Bob Casey

Mr. CASEY

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I wish to speak about an issue that is--to say it is unfinished business is an understatement. The fact that we are standing here in the fall of 2016 and the Congress of the United States hasn't fulfilled its promise to coal miners is really an insult not only to coal miners who spent a lot of years in the mines in a lot of States, mine and other States, but it is also an insult to the country because their government--our government--made a promise to them more than a generation ago. Some people may remember the book ``The Red Badge of Courage.'' That was written by Stephen Crane, a great novelist who didn't even make it to the age of 30. He died in his late twenties. Stephen Crane is known for being a great novelist and known for writing ``The Red Badge of Courage,'' but one of the most compelling accounts he ever wrote or anyone has ever written about the dangers and horrors of a particular line of work was Stephen Crane's essay, just before the turn of the last century, about a coal mine in my hometown of Scranton. The name of the article published in Collier's magazine was ``In the Depths of the Coal Mine.'' I will not of course read all of it and recite major portions of it, but suffice it to say that Stephen Crane, a great novelist, went into a coal mine and reported what he saw there, not as a work of fiction but as a work of the harsh realities in nonfiction of what the miners were facing. In one part of the essay, he described the mine he was in when he descended all the way down. Of course, you only have to go down a very short distance before it is pitch black. You can't even see your hand in front of your face. He described the mine as a place of ``an inscrutable darkness, a soundless place of tangible loneliness. . . . '' Then he went on from there describing what he saw, describing young children working in the mines, children the ages of 10, 11, 12, and into their teens, working in the mines; describing the process of how the coal got out of the mines, mules pulling these carts full of coal. He described what my fraternal grandfather saw when he was there as a young boy at the age of 11, who entered a mine not too far away from this particular mine, just as Stephen Crane was writing. Stephen Crane concluded the essay by talking not only about all of the horrors of the mine but how miners could die in that mine. He described it at one point in summation as the 100 perils or the 100 dangers that those coal miners faced. Why do I raise that today? I realize coal mining in the present day or even 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, maybe even 30 years ago, was not nearly as dangerous as it was in the 1890s or the early part of the 1900s, but it is still very dangerous work today and has been for all these years. We have seen too many places where miners have been trapped and rescued or trapped and never rescued, killed, in places like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, and other places over more than a generation--in fact, many generations. Those miners worked there for, in many cases, more than 10 years or 20 years. Some of them also served our country in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, or beyond. They were promised by their government that they would have a pension. A number of us, in a bipartisan fashion, came together to support the Miners Protection Act, which would make sure that at a minimum the now 12,951 miners in Pennsylvania would get that pension they were promised and a smaller number--but a big number, in the thousands, in Pennsylvania--would also get the health care they have a right to expect. This was a promise by the Federal Government. It wasn't a ``we will try to'' or ``we hope to do it'' or ``we will make every effort to do it,'' it was a hard-and-fast, irrefutable promise, and it is time the Federal Government has delivered on that promise to those miners and their families. They went into the darkness and the danger of a coal mine in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. Some of them were younger than that. Some of them still do it and still engage in that work. They should have a right to expect that just as they kept their promise to their families that they would go to work every day and work hard and bring home a paycheck, just as they made a promise to their employer that they would go into that mine every day and do impossibly difficult work year after year and sometimes decade after decade--and they fulfilled that promise to their employer and to their families. Some of them made a promise to their country that not only would they work hard, but they would serve their country in war and combat. The question is, Will we keep our promise to them? Their promise was much tougher than our promise. All we have to do here to keep the promise is vote the right way, vote in the U.S. Senate to make sure miners get their pensions and health care and vote in the House in the same way. That is not hard to do--to walk into the well of the U.S. Senate or somewhere in this Chamber and put your hand up. That is pretty easy to fulfill the promise we made to them. This isn't a lot of money for these miners. In addition to Social Security, sometimes it is about 530 bucks a month for all of that work they did. So it is not hard to fulfill this promise that our country and our government made to them. These are people who are not in the newspaper every day, they are not on television. They may not have a lot of power. They may not be connected to people who are powerful or people who are wealthy. They are just hard-working people who did their job and deserve to have that promise fulfilled. I believe this is a matter of basic justice. It is basic justice whether we are going to fulfill that promise. Saint Augustine said a long time ago, hundreds of years ago: ``Without justice, what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers.'' If you apply that to today's terminology, a kingdom in some sense is like our government--a governing body for a nation. Without justice, what is a government but a great band of robbers. We owe people that basic justice, that promise. So let's fulfill our promise as Democrats, Republicans, and Independents in the U.S. Senate. Let's not allow inaction or other circumstances, political or otherwise, to prevent us from doing the right thing. Let's not rob these miners and their families of what they deserve, what they earned. We are not giving them anything. We are just voting the right way so they have a promise fulfilled. I would hope that before everyone goes home to do whatever folks will do--travel to their States or campaign or whatever they are going to do--I would hope, at a minimum, we would take action on a number of things we talked about today but in particular that we make sure families don't have to worry about the horror and threat of Zika, something we can prevent the spread of if we take action; that families will not be threatened by it in Florida or Puerto Rico or anywhere because beyond that, we don't get to the solution, the action. Of course, we hope we can go home and say we at least said to miners and their families: We have fulfilled the promise the government made to you generations ago. That is the least this body and the other body should do before we leave Washington. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the issue of terrorism financing, especially with regard to the terrorist group ISIS, known by some as ISIL, or other terminology referring to ISIS itself. Just days ago, we marked the 15th anniversary since the terrorist attack on our country on September 11, 2001. At the time, the United States had a fundamentally different understanding of terrorist groups, their ideologies, and their operations. In the years since, our national security apparatus has grown and adapted, responding to evolving threats and prioritizing the fight against terrorism and violent extremism. For example, prior to 9/11, the Department of the Treasury was not as significant in our fight against terrorism as it is today. An act of Congress established the Treasury Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in 2004. Since then, this office has grown into an essential component of our counterterrorism work. They are charged with the task of cutting off the financial resources that terrorist groups need to survive. The terrorist group ISIS presents challenges, a whole new set of challenges. Similar to Hezbollah, ISIS is part terrorist group, part army, and part criminal syndicate fueled by a hateful ideology and controlling communities in Syria and Iraq. We know that ISIS has sacked banks and still profits from the illicit sale of oil, antiquities, and other items through the black market while extorting the civilians under their control. ISIS uses this funding to conduct terror attacks and control territory in both Syria and Iraq. They use it to buy more weapons, ammunition, and components for improvised explosive devices known as IEDs. They use it to pay salaries for fighters and develop propaganda materials to spread their hateful ideology. In August of 2014, I joined with Senator Rubio, urging the administration to prioritize stopping ISIS's financial support. Soon after, the President announced his comprehensive strategy to degrade and defeat ISIS. Already, we have seen that the United States and coalition efforts, including airstrikes on oil trucks and cash storage sites, have had a meaningful impact on ISIS's finances. For example, in recent months, ISIS has had to reduce the salaries they pay their fighters. Our airstrikes have also taken key ISIS leaders, including their finance minister, off the battlefield. Just yesterday, Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken reported significant progress on rolling back ISIS's control of territory. In April, Maj. Gen. Peter Gersten, Deputy Commander of the Combined Joint Task Force, Operation Inherent Resolve, said: ``ISIS's ability to finance their war through oil refineries has been destroyed.'' That is what it says right here. Their ``ability to finance their war through oil refineries has been destroyed.'' This is a very significant step, since ISIS was heavily reliant on this source of income. The President also recently signed into law my bill, the Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act, which helped ensure that the United States is not a market for antiquities looted from Syria. This is important because a report by the CultureUnderThreat Task Force stated that ISIS may try to increase--increase--its antiquities trafficking activity as other revenue streams, such as oil sales, are cut off. ISIS is rewriting the rule book on how terrorist groups work. Despite the loss of territory in both Syria and Iraq, it continues to cultivate its affiliates in northern and western Africa, Central Asia, and other parts of the Middle East. It continues to sow the seeds of terror in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, further afield in Europe, Africa, and, of course, here in the United States. ISIS has figured out how to operate outside of the international financial system, lessening the impact of our banking sanctions that we have relied upon before. We may be able to defeat ISIS, but the problem of terrorist financing will stay with us. I took a trip in February to Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, which confirmed this assessment. That is why I believe we need a more robust, permanent, international architecture for countering terrorist financial networks. In June, I introduced the Stop Terrorist Operational Resources and Money Act--the so-called STORM Act--with Senator Johnny Isakson, and this is but a first step. This bill provides a strong set of tools to compel greater cooperation from partner nations. The STORM Act authorizes a new designation by the President called ``Jurisdiction of Terrorism Financing Concern,'' which can be triggered either by a lack of political will by a country or a lack of capacity to take on this problem. Some countries have the capacity to make meaningful progress but lack the political will to do so. I believe we should levy tough penalties that make countries reconsider their willful ignorance or tacit acceptance of terrorist financiers carrying their country's passports or operating in their territory. The penalties under the STORM Act include suspension of security or development assistance, blocking of arms sales, and blocking loans from the IMF or the World Bank. With some countries the challenge is a basic lack of capacity. The United States is well equipped to provide technical assistance and capacity building. We have done this before on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation. The STORM Act authorizes the administration to do the same with countering terrorism financing. Lastly, the STORM Act authorizes sanctions against financial institutions that do business with ISIS. This sends a signal that banks need to be vigilant in ensuring that they do not facilitate ISIS's financial operations. In the years since 9/11, terrorist groups have become ever more sophisticated in the way they finance their operations. We have to respond in kind, and it is right to expect all our partners to do the same. The bipartisan STORM Act sends a very clear message. If you fail to pull your weight when it comes to terrorism financing and cutting it off, there will be consequences. If you want to improve your record, the United States is here to help you. I urge my colleagues to support the STORM Act as an element of our fight against ISIS and a step toward building a more robust, international architecture to stop terrorism financing in the long run. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business.

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

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I will start today with some numbers. Unfortunately, some of these numbers are all too familiar to Americans concerned about the horror of gun violence. There are 3 numbers: 49, 280, and 99. Forty-nine, unfortunately, we know maybe more than the other two numbers. That is the number of people killed in Orlando just a couple of months ago in the worst act of gun violence we know of. So many Americans watched that horror and would have guessed that the Senate would have acted with a sense of purpose and urgency and even outrage to begin to take steps to reduce gun violence. Unfortunately, that didn't happen a couple of months ago. There were 49 killed in Orlando. We can recite the other communities in the country over the last not just number of years but even the last several years, and 49 is the Orlando number. I am not sure we hear enough about the other two numbers, which are the weekly death toll or the weekly toll of violence in cities and communities across the country. Two hundred and eighty is the number just in the last week who were shot across the country and 99 is the number killed. That is just 1 week. For purposes of my remarks, to set aside numbers for a moment and consider the human trauma, the human tragedy, the toll of that, it is almost incomprehensible, all of the families who have been destroyed by gun violence. For many of us, it is a news event that we watch on television and read about. We are horrified. We pray for the victims. We wish for action to be taken to at least begin--just begin to reduce gun violence, but then we move on. Most of us move on if we are not directly affected, but those families don't move on. Their lives are either destroyed forever or adversely impacted in some way forever, mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and friends. It is impossible to in any way describe the adverse impact this problem is having. There are some who would say there is not much we can do about it other than enforce the law, and that is their point of view. I don't happen to agree with that. I think we need to take the same approach to this issue as we have taken to any issue the American people have faced over many generations. Most of the time we come together with concerted action and begin to tackle a problem. It might take a year, it might take 5 years, it might take 25 years, but, as Americans, in most cases we come together and begin to address the problem. Only in Washington does that not happen anywhere near often enough. There are a couple of commonsense steps we can take right now-- meaning next week or the week after or in the very near term--commonsense steps that have wide support across the country in both parties. One would be to finally say: Why not vote in accordance with not just a national consensus but actually a consensus here in the Senate on background checks? Why would we allow these gaping holes in our system to remain wide open so that almost anyone can get a gun? No matter how dangerous, no matter how much a threat they are to society, they can get a gun because of these gaping holes in our background check system. No one disputes that there are these holes. No one disputes that they lead to unnecessary death and violence. But we haven't been able to get enough Members in the Senate to come together to support background checks. We should try to do that again. I don't know why we don't have more votes. Let's keep voting until we get enough momentum. Second, this idea of terrorists whom we made a judgment about--that we either know they are terrorists or we suspect they are terrorists based upon all kinds of evidence--and we say: That category of people will not be able to get on an airplane. Guess what. When we did that after 9/11, that was our policy or part of our larger policy against terrorism. We came together and said that those people can't get on airplanes. Guess what. We haven't had planes fly into buildings in the country since 9/11 because we came together, we made a decision, we acted on it, and we stopped at least that part of the practices terrorists engage in. But when it comes to this issue of reducing--even beginning to reduce gun violence, we haven't had the same consensus. So we have a circumstance now where suspected terrorists are deemed too dangerous to fly in a plane but not to own a weapon of war. So, virtually, under the policy that is in place now, because the Senate hasn't acted, because we haven't had an act of Congress, there are folks who are either suspected terrorists or terrorists who can't get on an airplane but can buy any gun they want or obtain any gun they want and there is no legal prohibition. That makes no sense to anyone who is serious about this issue of preventing violence and reducing gun violence. How about individuals who are convicted of violent hate crimes that involve the use of force being allowed to get a gun? Why would we wait until that individual commits a felony with a use of force that in many cases involves the use of force with a firearm? Why would we wait for that violent person to go down that pathway, someone who is convicted of a hate crime that involves domestic abuse or some other act of violence or the use of force? So I think a number of these strategies are commonsense steps we can take that would have zero impact on the right to bear arms. We are not talking about law-abiding citizens; we are talking about people who pose a demonstrated threat to people in our community and beyond. But so far that hasn't happened. I hope we will schedule some votes. How can that be harmful, to keep voting on such an important issue until we move forward? So that is something we can work on before we leave here. There is no rule that says we have to leave at the end of next week. We could work the week after that and the week after that and begin to make progress on a whole range of issues, including gun violence. Of course, I hope that will include finally getting to a conclusion on Zika funding to address this threat to pregnant women and their children. We should finally get that done, and maybe we can get that done with the spending bill next week. That would be great progress. But unless we act, we leave on the table this horror of gun violence where there has been virtually no progress for years--not just months but for years.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I wish to welcome the visit of Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj to Philadelphia on September 23, 2016. This is a truly historic occasion. President Elbegdorj's visit marks the beginning of an important chapter in the relationship between our two countries and between the people of Pennsylvania and the people of Mongolia. Despite the geographic distance between our countries, we have in common the pursuit of a healthy democratic system of governance and of stability and economic prosperity in the region. I have no doubt that, during his visit, President Elbegdorj will be impressed with the city of Philadelphia, the musical talent of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is a truly global city, and the people of Philadelphia are excellent cultural ambassadors. I am pleased to share with my colleagues that, in 2017, the Philadelphia Orchestra plans to embark on its tour of Asia, which will include an unprecedented visit to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I want to convey my gratitude and appreciation for the Philadelphia Orchestra, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphians who are making this important visit possible. I want to express my best wishes to President Elbegdorj, Foreign Minister Tsend Munkh-Orgil, Ambassador Bulgaa Altangerel, and the rest of the delegation for a successful and productive visit to Philadelphia.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, today I wish to honor the 13th president of Duquesne University, Ken Gormley, a renowned lawyer, scholar, teacher, and author. A native western Pennsylvanian, Ken has dedicated his life to public service and education. He was sworn in as president of Duquesne University on July 1, 2016, after serving as interim dean and dean of Duquesne's School of Law from 2008 until 2015. The inauguration of Duquesne University's 13th dean, and just its third lay dean, highlights the impact this 138-year-old institution has made on the city of Pittsburgh and its students, displaying a constant and deep commitment to Spiritan values and academic rigor. Founded in 1878 by the Congregation of the Holy Spirit to educate the children of immigrant steel mill workers, Duquesne now enrolls nearly 10,000 students from throughout the country and the world. Ken first began his tenure at Duquesne in 1994 after a career in private practice and teaching at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where he founded a successful legal writing program for minority students and women returning to professional school after raising their children. Under his leadership as dean of Duquesne's School of Law, the institution ascended to the top tier of law schools and has become nationally ranked. Ken's commitment to public service is deeply rooted in western Pennsylvania. From 1998--2001, he served as mayor of Forest Hills, PA, where he helped to establish a community development corporation to focus on the borough's business corridor. He has also served as the president of the Allegheny County Bar Association, where he helped establish the Gender Equality Institute to work to advance women in the legal profession. Ken Gormley earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He quickly earned a reputation as a leading constitutional scholar, writing for such esteemed publications as the Stanford Law Review, the Rutgers Law Journal, the Pennsylvania Lawyer, and Politico. He is an expert on the U.S. Supreme Court and has testified before the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee and here in the U.S. Senate. Ken is also an accomplished author, having penned the biography of Archibald Cox, one of the great constitutional lawyers of the 20th century, for whom he served as a teaching assistant at Harvard. The book was awarded the 1999 Bruce K. Gould Book Award for outstanding publication relating to the law and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Ken's most recent book, ``The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History,'' draws upon the Nation's top experts on the American Presidency and the U.S. Constitution to tell the incredibly important story of how each President has confronted and shaped the Constitution. I am proud to rise today to honor Dean Ken Gormley and to recognize his wife, Laura, and their children Carolyn, Luke, Rebecca, and Madeleine. I thank Ken for his decades of service to Pennsylvania and this Nation and wish him luck for his significant work to come on behalf of Duquesne University.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I wish to honor Mr. Michael E. Kunz for his 54 years of extraordinary service as Clerk of Court for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. In 1962, Mr. Kunz was appointed as a deputy clerk following his graduation from Father Judge High School in Philadelphia and went on to receive both his bachelor of science degree and his master of business administration degree from St. Joseph's University. Throughout his career, Mr. Kunz showed an unparalleled enthusiasm for innovation and a profound dedication to ensuring the accessibility of our justice system for all Americans. I would like to take this time to reflect on his service and on the example he set for those who seek to serve their country. As one of the longest serving Federal court clerks in history, Mr. Kunz represents the growth of the court administrative infrastructure and the importance of the clerk's office in the operations of the court. Mr. Kunz spent much of his career overseeing the expansion of the Eastern District's facilities in Allentown, Easton, Philadelphia, and Reading to accommodate a larger Federal caseload and increased numbers of article III judges, magistrate judges, and court employees. He introduced innovations that allowed the court to do its work more efficiently and transparently than ever before. He helped to pioneer 17 out of the 26 nationally supported automation systems in the Federal judiciary, as well as advances in electronic case filing, docketing of cases, and fiscal management. Mr. Kunz supervised the introduction of the electronic courtroom; at present, 22 courtrooms in the Eastern District have full electronic capabilities. To ensure accuracy of court records, he implemented digital audio recording systems in all courtrooms in the Eastern District. Such systems allow litigants and members of the public who may not be able to order an expensive transcript or travel to a courthouse to access judicial information in an affordable, timely manner. Mr. Kunz demonstrated his commitment to improving the courts and preserving their memories by serving on a number national committees and advisory boards. In 1989, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist appointed him to the Advisory Committee to the Board of the Federal Judicial Center concerning the development of programs relating to the history of the judicial branch. Mr. Kunz served on committees overseeing court statistics, the development of automatic case management systems, changes to the decentralization of the budget and to the Judicial Salary Plan, and is a founding member of the Historical Society for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. In 1994, he received the Director's Award from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, just one of many commendations he received throughout his career. For over 50 years Mr. Kunz has stood for equality and efficiency in the justice system and embodied the selfless character of a true public servant. On behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I want to thank Mr. Michael E. Kunz for his decades of service and wish him the best for his retirement in the years ahead.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, we have a problem in our court system. We currently have 83 judicial vacancies, and 29 of these are considered judicial emergency vacancies because they have been vacant so long or because the case backlog is so severe. There is a simple reason we have this problem: Senate Republicans refuse to do their job and confirm judicial nominees. This is the case from the Supreme Court, with the outrageous and unprecedented obstruction of Judge Merrick Garland, to the Federal Courts of Appeals, where it took more than a year for Judge Felipe Restrepo to be confirmed to the Third Circuit, down to the District Courts, where the number of vacancies has skyrocketed under Republican leadership. We haven't always had this problem, and there is no good reason we have it now. Eight years ago this week, when Democrats controlled the Senate and President Bush was in the White House, there were a total of 39 vacancies in the court system. In the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency, the Senate confirmed 68 judges, compared to just 22 judges confirmed to date in President Obama's final 2 years. Pennsylvania currently has five pending judicial nominees. One, Rebecca Haywood, is an excellent nominee for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She is extremely well-qualified and deserves timely consideration and a vote. The other four are district court nominees, all distinguished judges nominated with bipartisan support from my colleague Senator Toomey. Two of these nominees, Susan Baxter and Marilyn Horan, passed out of the Judiciary Committee with unanimous support by voice vote. They are among the 24 judicial nominees on the Executive Calendar awaiting confirmation votes. These nominees have been vetted and unanimously deemed qualified by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and there is simply no legitimate reason to block their confirmation. They deserve an immediate vote. Pennsylvania's other two distinguished district court nominees, John Younge and Robert Colville, are equally qualified to be excellent Federal judges; yet, inexplicably, Senate Republicans have blocked them from even getting a committee vote. So they remain, for no legitimate reason, stuck with the 26 other judicial nominees awaiting committee consideration. This extreme level of obstructionism has serious consequences for Americans seeking access to the courthouse. In 2015, 361,689 cases were filed in the U.S. district courts, increasing the total number of pending cases by 3 percent in just a single year to 438,808. In Pennsylvania alone, 16,609 new cases were filed in our three districts in 2015. How are the courts supposed to give full and fair consideration to all of these cases if they are understaffed? The glacial pace of judicial confirmations is, quite simply, hurting the system of justice in this country. The obstruction is not only preventing access to justice by creating huge backlogs of cases, but is also damaging the integrity of the judiciary by politicizing nominees who should remain independent and nonpartisan. Senate Republicans need to do their job and immediately schedule votes to confirm the pending judicial nominees in Pennsylvania and around the country.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Stephen Dietz, a fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the duration of my remarks.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, let me start today by commending the remarks by the junior Senator from South Carolina. Throughout this week and several--I guess it is now three times this week--his words and his passion have both inspired us and informed us, but I think he has also challenged all of us to do more for our country. I am grateful that I was here for his remarks today. I commend him for those words and for what he talked about on the floor today.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, this week we are marking the 1-year anniversary of the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This week, 1 year ago, my colleagues and I began the enormous task of reading, analyzing, and making a decision about whether or not we would support the deal. For me, that task took 6 weeks of careful study, several classified briefings, countless meetings with experts and conversations with constituents. As I wrote, on September 1 last year, ``This agreement will substantially constrain the Iranian nuclear program for its duration, and compared with all realistic alternatives, it is the best option available to us at this time.'' We were under no delusions that the JCPOA would be a panacea for all of our problems with Iran. Rather, it was envisioned and designed to meaningfully address one major issue: Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability. In my decision, I wrote, ``We need not, and indeed should not, trust the Iranian regime.'' On the 1-year anniversary of the deal, that statement remains true. One of the strengths of the JCPOA is a robust, arguably unprecedented, monitoring and verification mechanism. We need to fully fund the International Atomic Energy Agency in support of its efforts to monitor Iran's compliance with the JCPOA; that is why I supported an increase to the U.S. voluntary contribution to the IAEA in this year's budget. We also need to see greater transparency from the IAEA. On July 6, Ambassador Dennis Ross wrote, ``Recent reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency indicate that Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA, but the level of information they provide is dramatically less than that found in previous IAEA reports on Iran's nuclear program.'' Specifically, Ambassador Ross identified several key elements of the deal that were not included in the IAEA's most recent report: the amount of low enriched uranium currently stockpiled in Iran, the number of centrifuges still operating at Natanz, and research and development activity on centrifuges, to name a few. I urge the administration to work with the P5+1 and the IAEA to increase the transparency of these reports. If Iran is indeed complying, there should be no need to hide the details. My decision was also predicated on the assumption that Iran would continue to foment instability and support terrorism in the region. The JCPOA did not address this issue, and likewise, it in no way curtailed our ability to sanction and hold accountable terrorist groups and facilitators. These tough sanctions remain in full force and effect. Iran continues its aggressive and destabilizing actions in the region, including by providing robust financial and material support to its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as to the murderous Assad regime in Syria and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Iran unequivocally remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. The Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah recently stated, ``Hezbollah's budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, come from the Islamic Republic of Iran.'' We know that Hezbollah is seeking advanced rocket capability, which could be used against Israel. We know that Hezbollah has become the ground force of the Assad regime in many parts of Syria. Last week, I introduced bipartisan legislation with Senator Isakson called the Stop Terrorist Resources and Money, or STORM Act. This bill will authorize the President to designate countries that are not doing enough to stop terrorist financiers and facilitators as ``Jurisdictions of Terrorism Financing Concern.'' With that designation comes significant penalties or the requirement to enter into a technical assistance agreement with the United States to improve their capability to investigate and prosecute terrorist financiers. Although Iran is already designated a state sponsor of terrorism, the President could use this new authority to hold accountable jurisdictions where Iranian terrorist proxies and their supporters operate with relative impunity. When the Iranians complain that they are not getting the influx of European business that they anticipated following the deal, maybe they need to take a hard look at their support for terrorism. With the sanctions on Iran for terrorism and human rights still firmly in force, it is no wonder that European financial institutions and other businesses are wary of doing business in Iran. One year on from the signing of the JCPOA, I continue to believe that implementation of this agreement is firmly in our strategic interests. We knew that implementation would be difficult and that the Iranians could not be trusted. Rigorous congressional oversight has been critical in this first year. We have pushed for increased sanctions on illicit ballistic missile activity, and the administration responded. We have tightened sanctions on Hezbollah and introduced new legislation to counter terrorism financing more broadly. We have advocated for a transformative investment in our defense relationship with Israel, which continues to face threats from Iran and its proxies. We will continue to ask tough questions and demand answers. We will also continue to prepare for the possibility that Iran may violate the agreement. This means maintaining the legal architecture that would be needed to snap back sanctions in the event of a violation; I have said that I will support a clean reauthorization of the Iran Sanctions Act. This also means toughening our deterrence policy, both here in Congress and in the White House, to ensure, as I wrote in my statement last year, ``The Iranian regime should not doubt our capability and willingness to respond swiftly should they attempt to break out and develop a nuclear weapon.'' One year after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was signed, we should redouble our commitment to ensuring that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapons capability and be firm in our resolve to counter their aggressive actions in the Middle East. But we should also commend the wisdom of this body for allowing the agreement to go forward, as it remains the best available alternative to constrain Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Mr. CASEY

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

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the Recovering Missing Children Act. This bill provides law enforcement with an important tool to help find missing or exploited children. Each year more than 200,000 children are abducted by their parents or other close relatives, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. In many of these cases, the IRS has information that could aid law enforcement in locating a child who has been abducted by a family member. A study by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that in more than a third of the cases reviewed, the IRS has tax returns on file which used the Social Security number of a missing child. Of those, 46 percent had a new address on file, for a 13.4- percent total. However, the IRS cannot share this protected, confidential information with law enforcement officials since the Tax Code prevents the IRS from sharing the information unless specifically authorized as an exception to nondisclosure. Senator Enzi and Senator Klobuchar and I have introduced bipartisan legislation, the Recovering Missing Children Act, to aid in the recovery of missing children by providing a new tool to help law enforcement officials locate missing children and their alleged abductors. The bill amends the Internal Revenue Code to permit the disclosure of relevant tax information explicitly for the purpose of aiding criminal investigations into missing or exploited children. Specifically, the act ensures that select taxpayer information will only be released to law enforcement officials as part of a legitimate investigation or a judicial proceeding under the orders of a Federal judge. The act amends the law to allow for Federal law enforcement to share information on a limited basis with State and local law enforcement that are part of the team directly involved in investigating and prosecuting such cases. Many investigations into missing and exploited children are conducted at the State and local level. The act provides a commonsense fix that maintains an existing balance between taxpayer privacy and judicious release of information that will make a meaningful difference to a child's safety. For the families who are affected, the reality that their child is missing is devastating. If there is a step we can take to increase the likelihood that the missing child will be returned home, then we have an obligation to act. This is such a step. I proudly have worked with both Senators Klobuchar and Enzi on this important issue since 2011, and I am glad to have the endorsement of both the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the National Association of Police Organizations. If the provisions in this bill can bring one child back to their rightful families safe and sound, it is worth it. This will assist those who have been searching and spending sleepless nights worried about their missing children and do it in a way that doesn't undermine Americans' privacy. With that, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 3209 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. CASEY. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. CASEY. I further ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. For anyone within the sound of my voice related to Senator Murphy, my question is a basic one, but I think it is fundamental to his efforts. I will address Senator Murphy and say that your efforts and the efforts of those you have worked with, not only today but on other days--Senator Blumenthal, who is with you today, has been working so hard on these issues, and Senator Booker. The three of you have been--if there is a way to express inspiration beyond just using that terminology, I would like to hear it, because it has been so--an inspiration. My basic question is this, and I will ask you to hold your answer for just a couple of minutes. My question is this: How do you stay focused? How do you stay inspired to continue this fight, which for you hasn't been just hours long or days long or weeks, but it has literally been for years? I will ask forbearance for just a couple of minutes to give you a sense of part of the motivation that I have. I am holding here--it will be difficult to see from far away, but this is a one-page tear sheet from the Wall Street Journal dated Monday, December 17, 2012. It says at the top: ``Connecticut School Shooting.'' The headline below that, in larger letters, says: ``Shattered Lives.'' I, obviously, won't read it all, but this has been on my desk since that week. We can see it is a bit yellowed, and every story here has an element of inspiration that is almost unimaginable. I mention that because I am from Pennsylvania. I don't represent the State of Connecticut, but this tragedy in Connecticut, at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School, stays with all of us for different reasons--maybe because some of us are parents, maybe because we were struck by the gravity of the enormity and brutality of that crime on what so many of us have called that awful day. But, I will tell you, I don't think I have been as affected by a news event other than 9/11 in my life, and certainly not one that ever affected in the way that it had a connection to what I would do and how I would vote. So this tragedy in Newtown in 2012 directly affected the way I would vote. It changed my thinking in so many different ways. I won't walk through all of that tonight. But as much as these stories of these children inspired me then and continue to inspire me, I don't want to add another set of stories to my desk or keep adding to the chronicle of suffering and the chronicle of murder and destruction that gun violence will leave with us. Today the Washington Post--and I will just open this up for illustrative purposes--had one page and then another page, and they needed two pages of it, obviously, because of the number of victims. I didn't count, but if that is not 49, it is close to 49. Each of them has a story as well. So just as the children whose stories were summarized in the Wall Street Journal in 2012, today's Washington Post--and I am sure many other papers--have these stories. We don't have time to go through every story, but I was inspired by the lives of those children, what they meant to their families and what their life meant to their community, and how in their very young lives they had already begun to achieve significant things in their life, either by making their sisters or brothers happy or by comforting their sisters and brothers and family and friends. I am sure the same will be said of those who lost their lives in Orlando. Let me give you two examples in the interest of time. This is on page A-11 in the Washington Post today. It is one of the many vignettes. I mentioned Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old, who happened to be from Philadelphia. I talked about her earlier today. She was third in her class and on her way to a basketball scholarship, and she happened to be in Orlando, FL. She was killed. She was a remarkable young woman. I wish I knew her, but she had just graduated from West Catholic in Philadelphia. Here is someone as well who died in Orlando. Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old, is one of the oldest on these 2 pages. Many of them listed, as many people here know, were 25 and 21 and 18 and 24 and 22, and on and on. But here are the first two lines of this vignette about Brenda Lee Marquez McCool. A two-time cancer survivor, McCool was first diagnosed with cancer about 8 years ago. This is what her ex- husband Robert Presley said: ``The doctor gave her a year to live. She lived eight, until this nonsense.'' She lived 8 years after a diagnosis of cancer. So her life and her fight to overcome cancer should be a reminder for us that this is a long fight. She lost her life ultimately, but she beat cancer for a long time, even though she lost her life this weekend. I will give you one more. There are so many more, but we just don't have time tonight to go through all. Shane Evan Tomlinson was 33. He was working that night, playing in a band, and he left there to go to the club, to be able to relax a little bit after working. He was a member of an all-male gospel choir at the House of Blues in Orlando. Again, he was 33 years old. So I don't want to keep adding to this chronicle. None of us want to. We all want to figure out a way to make progress on this issue, to finally say to ourselves that as Americans we can come together and take even incremental steps. But, I think, for this week that would be significant. As all three Senators--Senator Murphy, Senator Blumenthal, and Senator Booker--have reminded us, what we are asking for here is a model of reasonableness. We are asking for a simple solution to a very discreet but horrific problem. If you are too dangerous to get on an airplane, if we have made that determination, why would you be allowed to have a firearm? Why would a terrorist or potential terrorist be allowed to have a firearm? Let's solve that one problem. Then, of course, there is the problem that we have tried to solve in 2013--background checks, which, at last count, was about a 90-10 issue in the United States of America. This is a reasonable and sensible set of requests, just two in number. I can go on with others, but I won't. Let me just conclude with Sandy Hook for a moment. We all know the horror of what happened there and the impact it had on all of our lives, but Senator Booker reminded us yesterday that in so many communities and in so many inner cities in America they have large numbers of gun deaths every single week, and in some communities every single day. I won't mention a list of cities or communities, to not be exhaustive, but I think people know them. We have to figure out a way to stay focused on those communities even as we focus on the horror and gravity and dimensions of what happened in Orlando or Newtown or Sandy Hook or so many other places. Let's think about this just for a moment, before I, at long last, ask my question or ask for the answer to Senator Murphy. How about school shootings since Sandy Hook? What do we find there? Since Sandy Hook, a gun has been fired on school grounds nearly once a week for a total of 188 school shootings, including several in my home State of Pennsylvania, according to data compiled by Every Town For Gun Safety. This has happened weekly since Newtown. It is not as if we have these events and we focus on them and then the problem recedes as we recede in our action or lack of action, in our focus, in our determination, in our sense of urgency. The problem does not go away. The problem is not going away. If anything, it is growing in dimension. Just look at the data on how this problem has grown since the 1960s and 1970s. It just didn't happen in those days. It didn't even happen much in the 1980s, but if you look at 1990 forward, you see incident after incident. In 2000 and forward, it goes on and on. So if anything, it is accelerating at a pace that no one--no one in this body--should be content about. So that means that every week--every single week--there is some schoolchild or school student. This goes all the way, obviously, to colleges and universities. So every single week some group of Americans who happen to be children or young adults are in a school setting of one kind or another, and they are either the direct victim or the victim who lives through that horror and has the imprint of that horror for the rest of their lives. That is the reality. So to anyone who thinks this is just a random occurrence, go to a school in a lot of places and talk to people in schools and go to our cities. I think we could all learn a lot. I want to just mention a few more statistics because we were talking about children. Numbers don't ever paint the right picture, but they are instructive on a night like tonight. I live in a State which has a proud tradition of support for the Second Amendment--and I mean really strong, like maybe no other State in the country, maybe one or two others but not many--a strong tradition of hunting and sport. Hunting is almost a part of not just the culture of our State but part of family life. Fathers and sons go out and hunt, and I am sure fathers and daughters or mothers and daughters. It is part of growing up in some communities. They go out and hunt, they participate in a tradition, they work to do it safely, they do a lot of training, and they pass on from one generation to another not just the experience but the rules and the way to do things. We have as strong a tradition as any of the country. By some estimates, there are about a million gun owners. I don't know where that puts us in the rankings, but it is no lower than second or third or fourth in the country. We have a lot of people in our State that not only value the Second Amendment, but the benefits of that amendment for their lives are significant because they get to own a gun to hunt and in some cases obviously to protect themselves or their families. This is what the numbers tell us about just gun violence in a State like Pennsylvania as it relates to children only. According to the Pennsylvania Trauma Systems Foundation, every year about 400 children-- meaning individuals under the age of 20. That is the cutoff. They don't say under 18. This is under 20, so children, and I guess you could say young adults. Four hundred are treated for firearm injuries in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. This number does not count the children who die at the scene, like most firearm suicide victims, so it doesn't even count some young people. In 2013, there were 1,378 firearm-related injuries in Pennsylvania. Almost half of these were persons under the age of 25 years old. In that same year of 2013, the same year as Newtown, 1,670 children under 18 died by gunshot and an additional 9,718 were injured. So in just 1 year in one State, 1,670 children died by gunshot, 9,718 were injured. That is the reality. When we consider the gravity of this problem in our cities, in communities of all kinds, and most tragically in Orlando, FL, we know it is a problem of great significance, dimension, and complexity. We know this is not easy to solve, but we know our country has faced huge challenges in the past. We are the country that won World War II. Without our participation, the Allies could never have won. That is who America was. That was a pretty tough problem, trying to defeat the Axis powers and trying to take on these powerful military machines, but we figured out a way to do that as a nation. We all came together. We all came together after 9/11. It is a complicated problem involving rights, having to stand in line and say: I am going to participate in this process to make our airlines safe so we don't have airplanes flying into buildings. That was a big problem, but we did not surrender to the terrorists after 9/11. We came together and figured out a solution to a problem. We haven't solved the terrorism problem. We have certainly solved the problem of preventing terrorists from taking an airplane and flying it into a building, not only to kill thousands of people but to create untold kinds of fear. Where does that leave us with the children of Sandy Hook? Well, I will take another day to read some of the stories, but let me just leave you with one thought. I want to ask Senator Murphy a question after I read this. One of the children killed that day--and every child's story is worthy of mention, but in the interest of time I will highlight, and it will be a highlight of one, Caroline Previdi. Caroline was 6 when she lost her life at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Among other things they wrote: Caroline loved to draw and dance. Her smile brought happiness to everyone she touched. That is what her obituary read at the age of 6. She will be remembered for accompanying a nervous kindergartner on the schoolbus. Caroline, a first grader, sat with Karen Dryer's son Logan on the bus each day. This is what Mrs. Dryer said about Caroline: She sat with her son Logan so that he wasn't scared. That is what a grateful mother said about little Caroline and about what she did before she died. What does that mean for tonight? If little Caroline, at the age of 6, could comfort someone younger than she was on the bus every day, knowing he was afraid, knowing he was scared or worried about what was happening in his life, a kindergartner on a bus--if Caroline could do that and show not just a measure of courage but really a measure of responsibility--she took responsibility in her young life to help solve the one problem that one of her classmates or ``almost'' classmate, that one of her friends was having--I think we should take inspiration from Caroline's sense of responsibility. She thought apparently it was her duty to help someone younger than she was and to give them comfort, to give a measure of security. In her young life, in that little world that she was, she figured out a way to be responsible. I hope that people across this Chamber will do more than just kind of casually review these amendments, casually think about this issue, and just stay in your lane, which the lane is, for a number of people here, the usual response is no laws will change this. I am glad we didn't say that after 9/11, by the way. It is a good thing we didn't do that as a nation--no laws will change us, no policy will change us. I hope in light of what Caroline has taught us that we will all be responsible, serious, and sober about what we do here, and we will examine our conscience, to use an old expression. Is there something you can do with your vote this week, next week, next month, or next year that will help solve a part of this problem? Because this is a big problem which has not gone away, and every one of our lives is going to be affected by it in some way or another going forward. Many of us have seen too much of this in our States and in our communities. Finally, Senator Murphy, I will ask you this question. I will not guess at the answer. In light of those stories--and you know the stories, you know the families personally, I do not--how do you stay focused on a goal, the goal that you are pursuing and we are talking about tonight, and how do you stay inspired in the midst of and in the absence of significant progress?

Mr. CASEY. I thank the Senator from Connecticut. The question I pose will center on not just why we are here, what the two measures are we are hoping to get a vote on, but why we seek to have support for those--first, to have support to get a vote in and of itself, and then to get support from our colleagues. I want to take us back to two scenes, one I referred to earlier today but one that I had just remembered tonight that is a painful memory for a lot of people in Pennsylvania. I did want to say this first as well. I had mentioned earlier a Pennsylvanian who had lost her life in Orlando in the terrible incident of this weekend. What I did not mention was a second Pennsylvanian, and I should have. The second person from Pennsylvania who was killed in that murderous rampage at the nightclub was a graduate of McCaskey High School in Lancaster, PA. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25, known to his friends as ``Drake,'' was a native of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, according to his Facebook page. It also says he studied law in Puerto Rico. It goes on from there to talk about his life, but I did want to pay tribute to him as well. He was one of the 49 killed in addition to Akyra Murray, who I mentioned before. She was only 18 years old and lost her life as well. The two scenes I wanted to bring us back to include, of course, Charleston, SC. We are remembering that day of horror as well. We had an incident this weekend in a nightclub. In Charleston it was in a place of worship, and in Sandy Hook it was in a school, a school classroom. All of these settings were where people, I think, should have some reasonable expectation of some measure of safety, but even now that is at risk because of the horror of gun violence. Today, I mentioned earlier as well: Let's remember the national number. By one estimate, 33,000 lives are lost each year through gun violence. That is why when you add up all the well-known incidents, it doesn't add up to anywhere near 33,000 because as the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Booker, reminded us, there are a lot of places in between where the numbers go not just into the thousands but literally the tens of thousands, because of what happens on our streets day after day. But here is the reason I raise Charleston. We know that took place at the Emanuel AME Church, often called ``Mother Emanuel,'' in Charleston. Nine people were shot in their place of worship by a young man with hate in his heart. That was a hate crime murder--certainly an act of domestic terrorism. It had no connection to anything international, nothing about ISIS or international connections. The second incident I will mention has that same characteristic, hate and murder domestically, nothing having to do with some inspiration from a terrorist organization. But here is the remarkable feature of what happened after Charleston, what some of the family members did. They were so courageous, just like so many others of these families who have lived through this. After the massacre, the relatives of those killed attended a bond hearing where the accused shooter appeared. They didn't attack him, they didn't yell at him, they didn't scream at him, they didn't convey their justifiable anger, even outrage, which we all would consider a justifiable feeling of vengeance, of score settling. However you want to call it, they didn't do that. Instead, what did they do? They forgave him. Nadine Collier, the daughter of Ethel, who had been killed in the church that day, said to the killer: You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul. So said Nadine Collier, a remarkable testament to forgiveness, to mercy, which is almost superhuman. I am not sure I could have done that. I am not sure many people could have. She wasn't the only one. Other relatives took their turn one after another expressing pain but always showing grace and praying for mercy. None of us or very few of us--and I count myself among those who could not--could do that in that circumstance. That was Charleston, SC. Let me take it back in time. I was so moved that Senator Baldwin mentioned, when she was doing that chronology, that she started in 2006, 10 years ago. I mentioned Lancaster County before, Lancaster, PA. The first incident she mentioned was so-called Nickel Mines, a small community in Lancaster, this Amish community. It is this great community of faith of industriousness people and a community that is bonded together by their work ethic, by their faith, and by their families. Even that tranquil community--that community which has enjoyed for generations a kind of tranquility that many other communities would not--was subjected to violence. Ten years ago, this coming October, a man entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, PA, with a cache of weapons, including a 9mm pistol, two shotguns, a stun gun, two knives, two cans of gunpowder, and 600 rounds of ammunition, into this small community of the Amish community. He executed five girls and wounded six others before taking his own life. It is hard to comprehend the horror of that scene, just like so many others we talked about. Yet on the very same day, as the shooter committed this heinous act, a grieving grandfather told young relatives: ``We must not think evil of this man.'' ``We must not think evil of this man.'' I mentioned both of those scenes, scenes of the kind of bloodshed, tragedy, and horror that we cannot even imagine. I certainly cannot. But in both instances you had very close relatives in the immediate aftermath of the killings expressing mercy and forgiveness. Nadine Collier saying: But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul. And the Amish grandfather said: ``We must not think evil of this man.'' We are not asking anyone in this Chamber to do anything like that. We are not asking anyone here to forgive someone who just murdered one of their family members. We are not asking someone in this Chamber to do something which is, in a sense, superhuman. We are just asking people to support two votes. In this place, when you are a U.S. Senator you are judged on a number of scales, but you are mostly judged on how you vote. That is what we are supposed to be doing here--how you vote. And that becomes the scorecard of your work. That becomes one of the measures against which people will make a judgment about you. So we are not asking people to do something that is all that difficult. I know there might be some political difficulty to it but, come on, this isn't like having to forgive someone who just murdered your loved one and you are standing in front of them. This isn't as difficult as what the families of all these places mentioned went through--Nickel Mines, PA, all the way through Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and all the way to Orlando, FL. We are not asking people to do anything very difficult. All you have to do is put your hand up and then put it down twice if you are going to vote for it. And if you want to vote against it, so be it. But at least put your hand up to allow a vote on two simple measures that will begin--just begin--the long journey to rectify a substantial national problem that takes 33,000 people every year. All we are asking for is a start, a foot in the door, maybe even a toe in the door--but just a start to do something about this problem we have to reduce this number. No one can convince me that the greatest country in the history of the human race cannot begin to tackle this problem. This idea that there is nothing we can do, that all we need to do is enforce the law just doesn't make sense anymore. It really, really doesn't if you look at the facts. In essence, there is nothing we can do, some say in Washington, other than enforce the law and just hope that good law enforcement every day of the week is going to save 33,000 lives. That is not logical. It is not tenable based upon the facts. To me, it is unacceptable. So I would ask the Senator from Connecticut, a very simple question. What are we asking people to do, Members of the Senate, in the next couple of days and asking them as well as we are asking Members of the Senate to do something which puts them in any risk beyond political risk? If you could just reiterate for us what is at stake here, why we need to take at least these two actions, and how we can best begin to solve this problem.

Mr. CASEY. I want to thank Senator Murphy.

Mr. CASEY. I thank the Senator from Connecticut who has taken the floor to take a stand for those who lost their lives in Orlando and so many other places. I know he has lived through that horror, representing folks in Connecticut, who went through the horror in 2012. I have a question about why we have to take action. I want to set forth a predicate first. The numbers here are just startling when you consider in the context of just the last couple of days--49 dead and so many others--so many others are grievously, and I hope not permanently, injured and all the devastation that means. Another number that we probably don't talk about enough and it is a much larger number. It is a number above 33,000--33,000 Americans lose their lives to gun violence every year. That is hard to comprehend. We have lost numbers like that in wars that go over multiple years. So 33,000 is the number. We have to ask ourselves why in the face of that whether it is Orlando or Newtown or Aurora or Tucson or go down the list of mass shootings. By the way, mass shootings were not a part of American life when I was growing up in 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This is a rather new phenomenon--a very recent vintage. But when a tragedy and a crime like this happens and the scale of it is so immense, we have to ask ourselves, is there something we can do? The answer by a lot of Democrats has been, yes, we can do a number of things. We can say finally that we can ban military-style weapons so we don't have to have them on our streets. We can take action instead of just debating and expressing solidarity and sympathy and mourning. That is appropriate, but in addition to that, we can take action. We can take action on military-style weapons. We can take action on limiting the amount of clips and the amount of bullets any one person can fire at any one time. I am convinced, for example, based on the evidence we saw in Newtown at Sandy Hook Elementary School that the Senator from Connecticut talked about--the most horrific way those children died--based upon the evidence, I am convinced that the killer, if he had more time, would have killed hundreds of children and that number would have gone far above the horrific number of 20. So we can take action on that and make sure that at least maybe that criminal, maybe that killer won't have a military-style weapon and won't have an unlimited supply of ammunition. We can also take action on background checks. We tried that. We got the most votes of any of the three votes we took in 2013. But we should certainly vote on that again and take action. That is a third way of taking action. We have had bipartisan consensus on that but not enough. Frankly, there were not enough Republican votes to pass background checks, which 90 percent of the American people support. It is hard to comprehend why 90 percent support it and not enough Members of our Senate. We can also take action on mental health reforms. That, too, has been bipartisan, but that hasn't happened. That is another way to take action. What I am trying to do is to focus on the other aspect or at least the additional aspect of this tragedy in Orlando, which is, as the President said, I said, and a lot of people said, this was an act of terrorism, but it was also an act of hate. Unless we begin to do something about the problem of hate in America, which infuses the horrific actions killers take, unless we take action against that in some fashion, we are not going to solve this problem. One of the things we could do--again, we have a long list of things to do to deal with gun violence, to reduce that number of 33,000 Americans dying every year because the Congress of the United States refuses to take any action at all. But this is what my bill would do, and it is very simple. It would say: If you have been convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime, in order to meet the requirements of this law, there is a two-part test. It would have to be a misdemeanor hate crime that fit this two-part test. First, it would have to be either an act of violence that was part of a conviction or an attempt to use violence or an action directed at either the attempt, the use, or the actual use of force or violence. Second, in addition to that, the crime and the conviction would have to be a hate crime motivated by hate or bias against eight groups of Americans who are in what we call the law-protected class. First, if someone committed a hate crime against someone because of their race--and that is on the rise. We are told by the experts that there are over 890--the number they put is 892--there are 892 hate groups in the United States of America. Over 190 of them are the Ku Klux Klan. All of that is part of this problem, the rise of hate crimes, the rise of hate groups. Hate groups who are directing violence and other actions against African Americans--that is on the rise. Hate groups who are targeting Muslims--that is on the rise. Hate groups who are targeting people with disabilities--that is on the rise. And of course, as we saw horrifically in Orlando, hate crimes--in this case, there were 49 people killed because of animosity toward LGBT Americans. So you are engaged in hateful actions that rise to the level of the definition of this bill, and you are directing that at someone because of their race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. So if you are directing hateful actions against Americans who are in those classes, that would meet the definition of a misdemeanor hate crime. The consequence of that, the consequence of a conviction or the consequence of a sentence enhancement because of a hate crime, would be that you would be denied a firearm. That is just one of many ways that we can make sure someone's hate is checked at a much lower level. I don't want to wait until that hate manifests itself in a felony conviction where there is a much graver crime that has been perpetrated because of hate, because you are directing your hate through violence against individuals because of their race or because of whom they love or because of some other reason. So this is one of several ways I think we can act. The list gets longer. Obviously we are at a point now where we might be able to vote on finally taking action on the terrorist watch list. Why is it that if you are too dangerous to be on an airplane, you are not too dangerous to have a weapon or to have a high-powered weapon, a military-style weapon, with unlimited ammunition to shoot at anyone you want? There are a lot of things we can do, and that is why I pose the question to the Senator from Connecticut about what we can do and what we should do. I wanted to make a point as well before I pose the exact question. We know that in Orlando three of the victims were from Philadelphia, my home State. They were in that nightclub in Orlando when the gunman opened fire. Eighteen-year-old Akyra Murray's family took her and two friends, Patience Carter and Tiara Parker, on vacation from Philadelphia to Orlando to celebrate Akyra Murray's graduation from West Catholic Prep High School. The Presiding Officer, my colleague from Pennsylvania, knows where that high school is, as I do. She had a full basketball scholarship to Mercyhurst University, which is at the other end of our State in northwestern Pennsylvania. She was third in her class. She just happened to be in Orlando and happened to be in that club when her life was ended. They were there that night to dance and to laugh. She was 18 years old and not even a resident of that area. Both Parker and Carter were injured in the attack, but Akyra Murray lost her life. Our hearts break--everyone in this Chamber, I know--our hearts break for her family. Our prayers are with Patience Carter and Tiara Parker as they recover. Sadly, the LGBT community isn't alone in experiencing this hate that I spoke of a moment ago. One year ago this Friday marks the 1-year anniversary of the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. At this historically African-American church--the oldest AME church in the South, often referred to as ``Mother Emanuel''--a racist young man with hate in his heart opened fire and took nine shots. We all know the very moving speech the President gave that day or in the days after. One of the things the President said was that we have to recognize the uncomfortable truth of that tragedy, and that truth is staring us in the face today. It still stares us in the face. I think we must act. When we consider the 33,000 people who are killed every year by gun violence, the 43,000 hate crimes committed with a firearm over the course of just 4 years--43,000 hate crimes over 4 years with a firearm--when we consider those numbers, we have a long way to go. I ask my colleague from Connecticut a two-part question. Why is it that when these things happen, these horrific events, we have some people--and this is part of the debate--when we say we need to take action or ask ``Will you join us in taking action?'' their answer is ``We just have to enforce existing laws, and that is as far as we can go. We can't do anything more than that. We just have to enforce existing laws.'' So I would ask that part of the question. The second part is, if we believe the answer to that question is ``No, we can do more,'' what is it we should be doing? I pose this because I have to only wonder and imagine, really imagine in horror, what if that was our answer? What if that was our answer on September 12, 2001, and the days after that? What if we said at the time ``You know what. This is a horrific event, what happened on 9/11. Three thousand people were killed, and the country was shaken to its core. But terrorism is a difficult problem to solve. We will always be dealing with it. We should just enforce existing laws.'' No, we didn't do that. We said ``No, we are going to stop this from happening. We are going to take action so that planes won't be flying into buildings and killing thousands of people. We are going to take action to stop that.'' Guess what. People came together in this country, from one end of the country to the other, and we solved that problem. It hasn't happened. Now, we have had other terrorist attacks. We know that. We know we will continue to fight terrorism. But we solved part of the problem because we came together. We even opened up a new Federal Government agency, for goodness' sake, the Department of Homeland Security, which has made our country safer. We have a long way to go on this issue, but I am pleased that we answered that question with a determined effort and with a consensus across this city, this center of government, and across the country that, no, we are not going to surrender to the terrorists. We are going to take action to stop them from getting on airplanes. Why is it that we are not taking the same approach to gun violence? It is complicated, and it is difficult to solve this problem, but why not take a series of actions that in and of themselves will not solve the problem, but we can at least take action? I ask the Senator from Connecticut, why is it that the answer by so many people who serve in Congress is that there is not much we can do except enforce the law? And if we can take these actions, which I believe we can, what is it we can do?

Mr. CASEY

Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

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