Thomas Carper

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that our amendment, the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment 3582, be made pending and that it be reported by number at this time. The clerk will report.

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I understand in the unanimous consent agreement I have 5 minutes.

Mr. CARPER. I yield 1 minute of that to Senator King. Oh, great, he has 5 minutes. I would like to have 4 of his minutes. I will start by saying my thanks to Senator Wyden for his leadership as well. I am pleased to be able to support his amendment. I am grateful he is supporting ours. I say to some of our Republican colleagues, I have talked to most of you in the last several weeks about this approach that Senator Boxer and Senator Corker and I are proposing; that is, to lower from $11 billion to $8 billion the amount of money that would go into the transportation trust fund. That would force us to come back and make a decision by the end of this calendar year. That would force us to do something real, do our job during the lameduck session. One of the reasons Republicans have said to me is: We can't do that because then that would force the bill to go back to the House from which it has emanated. Well, let me just say the bill is going back to the House. The Wyden amendment is going to pass. So get over it. The bill is going to go back to the House. It is not going to die there. They will do something with it. They may send it back to us in that same form or some different form. But for Republicans who have said: I understand the importance of doing something in a lameduck session, and we know we need to be compelled to do that but I just can't do it, well, you can. For the folks, our Republican friends who say: I don't like that pension smoothing at all, the idea of mucking with people's pensions in order to fund something entirely unrelated--and that is building roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems--well, you do not have to do that. You can use an honest pay-for, an honest set-aside, and feel good about doing that. We are going to be here, maybe, Friday night, December 19, and if we have provided $11 billion to carry us to fund programs through the end of next May, I promise you, if we have not worked out a 6-year transportation funding plan by December 19, that Friday night, we are going to be gathered right here and people will say: What are we doing here? It is almost Christmas. I want to go home or go somewhere to be with my family. We have money to run these programs until the end of May, so let's just kick the can down the road and come back a little bit before May and we will do it then. One problem with that: We did something like that 5 years ago, and we did it again and again and again and again--11 times. This will be the 12th time we do it. Why am I concerned we will do it again? I say to Senator Durbin, let me ask, what did Albert Einstein say about the definition of ``insanity''? He said: It is the notion that we are going to do things the same way we have always done them and we get a better result or a different result. We will not. We will do it again. All over this country, State and local governments, mayors, Governors, people who build roads, people who run contracting companies, the truckers, all kinds of people are saying to us one message: Do your job. Our job is to provide transportation infrastructure. Do it in a time- responsible way so that States and local governments that have these programs, that have them on the drawing boards can build them or the ones that are underway, they want to complete them. We can help them do that. We can do that by voting for the Carper- Corker-Boxer amendment. Let me close with another great quote from another great guy who used to criticize this place, Mark Twain. He was always saying bad things about the Congress, even then when he was around. But one of the things he said is relevant today. Here is what he said: When in doubt, do what is right. You will confound your enemies and amaze your friends. I will just say to my Republican colleagues, especially: We love you. We want you to join us in doing what is right, and you will confound your enemies and you will amaze your friends, and not only that, you will do the right thing for our country, strengthen our economic recovery, do what we are supposed to do, providing strong transportation infrastructure for this Nation. The people of this country are counting on us. Let's not let them down. I yield back my time.

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, let me say to our Republican colleagues, this bill is going back to the House. We can send it back to the House correcting what I think is a misguided approach on pension smoothing. We can knock out that $3 billion pension smoothing. We can set a dynamic that will ensure we do something this year--that we do our jobs this year and get it done. Across the country, AAA, American Trucking Associations, Governors, Senators, want us to do our job and finish it this year. Let's vote yes on the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment and do our job this year. I yield for the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I will make some comments to lead off and then will yield to Senator Corker and back to Senator Boxer, and we have others who would like to speak on behalf of this amendment. I wish to start off by saying to the Senator from Tennessee who is here with us, the lead Republican on the amendment, how grateful I am to have this opportunity to work with you on an important issue. Thank you for your courage. One of the definitions of leadership is the courage to stay out of step when everyone else is marching to the wrong tune. In this case, not everyone else is marching to the wrong tune, but a few people are. I thank you for showing that courage and standing up to do what we believe is the right thing to do. I would like to give a big shout-out to Senator Boxer. She chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee on which I serve as the subcommittee chair for transportation and infrastructure. She and Senator Vitter and Senator Barrasso and I worked to fashion a 6-year transportation plan for our country that is a very well thought out, excellent roadmap for the future of transportation in America, and what we now need to do is to fund it. It is great to have a plan. How about some money to make it happen? That is what this is all about. This is the question: At the end of the day, how do we best ensure that we actually fund the 6-year plan Senator Boxer and others helped us develop? I thank not just Senators Corker and Boxer for their great support and for their leadership, I also thank the Democrats and Republicans and even an Independent or two for their support of our amendment. I will yield the time now to Senator Corker and Senator Boxer, and I will take some time out. Senator King is welcome to speak as well. Unanimous Consent Request

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, first let me express my thanks to Senator Grassley for letting me step ahead of him and I thank the Senator as well for a number of courageous votes today. I also express my gratitude to him and to the Presiding Officer. I understand earlier on the vote on final passage of the transportation funding legislation 79 Senators voted for the bill as amended. That is a resounding majority of Democrats and Republicans. The year when Senator Grassley--longer ago than the Presiding Officer and I combined--came here, the idea was for Democrats and Republicans to work together to try to find the middle, to find principled compromises. It has been a while since the Senate actually did that. I feel as though today we were the Senate again. It is gratifying to me, and I just want to thank everyone who voted for the Corker-Boxer-Carper amendment, for Senator Wyden's support, for everybody who helped to make that amendment part of the bill and supported it in final passage. I hope it sends a message to our friends in the House that will not be lost on them. I hope before they just reject it out of order they will sleep on it and when they wake up in the morning maybe we can have a good conversation. That is not why I rose tonight, but I wanted to get that off my chest and appreciate the chance to do that. I rise this evening in support of the emergency supplemental appropriations bill introduced, I believe, last week by Senator Mikulski. The bill as you will recall will provide some $2.7 billion in order to address the humanitarian challenge that is playing out in recent weeks on our southern border with Mexico. This money will ensure that the agencies charged with securing our borders don't run out of money this summer. More importantly, it will address some of the underlying root causes of the problems we face along our southern border. As we all know, we are facing an unprecedented surge in migration from three countries. They are El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. A large number of migrants from these countries are families. Some of them are unaccompanied children. Some of those unaccompanied children are as young as 4, 5 and 6 years old. Let me be clear. These children and these families are not slipping past our borders unprotected. They are being apprehended in large numbers by the Border Patrol almost as soon as they touch U.S. soil. Some of them, many of them actually, turn themselves in voluntarily to our Border Patrol. Although the influx has slowed in recent weeks, the sheer number of children and families coming across our southern border in South Texas earlier this summer overwhelmed the Border Patrol--overwhelmed Health and Human Services and other Federal agencies. The administration and Secretary Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, have responded to this situation with what I will describe as an ``all hands on deck'' approach. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is coordinating the DHS-wide response to the problem. The Department of Defense has provided space on some of its military installations to house unaccompanied minors until Health and Human Services can find a placement for them. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has greatly expanded its ability to detain and remove families, and we have surged Border Patrol agents, immigration judges, and other personnel to the border to help process these people. These measures have been working. For example, the amount of time people are detained before they are removed has decreased significantly in recent weeks, but these emergency measures are expensive and none of the Federal agencies involved have the money they need to sustain the aggressive steps they are taking to deal with this situation. The consequences of not moving forward with this legislation are severe. Let me give some examples of what failing to act will mean. Without this emergency funding, Immigration and Customs Enforcement could be forced to release thousands of people currently being detained and to stop operating repatriation flights. Health and Human Services could be forced to cut back on the number of children it can care for. Children would be forced to stay longer at Border Patrol stations and Border Patrol agents would spend more of their time taking care of children and less time pursuing the smuggling networks operating along our borders. Some of my colleagues are suggesting that we will not be able to pass this supplemental until September and that the administration can just move money around until then to make up for the shortfall. That may have been more feasible earlier in the fiscal year, but doing so now will likely have some significant unintended consequences. For example, it would impair our border security because DHS may have to reduce aerial support for the Border Patrol or stop replacing the badly needed x-ray machines at our ports of entry. Our ability to respond to natural disasters could also be harmed. I also understand my colleagues in the House introduced a bill today that would provide $659 million to deal with this crisis. That is roughly one-quarter of what Senator Mikulski has introduced, and $659 million is just a drop in the bucket from what is needed. Incredibly our friends in the House are offsetting this funding by raiding other critical operations which is what Senator Mikulski's bill is trying to avoid. Failing to move an emergency supplemental this week would be in my view unconscionable. I urge all my colleagues to do the right thing and make sure we deal with this before we leave for 5 weeks. Dealing with the challenge we are facing on the border is, rightly, our main focus right now. However, we cannot lose sight of the root causes that are driving the surge in migration in the first place. In this country all too often we focus so much of our attention on dealing with symptoms of problems and not enough attention on addressing the underlying causes. This is particularly true on our borders. Listen to this. Since 2003 we have spent $223 billion--that is almost one-quarter of a trillion dollars--enforcing our immigration and customs laws, strengthening our borders, strengthening the security of our borders-- almost one-quarter of a trillion dollars. We have spent a small fraction of this--a very small fraction--actually less than 1 percent helping El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras improve conditions for their citizens. I commend the President and Chairman Mikulski for including $300 million in this emergency supplemental request aimed at addressing what I am convinced are the root causes of this problem. What are they? The lack of economic hope, lack of jobs in Central America, combined with increasing violence and insecurity in the region. I know. I have been there. I have been to two of those three countries, Guatemala and El Salvador. This year down to Mexico, down to Colombia, which 20 years ago was just about a failed nation. Remember in Columbia roughly 20 years ago when a bunch of gunmen rounded up the Supreme Court judges in the country and took them out and shot them to death? That was Colombia 20 years ago. They are no longer a failed nation. They came back from the brink. They are a strong partner of ours, along with Mexico, to turn this situation around in these three Central American countries which are the source of all this migration to our country. Based on my recent conversation with Central American leaders as recently as last week, the Ambassadors of these three small countries as well as the Ambassador to Mexico, and based on trips to the region, I believe one of the critical needs is to foster economic growth and create jobs. How might we do that? One, by helping restore their rule of law. In those countries we have police who don't police. We have prosecutors who don't prosecute and we have judges who don't adjudicate. We have prisons that either don't rehabilitate or punish. We have kidnappings and extortions. We have people who are scared to stay there and live there and they are bailing. They are voting with their feet. We need to help them restore the rule of law, much as we helped other countries such as Colombia from the last two decades. Their energy costs are roughly three times what they ought to be. Most of their energy from the electricity grid comes from petroleum. They could use natural gas and spend half of what they spend for energy. They need to improve their education and workforce skills and access to capital. Those are some of the ways to strengthen their economy. I am not suggesting any of this will be quick or easy to do. It will require a sustained investment and focus on the region by the United States and also by a number of others. This is not our job alone. This is a shared responsibility, and we need to keep that in mind. But it can be done. In fact, we have already done it with two of our most important allies in Latin America, as I mentioned Colombia and more recently with Mexico, where the economic situation was so bad that more than 1 million Mexicans were traveling across our borders every year-- more than 1 million. Today both countries have vibrant democracies and vibrant economies and their citizens have hope for their future. Now there are more Mexicans leaving this country going back to Mexico than are coming this way. I will say again what I just said. We cannot and we should not do this alone. This is not all on America. This needs to be a shared responsibility with the governments of these three countries, with all the partners in the region, including Mexico and Colombia, with all the private sector nonprofits and institutions of faith. Three hundred million dollars as an emergency supplemental is a downpayment on what will need to be a long-term commitment to our neighbors in the region. This cannot be one and done. If we are serious about addressing the surge, we will need to do more, and frankly so will others--and I would underline ``so will others.'' Based on what I have seen, this crisis requires a holistic approach and one that tackles the underlying causes that are pushing people out of Central America and the factors that are pulling them to our borders. If we turn our backs on these countries I am convinced we will be back 10 years from now dealing with another expensive humanitarian crisis on our border. We don't need that in any of these countries. I urge all my colleagues to put politics aside and pass this emergency supplemental. I yield the floor. Thank you so much.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I rise to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission Report. As the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--a committee on which I proudly serve with the Presiding Officer--I can tell my colleagues that this report has been and continues to be incredibly important to the work we do in the committee that Dr. Coburn and I are privileged to lead in this Congress. Nearly 13 years ago, as we will recall, our Nation suffered the most devastating attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. Almost every American alive will remember where they were on the day the Twin Towers collapsed, when the Pentagon was hit, and when they saw the wreckage in the fields of Shanksville, PA. We asked ourselves at that time, Why would anybody want to do this? How did this happen? What could have been done to prevent this tragedy? In the months after this horrific attack, Congress and the President endeavored to answer these questions. Together they established an entity we call the 9/11 Commission. Led by former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean--our neighbor across the Delaware River--a Republican, and by former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat--one of my mentors in the House of Representatives--the Commission was charged with preparing a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding these horrific attacks and recommending ways to make our Nation more secure. This proved to be no small task. The Commission interviewed more than 1,200 people in 10 countries, including every single relevant senior national security official from not one but two administrations, and reviewed more than 2.5 million pages of documents. Despite the political tensions and partisan climate that engulfed our Nation at the time, the Commission put aside their own political differences and issued their final report 10 years ago today. The 592-page report contained a full accounting of what happened before and after the attacks and included no less than 41 recommendations on how we could prevent another tragedy such as the one visited upon us on September 11. The report went on to sell more than 1 million copies and it was at the top of the national best seller list-- numerous national best seller lists. Imagine that, a report--a Federal report--a best seller. It was a remarkable achievement, not only because of the depth and breadth of the Commissioners' findings but because all 10 Commissioners--5 Democrats and 5 Republicans--came to agreement on every single word of this report. Around here some days we can't agree if it is Wednesday, much less agree on every single word of a 592-page report. In the months and years following the report's release, Democrats and Republicans in Congress worked together with the Bush administration to enact not one but two major laws to implement the report's recommendations. These laws were championed in part by our good friends Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine, both of whom served as chair and as ranking member of the committee I now chair. Among other things, these two historic bills created a new Director of National Intelligence to coordinate and oversee all information sharing and intelligence activities. These laws implemented a passenger prescreening system that has helped to ensure that terrorists aren't able to fly on aircraft, while also establishing a fully staffed Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. When we think about all of these accomplishments and more, I think it is safe to say that the 9/11 Commission report has proven to be one of the most important and influential efforts of its kind in recent history. We as a nation owe a real debt of gratitude to the Commissioners for their determined and clear-eyed approach to improving the security of our Nation. We might ask ourselves: How did they do this? The Commission's leadership--Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton--wrote in their own words on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks about why the Commission was so special and so effective. Here is what they had to say: First, because of the great damage and trauma the 9/11 attacks produced, the American public demanded action and had high expectations for measures and reforms that would improve the nation's security. Importantly, the statutory mandate for the Commission was limited, precise, and clear--the Commission was authorized to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the attacks and to make recommendations to keep our country safe; The Commission had an extraordinary non-partisan staff-- They truly did have an excellent staff-- the members of which possessed deep expertise and conducted their work with thoroughness and professionalism; the Commissioners-- Many of them I am privileged to know-- had deep experience in government and political credibility with different constituencies; The final report was unanimous and bipartisan; families of the victims of 9/11 provided solid and sophisticated support throughout the life of the Commission and in the years since; and following the Commission, the Commissioners and staff continued to work closely with Congress and the executive branch to implement and monitor reform. That is what they had to say. In other words, they had the will to act. They had the authority and the responsibility to act. They had the support of great staff and of the Americans most directly affected by the tragedy; that is, the families who were affected. They had extraordinary leadership from Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, both of whom put aside partisan differences and built a trusting relationship for the betterment of our Nation. Once, after having a hearing in Dirkson 342, where our committee meets now and where they were testifying before us, the Chair and Vice Chair, Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton, and I asked them: In a day and age when it is hard for us to agree on much of anything around here, how were you able to agree, the two of you and your Commission, on the entire almost 600 pages of this report? I will never forget what they both said. They said: Well, we didn't really know each other, but we were thrust into this and asked to serve in this capacity, and we got to know each other. They said: We got to know each other very well, and out of all the time we spent together grew a trust that was almost without bounds and a very strong friendship--a real bond. Sometimes we think about why we are so dysfunctional here. That is, in my judgment, a very big part of what is missing--a lack of trust and understanding of one another and having those kinds of personal friendships that go across all kinds of boundaries. After 10 years, I still marvel at the trust developed between the Commissioners, and especially the Chairman and Vice Chairman. Perhaps most importantly, no other large-scale, 9/11-type attack on U.S. soil has occurred over these past 13 years. The improvements made to our intelligence, our law enforcement, and our security agencies as a result of the 9/11 Commission's work have undoubtedly contributed to that good fortune. The response to the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013--just last year--was a shining example of how the investments we have made as a nation in training and equipment for our first responders have made us more capable, more resilient, and more secure than ever. But that attack itself showed us we cannot grow complacent. We must maintain our resolve and our commitment to the security of our Nation. The Boston bombing, new threats to aviation, foreign fighters in Syria coming home--these are all stark reminders that we continue to face persistent and evolving terrorist threats. Of course, one of the biggest threats our country faces is in cyberspace. That is why Dr. Coburn, our staffs, members of our committee, and I worked so hard to move three bipartisan cyber bills out of the committee this year and they now await action by the full Senate in this Chamber. These are just a few of the challenges our Nation continues to face. We know there is still work to be done to fully implement the Commission's recommendations. So today, as we commemorate the release of this report, I think we would be wise to revisit and attempt to recapture the spirit of unity that made this bipartisan achievement possible by the 9/11 Commission. As we seek to confront and to overcome the challenges before us on this day, we would be wise to consider again the example set by Governor Kean, Congressman Lee Hamilton, and the other eight Commissioners, and we should be inspired by their example. The people we are privileged to represent across the Nation are pleading with us to set aside what separates us--pleading with us-- remembering what binds us together and do the hard work we need to do to keep our homeland secure in an evermore turbulent world. Let me close by thanking once again the 9/11 Commissioners not only for their important work that they did all those years ago but for the enduring example they set for us a decade ago. Let's be inspired by them. Our country and its people are counting on us on so many different fronts. Let's not let them down. I note the absence of a quorum. Thanks so much.

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I urge my colleagues to vote to confirm Julia Clark to a second term as general counsel of the Federal Labor Relations Authority. The Federal Labor Relations Authority oversees the program in place at the Federal Government to maintain fair and efficient labor- management relations at agencies across the government. The general counsel fulfills key responsibilities in these efforts, including investigating and prosecuting allegations of unfair labor practices. Ms. Clark has served in this position for almost five years, and has fulfilled her responsibilities effectively and with distinction. However, her term expires on August 7--just 15 days from today. If the Senate allows her term to lapse without reconfirming her, the position will become vacant and, by law, no one else can fulfill the functions of her office. Our inaction will cause a backlog of complaints and appeals to form. This has happened before, and Ms. Clark spent much of her first year as general counsel clearing a backlog that developed because of a previous vacancy. Ms. Clark is highly qualified, and we must fulfill our constitutional duty and confirm Ms. Clark today in order to allow her to continue doing her job.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, before the Senator from Tennessee leaves, I wish to thank him very much for joining Senator Boxer and me in this Senate to create a dynamic that will enable us to do our job. He shows time and again the courage to keep out of step when everybody else is marching to the wrong tune. So does Barbara Boxer. She has shown extraordinary leadership in the Environment and Public Works Committee, on which I serve. I serve as chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure. She and Senator Vitter and Senator Barrasso, with a little help from me, were able to guide through committee and report a secure transportation bill--a plan for the transportation for our country, including roads, highways, bridges, transit systems--and report it out of committee without amendment, without a dissenting vote, and bring it to the floor of the Senate. If it were that easy, we wouldn't all be here tonight. There is other legislation, companion legislation that came out of the commerce committee for, among other things, freight railroads, passenger railroads. They have jurisdiction over aviation as well. The banking committee has jurisdiction over transit systems. So there is a shared responsibility here, and there is a shared responsibility to figure out how to pay for all of this. How do we pay for this? We are spending somewhere around $17 billion, $18 billion a year for the Federal share for transportation projects. That is roughly about half of what we are spending if we add in State and local monies during the course of the year. We have run out of money. We literally run out of money next month for the Federal Government to do its share. So what do we do? Well, I will tell my colleagues what we do. We are not going to continue to put it on our credit card, and we are not going to keep turning to countries such as China and saying: How about loaning us some more money so we can replenish the general fund, which will replenish the transportation trust fund. Why do we want to be beholden to China? I don't think we want to be in that situation. What we need to do is summon the courage to do what people sent us to do, and that is to make tough decisions. Senator Corker is--I call him a recovering mayor from Chattanooga. I was the Governor for some years in Delaware. We are a bunch of former Governors and mayors here and some county executives, and we bring those experiences with us. When we are in our State or our city or our county and we are trying to plan and fund and permit contracts for roads, highways, and bridges or transit projects, it takes a long time. People are watching and wondering, why do we need a 6-year bill or why do we need predictability and certainty that the money is going to be there for these projects? It is because they take a long time. It is not uncommon to spend years planning a project. The problem is, as the Senator from Tennessee said, five times we have done stop-and-go. I think it has actually been 11 times in the last 5 years that we have done stop-and-go funding and we haven't provided the certainty and predictability that State and local governments are begging for and that transportation authorities around the country are pleading for. The road contractors and folks who build these systems and transit systems, the folks who work on them, the labor unions--everybody is pleading with us to do our job. And what we have done--the House, God bless them, reported out a bill that was, unfortunately, a straight party-line vote. They reported out a bill that funds the transportation trust fund to allow projects to be built through May 31 of next year. Some people say: Well, that is fine. That is not fine. It is not 6 years, and, frankly, Senator Boxer called it kicking the can down the road. We have done that again and again--11 times over the last 5 years. There is a good chance that when we get to next May 31, we will say: Well, it is too hard to make these tough decisions as to how we are going to pay for this stuff, and we will kick the can down the road again, providing more uncertainty, more unpredictability. It is wasteful. It is inefficient. It is foolish. We look impotent. It is not the way for us to do business. What Senator Corker and I and a number of others who are going to be joining us in this cause will call for doing is pretty simple. Instead of providing $11 billion for the transportation trust fund from what I will call a bunch of different sources of revenue--some of them more equal than others but some of them pretty questionable; but in some cases we are stealing revenues over the next 10 years for stuff that has nothing to do with transportation projects and using that money to fund transportation projects for, I don't know, 7, 8, 9, 10 months instead of actually doing what we have done for years--have a user-pay system where those who use our roads, highways, and transit systems pay for them. That is what we ought to be doing. But the problem with what the House has suggested we do is we will never--maybe never--get back to providing the certainty and predictability we need. We continue to drive up costs and say to all of the folks who are ordering us to do our job: Well, we don't have the courage to do it now. Maybe we will have it next year. I think that will be a huge mistake. I like to think of our Nation's economy as a car at the bottom of a steep hill, and 5 years ago our Nation's economy was at the bottom of the steep hill. We could have literally dropped off a cliff. Between July 1 and December 31, 2008, we lost 2.5 million jobs. In the first 6 months of 2009 we lost 2.5 million jobs. Literally the week Barack Obama and Joe Biden were sworn in as President and Vice President, we had 628,000 people file for unemployment insurance. In 1 week 628,000 filed for unemployment insurance. We know that anytime that number is over 400,000 people filing for unemployment insurance in a week, we are losing jobs in the economy. And that number stayed over 600,000 for too long. But it started to drop, and it dropped down to 550,000, then 500,000, eventually 450,000, and then 400,000, and a year or so ago we got under 400,000, and that number now is about 300,000. We are adding jobs. Some would say: Well, they are not the kinds of jobs we want or need. But some are--a lot of them. Almost any job is better than nothing. And some of these jobs are very good and pay a fair amount of money. Here is where we were. We were that car at the bottom of a very steep hill 5 years ago and trying to climb up the hill. It was slow going. We kept going. We kept going. We have added jobs; sometimes, some months, 50,000, some months 100,000. Now we are up to over 250,000 new jobs a month. But that car-- if you will, we are that car--is climbing that hill. We are making it to the top. We are at the crest of the hill. As we look at it we can say it is downhill now. As we add more and more jobs every month, we have the option of doing two things: One, we can mash down on the accelerator, kick it into high gear, kick this economy into high gear, where it needs to go or we can start tapping on the brakes--start tapping on the brakes, slow things down, introduce uncertainty, lack of predictability. What we offer in our amendment, Senator Corker and Senator Boxer and myself and others, is a better likelihood that we are going to be pushing down on the accelerator next year. We are not going to just put hundreds of thousands of people to work across our country building roads, highways, bridges and transit centers, but we are actually going to make our transportation system more efficient, which in the long haul is most important, to move product, whether it is from one coast to the other, north to south or just around our States. That is the key. How do we do this in a more efficient way? How do we make our economy work better? So this works at couple of different levels. If we say we are going to kick the can down the road into next year and we will fund these programs until May 31, I do not know what is going to give us the courage next May 31 to fund a 6-year transportation program. As Senator Corker said, we have seven or eight people who are leaving at the end of this year. They are not running for reelection. They are retiring. They want to leave, saying: We did this on our watch. It was our job to get this done and we did. That is exactly why people send us in the first place, to make those kinds of decisions. This is not something Democrats can do by ourselves. This is not something Republicans can do by themselves. What I am very proud of, in both committees, is that the Democrats and Republicans voted for it-- the Finance Committee voted for a similar proposal, not quite a majority but a very respectable showing. We have been working and gaining support literally by the day for what we are going to do. Senator Boxer ran through some of the folks, some of the organizations that are supporting this, a lot of State and local governments, State departments of transportation, folks who build roads, folks who run the roadbuilding companies, folks who do the actual labor for these projects, the American Trucking Associations, AAA, you name it. There is a huge bunch of people out there who want us to do our job. They do not want us to wait until some other time. They want us to do it now. We can do that. We are not here tonight to say this is how we are going to fund a 6- year plan. There are a lot of good ideas, and Senator Boxer ran through some of those. The idea is to create a situation where we are going to be compelled and we will actually figure out, of all those options--and there may be some other ones--how do we get this done. The idea that we continue to borrow money, to borrow money over the next 10 years-- revenue streams have nothing to do with transportation, nothing to do with transportation. If we pretend that is going to fund our transportation budget for 5 or 6 months, that is just laughing stock. We look so foolish doing that. It is also highly inefficient, as I said. I wish I could remember exactly what Mark Twain once said--maybe the Presiding Officer can help me on this later--but he once said something like this: Do the right thing. You will please your friends and amaze your enemies--something along those lines. For the record we will correct it. But please your friends and amaze or confound your enemies. Why do we not try that for a change. That would be a great way to finish this year. I again thank Senator Boxer. I thank Senator Corker for joining me in what I think is a noble mission. I never take anything for granted, but I think if we work it hard enough, we may surprise some people in a good way. I see my friend from Texas--whose mother was born in Wilmington, DE, 1 of 17 children--is rising for recognition. I yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, the committee which I am privileged to chair, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and on which Senator Portman serves is responsible for working with the administration and others to help make sure that Federal agencies work better and more efficiently with the resources we entrust to them. During my years of public service, I have learned that an essential ingredient in enabling organizations of any type to work well is leadership. It is what they say about integrity: If you have it, nothing else matters; if you don't have it, nothing else matters. In an organization, if you have great leadership, that is most important. That is the case both in government and the private sector and in organizations large and small. Part of our responsibility here is ensuring that we have effective leaders in place across our Federal Government. It is every Senator's constitutional role to provide advice and consent on the President's nominations in a thorough and timely manner as part of the Senate's confirmation process. Today we have an important nomination before us. It is the nomination of Shaun Donovan to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget. I wish to express my sincere gratitude, not just to Secretary Donovan for his willingness to take on this critical role, but also I wish to thank his wife. I would like to thank his two boys who joined him at a hearing, and I want to say if my son were that age, there is no way he could sit through that: attentive, listening, thoughtful. What a tribute to their dad. It is all well and good what the rest of us think, but to have that kind of show of support from teenagers is pretty amazing these days. While Shaun has very large shoes to fill left by Sylvia Mathews Burwell, I believe he is up to the task and, maybe more importantly, she believes he is up to the task. Sylvia is somebody who we admire deeply around here. She did a great job as OMB Director. She is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. She has known Shaun Donovan since they were undergraduates together at Harvard. She knows what he is made of, she knows his values, she knows just how smart, how bright, and also just how hard-working he is, and she has known him for a long, long time. Secretary Donovan's nomination was successfully reported out of both the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. I am hopeful that we will be able to do our part today and vote to fill this key vacancy. We know that Secretary Donovan is a strong leader who can take on and solve tough problems. As Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the past 5 years, he has guided our Nation through one of the worst housing crises in our lifetime. We also know that Secretary Donovan is someone who can cut through red tape and work together with agencies more effectively. That is precisely why the President asked him to chair the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force--and boy did he do a job. He has also had high-level experience in local government, as commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and has worked in the private sector and the nonprofit sector. He knows this job. He knows his governing responsibilities from all angles. He knows how the Federal budget is impacted not only by Federal agencies but communities, businesses, and individual Americans and their families. I believe he has the diverse experience, strong work ethic, and leadership skills to get the job done and successfully continue his public service as Director of OMB. As Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Secretary Donovan will be faced with helping to lead our country back to a more fiscally sustainable path. Let me just say, 5 years ago when this administration took office, they inherited a deficit that was $1 trillion. After the stimulus package, it was $1.4 trillion. This year we expect it to have been reduced by two-thirds. Is that good enough? Should we be satisfied and pat ourselves on the back? No, but we are headed in the right direction. Under Shaun's stewardship we will continue to do just that. I believe that the grand budget compromise that we need, though, must have three essential ingredients: No. 1, we need entitlement reform that saves money, saves those programs for our children and grandchildren, and does not savage old people or poor people. No. 2, we need tax reform, and not only to lower--in my view--the corporate rates to be competitive with the rest of the world. We can forget all this inversions mess--the nonsense that is going on. We need to do that but also do tax reform and do it in a way that actually generates some additional revenues, and then we use those revenues for deficit reduction. No. 3, we need to look at everything we do in government and ask this question: How do we get a better result for less money--everything we do from A to Z--and act accordingly. OMB is critically involved in all three of those approaches, whether it is entitlement reform that is consistent with the values for the least of these in our society or tax reform that generates some additional revenues and lowers corporate rates. We are actually getting more for our money in everything we do. OMB is essential and critical, and the OMB Director is going to be the point person for making sure we continue to make progress in each of those three areas. I know from my own conversations with Shaun Donovan--which now stretch over 5 years--he will be a strong voice for fiscal responsibility and effective government management. As Senator Collins and I pointed out in introducing Secretary Donovan before our committee just a couple of weeks ago, he is known for using rigorous data analysis to demand better results from government programs and to save taxpayer money. She also pointed out he will be a leader of integrity and intelligence in a critical job. I mentioned the word ``integrity'' before, and I will say it again: Integrity, if you have it, nothing else matters; if you don't have it, nothing else matters. He has integrity. He is a bright guy, a very smart guy, hard-working, a wonderful family, and a great track record--not just in government but in the private sector, nonprofits, local, State, and Federal governments. He has demonstrated what he can do leading a big agency such as Housing and Urban Development and how he can lead in a cross-agency way when we were suffering under Superstorm Sandy, which came right through our part of the country. I think he is well qualified for the position for which he is nominated. I am pleased the President nominated him, and I am pleased Sylvia Mathews Burwell is still around over at HHS. Sean has done a wonderful job at HUD, and he will do a great job at OMB. I am pleased to support his nomination, and I hope all my colleagues will as well. I ask unanimous consent that the vote on confirmation of the Donovan nomination occur at 2:05 p.m. and that Senator Murray be in control of the final 2 minutes prior to the votes.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Texas for his thoughtful comments. When I was Governor, and long before that, and certainly in the Senate, I have liked to focus on underlying causes, not just the symptoms or problems but how do we solve the underlying challenge that is before us. In this case we focus so much on the border and what we are doing on the border. We have tens of thousands of men and women arrayed there, drones, all kinds of technology to stop people from coming in. It is important for us to defend and secure our borders. The Senator from Texas has been a champion for that, and I would like to think I have as well, also, having been to Guatemala and El Salvador in the last couple of months, and Mexico and Colombia, trying to understand what is the underlying cause here. As the Senator from Texas knows probably better than most of us, a big part of the underlying cause is the lives the folks are being forced to live in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. As we squeeze that bubble in northern Mexico to try to go after the narco drug lords, we squeeze that bubble and they go somewhere else--they head south. They have made life miserable in those countries for a lot of people. So as we secure our borders and do all the work there, sending a strong, clear message, as Secretary Johnson has said, to those parents of those in Guatemala and El Salvador, it is also important to figure out how we partner with Colombia and those folks in Mexico and Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, to improve the hellacious lives many are living, with a lack of hope, lack of safety, lack of jobs, lack of opportunity, lack of education. We can do that. We can do that while at the same time securing our borders. We have to do both. And the underlying cause is important. I have no questions, but I want to thank the Senator for his thoughts this evening, for yielding, and for giving me a chance to join him.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, while Senator McConnell is still here in the Senate Chamber, I wish to follow up on his comments about the loss of Christopher Stout. My wife and I have a son of our own named Christopher. He is roughly 10 years younger than Christopher Stout at his death. So as soon as Senator McConnell began talking about the loss of his life, it resonated with me as a father. It also resonated with me as a former commander chief in the National Guard for 8 years and as a Navy veteran who served three tours in Southeast Asia in the Vietnam war. Sometimes we don't focus enough on what is being accomplished by our service men and women such as Christopher Stout and their service to our country in Afghanistan and our purpose there. Our role has been to go into a place in which 9/11 attacks were conceived and guided, killing thousands of Americans. Our purpose is, as we draw down on our troops there at the end of this year, to be down to about 9,800 troops, roughly half a year from now, and even fewer in the years to come. But our goal is threefold; that is, when we leave, we leave behind not only a place that is less likely to foment and launch attacks against this country or any other country, but also we leave behind a country that can feed itself, defend itself, and govern itself. The Presiding Officer was adjutant general for the State of Montana, and he understands full well, having served in combat and for a long period of time, the importance of the role the Christopher Stouts have played and the reverence we hold for them and for their service in life and beyond. I also hasten to add in following up on the minority leader's comments, there are some things we had in the military. I served 5 years Active Duty, 18 years Reserve as a P-3 aircraft naval flight officer and later as a mission commander. There are some things we had in the military that frankly a lot of people in this country haven't had for too many years. Until last year about 40 million people in this country did not have health care. They did not have access to health care, and we have changed that. We have changed that dramatically. Does everybody have access to affordable health care today? No, but we no longer have 40 million people anxious to get access to health care. That has been cut by roughly one-quarter. We will reduce it again this year and again next year, but among the things we had in the military is an annual physical. The idea is that you actually get an annual physical in your birthday month. My birthday month is January. I got my first annual physical, I think, when I was 17 from a Navy doctor, and I got them for years and years after that. A lot of people in this country, including people on Medicare--they could have lived to be 105--and until about 3 years ago with the option of the Affordable Care Act they got one annual physical paid for by Medicare when they turned 65 and joined Medicare. That was it. It was called the Welcome to Medicare physical. If they could have lived another 40 years, they would have gotten another one paid for by Medicare. The reason the military provides annual physicals for its members, Active Duty and Reserve, is in order to catch health care problems when they are small, when they can be treated, and we do this to save money. I served in the military and in and out of military bases all over the country, all over the world, and in almost every one of them there was not just a doctor, a Navy corpsman and so forth, but there was a place to go--if you had a problem and needed medical attention, you could get it--a clinic. Today we have thousands and thousands of clinics all over this country where people, whether they have 5 cents or $5 or $50 to their name, have health care coverage. They can go get primary health care. They can get primary health care. We have grown dramatically access to primary health care in places all over America, not just Delaware but all the other 49 States as well. There has been a lot of attention on the VA, some of the very disappointing circumstances that are going on in Phoenix and other places such as that in terms of waiting lists, and they need to be aggressive and they will be, but one of the great innovations the VA came up with 15 or more years ago was electronic health care records. When I was in the Navy and on Active Duty, and the Presiding Officer may remember, we used to carry around with us--roughly this size--a brown manila folder, and it included my medical records for years, from the time I got my first physical as a 17-year-old Navy midshipman until my last one. People on Active Duty don't carry these around anymore. We have electronic health records pioneered by the VA and now we have them in the Department of Defense. The reason we have them is because it enables us to better coordinate delivery of health care to people who otherwise may not have it. The Affordable Care Act actually introduces for the first time for millions of people electronic health care records, not for them to carry around or access necessarily--although, in some cases they can--but so the people providing care for them can do it in a better coordinated and smarter way and a more cost-effective way, providing better results for less money. The other thing we had in the military was the medicine. If someone needed to take medicine, prescription medicines or that sort of thing, they could actually get a medicine that was going to help them, keep them well or help them stay well, be productive. We adopted about 7 or 8 years ago the primary Medicare Part D prescription drug program in Medicare which has turned out to be a great success, although they had a big problem with it when people would fall into the doughnut hole. A lot of folks who got pretty good coverage for maybe the first half of the year would lose their coverage and have to pay. They didn't get any help from Medicare Part D. We started fixing--filling the doughnut hole--with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and over the next 6 or 7 years we will complete fixing that doughnut hole and people will not fall off the cliff, the Medicare Part D participants, as they have been, because of what is in the Affordable Care Act. Do you know who pays for that? The pharmaceutical companies pay for that, not the taxpayers. The pharmaceutical companies pay for that expansion, making Medicare Part D a good program, cost-effective, under budget, and 85 percent of the people who use it like it. All of those things coincide with the benefits we enjoyed in the military, and they are made available in part and parcel for more people through the adoption of the Affordable Care Act. Are there problems with the Affordable Care Act? Sure there are. Are there things we need to fix? Sure we should. Will Sylvia Mathews Burwell help us fix those? She will provide great leadership. She and I, interestingly, have our lives intertwined in a strange way. We found out when I first met her. I called Erskine Bowles. I learned over 1 year ago the President had nominated Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be President Obama's OMB Director. I noticed she had worked in the Clinton White House with Erskine Bowles when he was Chief of Staff to President Clinton the second term. So I called Erskine, and I said: Tell me about Sylvia Mathews Burwell. He said: I will tell you about Sylvia Mathews Burwell. I have known people as smart as Sylvia. I have known people who are as good at working with other people as Sylvia is. I have known people as good as Sylvia at getting things done. I have not known one person who does all three of those things as well as she does. He told me a story when she was working as Bob Rubin's right-hand person, top assistant. Bob Rubin was then the Secretary of the Treasury. President Clinton was meeting with Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, Bob Rubin, the Secretary of the Treasury. Bob Rubin had one of his top aides with him, Sylvia Burwell. Erskine recounted the story of how the President was grilling Treasury Secretary Rubin on a particular issue and Secretary Rubin was kind of struggling to respond in an appropriate way to the President's inquiries. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the assistant, wrote a note, and when the President was not looking, handed it discreetly to advise Bob Rubin, who glanced at the note and then reengaged the President on the issue, and the President said: That is a brilliant insight. That is really a brilliant insight, Bob. Erskine Bowles, not to be deterred, said to the President: Mr. President, Sylvia wrote a note and gave it to him. That is how he was able to give you that answer. If I had people as smart as Sylvia on my staff, I would look a lot smarter too. But she covered herself with glory in those years at the White House. She finished up. This is a gal who grew up in Hinton, WV, a little coal mining town on the New River where I lived when I was 4 years old. Her husband Stephen proposed to her at the Blue Stone Dam on the New River where my grandfather and father used to take me as a little boy to fish. She later graduated from Hinton High School, a public high school, a little coal mining town. Where did she go to school? She went to Harvard. After that where did she go to school? She was a Rhodes Scholar. She went to Oxford, and she came out and she went to work for a great consulting company, McKinsey & Company, and started working in the White House doing all kinds of things during the Clinton administration, higher and higher responsibilities, ending up as OMB Deputy Director the last part of the year, when we actually had four balanced budgets in a row, if you will recall. She knows how to manage. She knows how to manage people, she knows how to manage financial resources, and she is terrific working with people. That is why Senator Tom Coburn, my wingman in terms of leadership on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, actually came along with Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia, actually came, a Republican and a Democrat, to introduce her for her confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, on which I served, to endorse her candidacy. I thank Dr. Coburn for doing that. One would expect Senator Rockefeller to do that. He has been a longstanding huge fan, but Senator Coburn and I have only gotten to know her for the last year and a half and have loved working with her and think she has done a terrific job at OMB and that she will do a terrific job at the Department of Health and Human Services. I wish to say a special thank-you to her parents who are still alive and who still live in Hinton, WV, a real thank-you for raising not one but two young women, including Sylvia's younger sister Stephanie, for instilling the kind of values and the kind of education in them that has enabled them both to go on and do extraordinary things with their life. I say thank you to Stephen, who proposed marriage to then-Sylvia Mathews at that Blue Stone Dam on the New River all those years ago. I thank him for sharing his wife with our country. These are tough jobs, demanding jobs, and in some cases thankless jobs, and he is willing to take on some extra responsibility as a dad in helping to raise their children, both under the age of 10. I think Helene is about 6 and I think the younger daughter is maybe 4 years old. They know their mom is changing jobs. They know she still has a job. If we confirm her today, it is a huge job. Is there work to do? Sure, there is. Is there work to do in implementing the Affordable Care Act? Sure, there is. Is there work to do in tweaking it and making it better? Sure, there is. I will close with this for my Republican friends--and I love them all. For my Republican friends who moan and groan about the enormous burden the Affordable Care Act is putting on the American people, let me say this: I have a friend who if you ask him: How are you doing, says: Compared to what? If things are so bad now with the Affordable Care Act, let's just say: Compared to what? Here is where we were 3 or 4 years ago. The country of Japan spends 8 percent of their GDP on health care. We spent 18 percent, until recently, with the Affordable Care Act. They get better results, higher rates of longevity, lower rates of infant mortality, arguably better results than we did until at least a couple of years ago, and in Japan they cover everybody. Until this year we had about 40 million people who went to bed at night who did not have health care coverage. I regret that anybody who is inconvenienced or disadvantaged all because of the adoption of the Affordable Care Act. I regret it for every one of those people, but you know what. I regret that all those folks in this country, tens of millions of them, didn't have access to health care. I regret the fact that all those people on Medicare never got a second physical, and if they had gotten one, they would have a much better life. I regret that all the folks in the Medicare prescription drug program--millions of senior citizens--fell into the doughnut hole and stopped taking their medicines and got sick, had to be hospitalized, and ended up in nursing homes. It cost a lot of money and they died with not a happy life. I feel badly for them. My dad used to say to us, rather than moan about our problems, fix them--fix them. There are plenty of things we can do to make the Affordable Care Act better. I know what they are. But the idea about going back to where we were? That dog doesn't hunt. It is not a good thing in Delaware and I don't think it is a good thing in Kentucky, where Gov. Steven Beshear has led, provided great leadership in his State to make sure the hundreds of thousands of people who needed health care have it today who didn't have it before. We want to make sure the opportunity they have realized in Kentucky and those States that don't have that opportunity, that have no exchange to sign up in--they have no expansion of the Medicaid Program--my hope is they will look to Kentucky as an example and to Delaware as an example, to see what we can do for our people. Last point. Most of the people who serve here are people of faith-- some are Protestant, some are Catholic, some are Jewish, different religions. Most people here are people of faith. Most of our sacred Scriptures have a couple things in common. One of the things they have in common is the Golden Rule. Chaplain Barry Black, who gives the opening prayer most days the Senate is in session, likes to say that the Golden Rule is: Treat other people the way you want to be treated, love thy neighbor as thyself. He says those are the CliffsNotes of the New Testament. As it turns out, the Golden Rule is the CliffsNotes of every major religion in the world. I don't care if you are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, almost all of them have something like the Golden Rule in their sacred Scriptures. In the New Testament, in the Book of Matthew, Matthew 25, there is something we have all heard. Not everybody knows where it came from or even that it is in the Bible, but it is. The Scripture talks about, when I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me to drink? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was sick and in prison, did you come to see me? Matthew 25 doesn't say anything about when I had no health care, and when I had to depend on the emergency room for health care when I got very sick and ran up a big tab that somebody else had to pay for because I was hospitalized for a while--a long while. It doesn't say that in Matthew 25, but the intent is the same. Where were you? We were here, and we voted to try to do something about it, to make sure people did have better access to health care, and we can improve on what we have done and we need to do that. We have a moral imperative to the least of these in our society to look out for them, to help them look out for themselves as well. We also have the fiscal imperative given our budget constraints to meet that moral imperative in a fiscally responsible way. Sylvia Mathews Burwell understands that as well as anybody I know. She has demonstrated that in her leadership in OMB. She will demonstrate that if we confirm her today to be the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services. I hope my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, will follow the leadership of Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, and his wingman Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware, in supporting this nomination. With that, I yield back the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today to commend my colleagues in the Senate and House for coming together last month to pass the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, which is known as the DATA Act. The measure enjoyed near unanimous support in both bodies, and I expect President Obama to sign the DATA Act into law shortly. This legislation seeks to ensure that Federal agencies have a framework in place to standardize their financial data, and will better ensure that expenditure data for all of our agencies is accessible to taxpayers and Congress. This will represent an important step toward a more transparent and responsive government. Passage of the DATA Act, though, is merely the first step towards improving transparency into how the Federal Government spends taxpayer dollars. Now comes the hard part--implementation. I know that Federal agencies and the Office of Management and Budget will face challenges in implementing the bill. To that effect, I have received a letter from Beth Cobert, the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, expressing concern about implementing the bill without additional resources. As with any legislation, our job does not end when the President signs the bill. I believe that those of us here in Congress have the responsibility to work with the administration to ensure that laws-- such as the DATA Act--that we enact have the support they need to be implemented. That is why I will work with my colleagues on the Appropriations committees to help make sure Federal agencies have the resources they need to meet the requirements of the bill. I invite my colleagues who worked so hard to pass this legislation to join me in this continuing effort. With that being said, I ask unanimous consent that Ms. Cobert's letter be printed in the Record in its entirety.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all time be yielded back.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, the Chinese New Year began, as you probably know, just a couple days ago. I do not know a lot of words in Chinese, but among the words I have learned is how to say ``Happy New Year.'' It is a new year in China. It is a new year for Chinese Americans in this country as well. I think the way we say ``Happy New Year'' is ``Gong Xi Fa Cai.'' So I say that to my friend. When word came out that Max had been nominated by the President for this role, I say to our friend from Utah, I ran into Max. He was about to go into an elevator, I think in the Hart Building, and I said: I know the President has nominated you for this, but you can't leave. We need your leadership on tax reform. We need your leadership on an SGR fix and doctors and all these other issues--trade policy. You can't leave now. He said: Well, the President has nominated me. I said: Well, I am going to put a hold on your nomination. He was about to get in the elevator and go away, and he put his head back out and said: Oh no, you are not. I was tempted. I was tempted because there is a lot he leaves. Actually, I think he leaves at a time when this place is working better. I am encouraged by that. Frankly, I am encouraged by the relationship the Senator has kindled with Senator Hatch. I am encouraged by the relationship the Senator has kindled with our friend Dave Camp from Michigan over in the House as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Max has set an example for the rest of us. It is ironic the chairman of the committee and the ranking member are sitting here across the aisle from each other, but the two of them, in terms of providing personal examples--the kind of leadership we need; do as I do, not as I say--both of them are terrific at reaching across the aisle, doing what the people sent us to do: find principled compromises, get things done. I wish to mention--let me just ask, and he can maybe nod his head--my recollection is, when we took up the issue of whether there should be a Medicare prescription drug program that was supported initially by Senator Kennedy and by President George W. Bush, I think in the end the version that prevailed was the version preferred by President Bush. My recollection is that Senator Baucus may have gone across the aisle and supported that version of the bill and took me and probably another 10 or so Democrats with him--not an easy thing to do. I remember going back to Delaware--I have told him this story before--I went back to Delaware and held a number of townhall meetings, if you will, on that issue and got excoriated, eviscerated by mostly Democrats. They would come and say: How could you do this? How could you support that prescription drug program, the Medicare Part D Program. I explained I thought it was a principled compromise. I thought it would work. A year later, it has an 85-percent approval rating by the people who use it. For 6 or 7 straight years--it still has an 85- percent approval rating, a little higher than ours. If you look at how we are doing in terms of anticipated costs, it is 7 years under budget--under budget. When the time came to try to find a compromise on comprehensive health care reform, I remember the Senator did not just work with 3 or 4 Republican colleagues on the Finance Committee--Senator Grassley, Senator Snowe, Senator Enzi. The Senator did not work with them for a couple of days to try a find a principled compromise, Senator Baucus worked with them for weeks--I think months--to try to do that. Ultimately, the Senator was unsuccessful. But the Senator led us through a difficult mark-up in committee and on the floor. I know there are reservations in that law that we should tweak and change and make it better. But I think in the end, the Senator's leadership will be vindicated by a lot of Americans, just like we did with the Medicare prescription drug program. Obviously, that was the right thing to do. Thank you for the leadership you provided. On a personal level, I would say, as Senator Hatch has said, this is a personal loss to me, and I know to many Democrats and Republicans. But the Senator leaves behind a wonderful legacy. You leave behind a whole lot of people, and they all have their resumes--no, not really. One or two of them may have. But you have a reputation as surrounding yourself with really good people. I sought to do that. I kind of learned from you and Senator Hatch, but I have always sought to surround myself by people smarter than me. My wife always says that it is not hard to find them. You have done a great job surrounding yourself with terrific people. They are here today sitting behind you, over in the Republican side, up in the galleries--a lot of love here. I hope you feel it from all of us. In the Navy when people pull up their anchor and prepare to sail off into the sunset or the sunrise, whatever the case may be, we always like to say: Fair winds and a following sea. Fair winds and a following sea. That is what I wish to you and to Mel. We are going to miss you here, but we are really going to miss her. We hope we will have an opportunity to see you again and to work with you again. We hope the same, that we will have an opportunity to see Mel. We think the world of her. Good luck to both of you. May God bless you.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, it is with great pleasure that I rise to honor the exemplary service of Liz Ryan, a Delawarean and founder, president and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice. Liz's love of helping others was inspired at a young age by her family's participation in a host program called the Ulster Project. The Ulster Project is designed to bring young Catholic and protestant youth from Northern Ireland to Wilmington, DE, where they live with Delaware families. The program allows these young potential leaders to build bridges in a safe environment and then return, hopefully to develop and maintain those bridges in their native Northern Ireland. Hopefully, they learn skills and attitudes that are needed to unite people when differences divide them. This program inspired Liz to work with children at risk both overseas and here in the United States. Bridging differences has become the hallmark signature of Liz's work. I came to know Liz when she joined my congressional staff as a legislative aide in the late 1980s, and she eventually rose to the position of legislative director. After I was elected Governor of Delaware in 1992, Liz worked on my transition team and then took on the assignment of setting up Delaware's first staffed Washington, DC, office. In addition to her work for our State, she also worked closely with the National Governors Association, where she was a respected contributor to the development and growth of that organization. After establishing the Delaware office, which has continued to make valuable contributions to the administrations of the governors who followed me, Liz returned to Delaware as my Deputy Chief of Staff, where she focused her attention on the Cabinet Family Services Council. She worked to develop programs for special needs and at-risk children. Liz's commitment and energy needed a bigger stage. She left Washington to become a VISTA volunteer, but eventually returned to continue her work advocating for children at the Children's Defense Fund, Juvenile Court Centennial Initiative, and the Youth Law Center before founding the Campaign for Youth Justice in 2005. The campaign under Liz's dynamic leadership focused on changing both state and federal laws and policies impacting on youth caught up in the adult criminal justice system. As a result, today there are several thousand fewer kids in the adult system, giving them a better prospect for a successful transition to adulthood. Through many years of work, she has become one of the most influential people in the field of juvenile justice today. It is clear that children in Delaware and across the country have benefitted from Liz's steadfast work on their behalf. Even though she will be missed as she steps down from the Campaign for Youth Justice, she leaves beyond a strong and vibrant organization that will continue her valuable work. I am proud of the work Liz accomplished during her time on my staff and for her work for our nation's youth. I know Liz is not done, and I can't wait to see what comes next. Today I say thank you, Liz, and good luck in all that lies ahead.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Madam President, I had not anticipated coming to the floor tonight to talk about health care in this country, but I feel compelled to do so after listening to a number of our colleagues share with us letters and messages from folks whose lives have been adversely affected apparently because of changes made in the coverage of their health care through the Affordable Care Act. I regret any of the consequences that have been shared with us here this evening. My hope is that we will find ways over the next coming weeks and months to address the kinds of concerns that have been raised. I just wish I heard some of that concern in past years as we prepared to take up the Affordable Care Act. As a member of the Finance Committee, I wish I heard those kinds of concerns about the tens of millions of people in this country who really don't have any health care coverage tonight--some 40 million. For a lot of them, this health care is a chance for them to go to the emergency room of a hospital. When they get really sick, they can be admitted to the hospital and get the care they need. Without health care coverage, it is hugely expensive ultimately for the rest of us because we pay for it. Where is the outcry on behalf of those tens of millions of people? Where was the outcry 4 years ago when we had several million people who signed up for the Medicare prescription drug program and found that when their purchases of prescription medicines reached a certain level--$3,000 or $4,000 a year--instead of Medicare paying 75 percent of the cost for their medicines beyond that in a year, Medicare paid nothing, which is known as the doughnut hole? A lot of people fell into it--a lot of older people fell into it--and they could not afford the medicines they needed to stay well or stay out of the hospital. Where was the outcry on behalf of fixing that problem? Where was the outcry on behalf of the millions of young people who were dropped off of their parents' health insurance plans when they aged out at 22? Where was the outcry in those cases? We have had Republican and Democratic Presidents who have had a chance for years--for decades to do something about the fact that we spend twice as much money for health care as the rest of the world but don't necessarily get better results and don't cover everybody. Frankly, I didn't hear a lot of outcry from our friends on the other side of the aisle during all those years. As much as we feel for the people whose stories they shared with us here tonight, I wish that same sympathy and empathy had been extended to some of the people who now don't fall into that doughnut hole when their prescription drugs exceed a certain amount during a year. Now we have people who are 22, 23, 24, 25 years old who don't age off of their parents' health care coverage. They are covered until their 26th birthday. We will add to the number of people who have health care coverage. Somewhere between 5 and 10 million people will have health care coverage either because they are able to qualify under the Medicaid Program or because they will get coverage through one of our State exchanges across this Nation. Is the Affordable Care Act perfect? No. Are there problems with it? Sure. Anything that is this big and this difficult to do, there will be problems. I think the implementation of the startup in October and November was totally unacceptable. We are trying to work our way through it and provide the kind of access and explanation for this coverage that people deserve, and eventually we will get this right. The outcry we now hear attributed to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act reminds me a lot of the outcry we heard--I want to say 2006 and 2007--when we were beginning to implement the Medicare prescription drug program. To put it bluntly, it was a mess. People were confused by it. The information technology didn't work. The headlines in the newspaper looked a lot like the headlines in October and November and even now. But a year or two later, guess what. We fixed the program with everything but the doughnut hole. And now we fixed the doughnut hole--it started about 4 years ago--through the Affordable Care Act. People don't fall off that cliff anymore the way they used to. So rather than simply criticizing the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that are troublesome or problematic, why don't we fix them? That is what we did with the prescription drug program, Part D under Medicare, and that is what we should do here. I did not come here tonight to respond to our colleagues. I just felt somebody needed to say something, and I am pleased I had that opportunity. Mayorkas Nomination Madam President, I rise tonight to speak again in strong support of the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas to serve as the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. I spoke yesterday about Director Mayorkas' impeccable credentials and experience that has prepared him for this important position. My colleague from Louisiana Senator Landrieu did the same yesterday. Today I would like to address some of the concerns about Director Mayorkas that have been raised by our friends on the other side of the aisle and seek to set the record straight. I understand that some of our Republican colleagues believe we cannot move forward with consideration of Director Mayorkas' nomination until the Office of Inspector General finishes its investigation that it began--get this--in September of 2012. There was an investigation as to his management of the complex EB-5 program some 15 months ago. Well, I must say I disagree with my Republican colleagues. I think we have waited long enough, and let me explain why. As I said before, the Department of Homeland Security has been without a Deputy Secretary since April of this year--8 full months--and 6 months have passed since Director Mayorkas was nominated. For many of those months, we did not have a Senate-confirmed Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Three days before Mr. Mayorkas' confirmation hearing in July, information about the OIG investigation was leaked to Congress and the media in a highly irregular manner. The information that was leaked indicated that in September of 2012, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security had received allegations about conflicts of interest, misuse of position, and an appearance of impropriety by Director Mayorkas and other agency officials. We also now know that the OIG did not actually begin investigating these allegations for almost 1 year after receiving them. Importantly, the OIG confirmed that this was not in any way a criminal investigation. Let me say that again because some of our friends on the other side of the aisle seem to be confused about this. The OIG confirmed in July of this year and reconfirmed in December of this year, earlier this month, that this is not and never has been a criminal investigation. To my amazement, Director Mayorkas has never been contacted nor interviewed by the OIG about this investigation. There was no phone call, no letter, no email. There was nothing in 15 months. Director Mayorkas only learned of this investigation after its existence had been leaked to the Congress in July, just days before our committee hearing on his nomination. Even then, Director Mayorkas ably and vigorously disputed the allegations in his interviews with committee members who would meet with him and staff who would meet with him as well at his confirmation meeting in July. Unfortunately, rather than question the nominee about this matter and give him a chance to refute these anonymous allegations, Republican members of our committee boycotted his confirmation hearing and have refused to meet with Director Mayorkas to give him an opportunity to respond to these allegations from people whose names and faces we don't even know. Senator Grassley said this week that Director Mayorkas has been given a chance to defend himself and has ``utterly failed'' to respond to Senator Grassley's letters. On the contrary. Director Mayorkas did, in fact, respond to Senator Grassley's letters this past August 20. In fact, he would have gladly spoken with Senator Grassley or any other Senator, Democratic or Republican, about the allegations face to face. That is the way we do things in Delaware. I can't imagine it is not the way we do things in other States. I am perplexed that an even better option--speaking to Director Mayorkas himself--was not taken advantage of by Senator Grassley. In fact, I offered to fly to Iowa with Director Mayorkas in August to meet with Senator Grassley face to face so that Senator Grassley could have his questions answered face to face, but, sadly, Senator Grassley declined. So I think the record shows that Director Mayorkas has been eager to meet with Senators on both sides of the aisle to answer their questions--not to duck them but to answer them. But our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been unwilling to give him what seems to me should be a common courtesy. Again, we are not talking about a criminal investigation. We are talking about the mismanagement of a program and allegations brought by people whom, again, my staff has never been able to interview. Getting back to the OIG investigation, of course, in a perfect world, I would prefer that it be completed before moving forward. At one point, I thought it would be. First, let me make it clear to all that there is nothing improper about the chairman of a committee asking for an update on the status of a pending investigation. There is nothing improper about that. Accordingly, in July Dr. Coburn joined me in inquiring about the status of this investigation. I was told it would be completed in October. Again, this investigation started a year earlier--in September of 2012. In October of this year, I inquired again about the status and was told it would be completed in December. On December 2 a bipartisan group of committee staff participated in a telephone call with the head of investigations at the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security to receive a status update. They were told it would likely take 2 or 3 more months to complete the investigation. In fact, every time we have spoken with the IG staff, we have been told they are just 2 or 3 months away from completing an investigation that began some 15 months ago. I respect that the OIG must do its job, but we have to do our job too, and the President has to do his job. We cannot wait another 2 months--every other month--especially for a position as critical as this one. Lest we forget, the Department of Homeland Security is charged with helping to protect our Nation and its citizens from all kinds of attacks, foreign and domestic--terrorists from abroad, homegrown terrorists from within--securing our borders, our aircraft, you name it. They respond to all kinds of natural disasters whether they happen to be hurricanes or tornadoes. There is a lot going on. It is a busy and tough neighborhood to run and manage, and we need confirmed leadership. I thank our Democrat and Republican colleagues for their vote earlier this week on behalf of Jeh Johnson to become Secretary of the Department. He needs a team, and he needs a team that includes Alejandro Mayorkas. During the call I mentioned a little bit ago with the bipartisan committee staff in December of this month and trying to find out the status of the investigation, the OIG confirmed that to date they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by anybody at DHS, including Director Mayorkas. That is right, no evidence, none, nada. Given that the investigation appears to be months away from conclusion and that its completion date has already slipped several times and given the confirmation by the OIG that there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, I believe it is time to move forward. In fact, it is past time to move forward. The allegations that have been made public cluster around Director Mayorkas' administration of the EB-5 visa program. It is an extremely complicated program that provides foreign investors an opportunity to immigrate to the United States in exchange for significant investments in job-creating enterprises right here in America. The Department of Homeland Security OIG just completed an audit of this program, as a matter of fact, but I will get to that in a little bit. The primary complaint about Director Mayorkas concerns an EB-5 related application by Gulf Coast Funds Management, the regional center which has ties to Virginia Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe. Anonymous sources have reportedly alleged that Director Mayorkas improperly intervened to help change a draft legal decision so it would come out in favor of Chairman McAuliffe's former company, Greentech Automotive. First of all, I think it is important for everybody to understand upfront that Greentech Automotive did not get what they wanted. Let me say that again. The final decision in this case did not come out in Greentech Automotive's favor, from the agency run by Director Mayorkas. Second, it is important to note that the author of the Greentech decision, the former head of the Administrative Appeals Office at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Mr. Perry Rhew, told my staff last week that he strongly disputed the allegation that Director Mayorkas had inappropriately influenced his decision. Many of the other allegations that have been made public about the Director's management of the EB-5 program contend that applications appear to have been processed without regard to security concerns. However, in reviewing the leaked emails that were attached to these accusations, Director Mayorkas actually says the exact opposite. I found this disconnect between the allegations and the emails presented as evidence so striking that I am going to read exactly--I want my colleagues to hear exactly what Director Mayorkas said in this email to support his contention on January 30 of this year concerning his application for a regional center in Las Vegas. This is what he said: We will take the time needed to resolve the security issue and we will not act until we have achieved resolution. I agree that we need to run enhanced security and integrity checks. This email directly refutes the claim that Director Mayorkas was pushing to expedite applications despite the security concerns raised by his subordinates. In another email attached to one of the letters making accusations against Director Mayorkas, he forwards a question about Mr. McAuliffe's company to subordinates and he notes--this is how he does it: He says-- Mr. Mayorkas' words: I want to make sure that we are providing customer service consistent with our standards, but that we are not providing any preferential treatment. I would ask: Are these the actions of someone who is trying to exert improper influence or subvert security checks? I think any fair-minded person would agree the answer is no. No. Even our committee's ranking member, my friend, Dr. Coburn, indicated that the allegations against Mr. Mayorkas, although serious, are most likely not grounded in reality. I don't want to mince his words, so I will quote him directly. In reference to the allegations against Mr. Mayorkas, Dr. Coburn said in a committee meeting--again, this is a quote: ``I doubt they are true, but we do not have the facts.'' I agree with Dr. Coburn. We don't have any facts pointing to any sort of wrongdoing by Director Mayorkas at all, as best I can tell. None of the anonymous sources or so-called whistleblowers have presented information to the majority regarding their concerns, something I think is unprecedented in these types of circumstances for our committee. We have been unable to question those bringing these anonymous concerns on the majority side, and our Republican friends on the committee--and maybe largely in the Senate--have refused to talk to the accused, and he has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing. That doesn't add up to me. Maybe it does to some people. That just doesn't add up. We don't get to talk to the people who raised these concerns and our Republican friends won't talk to the accused who has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing. On the one hand, we have over 30 people from both sides of the aisle who are well-known and hugely respected citizens who have gone on the record with glowing support for Director Mayorkas. On the other hand, not one person--not one--has stepped forward publicly opposing Director Mayorkas. Some of the people who have written in strong support of Director Mayorkas include the last Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Jane Holl Lute; the last Senate-confirmed inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, Richard Skinner, who is a Bush appointee; and the three most senior border security officials in the George W. Bush administration, Robert Bonner, Al Ralph Basham, and Jason Ayhern. The fact is that Director Mayorkas has been proactively addressing national security and fraud concerns in the EB-5 program for years. Soon after being confirmed, he took a number of administrative and operational steps to address national security concerns. Where he lacked the administrative authority to improve the EB-5 program, he repeatedly appealed to Congress for the legislative authority he needed. Unfortunately, Congress dealt Director Mayorkas and his entire agency a bad hand when we authorized the EB-5 program in 2012. We failed--we failed--to give the agency any of the legal authorities that Director Mayorkas and his team at CIS had specifically requested in order to enable them--and they just requested in 2012, made a request--in order to enable them to address the national security and fraud vulnerabilities they could not address on their own. It said: Congress, we would like to do this. We need the authority; please give it to us. They started asking for that in June of 2012. Earlier this year, during the Judiciary Committee's debate on S. 744, the immigration reform bill, Senator Leahy introduced an amendment that made virtually all the national security fixes that Director Mayorkas had requested. While the comprehensive immigration reform bill passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support, it is unfortunately stalled in the House. Fortunately, Senate Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy is working on a stand-alone bill to address these national security and fraud concerns, much of what Director Mayorkas and his team asked for in June a year ago. I urge all of my colleagues concerned about security issues in the program to join me as a cosponsor of that bill. It strikes me as grossly unfair to punish Director Mayorkas for the inability of Congress to address the vulnerabilities in the EB-5 program that Director Mayorkas and his team brought to our attention and asked us to fix over a year and a half ago. In essence, those of us in Congress failed to do our job. Yet Director Mayorkas is taking the fall for our failure. How is that fair? I will tell my colleagues: It is not. I mentioned previously that the OIG completed an EB-5 audit, and although that report has not been publicly released yet, some of my colleagues have been discussing the OIG's findings earlier today. In light of that, I think this is a good time to get some facts straight because this audit, remarkably, misses some key facts. First of all, the report says the EB-5 program is vulnerable to fraud and national security risks and that the legislation that created the program makes it difficult to fully address those risks. That is something that has been well-known by Congress and the administration long before this report and long before Director Mayorkas took over the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in August of 2009. The emails I just discussed demonstrate that Director Mayorkas did not take national security and fraud matters lightly. In fact, a review of the legislative history of the last year and a half might suggest that we take them lightly. Despite the widespread knowledge about the national security and fraud vulnerabilities in the EB-5 program--and all visa programs, for that matter--CIS did not and does not have the authority that it asked Congress for in order to adequately police regional centers and the EB- 5 program. I find it incredible that the OIG audit report makes no mention of Director Mayorkas' efforts to get Congress to pass legislation to address this problem since June of 2012. In the absence of being granted those authorities by Congress, Director Mayorkas took it on himself to implement other reforms. Yet many of these reforms took place before or during this audit--and yet, incredibly, those reforms are not even mentioned in the audit report. One of his first actions as the Director was to elevate the Fraud Detection and National Security Office to a director reporting directly to Mr. Mayorkas. This ensured that national security professionals had a seat at the management table and a voice in all major decisions. He expanded reporting requirements and security checks for regional centers, which led CIS to increase the number of national security investigations in the EB-5 program by more than 50 percent in the last 4 years. He increased EB-5 staffing from 9 people in 2009 to more than 80 today, and hired senior economists and national security officers to work side by side with immigration specialists. He positively engaged other agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI, and the Treasury Department to help police the program. In fact, Senator Grassley himself noted this week that Director Mayorkas convened a national security staff working group to examine the problem last year. The actions I have described are not the actions taken by someone who does not care about national security. The audit report says the EB-5 adjudication process is ambiguous. CIS has recognized there was a need for a consolidated adjudication manual and they published one in May of this year--one more fact that was not even mentioned in the audit report. The audit report says the program is fraught with the perception of outside influence. There is no denying the fact that this program gets a lot of attention, including from us--from Congress. In fact, the USCIS receives 1,500 queries about the EB-5 program each year from Congress, from Senators, from U.S. Representatives--1,500. As it turns out, almost half of our Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle have inquired about the EB-5 program since 2009. That is an enormous amount of interest from Congress in this one program. In many cases-- most cases--that interest was provided or demonstrated to CIS on behalf of our constituents, from States from one corner of America to the other. But let me be clear: The fact that this program garners a lot of attention from a lot of Members of Congress and a number of high-level officials from all parties about the frequency and status of pending applications does not mean that the Citizenship and Immigration Services adjudicators are swayed by the attention. Perception is not always reality. Contrary to what some have suggested or assumed, the OIG reported that all the files they reviewed in their audit--including the ones associated with Terry McAuliffe's company--appear to support the final decision. Let me say that again. The OIG audit concluded that the evidence it reviewed in these cases supported the final decision. Based on the evidence we have before us, I believe it is clear that Director Mayorkas has taken strong steps to improve the EB-5 program. These are the actions of a dedicated, thoughtful, and committed public servant. They are the actions of a leader who is willing to make tough but necessary decisions in order to shake things up and improve a program that needed improving. That is exactly the kind of leadership we need at the Department of Homeland Security. I think we need it across the Federal Government. I also believe we need leaders who are committed to doing what they believe in their heart is the right thing to do. At his confirmation hearing in July, I specifically asked Director Mayorkas about the allegations raised by some of these anonymous sources. Director Mayorkas testified before this committee under oath that he has never put his finger on the scale of justice, and I have seen no evidence since then that would lead me to question his veracity. I do not believe that we can allow rumors spread by anonymous sources to rule the day. Some of our colleagues have been very critical of DHS shortcomings and they are quick to point out its failures. However, one of the major reasons the Department fails to live up to expectations more than they and the rest of us might like is because their top leadership ranks have been riddled with vacancies for much of this year, and the same is true of many other agencies. Again, it is not fair to criticize the agency on the one hand and yet seem content on the other to leave them without Senate-confirmed leadership for months on end. We can't have it both ways. We have some responsibility here as well. It is time to stop playing political games. It is time to vote to confirm Ali Mayorkas for the Deputy Secretary position at DHS. There is something else that came to my attention today that I thought was interesting. It is not from an anonymous source. It is not rumor or innuendo. It is actually a report from the Partnership for Public Service. One of the things they do at the partnership is issue, I think maybe on an annual basis, the rankings of the best places to work in the Federal Government in 2013 and, as it turns out, also maybe the worst, because they do a ranking from top to bottom. I was dismayed to find out this week that the Department of Homeland Security ranked last--ranked last--on their list of Cabinet Departments in terms of employee morale--last. It is not the first year. It has happened for a number of years in a row. However, although the Department ranked last among all the Departments, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, led by Director Mayorkas, was one of the highest ranked components within DHS, coming in at, I think out of 300 Federal agencies, No. 76, which, if my math is good, that puts them in maybe the top 25 percent of all agencies. After Mr. Mayorkas took over in 2009, employee satisfaction with senior leadership there increased by over 20 percent. It has increased by over 20 percent since he took over in 2009. Every now and then, in driving on my way to the train station in Wilmington to catch a train to come down here to start our day, I listen to the news. Usually I arrive at 7 o'clock. About a year ago I heard a report on NPR of an international study that was done involving thousands of people across the country. In the international study, they asked the same question of thousands of people from all walks of life with different kinds of jobs in different locations. The question that was asked of each of those thousands of people was, what is it about your job that you like? What is it about your job that you like the most? Not surprisingly, those people who were asked the question had different responses. Some people said they liked getting paid. Some people said they liked getting a pension. Some people said they liked having a vacation or having health care. Some people said they liked the environment in which they worked. Some people said they liked the folks they work with. But do you know what most people said? Most people said the thing they like most about their job is they felt the work they were doing was important and they felt they were making progress. Think about that. The reason most people cite for liking their job, the work they do, is because they know it is important and they feel they are making progress. It is ironic to me--if you rely on the anonymous sources the majority side has not been permitted to talk with, it is ironic to me that in a department where morale has been low and a problem and a concern for years, at this agency that Mr. Mayorkas has led now for 4 years, employee morale is, by comparison, fairly high. He does not get any credit for that. But if employees really do care that the work they are doing is important and they are making progress, maybe that belief is reflected in these numbers. Maybe that is reflected in these numbers on behalf of the leadership that Mr. Mayorkas has provided for Citizenship and Immigration Services. Let me close, if I could. My friend from Kansas has arrived. There are a couple things I want us to keep in mind. This is one that is hard for me to understand. People whom we do not know, whom we on the majority side have not talked to and have not had an opportunity to hear from to hear their story--it is maybe unprecedented for that opportunity to be denied the majority or for the majority to deny that to the minority in a case like this. We have been denied that opportunity. I think the person who is maybe best able to provide or to rebut or to respond to concerns that have been raised by these anonymous folks whom we have not been able to talk to is Mr. Mayorkas himself, but our Republican colleagues have refused to talk to him. Even though there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, they refuse to talk to him to give him a chance to rebut or to respond to the accusations from anonymous sources we have never heard from. That one just blows my mind. If the shoe were on the other foot, if Democrats were in the minority and Republicans were in the majority, if I were the ranking member on the minority side and we had a Republican President who nominated somebody for office and the chairman of our committee asked me as the ranking minority member to meet with someone whom the Republican President had nominated, I would meet with them in a heartbeat. I would want to hear that person's story. That is what I would want to hear. If the anonymous sources were talking just to us, I would encourage them to talk to the other side as well. By the way, the one person we did talk to--and we got this person, Mr. Rhew--I think we got his name out of a statement given by Senator Grassley on the floor. We talked to him. He set the record straight. He set the record straight. I have already cited that in my comments. But we have never had the chance to talk to any other, I think, half a dozen or so sources. The other thing I would say is that there is nothing inappropriate about the staff of a committee chairman inquiring of an OIG about the pace and the resources provided to conduct an investigation. This is just not any Department that has lacked Senate-confirmed leadership from us; this is the Department of Homeland Security. Americans have a lot riding on that Department doing their job well. They need senior leadership, and they have not had the kind they need. But despite the repeated efforts to get the OIG to expedite their efforts, begun in September 2012--a joint letter from Dr. Coburn and me to the OIG in July of this year; 2 months later, get a response that, oh, maybe we will have something in October. Two months later, it is December, and bipartisan staff--Democratic, Republican; majority, minority--have a chance to be briefed by the OIG, and rather than say, well, this investigation we started 15 months ago is done, is ready to wrap up, they say, a couple more months, maybe 2 or 3 more months. Are we supposed to continue to wait? We have the leadership we need at the Department of Homeland Security. At some point you just say: Enough already. What we have learned is that in terms of full-time people working on this--I think there are about 650 full-time equivalent people at the Office of Inspector General at DHS, about 650, and as I understand it, 3 full-time people--1 investigator and 2 research assistants--have been devoted to this investigation. No wonder it is taking 15 months. I would ask us to keep in mind our failure--our failure--to act on the recommendations made to Congress for reforms in the EB-5 program to address national security concerns and to address concerns about fraud. Mr. Mayorkas did the right thing. He and his staff pulled together a long list of changes they need, legislative changes they need so they would be authorized to address his concern. We dropped the ball. We did not include those changes when we reauthorized the EB-5 program for 3 more years--a straight reauthorization. We did not make any reforms. We did not make any changes despite the fact that he had suggested them months before we acted. Finally, those changes ended up in the immigration bill. We passed it here. Most Democrats voted for it, some Republicans. It is over in the House. It is languishing and not moving. If we are really concerned about giving this agency, CIS, the tools they need, the authority they need to address these security concerns, fraud concerns, why don't we join Senator Leahy in the legislation he is going to introduce that largely is taken from the immigration reform bill? When he introduces it, let's cosponsor that bill. Finally, if we are going to accept as gospel criticism about the way a person has run a particular agency--and not of a criminal nature but criticisms about the way it has been run--why not give that person a chance to defend himself? Why not give him a chance to say: Well, there is another side to this story or maybe there is not, but at least give him that opportunity. Lastly, the morale at the Department of Homeland Security--they do some great work, important work, the Department of Homeland Security. And they do a lot better work. I will mention a couple things, if I can. Remember the response of FEMA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security? Remember their response to Katrina? It was deplorable. How about the response of FEMA to Hurricane Sandy? All around--for the most part, all around kudos were won. How about TSA? TSA has been a whipping boy for a lot of folks. All of us who have the opportunity to fly commercially, we have seen TSA make changes. They have taken criticism they have taken to heart. Among other things, they have created the Trusted Traveler Program so a lot of people do not have to take off their shoes or their belts or do all kinds of things to get through a security check. The TSA has done a number of things. Some of the technology they are using is not intrusive, as it was before. Security is actually strong. For 10 years, our friends at GAO, the Government Accountability Office, have, every 2 years, on their high-risk list at the beginning of every Congress, cited that the Department of Homeland Security needs to be able to earn a clean financial audit of its books. They said: 10 years; that is enough time. Well, it turns out the Department of Defense, which has been around for, gosh, about 70 years--over 60 years--is still not auditable. The Department of Defense is not auditable, much less to have a clean audit. Last week the Department of Homeland Security, for the first time in their existence, received a clean financial audit. They did it in 10 years. DOD, also a big operation--it is 60 years and counting, and they are not even audited yet. So for those who want to constantly criticize the Department of Homeland Security, I would just say that the people who work there work hard. They have tough jobs. They need our help. One of the things they need our help in doing is securing the kind of leadership they have not had, and that is Senate-confirmed leadership. We have had some very good people who have been acting as the Secretary, acting as the Deputy Secretary, but, friends, it is not the same. They need leadership that is going to be there with not just the blessing of the President but the blessing of this body and that is going to be there today, tomorrow, next month, next year, and provide the leadership that is needed. The most important element I have ever seen in my time in the Navy-- 23 years Active and Reserve--my time as Governor, my time here in the Senate, the most important element I have ever seen in any organization to determine whether it is going to be successful is leadership. Show me a school with a great principal, I will show you a school that is on the way up. I do not care how ineffective the teachers might be, I will show you a school that is on its way up. Show me a business with a strong leader, and the same thing is true. Show me a body like this or a military unit, leadership is always the key. And it is the key at the Department of Homeland Security. If the improvement that I have noted, that I mentioned here just a minute ago, is to continue and actually be strengthened, they need Senate-confirmed leadership. We will have the opportunity in a couple of hours to give Jeh Johnson, the newly confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security, a key player in the leadership team that he is trying to build at that Department. He deserves our support, and so do the people at that Department. And if they get it, they will provide the support we need in this country to be safer in the days ahead. With that, Madam President, I thank you for allowing me to give this statement. I see my friend from Kansas on the floor. I thank him for his patience, and I am happy to yield the floor.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I wish to speak tonight on two subjects. The first is the budget resolution, the bipartisan, bicameral budget resolution conference report we approved today. This is the first time in a number of years we have actually been able to debate and find some consensus on a bipartisan blueprint for spending for the balance of this fiscal year. I commend Senator Murray and Congressman Ryan for their work and for their leadership and their willingness to find the middle. My wife and I celebrate our 28th anniversary in about 2 weeks. Actually, it is a few minutes after midnight on New Year's Day. One of the things I love to do when I talk to people who have been married a lot longer than we have is to ask them the secret for being married a long time. I have heard all kinds of answers--hilarious answers, some very poignant answers. The best answer I ever heard is the answer of the two Cs. The first time someone said that to me I said: What are they? They said: Communicate and compromise. Communicate and compromise. As it turns out, that is not just the secret for a long marriage between two people, but it is also the secret for a vibrant democracy. If we are to continue to thrive as a nation and to meet our responsibilities, it will be by doing what our leaders on the Budget Committees have done; that is, communicated at great length with one another, developed a sense of trust with one another, an understanding of the other's views, and being willing to compromise and find their way to the middle. Everyone here could fault some aspect of the agreement that was struck. I can, and I know others can. But I wish to commend them and thank them for the effort that went into getting this one. The Presiding Officer has heard me say once or twice in the last year or so that there are three key ingredients to making real progress, major progress, on deficit reduction, and one of those is entitlement reform which saves the programs for future generations, saves money, and does not savage old people or poor people. The second is tax reform, which helps us lower some of the corporate rates a bit as well as generates revenues for deficit reduction. The third element is the notion of looking at everything we do in Federal Government--everything we do--and answer this question: How can we get a better result for less money or the same amount of money? As we approach the next budget resolution next spring and the next opportunity to revisit these issues of spending, including domestic spending, defense spending, entitlement spending, and revenues, my hope is that we will be able to make even greater progress by focusing also on those three critical elements. So that is one of the things I wanted to speak about. Mayorkas Nomination The other issue I wish to speak about actually is a person; that is, a fellow named Alejandro Mayorkas. He has been nominated by the President to serve as the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. He was nominated some 8 months ago. As the Presiding Officer may recall, I have the privilege of chairing the committee of jurisdiction over Homeland Security, the Committee on Homeland and Government Affairs, and we are responsible for working with the administration. We are also responsible, as are a lot of other folks in this country and outside of it, to help protect our Nation's security both at home and abroad. At the same time we strive on our committee to make sure Federal agencies work better, work smarter, and more efficiently with the resources we entrust to them. We are an oversight committee. During my years in public service, I have learned that the most important ingredient in enabling organizations to work well is leadership. That is the case both in government and in the private sector, in organizations large and small. Part of our shared responsibility is ensuring that we have effective leaders in place across our Federal Government. It is every Senator's constitutional role to provide advice and consent on the President's nominees in a thorough and timely manner as part of the Senate's confirmation process. While we in Congress hope to soon wrap up our 2013 session, it is going to be with far less to show than many of us would have liked, but at least the Senate will have had an opportunity to fill some key leadership positions across the Federal Government and to confirm a number of judges in many courts where they need a judge or two. One of the roles that needs to be filled, again, is that of Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. This Department, as we know, plays a critical role in protecting our Nation and its citizens from harm. Whether the threat relates to terrorism from abroad, to homegrown extremists, to cyber attacks or natural disaster, this Department and the folks who work there are on the frontline for us. Because of the Department's significant role in the security of our country, I have been very concerned--very concerned--for many months about the high number of senior level vacancies at the Department of Homeland Security. In fact, the Department has been without a Senate- confirmed Deputy Secretary since April and without a Senate-confirmed Secretary since I think late last summer. Earlier this week, we took an important step to address this problem by voting to confirm Jeh Johnson, a good man, as the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. I wish to thank our Republican colleagues for joining us in that vote. That is good news. But we should not stop there. We need to ensure that Secretary Johnson has a Senate-confirmed leadership team in place and that certainly includes Alejandro Mayorkas as his Deputy. I wish to take a few minutes, if I could, to speak in strong support of the nomination of Director Mayorkas' nomination and explain why I am convinced he is one of the leaders we urgently need at the Department of Homeland Security. As of this week, more than 8 months have passed since former Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute stepped down from her post at DHS, and nearly 6 months have passed since the President has nominated this man, currently the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, for that post. It is time to put in place Senate- confirmed leadership in this very important Deputy Secretary position. The former Deputy Secretary--the last Senate-confirmed Deputy Secretary for this Department--was a woman named Jane Holl Lute, a very impressive leader in her own right and widely respected not just by members of the committee but by many of our colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, in the Senate for her leadership, management skills, expertise, and for her candor. She helped DHS make strides in many areas; for example, in narrowing the operational and management issues identified as high risk by the Government Accountability Office. Ever since the Department of Homeland Security was created, it has been on the high-risk list every other year by GAO. They put it out at the beginning of every Congress, and one of the leaders, if you will, in terms of getting a lot of mentions on the high-risk list, is the Department of Homeland Security. One of the criticisms of the Department for the last 10 years is they never passed a financial audit. They are supposed to, under a law passed roughly 20 years ago, and little by little every Federal agency, except the Department of Defense, has become auditable and then finally achieved a clean audit. Last week we learned the Department of Homeland Security, within 10 years or so, finally has achieved that goal. Why is that important? Because what we cannot measure, we cannot manage. This is a big Department, spread out across the country. There are 22 disparate agencies, with hundreds of thousands of employees, and they need to be well managed. One of Jane Holl Lute's accomplishments, along with Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary, was to make them auditable and to get them a clean audit. I think it is safe to say that the Department needs somebody with the same kind of commitment and willingness to tackle problems head-on that Jane Holl Lute brought to the job. Similarly, Director Mayorkas understands and is well prepared to tackle these management challenges and is committed to continuing these reform efforts needed to move the Department forward. Director Mayorkas has a distinguished record of leadership in public service. In fact, he has been confirmed by the Senate not once but twice--first as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, the youngest U.S. attorney in the country at the time, and again in his current capacity as the leader of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He has also served as a partner in a major U.S. law firm, O'Melveny & Myers. Director Mayorkas has a long and distinguished record in law enforcement. As an assistant U.S. attorney, he aggressively prosecuted drug traffickers, human smugglers, and violent criminals. As U.S. attorney, Mr. Mayorkas led the largest Federal judicial system in the United States and was appointed by then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to serve on her advisory committee on ethics and government. Moreover, while a partner at O'Melveny & Myers, he served as chair of the firm's Values Committee and he was a recipient of the firm's annual Values Award. Since his confirmation by voice vote by the Senate in 2009, Director Mayorkas has served as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He has skillfully led the largest immigration system in the world. In this capacity, Director Mayorkas has been responsible for an 18,000-member workforce that maintains more than 200 offices worldwide and is supported by a $3 billion budget. Director Mayorkas has led the effort to turn around an agency that was widely considered to be foundering. He has helped to put it on the path to professionalism and competence. His first action after being confirmed several years ago was to order a top-to-bottom review of the agency to identify its strengths and to identify its weaknesses. When the review concluded, Director Mayorkas became concerned that Citizenship and Immigration Services was prioritizing speed over security when it came to processing visa applications. In order to make sure that national security concerns were getting the proper attention, he created an entirely new directorate responsible for policing visa issuance, reporting directly to him. This ensured that national security professionals would have a seat at the management table and a voice in all major decisions. Director Mayorkas has proven that he is an exceptional manager during his time at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Let me give a couple concrete examples of how he has made the agency more effective. He dramatically improved what I believe is one of the most important programs in all of DHS; that is, E-Verify. This is a voluntary program that allows employers to check whether prospective employees are eligible to work in the United States. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that under Director Mayorkas' leadership, the number of employers using E-Verify tripled--from 156,000 employers in 2009 to almost half a million today. The number of people processed by E-Verify also increased from nearly 9 million to over 20 million people. That is remarkable improvement in this important program. His implementation last year of the President's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program--a hugely complicated and challenging undertaking that brought hundreds of thousands of people out of the shadows--has also been widely praised. Within 60 days, Director Mayorkas managed to implement a program that processed hundreds of thousands of people while ensuring that the appropriate security checks were performed. I think it is a stunning achievement. Here is something else I found interesting. Just yesterday, the Partnership for Public Service issued its rankings of the best places to work in the Federal Government in 2013--just yesterday. On the one hand, I was dismayed to find out that the Department of Homeland Security ranked last on their list of Cabinet Departments. However, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, led by Ali Mayorkas, was one of the highest ranked components within the Department of Homeland Security, coming in, I think, at 76 out of some 300 Federal agencies. And after Alejandro Mayorkas took over in 2009, employee satisfaction with senior leadership did not drop; it increased by over 20 percent. We need more of that kind of proven and committed leadership at DHS. Everything I have learned about Director Mayorkas over the past year--and I have learned a lot--has led me to conclude that he is an exceptional candidate to be the next Deputy Secretary at this Department. But don't just take my word for it. Director Mayorkas has received glowing accolades from a number of our colleagues who have worked closely with him. I might also say that he has been strongly endorsed by every single former Secretary of this Department, every one of them, two appointed by George W. Bush and one by our current President. They have all endorsed him. He has also been endorsed by a number of our colleagues--Mary Landrieu, who knows him well, who is a valued member of our committee; Dianne Feinstein from California, who recommended Director Mayorkas for his positions--both as U.S. attorney out there to President Clinton and to President Obama for his current leadership position. We have also received dozens of letters from a distinguished, bipartisan group of individuals and organizations asking us to move forward with this nomination. I want to take a minute or two, if I could, right now to share with our colleagues what some of these distinguished people have been saying about Director Alejandro Mayorkas. Among those writing on his behalf are many individuals whom a lot of us deeply respect. I mentioned Jane Holl Lute, the previous Deputy Secretary; and Richard Skinner, the last Senate-confirmed Department of Homeland Security inspector general, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush. I particularly value what Jane Holl Lute has to say given that she has an unparalleled perspective on what it takes to be an effective Deputy Secretary. She was one herself, and she was terrific. Here is what she said about Director Mayorkas: As I have come to know Ali, I can tell you that he asks no more of others than he does of himself, and, in leading by example, sets a standard of excellence for all who consider themselves committed to public service. In my view, Homeland Security could be in no better hands. That is Jane Holl Lute. In one of two support letters--not one but two support letters-- Richard Skinner, the last Senate-confirmed inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security--again, a Bush appointee--he sent two letters to our committee, including one earlier this month, and in it he said this of Ali Mayorkas: During my tenure as Inspector General, Mr. Mayorkas demonstrated that he possessed the intellectual wherewithal to make objective and often times very tough decisions on complex, multifaceted issues, and a genuine commitment to the mission, vision, and core values of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He is a strong leader who will be able to bring together diverse interests in collaborative efforts. That is the last Senate-confirmed inspector general for this Department. The list of supporters for Director Mayorkas also includes other senior officials in the George W. Bush administration, such as Kenneth Wainstein, who was President Bush's Homeland Security Advisor. Here is what Mr. Wainstein had to say: Ali has consistently shown an exceptional ability to mobilize, manage, and lead people and organizations . . . as USCIS Director, he has effectively led a large and complex organization during a time of continuing change and challenge. His marked success in that difficult role is a strong predictor of his performance in the Deputy Secretary position. Again, that is what Mr. Wainstein had to say. I could not agree more. Those from the law enforcement community also laud Director Mayorkas. For example, we received strong letters of support from the people charged with securing our borders during the George W. Bush administration: Robert Bonner, Ralph Basham, and Jason Ahern--all of whom served as Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Bonner wrote: It is not merely his willingness to serve the public good that impels me to write this letter of support for his nomination, it is rather my firm belief that Ali has the experience, skills, talents, and plain old good judgment to be an effective Deputy Secretary, perhaps the best DHS has ever had. Having succeeded Jane Holl Lute, that is saying a mouthful. Mr. Basham also wrote: Mr. Mayorkas has already served the Department well and honorably in the role of Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I also believe Mr. Mayorkas to be a public servant of integrity with a clear and distinguished track record of leadership. Mr. Ahern, also one of the past Commissioners of this Department, said these words: It is my strong opinion that Director Mayorkas' experience and leadership will be invaluable as DHS continues the work of protecting the homeland against threats of all kinds. As the Department of Homeland Security continues to mature, Alejandro Mayorkas is the right leader to continue that development and also meet the many critical mission challenges faced every day. Think about it. The three most senior border security officials who served under George W. Bush all agree that Director Ali Mayorkas would make an outstanding Deputy Secretary. They have worked with him in many cases. They know him. They have seen him up close and in person. They have watched him lead. But it is not only former DHS officials who feel that way. Chuck Canterbury, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said that Director Mayorkas' ``professionalism, leadership skills and integrity make him an ideal candidate for this post.'' All of these individuals who have worked closely with Director Mayorkas have spoken highly of him. They cite his integrity, his commitment to excellence, and his tenacity. I will close with this. At his confirmation hearing Director Mayorkas said that his goal in life has always been to bring honor to his parents. His parents brought him to this country as a refugee from Cuba when he was 1 year old, he and his brothers. They worked hard every day to give him and his brothers the opportunity to go to school and make a better life for themselves. Like his parents, Alejandro Mayorkas has worked hard all of his life. He has worked hard and he has worked hard in part to make them proud. I believe he has brought great honor to them and to this country and, if confirmed, would continue to do so as Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. I urge all of my colleagues to support his nomination.

Mr. CARPER

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

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I am proud to rise to speak in strong support of the nomination of Jeh Johnson to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. As my colleagues know, I have been concerned for many months about the high number of senior-level vacancies that exist at the Department. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security has been without a Senate-confirmed Deputy Secretary since April and without a Senate-confirmed Secretary since early September. That is simply too long for such critical positions to be vacant, especially since the Department of Homeland Security has been without Senate- confirmed leadership in a number of other senior leadership positions too. That list of vacancies includes the position of Deputy Secretary, as well as the heads of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Inspector General. Working with the President, we need to do something about it. Today we can. It is my hope and expectation that we will vote to confirm a new Secretary to lead the Department within the next few hours, allowing Jeh Johnson to be sworn in and start work later this week. Getting a Secretary of Homeland Security quickly confirmed is essential to help effectively run this Department and protect the safety of our citizens. This Department is a large and complex entity with a diverse set of missions and challenges. It is composed of 22 distinct agencies spread across various locations throughout the country. In the 10 years after its creation, the Department of Homeland Security still lacks a strong sense of cohesion. Moreover, given the Nation's fiscal challenges, the Department, as many Federal agencies, is being asked to do more and get even better results with fewer Federal dollars. That being said, over its 10 years, the Department has celebrated a number of important milestones. In fact, only last week, for the first time ever, the Department of Homeland Security received a clean financial audit. There is one outlier among the major departments of our government that hasn't received that clean financial audit, and that is the Department of Defense, which has been around for approximately 70 years. The Department of Homeland Security took 10 years and has been on the GAO high-risk list for all of those 10 years. I was delighted when I received word last week that this goal had been achieved. It is a major accomplishment and one for which I heartily congratulate the Department. There is an old saying that goes something such as this: You can't manage what you can't measure. Now the Department of Homeland Security achieved a clean financial audit. It is my hope that its financial management practices will continue to improve. In order to build upon this and other successes, I believe the Department needs Senate-confirmed leadership. There is no doubt that even on a good day, serving as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is a very hard job. Jeh Johnson, however, is no doubt up to this enormous task. Again, I strongly support his nomination. Mr. Johnson is a seasoned national security expert who is eminently qualified to take the reins to run the challenging Department of Homeland Security. After graduating from Morehouse College and then Columbia Law School, Jeh Johnson started his career in private practice. Later he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted public corruption cases. He then returned to the private sector where he became a partner with the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. While working with this law firm, Mr. Johnson again answered the call to public service, first as the Air Force's top lawyer during the second term of the Clinton administration and, more recently, in the first term of the Obama administration, as the top lawyer for the entire Department of Defense. In both positions he was confirmed by the Senate with strong bipartisan support. Having served in such important positions at the Department of Defense has no doubt helped him develop a number of outstanding skills that will enable him to lead this Department effectively. There are few better places to learn how to manage a complex national security bureaucracy than at the Department of Defense. For example, for 4 years he was a partner and a part of the senior leadership team that ran the Defense Department. He played a critical role in overseeing more than 3 million military and civilian personnel scattered around the country and across the world, including having direct responsibility for nearly 10,000 attorneys. He provided key advice to two exceptional Defense Secretaries--Bob Gates and Leon Panetta--and was an important member of their management teams. To me, this is an invaluable experience for the huge task to which he has been nominated. He also participated in almost every discussion of consequence for the Department, helping to shape the policies that directly impacted the lives of our brave men and women in uniform and their families. In fact, during his time at the Pentagon, Mr. Johnson developed a reputation for tackling some of the toughest issues in the Department of Defense and finding a way to build consensus and develop thoughtful and effective policy. For example, he won praise from both sides of the aisle for his work on the issue of don't ask, don't tell and on the military commission system. Additionally, Mr. Johnson was an influential member of the President's national security team and helped design and implement many of the country's policies to fight terrorism and dismantle the core of Al Qaeda. Because of his experience in these positions and in other commanding roles, Mr. Johnson is well prepared to face the challenges that will await him if he is confirmed by the Senate today. People don't have to take my word for it. Mr. Johnson has received high praise from many distinguished former government officials from both sides of the aisle. In a letter to our Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, for example, every single former Secretary of that Department--Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, and Janet Napolitano--lauded Mr. Johnson as an ``eminently qualified nominee.'' They went on further to state, and I paraphrase: Jeh Johnson's service at the highest levels of the Department of Defense--the largest government agency in the world--provided him a keen understanding of how to successfully execute large-scale operational missions of varying complexity and purpose. This is what former Defense Secretary Bob Gates, a highly regarded and much-admired manager himself, said about Jeh Johnson and his time at the Department of Defense: Take my word for it: [Jeh Johnson] has successfully managed an array of major initiatives across the biggest bureaucracy in the government--and, in so doing, won the esteem of virtually everyone with whom he worked. Similarly, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said this about Jeh Johnson: Jeh has proven himself to be a talented, capable, bipartisan, and trusted public servant. I give my strongest recommendation and full support to his confirmation as the Nation's next Secretary of Homeland Security. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who stepped down in late 2011, has also expressed his deep confidence in the nominee, stating: Jeh Johnson is as fine a person and professional as I have ever met. I wish to state that again. Admiral Mike Mullen states: Jeh Johnson is as fine a person and professional as I have ever met. I am confident in his choice and that he will succeed in leading this most complex organization at a critical time in our country. Mr. Johnson has also received encouraging words and praise from a number of law enforcement groups, including the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the national Fraternal Order of Police. I would also add that at Mr. Johnson's confirmation hearing, our ranking member, Dr. Coburn, made known his support for Jeh Johnson and even went so far as to ask him to consider staying on as Secretary after the 2016 election, a high compliment indeed. I might add as an aside, Mr. Johnson's wife was sitting immediately behind him, and when Dr. Coburn asked for that assurance from the nominee, I wasn't sure if she was going to come out of her seat--and it wasn't in support of the idea. Mr. Johnson is undoubtedly a highly skilled leader. He is just the type of person that we need for this extremely important and challenging position. Mr. Johnson, of course, will not be alone in the task of leading the Department of Homeland Security. It is critically important that Mr. Johnson be allowed to surround himself with a capable leadership team. We can help. Indeed, we must help. At the Department of Homeland Security alone, there are 14 Presidentially appointed positions that are without a permanent replacement. Of these, 10 require Senate confirmation. This is an edition of what I call executive branch Swiss cheese. As we consider Mr. Johnson's nomination, we must remember that protecting the homeland is a team sport, and those of us in the legislative branch are critical members of this important team. If Mr. Johnson is confirmed, we must do our part to expeditiously, but thoroughly, vet and confirm his leadership team as well. We need to put aside our partisan differences, work together, and give the President and the Department the entire team it needs to better protect our homeland. That includes confirming Ali Mayorkas for Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. Today the question before us is Mr. Johnson's nomination. For my colleagues still on the fence about Mr. Johnson's nomination, I leave us with a few thoughts on his character and his integrity. I have gotten to know Jeh Johnson very well over the last couple of months. I have been impressed by his forthrightness, his thoughtfulness, his core values, and his impeccable moral character, as well as his deep commitment to public service and serving our Nation. He treasures his family, and he strives to honor the legacy through his work. I had the privilege of meeting several members of his family at the confirmation hearing last month. His wife is an accomplished professional in her own right. In fact, Jeh met his wife when she was practicing dentistry--and I think he might have been the patient. Together they are the proud parents of two young adults that any parent would be proud to call their own. He is also a devoted son and brother. Although they could not attend his confirmation hearing, I know his parents are deeply proud of the son that they raised. I noticed in his confirmation hearing that Jeh proudly wore a pin that was his grandfather's. His great grandfather worked as a Pullman train car porter in the early 20th century. I think that quiet statement says a lot about the importance of family to Jeh and how the values and character his family instilled in him are always with him. It is clear he is a student of history and draws inspiration from the civil rights movement. One of Jeh Johnson's guiding principles is a lesson he learned from Dr. Benjamin ``Bennie'' Mays, the former president of Morehouse College and a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, ``You earn a living by what you get; you earn a life by what you give.'' Think about that for a second. ``You earn a living by what you get; you earn a life by what you give.'' Think about that and think about all the times Jeh Johnson has left the comforts of the private sector--three times before--so that he could give back and serve the people of our country as a leader in our government. With that in mind, I think we know what kind of leader we are getting in Jeh Johnson and what he will bring to the Department of Homeland Security. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting today for Jeh Johnson. I thank the Chair, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, my wife ran into one of our old colleagues the other day, a guy named Ted Kaufman. He was the interim Senator who succeeded Joe Biden and held down that slot for 2 years until Senator Chris Coons was elected on his own, not that long ago. One of the things I loved about Ted was, every month he would come to the floor and he would talk about a different Federal employee. Sometimes I heard our colleagues or would hear other people talk about Federal employees or State or local employees as nameless, faceless bureaucrats in a derisive way, uncomplimentary and, I expect, dispiriting. The folks who serve in the Federal Government or State and local government do so usually not because it pays a lot of money or because they get huge bouquets and a lot of credit but because they want to do something constructive with their lives. Ted used to do that every month when he would come to the floor. This is like a shout-out to him because I heard about a fellow in Delaware who decided to step down after a great career of public service and I want to take a few minutes, if I could, to talk about him. The person I have in mind today is the fellow who is stepping down as the director of our Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation. His name is Charles A. Salkin. We call him Chazz. He was appointed the director of the division a couple of months before I became Governor. He was appointed on June 1, 1992. He continued to serve with distinction in that capacity, leading the Division of Parks and Recreation for the 8 years I served as Governor, and then he went on to serve for two more Governors after me. He served Republican Governor Mike Castle before me, and a Democratic administration, for a total of four Governors. That doesn't happen everyday in every State. When you get those kinds of opportunities it must mean you are pretty good. In his case he was very good. He is now retiring from the post after more than 35 years of service to the people of our State. For over three decades he has been a tremendous leader and real advocate for the educational, for the mental, for the physical benefits of State parks. He is also a devoted husband to his wife of 40 years, a woman named Sue, who is very accomplished in her own right. She recently retired as deputy director of the Delaware Division of the Arts. They have a daughter Emily, who I believe is now grown. It is kind of interesting to see where they pull up their anchors and sail off into the sunrise. But, Chazz and Sue, we thank them for the great service to the people of our State and wish them and Emily well. Their hard work and creativity and dedication will be missed a whole lot. We will remember for many years the tremendous contributions they have made. Since 1978, Chazz has played an active role in the expansion of Delaware's open space areas and in the development of programs that introduce Delawareans and visitors of all ages to the historical and recreational benefits of our State parks. As he steps down from the position as director of the Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation, we give him our sincere thanks and thank his staff too for their diligent and longstanding efforts to maintain Delaware's reputation as having one of the most dynamic and innovative park systems in the Nation. Throughout his career, Chazz has been a visionary whose creativity and forward thinking has changed the very nature our State park system. From the institution of zip lines to kayak rentals, Chazz has done a tremendous job of inspiring the love of nature in just about all Delawareans. He has played an important role in securing Delaware's footprint in the national park system with the recent naming of the First State national monument. Delaware was the first State to ratify the Constitution. William Penn came to America through Delaware. One of the oldest houses in all of North America is in Lewes, DE, apparently a Dutch settlement some 275 years ago. We were the first State to ratify the Constitution. We have done a lot of ``firsts'' for a little State. We do not have a national park. We have been working on it for a number of years with Chazz, and now Chris Coons and John Carney have taken up the mantle. We have a First State national monument. We are thankful for that. Thank you, Vice President Biden. We have been knocking on the door for a national park. Chazz and his people have been great laborers with us in that effort. Chazz's research, his professional leadership, and personal membership in all kinds of organizations such as the National Association of State Park Directors and the National Association of State Outdoor Recreation Liaison Officers, have also supported Delaware's natural resources and emphasized our State parks' value to Delaware's financial success. In places such as Oregon, Senator Merkley, the Presiding Officer from Ohio, Senator Collins, who is still on the floor--their States have wonderful national parks. As it turns out, the top destination, tourist destination for people who come to the United States from other countries is our national parks. We don't have one in Delaware. We want one. In the meantime our State parks have sort of filled the gap. We have some State parks of which we are real proud. One of the guys who worked very hard to make them something we can be proud of is Chazz Salkin. He has undoubtedly left a legacy of achievement, persistence, and passion with the members of the Parks and Recreation team that included hundreds of people over the past 35 years. We in the State of Delaware are truly grateful for everything Chazz has done to protect our State's beauty and history. On behalf of Senator Chris Coons, our colleague here in the Senate, on behalf of John Carney, our lone Congressman over in the House, we wholeheartedly thank Chazz for 35 years of service to the State of Delaware. His model leadership and dedication have improved the quality of life for visitors and residents who come to our State from all over the world. We offer our sincere congratulations on a job well done and wish him and Sue and their family many happy and successful years to come. We struggle at the Federal Government to pay for things. We struggle at the State level to have the revenues to pay for the kinds of services our citizens want. One of the things I especially admired in the work done by Chazz Salkin is a growing reliance, over time, on inviting people--could be young people, could be older people, could be retired, maybe not, could be students, could be senior citizens, but people who would like to volunteer some of their time to help in our national parks. It will be interesting to be able to look at the number of volunteer hours that have been amassed over the years in service to our national parks and compare that on a per-capita-basis to the rest of the country. I think we stack up pretty well. One of the things we have done in our State, in no small part because of Chazz's leadership, is to invite volunteers to come in to help out, to make our parks better than they ever were before and to benefit from that by feeling they helped us to accomplish something really good for now and for a long time in the future.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, my thanks to the majority leader this morning. Before I say a few words about Rev. Gregory Knox Jones, I want to go back in time for a couple of minutes. I was talking to the pages out in the hall behind the leader about how when our country was first settled folks came here from all over the world. They came here in part in pursuit of religious freedom. They were people of different faiths. They wanted to be able to worship God as they saw fit. When it got really tough in Philadelphia at the Constitutional Convention--trying to wrestle with issues such as slavery, rights of women, whether there should be little States, big States, how we were going to be represented here--many times the Founding Fathers hit the pause button and they called in a person of faith to pray, to help them to find a way to progress, and they did again and again. When George Washington was inaugurated--not here but in New York City--at the end of the day they did not go off and have big parties; they actually went to church. In the early days of our country, worship services were actually held here, as some of us know. We start every day here in the Senate with a prayer, oftentimes delivered by retired Navy ADM Barry C. Black, our Chaplain, and today with a special guest, my pastor, Gregory Knox Jones from Westminster Presbyterian Church. Our leader Harry Reid has run a number of marathons. As it happens, so has our guest. He is a long-distance runner, literally and figuratively. He just ran his 10th marathon. He ran the New York Marathon on Sunday--I might say in good time. He won in the category of White men over 50 who pastor large Presbyterian churches on the east coast and who were former team captains from the Kansas State University football team. That category he won hands down. I congratulate him, and I am sure my colleagues do as well. He reminds us every Sunday of the idea that we have a moral imperative to look out for the least of those in our society, people who are hungry and need to be fed, people who have no health care. We have an obligation to look after them. He reminds us every Sunday that we have an obligation to look out for not only those who are in our community in Wilmington, DE, but way beyond our borders, such as those in Guatemala and also those who live in Israel and the West Bank of Jordan, to make sure justice is done in those places as well. He reminds us every Sunday of the Golden Rule for our neighbor: Treat others the way we want to be treated. We have to focus on the poor, widows and the orphans, and those who are in need. He reminds us to not just talk a good game but to actually deliver on our words. What does it say in James 2? You show me your faith by your words, I will show you my faith by my deeds. He reminds us of that every Sunday. To my colleagues, he reminds us we are servants. There is a great sermon in Mark chapter 10. The words are, as I recall--I will paraphrase him--for those who want to be a leader, you have to be a slave to all. For those who want to become first, you must become last. We thank you for those remembrances. Every week I go to a Bible study led by our Chaplain. On Sundays I try to show up in our own church. It reminds me of a double shot. You and I, Mr. President, are about the same age. We remember the days of Motown, the great song called ``Double Shot of My Baby's Love.'' Every week I get a double shot of God's love from these two, my pastor and our Chaplain. To his life partner Camilla and three children and six grandchildren, we are honored you are here. I want to close with the way he closes our sermons every Sunday, colleagues. He does it with these words. I hope I have them right. It goes something like this. When he lets us go and dismisses his flock he says these words: May the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit bless you, those you love, and the ones that no one loves. And the ones that no one loves. He sends us on our way. Those are great words for us today as well. We welcome him. I thank the leader for allowing me to say these words this morning.

Mr. CARPER

Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, while Senator Chiesa is still on the floor, I want to take a moment to say to him how much we have enjoyed getting to know him, work with him, and come away with a wonderful--not just a first impression but a lasting impression. Governor Christie did the State of New Jersey well by appointing Senator Chiesa to serve as the interim Senator. We had a similar experience with losing an elected Senator when Joe Biden was elected as Vice President and to the Senate at the same time. He had to choose between being the Senator from Delaware or Vice President. I don't know if he ever regrets it, but he made the choice to be our Vice President, as we know. The Governor of our State appointed Ted Kaufman to serve as the interim Senator for 2 years, and he was subsequently succeeded by Chris Coons when Chris was elected a couple of years ago. We have a tradition of folks who are appointed as interim Senators who turn out to do an extraordinary job. Sometimes I wonder--with tongue in cheek--if maybe that is not a better approach, in some cases, for populating this place with men and women from across the country. The Senator from New Jersey has been here for 5 tumultuous months, and he has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly--in some cases the very ugly. If we had more people who would bring Senator Chiesa's values and commitment to comity--not comedy with a ``d,'' but comity with a ``t''--communicating, and his willingness to compromise, not on principles but on policy, this would be a better place and a better country. As the chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, I say on behalf of Tom Coburn, ranking Republican--and on behalf of those of us who have the privilege to serve on that committee--what a privilege it has been for the Senator from New Jersey to be one of our members. We are joined on the floor by Senator Barrasso, and it has been my privilege to serve on the Environment and Public Works Committee with him. As Senator Barrasso knows, Jeff Chiesa came early and stayed late. He asked great questions and brought forth good issues--including the issue of human trafficking, which has reminded us in extraordinary ways of the terrible situation that is faced by millions of women and children in this country and around the world. That is a gift the Senator from New Jersey has brought to this body, and I think ultimately to our country. Senator Chiesa is going to leave us now and sail off into the sunrise, and we look forward to having our paths cross many times in the future--maybe even in Delaware on a summer vacation. My friend can bring his wife Jenny and his two kids. He is always welcomed in the first State. Good luck, God bless, and Godspeed. I thank my friend for serving our country and his State so well.