees would consider maybe using that same amount of money and just spread it over 5 years or even 4 years. We could use every dime of it, and then some, for the transportation needs of our country. This may be the last talk I give on the Senate floor. I have given a bunch of speeches on transportation, not so much on the authorization side of it, but mostly about finding a way to pay for it. Writing the transportation authorization legislation--while not easy--is the easy part of the job. The hard part is figuring out how to pay for stuff. For a long time we have used a user-fee approach, such as the gas and diesel tax. We have done that since Dwight Eisenhower was President and when we were building the Interstate Highway System. We last raised the gas and diesel taxes in 1993, so it has been 22 years. The gas tax today is 18 cents, and after inflation it is worth about a dime. The diesel tax was raised about 22 years ago and is about 23 cents, and today it is worth less than 15 cents. A couple of days ago, I bought gasoline in Dover, and I think we paid just a tad over $2 a gallon. Last week I was told there are 30,000 gas stations across America where people filled up and paid less than $2 a gallon for gasoline. Senator Durbin, Senator Feinstein, and I in the Senate, and others in the House, have offered legislation to restore the purchasing power of the gas and diesel tax. We are not looking to increase it by 25 cents, 50 cents or $1, as some have suggested, but to simply raise it 4 cents a year for 4 years, and at the end of 4 years in 2020, index it to the rate of inflation. If we did that, we would generate something like $220 billion that would be used for our roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems over the next 10 years. Instead, we are not going to do that. We are going to take money from the increase in TSA fees, which ostensibly was to be used to protect people when they fly on airplanes, and instead we will use it for roads, highways, and bridges. We are taking the money that should go to bolster the strength of our borders so we can make sure we are able to detect drugs and other things that shouldn't be going across our borders--particularly the border crossings where we have huge amounts of commerce moving in and out of our country into Mexico or into Canada--and instead we are going to take that money and ostensibly put it in roads, highways, and bridges. I found a new way to avoid paying for roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems, and it is kind of a novel way, by saying to the Federal Reserve that we are going to reduce their reserves by $60 billion. The Federal Reserve, or central bank, turns out to have a large portfolio of investments, and a lot of the investments they have are actually Treasury security. During the course of the year, the Federal Reserve, from all of their investments, earns a lot of money, and after they deduct their expenses from all the money they earned-- through the interest income that they earn--they turn what is left over to Treasury. They actually remit money during the course of the year-- not all at once but during the course of the year. Last year, the Federal Reserve remitted something like a one-half trillion dollars in net interest and income to the Treasury. That is revenue that enables the Treasury to reduce our deficit. The House came up with the idea of just reaching in and taking $60 billion out of the Federal Reserve and use that for roads, highways, and bridges instead of it being taken and turned over in due course to the Treasury to reduce the deficit. Some people ask: What is wrong with doing this for transportation? What is wrong with doing this for homeland security? What is wrong with doing this for defense? What is wrong with doing this for agriculture or doing it for anything? I think this sets a terrible precedent and invites future Congresses to do the same thing. Instead of adhering to a policy that has served us well for many years and having those who use our roads, highways, and bridges pay for them, we are resorting to gimmicks and the kind of things we should not deign to do. Having said that, there is a good deal to like, especially in the authorization language. I applaud those who have worked on this legislation, and I appreciate the chance to help shape and reform some of it, but I wish we had taken a different course with respect to actually paying for this work that needs to be done. The last thing I will say is this: Our friends at McKinsey consulting firm, an international consulting firm, have an arm of McKinsey consulting called Global Institute. That arm of McKinsey reached out a year or so ago, and they tried to figure out if we were to invest robustly in our roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems, what kind of effect it would have on the unemployment in this country. What kind of effect it would have on the gross domestic product in this country. If we were to truly make the kind of robust investments that are needed--not just the limp-along-level funding, which is woefully inadequate--they calculated that we would add 1.8 million jobs in America. A lot of the long-term unemployed folks wish they could be hired back again to do construction projects and build roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems. Instead, they are sitting on the sidelines because we don't have the money to pay to hire them to build these projects. The Global Institute of McKinsey also tells us that robust transportation investments would enable us to grow GDP annually by 1.5 percent. Think about that. We are lucky if we can get GDP up 3 percent per year in this country and so are most developed nations. Simply by making robust investments in our transportation systems--rebuilding America's transportation systems again--we could expect to grow GDP by as much as 1.5 percent per year. The level of funding that is in the legislation before us doesn't come even close to that. I think we missed an opportunity here. At one of my hearings today, Patty, one of our witnesses, had a funny quote by Yogi Berra, who died earlier this year. She said one of my favorite Yogi Berra quotes: ``When you come to the fork in the road, take it.'' We have come to the fork in the road with respect to transportation funding, and with apologies to Yogi Berra, I think we have taken the wrong fork in that road. With that, I will call it a day and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I come to the floor to address the issue of climate change, but I am inclined to follow up on comments by our friend from Louisiana who has just spoken. As the Presiding Officer knows, I am no longer the chairman of the homeland security committee, but I am the senior Democrat. I have served on the committee for about 15 years. The issue of the security of our homeland, whether from cyber attacks or terrorists or any other of number of threats, is something I care a whole lot about. I am sure all of us recall when we had a special visitor who addressed a joint session of the Congress on the other side of the Capitol. His name is Francis, and he is the Pope. It was a Papal visit. He addressed a joint session of Congress. I am not Catholic, but I was moved, and I know a lot of our colleagues were moved, especially when he invoked the Golden Rule in front of a national television audience, when he called on all of us to treat other people the way we would want to be treated, and also when he invoked the words of Matthew 25: When I was hungry did you feed me, when I was naked did you clothe me, when I was thirsty did you give me to drink, when I was a stranger in your land did you take me in? When I hear of the prospect of a thousand or so Syrian refugees coming to this country this year--and more next year--I think of the desperate plight of people who are trying to escape the hellacious situation in Syria and who have been living, in some cases months or years, in refugee camps. What kind of moral imperative do we have with respect to them? What kind of moral imperative? What kind of moral imperative do we have at the same time to ensure that the folks we allow to come in as refugees to this country--that we are going to protect those of us who live here from possible threats that might be caused by that immigration? This week I learned a few things I didn't know before. There is a lot more I have to learn. Among the things I have learned this week is that when refugees--whether in Turkey or someplace else in that or the other side of the world, in Pakistan or any other place--seek to come to this country, they don't get to just come. It is not like they say: I am applying under refugee status to come to the United States, and I would like to come this week or this month or even this year. The average wait for folks in refugee status trying to get someplace out of a refugee camp--and it could be here, but especially here, the average wait for refugees is not a week, it is not a month, it is not a year. It is 1.5 years. For those of Syrian descent, the wait could be even longer. I am not going to go through all the hurdles folks have to go through, but it is a screening process that begins not with the Department of Homeland Security in this country. It is a screening process that begins way before that with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. They first register refugees, they gather biometric data, and they gather other background information. Only those who pass the U.N. assessment are ever referred to the United States for possible resettlement. Where they are looking to accept maybe 1,000 Syrian refugees this year, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees may interview 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 refugees, or more, to come up with a list of 1,000 that we would even consider. Those refugees are interviewed not when they get off a plane here, but overseas, before they ever get on a plane. Before they ever get on a plane, they go through multiple background checks and vetting and use biographical checks conducted by the State Department, security advisory opinions from intelligence and other agencies for certain cases, National Counterterrorism Center checks with intelligence agencies for support, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI biometrics checks, and the Department of Defense biometric screening. Then, after going through all of that, if they get here, they have the opportunity to be interviewed again face-to- face by the Department of Homeland Security folks who are trained to interview people alleging to be refugees. They could be something else. Then, if they get approved to stay here as a refugee, we continue to monitor them for an extended period of time. A year or so ago there was great concern with Ebola. We had a lot of people coming across the border from Mexico, and they were going to have Ebola and infect us all and a lot of people were going to die. Not one American died from Ebola contracted here. So I would have us take a deep breath, try to gather the facts, and really understand what somebody has to go through as a refugee to get here. It is not overnight; it is not a 1-week or a 1-month deal. If I were a bad guy wanting to come here and create mischief, I sure wouldn't go as a refugee. I wouldn't cool my jets for a year and a half, trying to get through that process. I would find another way. Mr. President, that is not what I wanted to talk about. I want to talk a bit about one of our favorite subjects, climate change and global warming. I will start off with a map here of New Jersey, Maryland, Philadelphia. In between Philadelphia and the Delmarva Peninsula is my State, the State of Delaware. This is probably hard to see from up there or on television, but the outline of this map is Delaware today. A couple hundred years from now, if we don't continue to make progress in reducing carbon dioxide, Delaware will not look like the outline of that map. It is not going to look like the green. It will be somewhere between the outline of that map and the green that we see here that depicts Delaware. For us, this is real. These are our homes, these are our farms, the places we live and raise our families. So for us, this is something that is serious. Long before I ever moved to Delaware, I served as a naval flight officer in the Navy during the Vietnam war and served in Southeast Asia and other places. Long before I ever did that, long before I went to Ohio State to study economics, long before I moved to Virginia, I was born in West Virginia. I was born in a coal mining town. My dad, coming out of Shady Spring High School in Beaver, WV, was for a short while a coal miner. Even after my sister and I had grown up and left West Virginia--she after being in the third grade and I in the second grade--we would come back and visit my mom's parents, my grandparents, in Beaver, WV, right outside of Beckley. A coal miner named Mr. Meaders lived next door to my grandparents. He had a big field of about 2 to 4 acres right next to my grandparents' house. He would come home from work at about 4 or 5 in the afternoon. He always had his coal mining clothes on. He had mined coal for decades. He also owned a cow, and he kept his cow in a shed on that 3-, 4-, 5-acre field. When he would come home, he would clean up, and then he would milk his cow and he would let us milk his cow. Mr. Meaders didn't make his living off the milk from that cow. He made his living as a coal miner. And he wasn't the only person in West Virginia who made their living mining coal. There are still a number of people in West Virginia whose income is derived from mining coal. West Virginia is one of the top five coal-producing States in the country, among Wyoming, Kentucky, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. The number of people employed in the coal mining business in each of those States today--as opposed to when I my sister and I were little kids running out with Mr. Meaders to milk his cow--has come down a whole lot. But for these people, these are good-paying, life-sustaining jobs for their families. So we try to figure out--not just in Delaware, not just in America, but around the world--how do we reduce the threat from high levels of carbon in our atmosphere? Is there a way to do that? Is there a way to do that that is also respectful of the needs of people in Wyoming, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kentucky, who are trying to make a living and all they want to do is mine coal? That is what they have done maybe all their lives and want to be able to continue to do that. The Golden Rule--again, is there a way we can somehow adopt a policy or policies that are mindful of their needs to be able to sustain and support their own families, and at the same time to make sure in doing that, they don't endanger the rest of us? That is the dilemma we are in. We have a moral imperative to look out for the coal miners and their families in those States I mentioned, and we have a moral imperative to look out for everybody else, including the folks here and up and down the east coast and west coast, and others whose lives are going to be changed if we don't continue to make progress. We want to continue to make progress with respect to reducing the amount of carbon in our air. I think we can try to at least address both moral imperatives--to try to make sure the folks who for generations have mined coal can continue to do that in a way that is not just economically sustainable but environmentally sustainable, and do so in a way that actually looks out for the legitimate interests of a whole lot of us who come from States where we don't mine coal. One of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere continues to be coal-fired plants. We generate electricity. It used to be that about 40 percent of the electricity in the United States came from coal-fired plants, maybe another 20 percent or so from nuclear powered plants, another 20 percent or so from natural gas-fired plants, and the rest from hydroelectric, solar, wind, and so forth. That mix has changed a little bit. Today, coal is down to about 30 percent. Natural gas, in terms of generating capacity, is up to about 30 percent. Nuclear is still in there at about 20, adding a couple nuclear plants in the next few years, maybe building some smaller, modular plants. We are generating ever more electricity from wind, a bit more from solar and from geothermal and hydro. But coal is down from 40 to maybe 30 percent, and the projection is that maybe by 2030 it will be down from 30 percent to as low as 20 or 25 percent. That is going to create some hardship for the folks in those States, including my native State. Is there some way that we can actually help them while at the same time helping those of us who aren't from those five States? For as long as I can remember, I have heard people, including from this floor, for many years talking about Robert Byrd, who was the former majority leader, dean of the Senate, and maybe the longest- serving person in the House and Senate in the history of our country. He was a big champion of clean coal technology. Since approximately 1997, we have pursued clean coal, carbon capture, and sequestration. I am told that just in this last decade we have spent about $20 billion, since maybe 2005--something like that, in the last decade--and we have a success story. We have had a lot of disappointments, but we have a success story. I want to share that with our colleagues today. The success story on U.S. clean coal is a project in Southwest Texas, in Houston, where there is NRG, a big utility company. That project is a clean-coal project generating electricity. It is going to come online sometime next year. There are other projects under way, and we are continuing to invest a lot of money in clean-coal technology. We need to continue to do more. The last thing I want to say is this. We face many threats to our Nation these days. ISIS is certainly one of those. There are also other terrorist threats. Cyber security is certainly a threat we face. We have an obligation to our grandchildren and their grandchildren to be able to make sure we address those threats. This is not a battle that the United States can win alone on those fronts--nor with respect to our climate change concerns. It is going to take a coalition of many nations, and we are one of those nations. We are one of the nations that put as much CO2 in the air as anybody else. We have an obligation to try to figure out how to reduce that amount and how to reduce the threat. We need to be a leader and not just say to other nations that they should do this but also that they follow our example. What we are trying to do is to lead by our example. At our church, our pastor sometimes will say: I am preaching to the choir, but even choirs need to be preached to. The other thing he will say from time to time is this: I would rather see a sermon than hear a sermon. For the rest of the world, they don't want to hear a sermon from us on climate change. They want to see the sermon. What we are trying to do over the next 15, 20 years is to reduce our CO2 emissions since 2005 by about 30 percent and leave it up to the States--not EPA calling shots and not micromanaging--to figure out what works best in their States and to help them help us meet that national target. Thirty percent reduction from 2005 to 2030--that is the deal. That is the goal. My hope is that we will do our part. We will provide the leadership that is needed, not by what we say but by what we do. I yield the floor.