Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, in 3\1/2\ days, the Department of Homeland Security may well shut down. I speak as the senior Democrat on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for the last 2 years and, along with Dr. Tom Coburn, our former colleague from Oklahoma, chaired that committee that he and I led. But in 3\1/2\ days, if Congress fails to act responsibly--78 hours, I think, from right now--the Department of Homeland Security may shut down. I have spoken on the floor a number of times in recent weeks about the complex, consistent, and very real threats that our country faces. We are familiar with a lot of them--maybe not all. But over the past several months we have seen horrific images of beheadings, of mass murders, brutal executions at the hands of the Islamic State. Some of our Nation's largest companies and Federal agencies have been victims of massive cyber attacks. They continue to this day. This weekend another terrorist group, the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Somalia called al-Shabaab, vowed they would seek revenge against the United States. They cited the Mall of America in Minnesota as a potential target. It is not just these groups or the lone wolf terrorists they inspire that we need to worry about. Last fall, Ebola ravaged several nations in western Africa and even came to our shores as well. Threats from Mother Nature persist too. Communities and cities in some parts of our country are trying to get through a winter that has already broken snowfall records, and more records are likely to fall. Yet today, here in the Congress, there are some who are questioning whether even to fund the very agencies charged with keeping us safe from these and other evolving threats. That goes beyond being irresponsible. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson nailed it recently when he said what it was. Here is what he said: ``It is bizarre and absurd that we are even having this discussion.'' I could not agree more. Is this really the message we want to be sending to all those folks across the world who wish us harm? God, I hope not. Here we are, days before this key agency could be forced to shut down preparing for the worst. Some of our colleagues have said that it is not a big deal if the Department shuts down. I could not disagree more strongly, and here is why. If we continue this behavior and fail to pass a clean Department of Homeland Security funding bill by midnight on Friday, this is what will happen at the Department of Homeland Security: Much of the Department's workforce, up to 200,000 people, will be expected to show up for work but work without pay. That includes Border Patrol agents who protect our borders. That includes Coast Guard crews who patrol our waters. That includes the TSA employees who keep our skies safe and make it safe to fly on airplanes and get in and out of our airports. Many of these courageous men and women put their lives in harm's way every day. We expect them to continue doing that. We just are not going to pay them. That is right. We want you to keep doing your job of protecting our Nation. Eventually, those in Congress will get around to doing our job. When we do, you will get paid. Let me ask: How would we like to be treated that way? How would we like to be treated that way? Well, we would not. I think it is shameful that we would even contemplate treating some of our bravest fellow employees like that. It is shameful. Even worse, treating our people like this does not make America any safer. In fact, it makes us less safe in the end. Even if we did avoid a shutdown, we would keep the Department running on a stopgap continuing resolution. We would prevent the men and women who work there from doing their jobs as efficiently and as effectively as they could be, should be, and would like to be. Secretary Johnson described that putting the Department on another continuing resolution--these are his words--``is a little like trying to drive cross-country with no more than five gallons of gas [in the tank] at a time and you don't know when the next gas station is. You can't plan except days and weeks at a time.'' For example, if we pass another stopgap continuing resolution, the Department will not be able to replace obsolete surveillance technology along high-risk areas of our border. We need to replace that. In addition, our Nation will have significantly fewer resources to respond to any future surges of unaccompanied minors along our southwest border. Moreover, we will put construction of a badly needed national security cutter for the Coast Guard on hold. Why does that matter? It matters because our Coast Guard fleet is aging and needs to be modernized. These ships are essential to stopping illegal trafficking off our coasts, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, and illegal immigration--some of it in vessels that travel at speeds of greater than 50 knots. If that is not enough, try this: It is widely known that employee morale at the Department of Homeland Security is the lowest of all major Federal agencies. Passing yet another continuing resolution I promise you will not make it any better--quite the opposite. Morale will only get worse, and in doing so threaten to degrade the performance of the people we rely on, perhaps more than any other, to keep Americans safe. So let me say it again. This is not the way we should be treating the public servants who in many cases risk their lives to keep our Nation and all Americans safe. This is no way to run a key national agency. Furthermore, as we have learned over the years, this kind of crisis budgeting costs taxpayers millions of dollars in lost productivity, in hiring freezes, in contracts that will have to be renegotiated--not at a lower cost to taxpayers--at higher costs. Now, I understand why some of our colleagues are concerned about the policies and procedures set forth in the President's Executive action on immigration. I get it. They have every right to express those concerns. But the budget of the Department of Homeland Security is not the place to have that debate. A Federal district court in South Texas recently examined what the President put forward and blocked its implementation. Why cannot we just let the judicial process play out and meanwhile do our job by funding the Department of Homeland Security for the balance of this fiscal year? Some of our Republican colleagues agree with this approach. One of our colleagues, Lindsey Graham, said earlier this week: ``I hope Republicans will come together and back the court case, file a friend of the court brief with the court and fund DHS.'' He added: I am willing and ready to pass a DHS funding bill and let this play out in court. The worst possible outcome for this nation is to defund the Department of Homeland Security given the multiple threats we face to our homeland. Our friend, Lindsey's friend, John McCain, also said recently--these are his words, not mine: It's not a good idea to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. . . . Now we have the perfect reason to not shut it down because the courts have decided, at least initially, in our favor. ``Our favor'' is that of the Republican Governors who filed the lawsuit in the South Texas district court. I want to urge my Republican colleagues to go ahead and pursue this potential judicial remedy to address the concerns they have. But while they are doing that, for God's sake, let's bring a clean, fiscal year 2015 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security--the same bill that both Democrats and Republicans agreed to last December--let's bring it to the floor so we can give the Department the funding and the certainty that it desperately needs. Regardless of what happens in the courts, at the end of the day comprehensive immigration reform is the only way we can fix our broken immigration system for the long term. It is the only way we can address the issues the President was trying to resolve in his Executive action in a straightforward way, as we did in the last Congress when we passed by a big bipartisan vote right on this floor--by a 2-to-1 margin-- comprehensive immigration reform. We owe the American people an honest and thorough debate on immigration reform. But let's do it the right way. We have shown that we can do that. We did it a year and a half ago. Let's do it again. Let's do it this year after approving a clean, full-year funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. I might just add this. The comprehensive immigration reform that we passed here by a 2-to-1 margin a year and a half ago was priced out by the Congressional Budget Office, which is not Democratic or Republican. They looked at it and did all the numbers and everything. They concluded that rather than increasing the budget deficit, that comprehensive immigration reform bill reduced the budget deficit for the next 10 years by $200 billion. Further, for the second 10 years, it reduced our budget deficit by $700 billion. A different study further suggested that the impact on our Nation's economy and on our gross domestic product by the implementation of that same comprehensive immigration reform was that it would not diminish the growth to our economy. It would actually increase it by 5 percent-- 5-percent GDP growth over a two-decade period of time. Those of us who are privileged to serve in the Senate were sent here by our constituents with a critical responsibility: to work together and pass laws that help our Nation and help our economy to grow and to thrive. This debate--or any debate, for that matter--should not be about one political party winning or losing, because the only people who are losing are the constituents we are supposed to serve. As long as we continue to spend our time debating these manufactured funding crises, our constituents--American taxpayers from coast to coast--are going to continue to lose. We as a Congress, I think, lose as well. I believe American voters made it clear in last fall's election. They are tired of all of this kind of behavior. I do not blame them either. But it is simple. They want us to do our job. They want us to work together across these aisles. They want us to get things done that need to get done. They want us to find ways to strengthen the---- I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

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

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, here in Congress, as the Presiding Officer knows, we do a lot of oversight. Oversight is focused on what is going right as well as what is going wrong in our government. There is a lot of each, actually. That oversight is critically important work. It is sometimes overlooked, but critically important. I think it is also important to stop and recognize where things are going right from time to time and the people who are doing the right thing. Following in the footsteps of one of our former colleagues here--I don't think the Presiding Officer ever had a chance to work with him, but Ted Kaufman was a Senator who served here for 2 years. He succeeded Joe Biden who went off to do some other job--Vice President, maybe that is what it is. And then, before Senator Chris Coons was elected 2 years later, Ted Kaufman was our Senator, a great guy. He used to be Senator Biden's chief of staff for 20 years or so. Ted used to come to the floor pretty regularly and talk about different Federal employees who are doing exemplary work; people who had gone above and beyond to achieve the mission of solving problems and giving the U.S. taxpayer something to be proud of. When somebody has a good idea, I like to steal it, and I think Ted Kaufman had a great idea. I have not really stolen it, but we have taken an idea and we have focused it a little bit, to focus on some of the people the Presiding Officer and I, along with Senator Ron Johnson, met with this last weekend on the U.S. border with Mexico. I have decided to take the Ted Kaufman idea and focus it, put a spotlight on a number of employees within the Department of Homeland Security. As many of us know, the Department of Homeland Security, which does important work--sometimes heroic work, dangerous work--they suffer from low morale, but it is filled with men and women who, frankly, deserve, I think, in many cases, a lot more credit than they receive. Today I wish to speak for the next several minutes about one of the people we met, a fellow whose name I think the Presiding Officer will probably remember. His name is Ramiro Garza, Jr., and he goes by Ram. I think he has probably gone by Ram all his life. I will always remember him as Ram. He is an outstanding Border Patrol officer whom we met last week in McAllen, TX, while we were visiting the Mexican border in South Texas--the three of us, the Presiding Officer, Senator Ron Johnson, and yours truly. This is Ram. Some of my colleagues may remember the pictures last summer, when an unprecedented surge of Central American children and families arrived at our Texas border. They are the kind of pictures that really burn into our memories for a lot of us. The pictures we are more used to seeing may be from war zones than to see here in our own country, with hundreds upon hundreds of unaccompanied minors and a lot of mothers with young children in search of protection, literally turning themselves in to our Border Patrol agents; not running away from them, but turning themselves in and asking for asylum. The Rio Grande Valley in South Texas is where Agent Ram Garza works. Ram is the acting patrol agent in charge of the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol. The Rio Grande Valley where Ram works is the epicenter of that humanitarian crisis we witnessed last year. That is because most of the migrants were from the northern triangle of Central America, and they were fleeing violence, fleeing economic desperation, and fleeing a sense of hopelessness in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. These migrants had to travel some 1,500 miles through Mexico, risking life and limb to get to the United States. The shortest route--though by no means an easy one--runs up the east side of Mexico from Central America to the South Texas border, and many of the people who are making that 1,500 mile trek did it on top of a train. In fact, they did it on a series of trains--freight trains, not passenger trains--where people actually get on top of the trains and try to hold on for a 1,500 mile trip. Some of them succeeded and some of them didn't. Some of them fell down between the trains and cars and lost their lives. Some made it to the border. Some fell off the train. Some got hurt. Some got on another train. Some didn't make it. But many of them rode on top of those trains to get here, and they suffered violence. If they made it safely on the train, a lot of them suffered violence at the hands of predatory gangs along the way. When these children showed up in South Texas, they literally overwhelmed the Border Patrol stations along the border. These stations are only supposed to hold detained migrants for a short period of time as they are processed for removal back to where they came from, or for detention. Usually along the border, they deal with the young men. However, last year stations were packed with mothers and young children who were trapped there for days as our government struggled to find suitable shelters and decide what to do with them. There were no adequate meals, no clothing, no diapers. There is literally no room at times for someone to lie down, either. Faced with this human crisis, Customs and Border Protection agents sprang to action. Among their leaders was our agent here today whom I especially want to put a spotlight on: Ramiro Garza. With the help of his colleagues, Ram went above and beyond to process the arrivals, according to the law, while also responding to the human needs of these people. Agent Garza helped create an emergency operations center to manage the crisis and worked to transfer unaccompanied children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Perhaps most impressive, though, he worked with his colleagues to convert an enormous abandoned warehouse that we visited in McAllen, TX. I will not soon forget that. It is just a few miles from our border with Mexico. He turned it into a processing center for detained migrants and they did it in 18 days. They looked at a place--and they described what it was like before they started working on it, and then what they did in 19 days, they did pretty remarkable stuff. And Ram, whom we honor especially here today, and those who worked with him deserve our recognition. This processing center helped greatly relieve the crowded and inadequate conditions in multiple Border Patrol stations along the border. When Senator Ron Johnson, our Presiding Officer, Senator Sasse, and I visited this past weekend the extraordinary processing center that Agent Garza helped set up, we were amazed to see a cavernous, orderly center equipped with the humanitarian necessities needed for hundreds of children and their parents. The center also had space for Central American officials to work with Customs and Border Protection in order to properly identify migrants and arrange for speedier repatriations, in many cases to their home countries, where appropriate. Agent Garza was instrumental in designing the processing facility and getting it up and running quickly. Today he is in charge of that facility. This is just the latest achievement in Agent Garza's career with the Border Patrol. As I said, known most of his life as Ram, he grew up in the Rio Grande Valley. There he attended high school and the University of Texas-Pan American. He joined the Border Patrol in 1996. His first assignment was to the Brownsville station in the Rio Grande sector. In 2004, he was promoted to supervisory Border Patrol agent at the Rio Grande City station. That was followed by tours at the Rio Grande sector's intelligence office and at Harlingen station. Agent Garza also worked on detail here in Washington, DC, where his duties included supporting the agency's efforts in biometric collection--something we think is very important. While he is helping to humanely process migrants apprehended at the border, Agent Garza also cares for his own family--his wife and their own two children. We thank them for sharing with us their husband and their dad--a very good man. The Department of Homeland Security and our Nation are truly blessed by Ram's exemplary service. Agent Garza, if you are out there listening, we want to thank you for what you do each and every day for all of us. We thank you for your tireless service to our Nation for all of these years.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. As the Presiding Officer, along with Senator Johnson and myself, met the men and women of the Border Patrol last weekend, including Agent Garza, we heard about their work, and it is hard to ignore the fact that they might not know if they will be getting a paycheck next month when the continuing resolution which funds the Department of Homeland Security expires in actually about 2 weeks, on February 27. Many of them don't know if they will be able to obtain the technology or supplies they need to do the jobs as effectively as possible either. This is not the way we would want to be treated if we were in their shoes, but it is how I think we are treating the men and women who work around the clock to protect our borders and to keep our Nation safe and secure. Those of us here in Congress can change that, and I think we should. Two of our colleagues--Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland--have introduced a clean appropriations bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security for the balance of the fiscal year, up through the end of September. Overall, the funding provisions in their bill, S. 272, which I understand both Democrats and Republicans on the Appropriations Committee agreed to in December--just 2 months ago--provide just under $40 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of the fiscal year. I think that is an increase from year to year of about $400 million. It sounds like a lot money. It is about a 1-percent increase above 2014 funding. This bill would ensure that Department employees get their paychecks on time and have the resources they need to best meet the Department's critical mission and the security needs of our Nation. The clean bill put forward by Senators Shaheen and Mikulski would take additional measures to secure order and enforce our immigration laws--something that I know is a priority to me and I know to our colleagues on both sides of the aisle. In fact, most of the funding increase in the Shaheen-Mikulski bill would go to border security and immigration enforcement. The bill our colleagues have put forward contains a little more than $10 million for Customs and Border Protection--an increase of approximately $118 million above last year's enacted level. This funding level would support the largest operational force levels for the agency in its history--a total of more than 21,000 Border Patrol agents and nearly 24,000 enforcement officers. But if the Department of Homeland Security remains on a continuing resolution--or worse, shuts down--we just won't be as effective as we ought to be in securing our Nation's borders. If Congress forces a shutdown of the Department--I hope we won't--frontline personnel would be asked to continue to work without pay. We met some of them just a few days ago when we were on the border. They don't look like fast boats, but they move pretty good. We went zipping up and down the Rio Grande River looking for people trying to slip across the border, looking for folks who were trying to bring contraband--drugs, illegal drugs--across the border. There are some 40,000 Customs and Border Protection officers who are needed to keep our borders secure. If we allow the funding for the Department to lapse on February 27, we are going to expect these guys and gals to still come to work. We are not going to pay them, at least not in a timely way. If Congress continues to keep the Department on a continuing resolution, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will see a shortfall--I am told a little over half a billion dollars--to respond to unaccompanied minors and families with children. In addition, Customs and Border Protection won't be able replace or upgrade border surveillance technology, including upgrades to obsolete remote and mobile video surveillance systems in the high-risk area of the Rio Grande Valley. The drone is a pilotless aircraft. We fly aircraft similar to these all over the planet. We fly a number of them along the border of our country with Mexico in an effort to try to see, visualize, and detect people making their way to our border, maybe just to come across, maybe to flee a bad situation in their own country. Maybe it is to bring drugs or other things that are illegal into our country. We are not going to be able to replace or upgrade this kind of technology and bring it to high-risk areas along the Rio Grande Valley. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson recently said-- I want to quote Secretary Johnson just briefly. He said, ``Border security is not free. The men and women of [the Department of Homeland Security] need a partner in Congress to fund their efforts.'' He added, ``Time is running out.'' Those were his words. I couldn't agree with him more. In the next week or so, I pray that those of us in Congress will come together and will do what I believe is the right thing; that is, support the passage of a clean full-year appropriations bill for the remainder of this fiscal year for the Department of Homeland Security and do it by February 27. After we have done that, for God's sake, let's get to work on crafting thoughtful, comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform law for our country, one that better secures our borders, one that strengthens our economy, and one that reduces our budget deficit over the next two decades by hundreds of billions of dollars. That is what we ought to do. I would pledge here today to my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, one or two Independents, and our Presiding Officer, that we will meet you in the middle and do our dead level best to make sure we meet our responsibilities. With that, I am looking for others on the floor who may want to speak. I don't see anybody. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that I speak on behalf of the Delaware Delegation to honor the exemplary service of the president and CEO of Christiana Health Care System, Dr. Robert ``Bob'' Laskowski. He served in this position since 2003, and during that time he transformed the largest not-for-profit health care system in Delaware into an award-winning hospital organization with a national reputation of patient quality and innovation. Bob is now retiring after more than two decades of serving Christiana Care. He is a tremendous leader and true advocate for the patient and health-care worker, as well as a devoted husband to his wife, Kathy, and loving father to their children and grandchildren. His hard work, leadership and willingness to work together on transforming the health care system in Delaware and the Nation will truly be missed. Bob used his leadership role at Christiana to cultivate philanthropic endeavors in the community. He lives ``The Christiana Care Way'' of serving our neighbors as respectful, expert, caring partners in their health. Under his leadership, Christiana Care has given back millions of dollars to the Delaware community. Bob is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine with a master's degree in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. He is a board- certified internist specializing in geriatric medicine who understands the needs and priorities of health care professionals, as well as the business of running a health care system. Bob's reach extends far beyond Delaware's borders. He is nationally recognized for his work on health care transformation. He fearlessly took on the challenge of making Christiana Care Health System a model for other hospital systems around the country. Bob's notable accomplishments include expanding the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute to a 200,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility that serves the majority of cancer patients in Delaware. This National Cancer Institute selected Community Cancer Center is a national model for care and a leader in enrolling patients in clinical trials. He also led Christiana Care in earning recognition by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program as 1 of only 37 hospitals in the Nation achieving ``meritorious'' outcomes for surgical patient care in 9 clinical areas. His expertise is sought out throughout the country as he serves on the board of directors of the Association of American Medical Colleges and on its finance and executive compensation committees. He serves on the American Medical Association Section on Medical Schools, and is a former member of the American Hospital Association Section for Health Care Systems Governing Council and the Health Management Academy Chief Executive Officers Forum. Apart from his work in the health care field, Bob is an excellent cook, honing his skills in his own kitchen and cooking for colleagues and guests. He also spends his time playing piano, violin, the accordion, and is currently learning Spanish. On behalf of Senator Chris Coons and Congressman John Carney, I wholeheartedly thank Dr. Bob Laskowski for his service to Christiana Care and our State. His model leadership and dedication has improved the quality of life for not only Delawareans, but patients and health care workers around the Nation. We offer our sincere congratulations on a job well done and wish him many happy, healthy, and successful years to come.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, last weekend--this past weekend--I was privileged to visit our Nation's border with Mexico. Not my first visit but maybe the most productive, most informative visit I have had. I had the opportunity, as a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, on which the Presiding Officer serves, to visit our Nation's border with Mexico from--really from California, from the Pacific all of the way across the southern part of our country, almost to the Gulf of Mexico. I did not cover every square inch of it or every mile of that border, but we had a chance to look up close and personal, if you will, to see what we are doing and what we have been doing in California, in parts of Arizona, in parts of Texas. As we all know, those are some big States. But we have been there enough, talked to enough smart people, went with our colleagues, this time with the chairman of our committee now, Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, and with Ben Sasse, the new Member from Nebraska. I am grateful to them for including a former chairman of the committee and my staff. I thought it was very productive. I learned a lot. I thought I already knew a lot going down there, but I came back even better informed. I hope they felt that way as well. We had some discussions going and coming about the President's Executive orders with respect to the status of some of the undocumented folks in our country. I know there is a fair amount of heartburn on the part of our Republican colleagues that the President may have acted inappropriately. We understand that unhappiness. My hope is that we will not take that unhappiness out on the Department of Homeland Security whose employees are working hard to try to do their jobs, to protect us from all kinds of dangers, not just on the borders of our country with Mexico or Canada but all kinds of threats around the world. My hope is that at the end of the day we will use this dustup, if you will, this disagreement with the President's actions to provide a sense of urgency to take up and debate again comprehensive immigration reform--not next year but this year, not this fall, not this summer but the beginning of this year, now or very close to now. One of the things we have learned in terms of our own work on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is immigration reform done well--and I do not know how the Presiding Officer voted. I voted for it. I was not crazy about it. My guess is she probably voted for it as well. But was it perfect? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. Was it better than nothing? It sure was. Are there some things I would like to change? You bet there are. My hope is that we do immigration reform again, hopefully soon, and that we will have the opportunity to keep what is good and valuable in that legislation and change the things that are not. But among the things on the positive side that came out of that legislation is, one, the bill, supported by two-thirds of the Senate a year and a half ago, does a couple of things. How does it affect gross domestic product? How does it affect our economy? It grows it by about 5 percent over the next 20 years. That is a pretty good little stimulus to help make sure the economic recovery continues. So that is something to have us keep in mind. The other immigration reform question a lot of people back home in Delaware asked me was, Immigration reform, isn't that going to cost us a lot? Isn't it going to make the budget deficit bigger? The Congressional Budget Office, which is neither Democratic nor Republican, has actually studied that, drilled down on that, and here is what they have concluded. The immigration reform, imperfect though it was, that we passed a year and a half ago with strong bipartisan support, would actually reduce our budget deficit over the next 10 years by $200 billion and further reduce our budget deficit over the next 10 years after that by $700 billion. Add those together, it is $900 billion in deficit reduction. We are at a time when, as our Presiding Officer knows, we still have all the deficits down by two-thirds from where it was 5 or 6 years ago. It is still higher than we want it to be. There are actually a number of things we can do to continue to drive it down closer to zero, where we would like it to be. I know I would like that. I know the Presiding Officer feels that way too. One of the things we had in the immigration reform bill, as I recall, was some provisions dealing with guest worker programs. What I have heard in my visits to Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, my visit to the border, a lot of the people--it is primarily those three countries from which the greatest numbers of people are coming across the border in South Texas--that is where they are coming from. Are there still Mexicans who come into the United States? Yes. Legally and illegally? Yes. Last year I am told almost as many Mexicans were going back into Mexico from the United States as are coming into the United States from Mexico. The origin of the illegal immigration is Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. People say: Why would anybody allow their 7-, 8-, 9-, 10-year-old daughter or son to literally leave in the arms of a coyote on a train--not on a passenger train but on the top of a train--and try to travel 1,500 miles with all kinds of threats to their life and limb? Why would anybody do that? Having been in those countries--Honduras is the murder capital of the world, and I have seen in that country and in Guatemala and El Salvador police who do not police, prosecutors who do not prosecute, judges who do not administer justice, correctional systems that do not try to correct the behavior. The school system in Honduras is a great example. Kids in Honduras go from--I know the Presiding Officer has young children. Our boys are through school out into the world. But in schools in Honduras, public schools, they go from grade 1 to grade 6. About half the kids actually make it to grade 6. Of the ones who make it to grade 6, only about half of them can read at grade 6 level. As to the ones who actually make it through grade 6, only 5 percent of them can do sixth grade math. That is a problem. Several years ago when Hurricane Richard came through Honduras, it wiped out half of their secondary roads. In that country, they have electricity costs which are two or three times what they are in the countries to the south of them and to the north of them. Most of the electricity is created by petroleum. It is expensive. What they need to do is use natural gas, bring it down from Mexico, be able to convert that into electricity and build a grid that helps distribute that electricity. The other thing they need in that part of the world--as a former attorney general, our Presiding Officer knows well how important this is--is to restore the rule of law. In visiting the three countries-- Honduras, I will use again as an example. Until last year, I think their murder rate was about 95 per 100,000 people. That was their murder rate. It was the murder capital of the world. A number of businesses were shut down by extortion because small business people in Honduras got tired of being extorted basically from gangs who said: Give me money. If not, I will kill you. Small business owners gave up--15,000 of them. Fifteen thousand small businesses that were there 3, 4, 5 years ago closed. The conscription of gang members--the Presiding Officer I think has heard me tell this story. But we heard this from one of the folks in Catholic Charities in Southern Delaware, in Sussex County, Georgetown, where we have some Guatemalan population from way back--they worked in the poultry industry, some of them--and some of the unaccompanied minors who have come to Southern Delaware, not thousands of them but maybe 100 or more. One of the stories was told to us by the folks who are trying to provide some help for those young kids. There is a story. It is from Honduras. A 15-year-old boy was conscripted to join a gang. He was told by the gangs: We want you to join the gang. He said: I don't want to join the gang. A week or two later they came back and said: We want you to join our gang. He said: I'm not interested in joining the gang. A little bit later they came back and said: If you don't join this gang, our gang, we're going to kill somebody in your family. He joined the gang, and later on he found out about his initiation and what he would have to do as part of his initiation into the gang that he did not want to join. Part of the initiation was--he had a 13-year-old sister--he had to rape his 13-year-old sister. Within a week or two that 15-year-old boy and 13-year-old sister were on their way north with a coyote to get out of that country and ultimately ended up in the southern part of our State. People say to me: Well, why would all those people risk their lives? Can you imagine letting your kids go or my kids go? I cannot imagine that, what has happened, again and again and again. Part of what was reiterated to me on this trip is it is all well and good that we continue to strengthen our borders. We spent a fortune, one-quarter of a trillion dollars in the last 10 years to strengthen our borders with Mexico. Are they stronger? You bet they are. Are they totally impervious? No, they are not. Are there things we could do to make them stronger, more stalwart? Of course there are. One of the great things about the codel that I was privileged to join Chairman Johnson and Senator Sasse on is we basically learned--had reinforced to us those things that were working. Let's find out what is working, do more of that, and find out what is not working and do less of that. One of the things we have to do is not just continue to address the symptoms of the problem--people trying to come across the border. God knows we need to do that. We can. We can do it more smartly, more cost- effectively. The other thing we need to do is to get at the underlying root causes. The reason people are coming up, risking life and limb to get through Mexico to get to the United States, is because of the lack of hope, lack of economic opportunity, the corruption they faced in their lives for a number of years. What are some of the things we learned that are working? The Department of Homeland Security folks with whom we met at the border, folks working at the border, Border Patrol, people in aircrafts, helicopters, Homeland Security folks on watercraft, and the people who are running the centers for minors, people who have been detained and are being held--and some will be returned; most of the adults will be returned; for folks with criminal records, almost all of them will be returned to their native countries--but I saw some remarkable work. We saw remarkable work being done by employees at the Department of Homeland Security. Coast Guard people are doing it. All kinds of folks are involved in it--ICE, Border Patrol, folks who are working at these very busy land crossings where we have billions of dollars' worth of commerce going through these borders from the United States into Mexico. We have a bunch of them across the southern part of our Nation. Mexico is a huge trading partner with us and we with them. One of my takeaways is, How do we continue to move that commerce, move that commerce to benefit us, create jobs here and frankly in Mexico as well? How do we do that in a way that makes sure we are doing a good job stopping the human trafficking from coming across our borders, and at the same time make sure the illegal drugs, not just marijuana but especially the cocaine and the heroin that folks are trying to get across our borders by water, by air, by land gets stopped. There is a real tension here, and I thought we came back with great ideas of how to do a better job of meeting both responsibilities--the stuff we want to keep out of our country, including people out of the country who are illegal. We can do that. We need to do a better job--I think we are doing a better job--and also at the same time make sure the flow of commerce continues unimpeded. The legislation that was passed about 18 months or so ago with strong bipartisan support sought to double, I believe, as I recall, the number of people who work in the Border Patrol doing some of the border security work. We already have about 20,000 people there. I think we have another maybe 20,000 or so who are working the ports of entry to try to make sure we are stopping bad people, bad things, including diseases, insects, and all kinds of things that hurt our agriculture economy to try to stop that from getting through. The bill we had said we ought to basically double the number of people who are working on the border for security. Do we need some more people? Yes, we especially need them at the ports of entry. What we truly need though is some technology. I call them force multipliers. I am a big believer in drones. I spent a lot of time in my life in Navy P-3 aircraft. One of the joys of the weekend for me was to be on a Navy P-3 aircraft--the kinds of airplanes I flew on as a mission commander, a naval flight officer on Active Duty, and later as a reservist. I retired as a Navy captain, I think in 1991, but to actually be on a P-3 aircraft again and to take an aircraft that is much older than you and not as old as I, to see that aircraft reconfigured--actually the wings and insides are new as well, the avionics up front--and to see the changes in the equipment that we have, there is better radar, and there is an ability to put that aircraft out over water and to pick up the bad guys whether they are in cigarette boats or a submersible with a periscope poking out of the water. There are also helicopters to see what we can do as we patrol the Rio Grande River--very low altitudes, twisting and turning and actually finding some people trying to get across. To look at the drugs and try to understand what our capabilities are with the drones, I think they are terrific. Are we getting full bang for our bucks? No, we are not. The inspector general from the Department of Homeland Security has issued--not that long ago--a finding that was very critical of the effectiveness of the drones. I am convinced there is a great potential there. I am determined. I am sure working with Democrats and Republicans and our committee in the Senate and hopefully the House and certainly with the administration. We need to make sure we are getting full value for everything we are putting into the drone technology, in the deployment of drones. If we are going to spend more money on drones, I want to make sure we get our entire money's worth. I am sure the taxpayers feel that way as well. One of my thoughts, aside from the technology, I wish to work with the Presiding Officer, with the Republicans, and I want to work with the Democrats on comprehensive immigration reform. I want us to finish the work we started, and I want us to do it sooner than later. I hope the money we have to spend in that bill to strengthen our borders, we spend it in a smart way. I have mentioned a couple of those ways too. One of those is the drones, to make sure we take into account the investigation by the inspector general and his folks and make sure they are being honest and straightforward with us. I am sure they wouldn't deliberately mislead us, but I want to make sure we are getting our value. I want to mention a couple of other things. I spent a little bit of my life in an airplane, some of my time in the Navy in a P-3. During the Vietnam war, we flew a lot of missions off the coast of Vietnam and Cambodia. Our job was to pick up little infiltrator trawlers trying to resupply the Viet Cong and turn them over when we found them, track them to the coast, and turn them over to swift boats and the Coast Guard. That was our job. We also did an area of surveillance of shipping traffic going into Haiphong Harbor. The capital of North Vietnam, Hanoi, was there. We were trying to make sure we knew what was going in and out of that country. When we were doing those kinds of missions, largely what we did was we did ocean surveillance, subsurface ocean surveillance. We tracked a lot of Soviet nuclear submarines, diesel submarines, to make sure we knew where they were and what they were up to. The other thing we did from time to time, we would be called on for our Navy P-3 assets to do a search and rescue. As we have seen from the Malaysian aircraft that disappeared a number of months ago and the Indonesian aircraft that disappeared a number of months ago, we put the P-3 airplane up there to help search for them. We put them out across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean with, in many cases, binoculars, but radar was running as well and we were trying to listen to see if there were any radio signals coming out. We also came out with binoculars. I am going to tell you, looking for people in a boat, looking for wreckage with binoculars from an aircraft out of the ocean at 1,000 feet, 5,000 feet or 10,000 feet, that is very hard to do and not very fruitful. We have these fixed-wing aircraft that the Homeland Security owns. They are called Cessna 206. They are a single engine and they fly for maybe 5 or 6 hours. They are actually a pretty good platform, but we essentially use them--if we use them at all--with binoculars, looking for people coming to our border from Mexico or trying to get across our border. That isn't very smart. There is a system called VADER and the VADER system is a highly advanced, sophisticated system that enables us to see from 5,000, 10,000, 20,000 feet, day or night, what is coming through our borders, in some cases even in inclement weather. For us to fly aircraft, whether they are drones, fixed-wing aircraft, whatever, and not use that technology is not very smart. If we have something that is that good--as I have seen with my own eyes, even on this trip--what an advantage that gives us for being able to detect people coming to our border, across our border or over our border. That is hugely helpful information. We can deploy our forces by helicopter, by vehicle or by foot or by horse. The Presiding Officer has been to Afghanistan a time or two. I have been there a couple of times myself. I had a chance to see the tethered dirigibles--lighter than air--that were used in Afghanistan, Kabul and other places, to enable us to surveil through cameras and other assistive devices, surveil what is going on in Afghanistan and in Kabul, for example. They are very helpful. It seemed to me the first time I was there--the first couple of times I was at the border--the first thing I asked was why do we use that technology? Why don't we use that technology, tethered lighter-than-air dirigibles that can go up to 1,000 feet, 2,500 feet, 5,000, 10,000--why don't we use them along the borders, particularly as we are bringing that equipment technology back from Afghanistan? Well, we are starting to do that. One of the things we did, we actually were at the tethered dirigible site on the border by the Rio Grande River, and we had the opportunity, with the tethered dirigible up and operating, to actually be in the shack, if you will--there is actually a modern shack right at the base of the dirigible--and see people coming through Mexico--about a half dozen or so--approaching our border and waiting for sundown or dusk to be able to come across the Rio Grande River. It gave us the opportunity to know they were coming, to marshal our forces, and to have them positioned appropriately, if these folks came across, to take them into custody. If they were folks who were not coming here lawfully or for asylum or just looking for an opportunity for a better life or a better economic life or if they were bringing bad stuff--drugs, and a bunch of them do--then we were in a position to deal with that. But the technology, the tethered dirigible, the technology we can put on those--cameras, radar, great stuff--we ought to be doing more of that. Again, I like to find out what works and do more of that. But that is a great force multiplier and not the only one. We also have towers. These are towers that are not tethered dirigibles. These are towers that are maybe 100, 200 feet in the air. They don't allow someone, as the dirigible does, to look over the horizon, but they can certainly give a good idea of what is going on for several miles, either way, maybe 2 or 3 miles in radius. The dirigibles go up 10, 15 miles in radius to see what is going on and inform us--in all kinds of weather. But the towers that are on the ground are fine. Airboats, one of the exciting things we did was add boats, fast boats. We have gone up and down the Rio Grande River--gosh, maybe a mile away. The fellow who was running our boat--I might be getting confused with our helicopter--but in any event, as we were doing helicopter runs up and down the river and airboats up and down the river--I think the pilot actually saw something in our helicopter about a mile up going around the bend. He actually picked up visually at least one or two people who were approaching the banks of the river on the Mexican side. Sure enough, we ran in on them, and they had a raft there and several people who were apparently trying to come across the river. But we have some parts of the Rio Grande River--the kind of watercraft we were in works just fine, but there were other parts of the river where we needed airboats because the water was very shallow, and the boats we were in would run aground. So one of the other takeaways in terms of force multiplier is to make sure we have boats, technology that is appropriate, also making sure we have the communications equipment we need but also making sure we are using things such as airboats when we need them. The other thing I was saying--I hadn't thought about this until right now--but one of the things that is very important for us to better secure our borders is for Mexico to better secure their borders. For Mexico, when folks are trying to get across from these three Central American countries and they are coming toward the southern border of Mexico, Mexico needs to realize they have a dog in this fight. If we stop them at our border, that means all these immigrants are going to be in Mexico. It will provide challenges, some problems, if you will, for the Mexican people in some cases. Just as a refugee needs a place, needs work or needs food or shelter, it is all of those challenges with movement of population such as this. In some cases they are criminals. In most cases they are not, but in some cases they are criminals. Does the Mexican Government want all of those problems? No, they don't. They are finally awakening to that and they are doing a much better job, particularly with their multi-layer approach on their southern border to slow and stop--to some extent--the flow of illegal immigrants coming from the three Central American countries I have mentioned. The other thing that Mexico can be very helpful with is shutting down train service. I say that with tongue in cheek. There is a train called ``The Beast''--in fact, several of them. They emanate from southern Mexico. They run the full length of the country, about 1,500 miles. People are able to climb--until at least recently--on top of these freight trains and hold on for dear life or maybe get into the rail car and hunker down, travel the length of the country, and get off as the trains approach the border with the United States. It is sort of like riding the Amtrak train from Delaware to New Orleans or from Delaware to Chicago and basically not having a ticket, just traveling along, a free rider. I have said to the Mexican Government: Why do you do this? Why do you allow them to do this? We would never let people ride our free trains like this and come down to your country. Why do you allow this? God bless them. They finally said: Well, we are going to stop that. Instead of having maybe a couple thousand people on ``The Beast,'' this train--this freight train with people on top of the freight cars holding on for dear life--now we have a handful--maybe a handful--of people allowed to do this, which is helpful. The other thing Mexico can be helpful in--and they are doing I think a better job--is sharing information with us, the sharing of information. They have an idea of who is coming through their country, who is bringing them, and we need that information. We actually need some more information from Honduras and Guatemala. We are getting reasonably good information, intelligence from the Mexicans and the other countries, and we need it to be better. To the extent that we get that better information, it enables us to be better positioned to respond with human assets and with some of these force multipliers that I have been talking about. I wish to mention--if I could again go back to the border crossings. When we think of a border crossing, we think of a road maybe or something, maybe it is a bridge. These are unbelievable. Some of them are huge and unbelievable infrastructures that have been constructed with multiple lanes of traffic going each way. Traffic is backed up in some cases for hours trying to get from the United States into Mexico. Maybe they are taking parts down for auto assembly and then coming back with finished products. But there is a huge flow of trade which benefits Mexico and frankly benefits us as well. There is an old saying: Time is money. To the extent that folks in a just-in-time economy are trying to move products, trying to move goods, to have to wait for those lengths of time is not good. We can do a better job. We need to do a better job in terms of the people whom we have working there at the border for us and in terms of the kind of technology we are using. I wish to use as an example one piece of technology that I saw, something just a little bit bigger than my handheld device here. A woman who is working the border at the crossing for all the trucks trying to come and go--she showed me her handheld device. She said: These are the next six or so trucks lined up to come through from northern Mexico. I said: Really? Do you know anything about any of them? She clicked on one of the trucks. It had the history of the truck coming across our border this year--maybe even before this year--and the driver information, about who is the driver, how often has he or she been coming across our border. It is very good stuff. We have the ability to detect radiation, the ability to detect shipments of guns, and the ability to detect people who are in vehicles. That is all well and good, but we need to continue to update and modernize that technology at the border and frankly put more money into the infrastructure so that flow of commerce is not impeded to the extent it is today. I think that is it, pretty much. I always think, when I go through a long ramble such as this, I should come back at the end and try to point out a couple of points and repeat what I really want to convey. I am really glad we went to the border. I have learned a lot each time I have gone. I certainly learned a lot this weekend. One of the things that gives me special joy is that it helped me identify and reinforce items such as the tethered dirigible--the kind of technology we can hang on to and deploy across the border in all kinds of locations. How important that technology is. The other item that came home to me was that we spend a huge amount of money on these measures--one-quarter of a trillion dollars in the last 10 years on securing our borders. We spent less than 1 percent of that trying to help--along with Mexico, Colombia, and the Inter- American Development Bank--the countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala to become less places of desolation and fear. We want to help them. It is not for us to do this by ourselves. It is not our job. What do they say at Home Depot? You can do it; we can help. In this case it would be like Colombia. In Colombia, 20-some years ago, what happened was a bunch of gunmen rounded up their supreme court justices, took them into a room and shot them to death--11 justices of their supreme court. Colombia was oppressed on the one hand by leftist guerillas and on the other hand by narco drug lords. A lot of people said they were going down. But they made it, in part with our help and Plan Colombia. The folks who--the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have come up, with our encouragement, with their own Plan Colombia to focus on, among other things, restoring the rule of law, going after corruption, making sure police police, prosecutors prosecute, judges administer justice, and correctional systems prisons actually correct behavior. They are looking at the schools. Kids are finishing up after grade 6 and, frankly, without the skills they need to do much of anything. So they are looking to make sure those schools are producing students better equipped and prepared to be gainfully employed. Also, as I said, half of the secondary roads in Honduras were wiped out after Hurricane Mitch. Half of them were wiped out, and there is a need for them, with maybe some help from a bunch of us--Mexico, Colombia, NGOs, and nonprofits--to work on that. The other thing is the energy piece. If they are going to have jobs down there, they need to have affordable energy, and it is not going to be from the continued use of electricity through the use of petroleum but through low-priced natural gas and by strengthening their grid-- really, to build and rebuild their electric grid. So those are some of my take-aways. I wanted to share some of those with my colleagues. I hope we don't shut down the Department of Homeland Security. They do important work for us, and we need them to be on the job. Frankly, we don't need a continuing resolution because that just hampers their ability to move assets around to meet one challenge that is greater than another. Hopefully, we will not have the kind of flood events we had last summer. Hopefully, we won't. We are doing some smart messaging campaigns down in those three Central American countries, and with the cooperation of the governments, we are saying: Look, this is really what you are going to find when you try to come through Mexico and this Texas border. This is what the real truth is, and this is what you are going to run into when you get into the United States. It is the kind of truth campaign we are delivering with the help of those governments to try to reduce the attraction for coming. But I came away more hopeful than maybe I was when I went down. There is reason for hope, but there is plenty to do--plenty to do. If we can somehow put our political differences aside, I hope we will continue to fund the Department of Homeland Security so they can do their jobs. There are a lot of good people working for us around the world, and we don't need to hamper them further. Finally, let's work on immigration. Let's roll up our sleeves and do this year a better job than what we tried to do 2 years ago--a better job. The American people sent us here to do that. With that, I conclude my remarks. I thank you for your patience and attention. I saw one of my colleagues walk on the floor. He is a Senator from another small but mighty State, the State of Rhode Island, and I am happy to yield for Senator Whitehouse to make whatever remarks he wishes to make.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, earlier this week we learned about the young Jordanian pilot who was horrifically burned alive in a cage at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIL. This is the same group that haunts us with images of beheadings and mass murders week after week and enslaves women into servitude. It is the same group that recently declared it is determined to ``reach America.'' My friends, we live in a world that is scary. And it is not just ISIL. It is the lone wolves who gather ammunition and equipment and carefully draft plans to attack us where we work, such as the attack we saw last year in Ottawa and last month in Paris, as well as the individual from Ohio who was planning to attack the Capitol right here in Washington, DC. It is pandemics such as Ebola. It is the criminals trying to traffic illegal drugs and human beings across our borders and through our ports of entry. It is those individuals trying to sabotage our airplanes and our trains. It is those people trying to attack our computer networks and critical infrastructure. But thanks in large part to the work of the Department of Homeland Security and its employees, Americans are safe--at least a lot safer than we otherwise would be. Our airplanes and our airports are protected 24/7. Our borders and our ports throughout our country are secure. Trafficking of illegal drugs and human beings is better controlled, and our critical infrastructure networks are better protected. For anybody who thinks it makes sense to put the Department of Homeland Security out of business, to put it on the sidelines at this point in time in this world in which we live, I ask: Have we lost our minds? I hope not. I hope not. Yet today, here in the Congress, we are locked in a political debate about whether we fund that very agency that is charged with keeping Americans safe--those who live here with us--from the Islamic State and any other number of additional threats. That is irresponsible and shameful behavior. In order for the Department of Homeland Security to officially and effectively carry out its critical role in combating the multiple and ever-changing threats our country faces, the Department needs fiscal certainty and the full support of this Congress. Throughout this week I joined nearly half of my Senate colleagues to reject the House funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, H.R. 240, which contains riders that block the President's recent immigration actions. Many of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle have significant concerns with these amendments, and the President has promised he would veto this bill if these amendments were not stripped from it. My colleagues' insistence that we accept these House amendments is jeopardizing timely enactment of a vital and bipartisan Homeland Security funding bill and threatens to prolong the crippling budget uncertainty the Department of Homeland Security has been operating under since last year. On top of that, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, this House bill with the amendments would increase deficits over the next 10 years by a total of $7.5 billion. Instead of helping our Nation move forward with our economic recovery and our deficit reduction, this bill would move us backwards. I understand why some of our colleagues are upset about the President's immigration policies. We can and we should have a debate about those concerns. We started the process just yesterday in the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where I serve as ranking member. Let me remind my colleagues that we wouldn't even be here having this conversation today or at that hearing yesterday if Congress had finished the job we began some 2 years ago in the Senate, right here on this floor. As most of my colleagues in this Chamber will recall, two- thirds of the Senate came together in 2013. We passed by a wide margin a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Was it perfect? No, but we took significant steps to fix our badly broken and outdated immigration system and to enhance the security of our borders. At the same time, the bill would have reduced our budget deficit by nearly $1 trillion--$1 trillion--over the next 20 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Let me repeat that. Comprehensive immigration reform adopted here by a two-thirds vote would reduce our deficit by nearly $1 trillion over the next 20 years. We demonstrated almost 2 years ago that we can debate our Nation's immigration policies in a thoughtful way in the Senate, and, I think, over in the House. There is no reason why we can't do it again. We need to have this debate on the Senate floor as we did last Congress. We need to have this debate in committees as we did in the last Congress. We need to have this debate in our towns and States across America as we did in the last Congress. But we should not have this debate while we are deciding the fate of the budget of the Nation's most critical national security agency, the Department of Homeland Security. I am not the only one who thinks so. All three former Department of Homeland Security Secretaries--Republicans Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff and Democrat Janet Napolitano--wrote to the Republican leadership last week and this is what they said: We do not question your desire to have a larger debate about the Nation's immigration laws. However, we cannot emphasize enough that the DHS's responsibilities are much broader than its responsibility to oversee the federal immigration agencies and to protect our borders. . . . And funding for the entire agency should not be put in jeopardy by the debate about immigration. The Washington Post's editorial board has also weighed in. Last week, here is what they wrote: If congressional Republicans want to attack those-- Talking about immigration-- actions responsibly, with discrete legislation, they are free to try. . . . However, it is another thing to wield their frustration over immigration as a cudgel, holding hostage an entire department of government that is critical to the nation's security. That is as irresponsible as it is politically ill-advised. I could not agree more. We need to focus now on doing the job we were sent here to do--to provide the funding necessary to keep America safe in an ever more dangerous world. Once we have done that, we should engage in an urgent debate on how to amend America's immigration policies for the 21st century. If we choose instead to continue down this irresponsible path toward a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, we will actually put America at greater risk. Why would we do that? Why would we do that? If we allow the Department of Homeland Security to shut down, here is what is going to happen--a few things that will happen. First of all, over 50,000 TSA security screeners keeping terrorists off of airplanes are going to go without pay. We want them to do their jobs, but we are just not going to pay them for it. Over 40,000 Customs and Border Protection officers needed to keep our borders secure are going to go without pay, too. We want them to do their jobs. We are not going to pay them, either. In addition, over 13,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, enforcing our immigration laws and combatting human and drug trafficking, are going to go without pay too. We want them to do their jobs. We are not going to pay them, either. Essentially, a large part of our Federal homeland security personnel would be working on an IOU. Now you say: How is that fair? How is that fair? Well, it is not. Even if we avoid a shutdown but continue to keep the Department on a continuing resolution, we prevent the men and women who work there from doing their jobs as effectively and as efficiently as they can. For example, we will not be able to replace obsolete surveillance technology along the high-risk areas of our border with Mexico. Our Nation will have significantly fewer resources to respond to any future surges of unaccompanied minors along the Southwest border. Morale will continue to degrade at the Department, which already ranks dead last for morale among other major Federal agencies. This is not how we want to be treated. It is no way for us to treat the men and women who are working around the clock to keep us safe. It is also an egregious waste of money. As we have learned over the years, crisis budgeting costs taxpayers millions of dollars. This latest situation is no exception. Employee hiring and research efforts at the Department would come to a halt. The contracts for a variety of security projects would be stalled and would need to be renegotiated, in all likelihood at a higher cost to taxpayers. For example, a continuing resolution would delay a $600 million contract to build a national security cutter that the Coast Guard urgently needs--keep it from being awarded. This cutter is critical to stopping the illegal trafficking off of our shores and ports of entry, including illegal immigration and drug and human trafficking. That is just one example. As any business owner would tell us, this is not the way to run a business. It is certainly no way to run a vital national security agency of the United States. So how are we going to remedy this situation? Fortunately, we have a solution sitting right in front of us, the bill that Senators Mikulski and Shaheen have introduced. It is S. 272. It is a clean fiscal year 2015 appropriations bill, which both Democrats and Republicans agreed to just this past December, 2 months ago. This measure provides the stable full-year funding that the Department of Homeland Security and our national security need without demanding a ransom. In closing, I want to urge, as strongly as I can, my colleagues in this Chamber, in this body, to join me in doing the right thing. Support passage of this clean full-year appropriations legislation for the Department of Homeland Security. Reject the amendments approved by the House. Once we have done that, let's begin a fulsome and badly needed debate that will enable us to hammer out a thoughtful, 21st century immigration policy for America, a policy that is fair, a policy that will significantly reduce our Nation's budget deficit, and a policy that will strengthen the economic recovery in this country that is now underway. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Susan Corbin, Jill Mueller, Paul Babiarz, and Charles Carithers, detailees to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, be granted the privileges of the floor for the remainder of the first session of the 114th Congress.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise for the purpose of entering into a colloquy with the senior senator from Oregon and ranking member of the Finance Committee in regards to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. As the senior senator from Oregon knows, the Land and Water Conservation Fund was created in a bipartisan manner to help safeguard national parks, rivers, lakes and critical habitats for wildlife in all fifty States. Over the years, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has helped protect some of our Nation's most treasured places. Two such places are located in Delaware. They are the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge and the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Now that Delaware has a new national park--the First State National Historical Park--the State has even more opportunities to take advantage of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. As you know, every year, some of the royalties from drilling for oil and gas on public lands are paid into the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Despite over $900 million coming into the fund every year, only about one-third of that amount actually goes toward conservation. The funding is diverted elsewhere, despite the huge unmet need across our country to safeguard national parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges, rivers, lakes, and critical wildlife habitat. Two weeks ago, I sought to bring an amendment up for a vote on S. 1, the Keystone XL Pipeline Act, in an effort to address some of the Land and Water Conservation Fund funding issues. Critical habitats are impacted every year by the building of pipelines like the Keystone pipeline. Therefore, increasing funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund to help counter these impacts seemed like a relevant issue to debate and vote on. Unfortunately, my amendment was tabled, along with other Democratic amendments, and we were not able to have that debate and vote. Although I am disappointed we were not able to address this issue on this piece of legislation, I am determined to continue to work on this issue. Let me say to my colleague, our ranking member, I know you have been a long-time champion for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I would welcome the opportunity to work with you and your staff on legislation that not only reauthorizes the program, but also better ensures that the revenues credited to the Land and Water Conservation Fund each year are no longer diverted, but are used instead to meet more of our Nation's critical conservation needs. Would the Senator be willing to work with my staff and me?

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with Senator Wyden.

Mr. CARPER. I thank the Senator.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to bring a clean fiscal year 2015 bill for the Department of Homeland Security to the Senate floor as soon as possible. Earlier this month the world watched in horror as terrorists massacred journalists and other innocent civilians in and around Paris. In December we were stunned as computers at a major corporation, Sony Entertainment, were attacked by North Korea. Over the past year, as recently as last week, in fact, we witnessed brutal executions at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. These events illustrate all too well that the threats faced today by America and by our allies are real. As a former chairman and now ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I know this to be the case. Nearly 12 years ago, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security--we call it DHS-- to help secure our Nation and to help ensure that our Nation is protected against these continuing and evolving threats. Given the origins of the Department, the work the men and women do there every day to keep us safe, and the grave nature of the threats our country faces, it is shocking to me and disappointing to me that we are here today having this debate. We are now discussing ways we can make the Department and its employees more effective. We are not discussing how we can enable them to work better. Senator Coburn and those with whom we served in the last Congress did that throughout the year. Senator Johnson and I did that just yesterday with our first hearing on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this year. Unbelievably, as we focused on cyber security attacks, we are debating whether to give this key national security agency funding for the remainder of the fiscal year. In order for that Department to efficiently and effectively carry out its critical role, it needs adequate and reliable funding. They need it. Another short-term budget--or even worse, another shutdown--would be bad for the Department and bad for employee morale--very bad. More importantly, though, it would pose a grave threat to our security. Instead of sending us a straightforward clean funding bill for the Department, the House has unfortunately sent us a bill that includes a number of amendments aimed at undermining the President's immigration policies. Many of our colleagues on both sides have significant concerns with these amendments, and the President has indicated that he would veto the funding bill if the amendments stay attached to it. Thus, these amendments jeopardize passage of the bill, and they threaten to prolong the crippling budget uncertainty the Department of Homeland Security has operated under. The Department of Homeland Security already has a lot to say grace over. We do them no favor by playing games with their budget. I understand why some of our colleagues are upset about the President's immigration policies, and we should have a debate about those concerns. But first we should be doing what we have been asked to do by giving the Department of Homeland Security the resources that it needs to keep Americans safe in an ever more dangerous world. Two of our colleagues, Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Barbara Mikulski, have introduced a clean appropriations bill that mirrors funding provisions of the House bill. Overall, funding provisions in their bill, S. 272--which I understand both Democrats and Republicans on the Appropriations Committee agreed to last year, last December--in fact, provides for $39.6 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Homeland Security. That is an increase of $400 million above last year's funding, but this measure is more than just a funding bill. To my colleagues who want to do what we can now to protect our country from the kinds of attacks we have been seeing around the world of late, I say: Support a clean DHS funding bill. To our colleagues who want reforms at the U.S. Secret Service, I say: Support a clean DHS funding bill. A clean bill would provide the resources the Secret Service needs to carry out much-needed reforms in the wake of the most recent White House fence-jumper incident and other security lapses. To my colleagues whose States need to recover from this week's blizzards or to prepare for the next storm, let me just say: Support a clean DHS funding bill. We need to ensure that FEMA and our States have access to nearly $2.6 billion in grants to respond to future disasters--both natural and manmade. To my colleagues who want stronger border security and immigration enforcement, a clean DHS funding bill is what we ought to be rallying around. The clean bill put forward by Senator Shaheen and Mikulski would take additional measures to secure our border and enforce our immigration laws, something I know is a priority to me and, I think, to all of our colleagues. In fact, most of the funding increase in the Shaheen-Mikulski bill would go to border security and immigration enforcement. The bill our colleagues have put forward contains a little more than $10 billion for Customs and Border Protection, an increase of approximately $118 million above last year's enacted level. This funding level would support the largest operational force level for the Agency in its history--maintaining over 21,000 Border Patrol agents and supporting the new funding level for nearly 24,000 officers. The Shaheen-Mikulski bill would also enable Customs and Border Protection to fly more patrols along our maritime and land borders and to continue purchasing new force-multiplying gear and equipment. It would also increase funding for critical surveillance technologies along our border, especially along areas such as the Rio Grande Valley, by some $20 million. As our colleagues will recall, last year our Nation saw tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors and families from Central America come to our southern border. This clean full-year funding bill would provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement $689 million more than last year's funding to help address the additional needs associated with that surge. Specifically, it includes $3.4 billion for immigration detention and funds 34,000 adult detention beds. The Shaheen-Mikulski bill would also fully fund the employment eligibility verification system, known as E-Verify, which helps businesses to ensure they are hiring legal employees. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson recently said--and I fully agree with him--that to deny his Department full-year funding would actually hurt our border security. We cannot continue to default to short-term continuing resolutions and force the Department to cut corners and scramble to fund its highest priorities. As we have learned over these years, stopgap crisis budgeting is an egregious waste of money. Let me say that again--an egregious waste of money. By shutting down the Department or keeping it on a continuing resolution, we will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, including the cost of renegotiating contracts, lost employee and contractor productivity, and lost training. For example, it would delay the award of a $600 million contract to build a national security cutter that the Coast Guard needs. But there is more than just a financial impact. The dramatic consequences of failing to provide full-year funding for the Department will be felt throughout our country. While most of the Department's workforce will continue to perform essential functions in the event of a shutdown, the bulk of its management and administrative support activities would cease and frontline personnel would not receive the support they need. It would be like trying to fight a war without planners, without logistics, and without supplies. It would be like us here in the Senate working without our staffs. We might be able to find a way to get our work done, but we wouldn't be as effective. And those at DHS who are required to come to work if a shutdown were to occur would not be paid until Congress restores funding. Essentially, a large part of our Federal homeland security efforts would be operating under an IOU. A stopgap budget or a shutdown would also further degrade employee morale at the Department of Homeland Security. As many of us know, the Department continues to rank dead last--dead last--among all other large Federal agencies when it comes to workforce morale. While Secretary Johnson, Deputy Secretary Mayorkas, and their team are taking important steps to make the agency a better place to work-- and we are helping them--the Department still lacks a strong sense of cohesion and a sense of team. But Congress too has a responsibility. Providing this large and complex agency the funding it needs would be a terrific next step. If my colleagues and I expect the Department of Homeland Security and other Federal agencies to show improved outcomes, we cannot continue to play games with their budgets and expect them to not feel the negative consequences. No business owner or manager could be expected to be effective and efficient under these conditions. The leadership of the Department of Homeland Security is no exception. A clean Homeland Security funding bill for the rest of the fiscal year is the fiscally responsible step to take. If we deny them that funding, we will not be punishing the President. In a sense, we will be punishing a number of the employees. But most of all we will be punishing taxpayers because we are wasting their money and we are diminishing and reducing the kind of security they need in this country today. Let me just say, don't take my word for this. Our good friend Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security and a former Republican Governor, with whom I served, said: I would be very, very disappointed if I were Secretary, and the Democrats did it to me . . . It's pretty difficult to plan long term when you don't know exactly how much you're going to have available and what strings might be attached to it. Give them the funding they need. And I would say to our Republican colleagues, give them the funding they need. For these reasons, I urge our colleagues in the Senate to join me in doing the right thing in supporting passage of a clean full-year appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security and rejecting the amendments approved by the House. It would be irresponsible for us to continue kicking the can down the road when it comes to national security, and we certainly cannot afford to let this vital agency's funding run out. I ask my colleagues to think about what we are trying to accomplish by failing to provide the Department of Homeland Security with the funds they need to operate. The American voters sent Congress a clear message on election day. This is what they said: They want us to work together. They want us to get things done. And they especially want us to enhance our economic recovery. Given recent events around the world, they also want us to do all we can to keep them and their families safe. We need to show Americans through our actions here in Washington that we have heard them. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, while Senator Durbin is still on the floor, I wish to say very briefly that we came to the House of Representatives a few years ago in 1983, and we didn't get a lot of time to speak on the House floor--maybe 1 minute a day if we were lucky. We would say when we were debating, when we agreed with somebody: I would like to be associated with the remarks of the gentleman from Illinois. I would very much like to be associated with the remarks of the Senator from Illinois. I served three tours in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war. We have most-favored-nation trading status, and they enjoy most-favored- nation trading status with us today. I like to work out and run. I like to run in the mornings. The mornings I stay here, I run down to the Lincoln Memorial, come back by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and I am reminded of the 55,000 lives that we lost in that war. Yet we enjoy normal diplomatic relations with that country, and they enjoy most-favored-nation status with us. If we can come to this point with Vietnam--after all the loss of life and cost--we should certainly be able to move things along with Cuba. So I applaud what the Senator has said. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be added as a cosponsor to S. 299.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I appreciate this opportunity today. My colleague from Delaware, Senator Coons, knows that Delaware, until 4 years ago, developed and built more cars, trucks, and vans per capita than any other State in America. We lost within literally 6 months a GM plant that employed thousands of employees and a Chrysler plant that employed thousands of people. Those companies went into bankruptcy. For a number of years before that and since then, I have gone every year in January to the North American auto show in Detroit. I remember being there half a dozen or so years ago and walking through the demonstrations--they call them the stands--where the auto companies, whether they happen to be domestic, Ford, Chrysler, GM, or companies from Europe or Asia, had on display their vehicles, in some cases the vehicles they were introducing that year for the next buying year, and in some cases concept cars that may never be built but are just interesting, exciting new technologies that are represented in those vehicles. I have never forgotten about a half dozen years ago walking through this enormous cavernous auto show and coming across what they call the stand where a number of the Honda vehicles were being displayed. One of them was in a makeshift garage. I thought that was interesting. You don't see makeshift garages in the Detroit auto show. I asked the Honda people, what is this about? They said, imagine a vehicle that is in a garage alongside a house. The technology in this vehicle will actually provide for the propulsion of that vehicle, propel the vehicle, and the fuel this vehicle uses will also cool the house next to this garage in the summer and warm and heat this house in the winter. I said, you are kidding. I said, what kind of technology is this? He said, this is fuel cells. I said, no kidding. Are you really serious about this? He said, yes, we are. As it turns out, a few years after that, I was back in Delaware at Dover Downs. A lot of people think of Dover Downs now because we have musical festivals. Firefly was there, and we had 80,000 people there. We also have 80,000 people show up for a couple of Sundays every year for the auto show. A couple of years ago, I was at Dover Downs, and I had a chance to drive around the Monster Mile when no other cars were racing. I drove a GM minivan. The thing that was unique about the GM minivan was how much it cost. I have a Chrysler Town & Country minivan that has about 386,000 miles on it. The vehicle I drove that day had less than 1,000 miles on it, and it was powered by fuel cells. I said to the guy I was driving with, how much does this vehicle cost if I wreck it? He said, probably $1 million. I said, I better be careful. And right about then somebody came out of the infield and drove right in front of me and scared the guy next to me to death. I was able to avoid a crash. GM, Chrysler, and Ford have put a lot of money into fuel cell vehicles. One of the people who helped to run GM for a number of years, a fellow named Tom Davis, a longtime friend, when he stepped down from GM several years ago ran the part of the company that dealt with light trucks and SUVs. Almost half of their revenue was generated from those sources. Earlier this month he and I talked about the future of the auto industry and GM in particular. I said, what do you think the future is for providing propulsion for cars? Is it like the hybrid electric? He said, no, it is not. I said, is it like the diesel electric? He said, no, it is not. I said, is it pure electric? He said, no, it is not. I have said for years that the future is fuel cells. I said, no kidding. That is just like I saw at the auto show years ago and just like the fuel-cell powered minivan I drove at Dover Downs a couple of years after that. He said, that is the future. It turns out in Japan they have a word that actually means future that they use to describe this technology, and it is called ``mirai.'' Honda and Toyota are betting a little bit of their money--actually quite a bit--just as some of our domestic auto companies are betting some money of their own. The great thing about this technology is that it reduces the consumption of oil. We are still the leading consumer of oil in the world. A lot of our oil is from foreign sources, and some of it is unstable. I think some of the countries use our money to harm us. This technology has the ability to reduce our dependence on that foreign oil from unstable countries. It has the ability to further clean our air and to offer a great driving experience. I personally experienced it myself all those many years ago in Dover Downs on the Monster Mile. What I want do today is call up an amendment that will help us to seize the day and to take this technology, which is ready now, to be made commercial and to be introduced on both coasts and across the country in order to provide fuel cell vehicles and to help give it a little push, if you will, through the Tax Code to encourage them to be purchased by our consumers. There are actually two parts to my amendment. One of those is to provide a $4,000-a-year tax credit for alternative fuel vehicles. In this case I am talking about fuel cells, but it could be electric, and it could be others as well. The second half of the amendment is to provide the infrastructure. We have heard about fueling stations. Well, these would be infrastructures that would include fueling stations for fuel-cell-powered vehicles. It is a two-fold amendment. It reduces our dependence on foreign oil, especially from unstable sources. It provides for new investment and for creation of jobs for that new investment. It is something that would help consumers, it would help our domestic auto industry, and it would enable us to compete with the rest of the world. There are two parts to this amendment--a tax credit of about $4,000 for each vehicle for 5 years, and then an investment tax credit of 30 percent to enable us to build the fueling stations. We have gas and diesel stations all across the country. We need alternative fueling stations, if you will, for these alternative vehicles if they are to realize their potential and we are to realize ours. Later in the week, I will ask to have the opportunity to offer this amendment, and I ask that my colleagues keep these arguments in mind, and if they see fit, to support this amendment. I hope they will. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor. Amendment No. 133 to Amendment No. 2

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

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, two Senators from Delaware, back to back-- a double shot. Amendment No. 120 to Amendment No. 2 Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment in order to call up my amendment No. 120.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask to be recognized for 1 minute, please.

Mr. CARPER. I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up my amendment to the Murkowski substitute, amendment No. 121.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President and colleagues, you will recall from our debate earlier this evening concerns raised about the equity of--most oil that is consumed and transported through this country or into this country pays a fee. It is an 8-cent-per-barrel fee that goes into the oilspill liability fund. One source of oil that does not pay that 8- cent-per-barrel fee is derived from the oil sands. There has been some discussion of whether--I think there is a fair amount of agreement that that does not seem right, it doesn't seem equitable, and it is not fair to assess an 8-cent-per-barrel fee on all these other sources of oil but not apply that to oil derived from tar sands. What I seek to suggest with my amendment is that an 8-cent-per-barrel fee be assessed on the oil derived from tar sands and the revenues derived therefrom would be deposited not in the oilspill liability fund but rather in the land and water conservation fund which has been in existence for many years. I believe the balance in the oilspill liability fund is measured in the billions of dollars. The balance in the land and water conservation fund is not. The moneys are much smaller, much more modest, and that money provides funding in all 50 States. Many of us know the need far outweighs the money appropriated every year for this program. The land and water conservation fund is also established not just to provide the revenues for national parks--and we are always looking for moneys for national parks. We just expanded our national parks system. How are we going to pay for that? The amendment I hope to offer would help to address that. The land and water conservation fund was also established to help protect rivers, lakes, and critical habitat for wildlife, areas that may be impacted by the construction of this pipeline or a possible spill from this pipeline or from another spill. Again, that is what I am asking. I will be concise. No fee is now paid on tar sands oil. I believe it should be the same as that which is assessed against other sources of oil. What I would suggest is rather than put the moneys derived from that 8 cents on the tar sands oil--rather than that money going into the oilspill liability fund, which is quite robust, to instead deposit that in the land and water conservation fund where we could use it in all 50 States for a variety of good purposes. That is the nature of my amendment. I hope I have the opportunity to offer that amendment.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the 73rd Postmaster General of the United States, Patrick ``Pat'' R. Donahoe, upon his retirement, for his leadership, vision and commitment to the U.S. Postal Service, and for his service to our Nation. During his 39-year career, Pat ascended the ranks of the Postal Service and went on to help lead the 239-year-old agency during one of its most challenging periods. Pat's career with the agency began in 1975, when he started as trainee on a mail-sorting machine in his native Pittsburgh. In 1976 he was hired as a clerk at the same location, and from there he moved up the ranks and went on to hold several leadership positions. Over the years, he has served as Vice President of Allegheny Operations, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Senior Vice President of Operations, Chief Operating Officer, and Deputy Postmaster General. In his role as Chief Operating Officer, he helped the Postal Service navigate back-to-back tragedies and challenges to mail operations following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the use of the mail to transmit anthrax. He also played a key role in the recovery efforts following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Before he worked his way up the Postal Service's ranks, Pat graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor of science in economics. During his time with the Postal Service, he earned his master of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management as a Sloan fellow. In October 2010, Pat was appointed by his colleagues on the Postal Service Board of Governors to be the Nation's 73rd Postmaster General, PMG. At the time, the outlook for the Postal Service was bleak and its future uncertain. It was hemorrhaging billions of dollars and saw its workforce numbers slashed as it grappled with the rapid transition to electronic communication and the fallout from the great recession in 2009. It was teetering on the edge of collapse, and no one knew how long the Postal Service could hold on. But Pat Donahoe accepted the challenge. During his 4-year tenure as Postmaster General, Pat proved himself to be a dedicated public servant, a strong leader, and an innovative chief executive with the willingness to make tough calls and hard decisions. He did what was necessary to help the Postal Service keep its lights on and compete in the age of the Internet. He did a remarkable job using limited resources to keep the Postal Service alive during the second worst financial crisis in its history. With the help of a strong team at Postal Service headquarters and in postal facilities across the country, he sought to keep prices competitive, reduced costs, rightsized the enterprise, and explored a number of innovative and successful business endeavors. His efforts have helped guide the centuries-old agency through a remarkable transition that has better prepared it to compete and remain a linchpin of our economy in the digital age. In fact, his work and his vision have put the Postal Service in a position where, with the right tools and authorities from Congress, it can remain competitive and viable for generations to come. Pat Donahoe had a vision for what the Postal Service could become and never stopped working to build on its potential. During his tenure, the Postmaster General helped bring the Postal Service to a place where it could better meet the demands of the 21st-century customers it serves. He reimaged tried-and-true services to make them more user-friendly and more valuable, like flat-rate shipping and priority mail. He created more opportunities to innovate and grow using the Postal Service's unique distribution network by adding services like Sunday package delivery and by exploring innovative partnerships with companies such as Amazon, FedEx, and UPS. As someone who has watched the Postal Service both soar and struggle, Pat provided guidance and leadership during tremendously challenging times. Despite the significant financial and legislative restraints that face the Postal Service today, the Postmaster General kept the Postal Service on a course that would enable it to deliver on the high expectations set by the American public. The PMG has also been a strong voice for the agency and an important partner to Congress during our efforts to pass comprehensive postal reform in the 112th and 113th Congress. He has worked tirelessly on behalf of the Postal Service's customers, employees, stakeholders, and the 7 to 8 million people whose jobs depend on a healthy and robust Postal Service. As I worked with my former partner on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Dr. Tom Coburn from Oklahoma, in developing comprehensive postal reform legislation, Pat and his staff were indispensable. We could always rely on the PMG and his team to come with little notice to a meeting in the Capitol or to join a late- night or weekend conference call. As he would probably admit, Pat also took plenty of abuse from some of my colleagues here in Congress, from the press, and from the public. He knew that some of the initiatives he put into place during his tenure as Postmaster General would be unpopular but stuck to his guns because he thought it was the right thing to do. Even in recent days, he has continued to press for what he knows is right and what he knows will sustain the Postal Service in the years to come. Pat Donahoe has graciously shared decades of his life with the Postal Service and has served the American people well. I sincerely thank him for his dedication, and I deeply appreciate his tireless efforts to help the Postal Service and our country. While Pat is retiring from the Postal Service, his legacy will carry on, and the changes he made will continue to serve the Postal Service and its customers. I wish Pat, his wife Janet, their two sons, and their granddaughters Charlotte and Lucy all the best in the years to come. As we say in the Navy when people complete an especially difficult assignment and sail off into the sunrise, ``Fair winds and a following sea.''

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, on behalf of the Delaware Delegation, I wish to honor the exemplary service of the superintendent of the First State National Historical Park, Mr. Russell P. Russ Smith. A native of New Castle, DE, and a devoted husband to his wife Jacqueline, two sons and two grandchildren, Russ returned to Delaware in May 2013 to cap his 42-year career with the National Park Service at the First State National Historical Park. Russ began working for the National Park Service shortly after earning a degree in American history from the University of Delaware. For the 10 years prior to his work in Delaware, he managed Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park in Fredericksburg, VA. His 28 years of field experience have included assignments at Prince William Forest Park, Fort Sumter National Monument, Independence National Historical Park, Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site and George Washington Birthplace National Monument. In 11 years at Independence National Historical Park, Russ oversaw nearly 100 employees and was responsible for telling the park's great story in American history by planning interpretive programs, creating museum and outdoor exhibits, and developing videos and publications. In 1989, Russ continued telling America's great stories when he was named chief of interpretation and visitor services for the Mid-Atlantic region, a position in which he pioneered the current interpretive planning system used by the National Park Service. It is fitting that his long career led him back to Delaware, where in March of 2013, President Barack Obama authorized sites in Delaware to be a part of the First State National Monument. The monument tells the story of early colonial settlement leading up to the ratification of the constitution. For the first time, Delaware was included in the National Park System, and Russ was back home, leading the monument as superintendent. Under his watch, the First State National Monument turned into the First State National Historical Park, finally giving Delaware the national park it long deserved. Russ has received the Mid-Atlantic Region's Freeman Tilden Award, the highest award for interpretation, the Director's Design Award for his interpretive plan for the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, a Superior Service Award from the Department of the Interior for redesigning the National Park Service interpretive planning system and the National Park Service's Appleman-Judd-Lewis Award for excellence in cultural resource management. Russ is a visionary and a leader. His work touched as many as 70 national park units from Maine to West Virginia and has allowed Americans and visitors from around the world to understand and enjoy the history and beauty that our Nation's national parks and monuments hold. Russ has devoted his life's work to our Nation's park service and has done a tremendous job of inspiring others to enjoy our Nation's history. On behalf of Senator Chris Coons and Congressman John Carney, I wholeheartedly thank Russ for his 42 years of service to the National Park Service and to our Nation. His model leadership and dedication to educate those of all generations is his legacy. We offer our sincere congratulations on a job well done, and wish him, his wife Jacqueline, and their family many happy, healthy and successful years to come.