Christopher Coons

Mr. COONS

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I made long remarks earlier this afternoon, along with my colleague and friend Senator Hatch. I want to briefly reiterate my thanks to the many staff who worked tirelessly to make it possible for the Defense Trade Secrets Act to move forward today. I greatly appreciate the leadership and hard work of the chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senators Grassley and Leahy, for their hard work and their staffs' work. I want to personally thank Ted Schroeder, who was my chief counsel for many years, for his terrific work on this bill and the dozens of staffs here in the Senate and the House and outside groups who have come together to make it possible for this strong bipartisan bill to move forward today. Thank you, Mr. President. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I begin my remarks by thanking my colleague, good friend, and the leader in this effort to pass the Defend Trade Secrets Act in the Senate today, the President pro tem of the Senate, Senator Orrin Hatch. In his four decades of service in this body, Senator Hatch has become well known for his ability and willingness to work across the aisle, to be a genuine leader in intellectual property matters, and to fight tirelessly for America's inventors and inventions. I am grateful for the small role I have been able to play in partnering with Senator Hatch to bring this important piece of legislation through the Judiciary Committee and to the floor today. Our country has long been the unquestioned world leader in the creation and production of innovative ideas. Simply put, for over two centuries we understood the critical connection between preserving intellectual property rights and creating sustained economic growth. As a result, we are second to none when it comes to innovation. Yet a critical form of IP, intellectual property, has somehow slipped through the cracks of Federal protection. Of course, I am talking about trade secrets, such as the secret formula for Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, customer lists, pricing strategies, and key stages in a vital manufacturing process. They are the lifeblood of great companies that can lead to the creation of products that make a company unique and uniquely profitable. It should come as no surprise that they are a major contributor to our economy. By some estimates, trade secrets are worth $5 trillion to publicly listed American companies alone. Despite the importance of trade secrets to our economy and our innovation ecosystem, trade secrets remain the only form of intellectual property not protected from theft under Federal civil law. More specifically, a misuse of trade secrets doesn't provide the owner with a Federal private right of action to seek redress. This means companies today have to rely on State courts or on Federal prosecutors to protect their rights. The multi-State procedural and jurisdictional issues and the hurdles you have to clear that arise in such cases are oftentimes intensive, costly, and complicated. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice, currently empowered to protect trade secrets on the Federal level, lacks the resources to prosecute many of the cases that arise. By the time the existing protections catch up with bad actors who have taken off with a customer list, formula, or recipe, it is often too late. Unlike physical goods, you simply can't take back trade secrets once they have been shared with the public. Once a trade secret is no longer secret, it loses its legal protection. This glaring oversight in our Federal legal system has become increasingly problematic in recent years as technology has made it easier and easier to steal trade secrets. Today a foreign competitor can steal a vital trade secret from an American manufacturer with just a few key strokes through a cyber attack. This hasn't gone unnoticed. The rate of cyber trade secret theft is at an alltime high, and our foreign competitors are stealing American innovation with woefully inadequate repercussions. This uptick and steady rise in trade secret theft is affecting American businesses large and small across our country. Today the misappropriation of trade secrets is estimated to cost American companies between $160 and $480 billion annually. That money would be so much better spent by investing in new products, growing businesses, and creating jobs. For example, my home State of Delaware has felt the impact of trade secret theft. Many are familiar with DuPont's signature product Kevlar, an extraordinarily strong and lightweight synthetic fiber that is best known for its use in lifesaving body armor. It is worn by dedicated police officers and the brave men and women in our Armed Forces. It has literally saved thousands of lives, including more than 3,000 law enforcement officers across this country. About 10 years ago, DuPont developed a next generation of Kevlar, which was even lighter and better able to withstand penetrating trauma from a wide range of rifle rounds or IED-generated shrapnel. This technology represented a real breakthrough in safety, but it cost millions upon millions to develop. You see, chemically the spun polyaromatic fibers that make up Kevlar are not that complicated, but the fabrication and production method that give the fiber strength and flexibility is incredibly difficult to develop and then execute. One day about 6 years ago--just 4 years after DuPont had developed this next-generation protective technology--a rogue employee took the trade secrets and the know-how behind manufacturing this new product and went and gave it to a rival manufacturing company in Korea by using DuPont's trade secrets. The potential loss to DuPont from this one instance of trade secret theft cost roughly $1 billion. Not only does trade secret theft cost American businesses revenue, which puts American jobs at risk, but it also discourages businesses from investing in critical research and development, and of all the sectors in the American economy, trade secrets are most central for manufacturing and for manufacturing in advanced materials. If you know an employee can steal your company's trade secret, potentially resulting in a loss of up to $1 billion, that trade secret that was the product of years of research and development, as was the case for DuPont with their next-generation Kevlar, it becomes harder and harder to justify investing substantial sums in the R&D needed to continue to produce technological breakthroughs and cutting-edge manufacturing in the United States. This trade secret theft can have a devastating, long-term impact on our country's ability to innovate and compete. It is also of particular concern in my home State of Delaware, where R&D is critical to our economy and sustaining our manufacturing sector. These protections in today's Defend Trade Secrets Act will only grow in importance as our country continues to cultivate advanced manufacturing. Delaware has a proud legacy of encouraging cutting-edge science. We are home to hundreds of basement inventors who have tinkered, designed, and perfected inventions. Some have become well known internationally, such as Kevlar, and others are not as well known but are critical to our economy. That is why I introduced, along with my friend and senior colleague Senator Hatch, the Defend Trade Secrets Act. This bill creates a new Federal private right of action for the misappropriation of trade secrets. It uses an existing Federal criminal law, the Economic Espionage Act, to define trade secrets, and it draws heavily from the existing Uniform Trade Secrets Act which has been enacted by many States to define misappropriation. Simply put, our bill will harmonize U.S. law. Each State has a slightly different trade secret law, and they vary in many different ways. Not all of these differences are major, but they affect the definition of what a trade secret is or what an owner must do to keep a secret or what constitutes misappropriation or what damages and remedies are available. Our Defend Trade Secrets Act creates a single national baseline, or a minimal level of protection, and gives trade secret owners access to both a uniform national law and to the reach of Federal courts, which provide nationwide service of process and execution of judgments. However, it is important to know this bill does not preempt State law because States are, of course, free to continue to add further protections. In my view, this bill is a commonsense solution to a very serious problem. Senator Hatch and I first introduced this bill in April of 2014, and we reintroduced it last July with just four original cosponsors. The bill before us today now has 65 bipartisan cosponsors in the Senate. An identical version in the House, introduced by Doug Collins of Georgia and Jerry Nadler of New York, now has 128 cosponsors. Congressmen Collins and Nadler have been great partners in this effort. Congressman John Conyers has also provided invaluable support. In addition to the broad bipartisan support we have collected on this bill from our colleagues, we have gained endorsements from dozens and dozens of companies as diverse as Boeing, Corning, Microsoft, and DuPont. I believe it is also a testament to the hard work and esteem in which Senator Hatch is held by his colleagues. Senator Hatch has long been a leader in intellectual property and has been able to lead a successful, open, and collaborative process that has allowed us to move the bill to this point today. Many of our colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, had suggestions for ways to improve the original draft. I am proud many of the Senators who originally raised concerns or questions have now become cosponsors of the bill as a result of Senator Hatch's leadership and our collaboration. In today's political climate, it is easy to forget that to get things done, we don't have to agree on everything, we just have to agree on one thing. In this case, we have all agreed that losing hundreds of billions of dollars annually to trade secret theft and misappropriation has been hurting American businesses and our economy. This bill is truly bipartisan. Frankly, it has united industry, practitioners, and Members of this body in a way we don't see often enough today. I rarely have an opportunity to work closely with the Heritage Foundation, the National Association of Manufacturers, and intellectual property owners on the same bill, but good policy can make for unique partnerships. With the bill before us today, the good policy is a commonsense proposal that creates a clear national standard and facilitates businesses' protection of their trade secrets in Federal court. I thank all of my colleagues who have cosponsored and supported this bill. It has been a pleasure to work with them as we worked to ensure that this final bill is bipartisan and achieves our goal of protecting American trade secrets. The formula for how we, together, got to this point is simple. Senator Hatch and I saw a problem, we found a coalition that wanted to fix it, and we came together to find a solution. I thank former Senator Kohl, with whom I first discussed this issue when I came to the Senate. I thank him for his early interest and involvement in trade secret protections. Of course, I am particularly grateful to Senator Hatch for his championship of this bill and leadership in finding consensus. I wish to join him in thanking Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Leahy for their critical support and commend my colleagues for their focus on this issue. I wish to specifically thank Senators Whitehouse, Feinstein, Graham, and Flake for their contributions to this bill that has strengthened it. I would be remiss if I didn't recognize and thank the tremendous efforts our staff contributed together to get this bill to where it is today. Senator Hatch has thanked many of the floor staff, leadership staff, and staff in the House, and I would like to add to my thanks to Matt Sandgren in Senator Hatch's office and to my tireless, dedicated, and recently departed from my office chief counsel, Ted Schroeder, as well as Jonathan Stahler, Andrew Crawford, and Erica Songer on my staff. This major achievement is the product of many contributions, and that is how the Senate is supposed to work. Given the wide support this bill enjoys today in the Senate and the fact that there is already an identical House version with bipartisan support, I am hopeful the House will act and pass this bill without delay. I was pleased to learn earlier today that the administration has issued a Statement of Administration Policy urging the passage of this bill and its rapid enactment into law. The sooner this bill becomes law, the sooner American businesses and companies can get back to creating jobs and producing new, life-changing products and services. Our country's legacy of innovation depends on it. With that, I yield the floor and thank my colleague Senator Hatch.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Daniel Pedraza, a legal fellow in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the day.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, last week the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC--the hard-line military force that answers only to Iran's Supreme Leader and is committed to the preservation of Iran's revolutionary regime--launched a number of ballistic missiles, in clear violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231. These missile launches are profoundly disturbing and suggest a regime that is content on continuing to destabilize the region and threaten our vital allies and its neighbors. They don't technically violate the terms of last summer's nuclear agreement, but they do serve as a vital reminder that Iran remains a revolutionary regime that does not respect world opinion and does not share our values or interests. America and our allies must seek every opportunity to push back on Iran's aggressive behavior--especially behavior such as this that is outside the parameters of the nuclear deal--by enforcing existing sanctions on Iran's illegal ballistic missile tests, its ongoing human rights abuses, and its support for terrorism across the Middle East and the world. Another critical way the international community can demonstrate we are serious about holding Iran accountable is by aggressively enforcing the terms of the nuclear deal. Today I will discuss a key element of enforcing that deal: fully funding the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, the world's nuclear watchdog, which is responsible for monitoring Iran's compliance with the deal. The case for providing robust, sustainable funding for the IAEA is further strengthened by a second topic I will discuss, which is Iran's continued human rights abuses. Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal so far does not mean that its government intends to embrace the international community or heed the call of the Iranian people for greater democracy. In fact, I believe the actions of the IRGC and Iran's hard-line conservative leaders indicate that the Iranian regime intends to continue to repress dissent, block democratic reforms, incite anti-Semitism, and violate basic human rights. Mr. President, in a speech to the United Nations in December of 1953, President Eisenhower proclaimed American support for a new international organization tasked with putting nuclear technology ``into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.'' Since its founding in 1957, the IAEA has undertaken a broad array of responsibilities--from promoting international nonproliferation efforts to supporting peaceful nuclear power--but none more vital than maintaining its safeguards program, which provides credible assurances that countries are honoring their international obligations to use nuclear technology and material only for peaceful purposes. The IAEA could not do its job without the ongoing full support of the United States. The United States develops the inspections technology on which the IAEA depends. We train and support the IAEA inspectors, scientists, and staff, particularly through our system of National Laboratories. Since 1980, every single IAEA inspector has been trained at least once at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. At any given time, roughly 20 percent of all the inspectors who work for the IAEA are undergoing training or retraining at the vital National Labs of the United States. The commitment made by American scientists and taxpayers to the IAEA is even more important now in light of the agreement reached by world powers last summer to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. This agreement, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA, gives the IAEA unprecedented access to monitor Iran's nuclear efforts through highly intrusive physical inspections and 24-7 remote monitoring technology. Unlike previous nuclear agreements, the JCPOA requires Iran to allow the IAEA to monitor Iran's entire nuclear fuel cycle, which includes all the steps required to go from mining and milling raw uranium to producing centrifuges that enrich uranium, to the actual enrichment sites. The IAEA's regular inspections and continuous monitoring and oversight mean that the international community will know if Iran tries to cheat on the terms of the JCPOA before it can dash to a nuclear weapon or build a bomb in secret. But access alone is not enough. The IAEA must have the resources to actually inspect, monitor, and verify Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal by confirming that Iran's nuclear declarations are accurate and comprehensive, by monitoring their declared sites to ensure Iran's behavior actually complies with the terms of the JCPOA, and by tracking all nuclear-related material leaving every facility to make sure Iran doesn't divert and pursue illicit nuclear activities elsewhere in their country. Given Iran's long record of cheating and of pursuing nuclear weapons illicitly over the decades past, investing resources in ensuring that the IAEA can take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity is a wise investment not just for the American people but for the world. To fulfill these responsibilities in addition to its regular and ongoing mission of ensuring nonproliferation in every other country in the world, the IAEA must have the resources to turn access into oversight. Back in January, I traveled with seven other Senators to the IAEA's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and there we heard directly from Director General Yukiya Amano about the challenges the agency faces in fulfilling its new responsibilities under the JCPOA. At the top of that list of challenges is securing a reliable, long-term source of funding. A recent report by our own nonpartisan Government Accountability Office here in the United States echos those very same concerns, stating that ``the IAEA faces potential budgetary and human resource management challenges stemming from the JCPOA-related workload.'' Effectively enforcing the terms of the JCPOA will require more than just additional inspectors, while inspectors are vital; the IAEA will also be required to train a new generation of nuclear scientists and to continue to develop more and more innovative nuclear detection and monitoring technologies as well--an undertaking as complex as it is important. That is why I urge Congress to increase America's voluntary contribution to the IAEA to a level at least $10.6 million above the President's fiscal year 2017 request and commit to a sustained and long-term investment so that we can be confident that the IAEA has the resources to recruit, to train, and to place the very best inspectors the world can produce. The increase of $10.6 million that I am urging will provide reliable funding for the IAEA--the funding they need to monitor the Iran nuclear program while continuing to work for safe, secure, and peaceful use of nuclear technology throughout the rest of the world. An additional $10 million would not crowd out contributions from other states. American representatives at the U.N. offices in Vienna could direct extra funding to specific projects or withhold it from others, allowing us to address unanticipated needs by the IAEA without discouraging other donors from fulfilling their obligations as they should. We also need to continue to insist on full transparency so that reports received by the IAEA, things they might learn, are shared with the United States--with our intelligence community, with our lawmakers, with our executive branch--and to ensure, frankly, that we know if there are additional classified or secret agreements, side agreements between the IAEA and Iran. Look, whether my colleagues supported the JCPOA or opposed it, surely we can agree that it is in America's interest to see the IAEA succeed in monitoring Iran's behavior and attracting the best and brightest young scientists from around the world for years to come. As Brent Scowcroft--who served ably as National Security Advisor to both President Gerald Ford and later President George H.W. Bush--wrote in an August 21 Washington Post op-ed, Congress ``should ensure that the International Atomic Energy Agency and other relevant bodies and U.S. intelligence agencies have all the resources necessary to facilitate inspection and monitor compliance'' with the nuclear deal with Iran. To fully and sustainably fund the IAEA is to make a sound investment in a highly technical organization that directly contributes to international peace and our security. But why exactly is it so important that we fund the IAEA, enforce the JCPOA, and push back on Iran at every opportunity? A brief review of Iran's dismal human rights record might reenforce why it is crystal clear that this is a priority for our Nation and must remain so. Iran's Government continues to preach anti-Semitism, to incite hatred against Israel, and to call for the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel, and it uses state-run media to blame the Jewish people for the instability and violence that currently dominates the Middle East. Just last week, one of the ballistic missiles Iran illegally launched supposedly had a message printed on the side in Hebrew saying, ``Israel must be wiped off the earth.'' In January, as the international community marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, Iran's Supreme Leader published a video on his official Web site in which the narrator condemns the world for supporting Israel and questions the legitimacy and magnitude of the Holocaust. These statements should deeply concern and outrage the world community, but they are simply another reflection of the Iranian regime's longstanding disregard for international values and human rights. Earlier this month, the United Nations issued a report showing that the number of people executed by the Iranian Government skyrocketed to nearly 1,000 last year--twice as many as in 2010 and 10 times as many as in 2005. Most of these executions were allegedly for drug-related offenses. According to some reports, last year one village in Iran saw every single adult male--every single one in the entire village-- executed for so-called drug crimes. These alarming statistics follow a January report from Amnesty International that documented Iran's execution of over 70 juveniles in the decade from 2005 to 2015, with another 160 young juvenile offenders still on death row. No country in the world uses capital punishment for minors more than Iran. And despite Iran's ratification of an international treaty banning capital punishment for minors, Iranian law still allows the death penalty for girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15. In addition, Iran's unelected Guardian Council suppressed democracy in its most recent elections, preventing the vast majority of either female or reform-minded candidates from even appearing on ballots. Iran has illegally and inappropriately detained American citizens, including retired FBI agent Robert Levinson and Iranian American energy executive Siamak Namazi--both of whom we believe remain detained in Iran. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that at least 19 reporters are today still being held unjustly by the Iranian Government. These are just a few examples among countless many of Iran's unwillingness to respect even the most basic norms of international human rights. Effectively pushing back on these egregious human rights abuses and enforcing the JCPOA demands international collaboration, but increasing our voluntary contribution to the IAEA makes a direct impact without requiring approval or action by any other country. There are two other additional unilateral steps this Congress can take today. First, we could increase Federal investment in our National Laboratories, which train the IAEA inspectors I spoke about, develop technologies that nuclear inspectors depend on, and undertake research that improves the lives of people around the world. Second, and more promptly, the Senate could and should confirm Laura Holgate, a nonproliferation expert who was nominated more than 5 months ago to serve as America's Ambassador to the U.N. agencies of Vienna, which includes the IAEA. After months of delays for purely political reasons, her nomination was finally approved by the Foreign Relations Committee on January 28. The full Senate should not delay any further to ensure that our government is represented at the very organization the world relies upon to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. Later this month, the President will convene heads of state from around the world for a fourth Nuclear Security Summit, a conference dedicated to preventing nuclear terrorism and securing stockpiles of nuclear material from around the world. The IAEA is at the very forefront of this vital mission, and we need to work together to make sure it has the tools it needs to take on these serious tasks. These goals demand involvement from every actor on the international stage, but by increasing America's voluntary contribution to the IAEA by an additional $10 million, Congress can send a strong signal that we intend to hold Iran to the terms of the JCPOA, to support the international cause of nonproliferation, and to provide a vital incentive for our international partners to dedicate more of their resources to this important agency. Iran remains today a revolutionary regime fundamentally opposed to America's values and interests. Iran's ballistic missile tests just last week serve as another reminder that the Iranian Government is neither America's friend nor ally. We must be relentless in our efforts to push back on these missile tests, on Iran's destabilizing support for terrorism, and on its human rights abuses. We must continue to enforce the existing sanctions in American law and be willing to consider imposing new ones when Iran's behavior warrants it. Let me be clear about one thing in closing. The Persian culture, the culture of the people of Iran, is one of great richness and complexity. I have had the blessing of knowing many Persian Americans in my life and have known them to be people of great intellect and inventiveness and capability and to be the products of an ancient and respectable culture. We in the United States do not wish the people of Iran ill, but the Iranian regime and those who support it deserve international condemnation for a decades-long pattern of human rights abuses, support for terrorism, and other bad behavior. But we can and should make a distinction between the Iranian regime and the Persian people. The people of Iran--those who turn out at polls to vote even in elections that are neither free nor fair and who have repeatedly demonstrated in the streets for democracy and engagement, risking life and limb to do so in the decade past--must know that the American people support the struggle of those who hope for real democracy someday in Iran and those who hope for an Iranian regime that someday respects international values and human rights. So today, just a few days before Monday's Iranian New Year of Nowruz, we wish the people of Iran a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year, while continuing to stand firm against the values and actions of the Iranian regime. Thank you. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COONS

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

Mr. COONS

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

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, earlier this week, I joined a bipartisan group of Senate colleagues, including Senator Graham, Senator Ayotte, and Senator Blumenthal--Republicans and Democrats alike--to send a letter to the United States Department of the Treasury. In our letter, we urged Secretary Jack Lew to continue the Obama administration's necessary and vital efforts to crack down on Mahan Air, a private Iranian airline that provides support for Iran's terrorist proxies and funnels weapons to Hezbollah and the murderous Assad regime in Syria. Mahan Air is only the latest example of a pattern of behavior we have come to expect from Iran: Supporting terrorism and conducting destabilizing activities in the Middle East, conducting illegal ballistic missile tests in violation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1929, and committing ongoing, major human rights violations. Indeed, as we wrote in the letter to the Secretary of the Treasury: ``Strong and swift sanctions enforcement is vital to hold Iran to account for its ongoing support of terrorism, ballistic missile development, and human rights violations.'' Today I would like to dive further into Mahan Air activities and explain why it is important that America work with our allies to continue to push back on Iran's bad behavior and to hold Tehran to the terms of the agreement reached last summer with regard to Iran's nuclear agreement. I will also explain why it is critical that the Senate confirm Adam Szubin, Treasury's now-Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, who plays a key role in pressuring our allies to push back on Iran and who, in the absence of confirmation, is weakened in that vital role. If we are serious about our shared intentions to hold Iran accountable, then this Senate must confirm Adam Szubin, and our European allies must work with us to sanction Mahan Air. Although Mahan Air is technically a private Iranian airline, it supports the operations of the IRGC--the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps--the hard-line military force committed to the preservation of the revolutionary and extremist Iranian regime. Mahan Air also provides services to the Quds Force, an elite IRGC military force that is designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. Treasury Department under Executive Order 13224. Through its ties to the IRGC and the Quds Force, Mahan Air directly and indirectly provides men and materiel to Hezbollah, a terrorist organization based in Lebanon, and to the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Yet, despite these known ties, Mahan Air is still flying into 24 airports in countries around the region and world, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy, and it is successfully procuring aircraft and equipment using front companies--an evasive approach that mirrors Iran's strategy in a number of industries, not just in airlines. Since October of 2011, the Treasury Department has taken key steps to sanction Mahan Air. In that month--October of 2011--Mahan Air provided travel for members of the Quds Force, who flew to and from Iran and Syria for military training, and other suspected officers who flew covertly in and out of Iran. Less than a year later, in September of 2012, Treasury further cracked down on Mahan Air and two other airlines for a series of bad actions, including sending military and crowd control equipment to the Assad regime in Syria in coordination with Hezbollah, often under the cover of being humanitarian aid. Later, in both February of 2014 and May of 2015, our Department of the Treasury took further action against two front companies that helped Mahan Air procure equipment and parts. The 2014 action penalized personnel and companies in the United Arab Emirates who helped Mahan Air transfer money and procure aircraft and other parts. This ongoing, long-term pattern of behavior by Iran and its IRGC makes clear why the United States and our other vital allies must work together to cut off Mahan Air's access to international markets and airports, and I commend our Department of Treasury for taking these important steps to designate Mahan and its employees. These actions alone are important--but not sufficient. Both the United States and our European allies must do more. To start, I urge governments across the European Union to also designate Mahan Air and its many front companies for their support for terrorism. By continuing to support Syria's violent and discredited President, Bashar al-Assad, Iran has directly contributed to the slow and grinding collapse of Syria, to the enormous humanitarian crisis that has resulted, and to the destabilization of the region. There is a direct correlation between Iran's destabilizing actions in Syria, but also in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq, and the migrant crisis now facing all of Western Europe. The more that Iran uses Mahan Airlines to transport the very goods that supply Hezbollah, the longer the instability inside Syria will persist and the more refugees and migrants will flee Syria toward our allies in Western Europe. Without the support of companies such as Mahan Air and the many front companies that it depends on, Iran and the IRGC would find supporting the Assad regime substantially more difficult and expensive. We must work together to keep Mahan Air from purchasing engines, aircraft, and other equipment for these maligning purposes. The second step our allies can and should take is simple: to stop allowing Mahan Air to land at their airports. A company like Mahan Air, which supports terrorism in defiance of international norms, should not have easy access to international airports. More broadly, combating Iran's destabilizing actions in the Middle East and successfully and rigorously enforcing the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran will require meaningful international coordination. As I recently wrote in an editorial that ran in the Guardian, while I understand that many European companies will seek to do business with Iran, now that certain economic sanctions have been lifted in compliance with the terms of the nuclear agreement, I urge our allies to remember three simple things. First, the United States and the U.N. continue to maintain and enforce economic sanctions against Iran. The United States' designation of Mahan Air is one of many unilateral sanctions examples, and many that we continue to keep in place. Second, stopping Iran's quest for a nuclear weapon must always remain a top priority. We are counting on our European allies to continue to share this view and to act in accordance with it--a view that they stated they shared during our negotiations that led up to the nuclear deal. Third, as Iran's relationship with Mahan Air shows, the Iranian Government remains a revolutionary regime with a long history of pursuing nuclear weapons and a long track record of supporting terrorism and destabilization in the Middle East. Iran's use of Mahan Air to evade international scrutiny is yet another reminder that we must remain vigilant in our oversight of Iran. Here in the United States, we appreciate the partnership of our European allies. In fact, the strength of this allegiance and our ability to act as one were key factors that led Iran to agree to the strict terms of the nuclear agreement. We must continue to advocate for and keep front of mind the idea that the most important contract with Iran is the one we have already signed in the nuclear agreement. We must pursue every possible means of enforcing it, and that means cracking down on front companies that facilitate Mahan Air, and companies that are playing a direct role in fomenting instability in the Middle East. Just as importantly, I urge my colleagues today to put politics aside and confirm Adam Szubin, who oversees the implementation of sanctions in the Treasury Department. With experience in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Adam Szubin is the definition of an outstanding career public servant: nonpartisan, dedicated to his job, and committed to his country. He has been widely praised by Senators of both parties, but his confirmation has been blocked for nearly a year for reasons utterly unrelated to his capabilities or his performance of the job. The cause of this hold is and has been raw politics, but the consequences of the hold go far beyond that. When Acting Under Secretary Szubin sits down at the negotiating table, the individuals on the other side, whether from the private sector or a foreign government, friend or foe, should know that he speaks for the American people and has the weight of the Senate and the whole Government of the United States behind him. When Adam Szubin travels around the world to ask senior officials from foreign governments to sanction Mahan Air and its front companies or to prevent Mahan from flying into their airports, he is trying to convince foreign governments to do something difficult, but necessary. Those foreign officials should know that he speaks not just for the Obama administration but for the executive and legislative branches of our whole government and that we as a people stand united against Iranian aggression. Let's demonstrate to our allies and to Iran that Congress takes these issues as seriously as we proclaim. Let's confirm Adam Szubin and other nominees who are vital to this effort and whose confirmations have been stalled for too long. Let's work together to crack down on Mahan Air and other Iranian avenues for sowing terror throughout the Middle East. And, in the same spirit of collaboration that led to the nuclear agreement, let's come together to rigorously enforce the terms of the deal. Thank you, Mr. President. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I emphasize how important I think the role is of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As many present know, my predecessor, now Vice President Biden, is a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As my good friend and colleague from the State of Vermont just reminded us, there is a long and important history on the Senate Judiciary Committee that I think bears repeating; that since its formation a century ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee has provided a hearing, a vote or both for every single Supreme Court nominee. The only exceptions being those that went straight to the floor because their confirmations were supported so broadly. I also think there is a second important point, if I could briefly touch on it; that even in those instances where a nominee did not enjoy majority support on the committee, even in those instances just cited by the Senator from Vermont, where a majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against a nomination, that nomination proceeded to the floor of the Senate to ensure that advice and consent--our constitutional duty--could be carried forward. If I might ask for the forbearance of the Senator from Vermont for one moment, I also want to set the record straight about what my friend and predecessor then-Senator, now-Vice President Biden actually said in a floor speech back in 1992, a floor speech that has been widely cited as evidence of some new set of so-called Biden rules that are somehow a basis for the obstructionism we now see--a refusal to even meet with a Supreme Court nominee, let alone give them a fair hearing. I want to take this moment because then-Senator Biden has been quoted out of context. He gave--I am sure this will not surprise some in the Chamber--a somewhat long and winding speech. There was no Supreme Court vacancy at the time. He was simply observing what might happen if there were to be a vacancy. While he did, early in the speech, give some comments that have been now used, he also gave at the end of his speech a section I want to read. To quote directly: I believe that so long as the public continues to split its confidence between the branches, compromise is the responsible course both for the White House and for the Senate. Therefore I stand by my position, Mr. President, if the President [then President George H.W. Bush] consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections absent consultation, then his nominees may enjoy my support, as did Justices Kennedy and Souter. In conclusion, let me remark that what then-Chairman Biden did speaks more loudly even than what he said. I believe his record as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is unmistakable. In case after case, he convened and held timely hearings, even in the election year of 1988. It means he considered and confirmed 64 judicial nominees, as late as September in a Presidential election year. It means he voted in favor of Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter, nominated by Republican Presidents, and it means that in his speech, in the section I quoted, I think he sent a clear request to then-President George H.W. Bush to work with the Senate, send us a moderate nominee, and I will consider supporting them. I urge the chairman and ranking member, all of us who are members of this important and august committee, to follow the actual Biden rules by working across the aisle, by consulting, and by offering a fair, open, and timely hearing for any nominee who should be proffered by our President.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, on a day that was sadly often marked by partisan differences, I thought I would take a moment near the end of this legislative day and simply remark on something where there has recently been some bipartisan progress, and I think it is worthy of some brief comment. Today is the third annual World Wildlife Day. This day was declared by the United Nations and will soon be celebrated in another place on this Capitol complex by a wide range of organizations from all over the United States and the world that are dedicated to preserving wildlife in places in the world where it is under distinct pressure. As I said, this is the third annual celebration of World Wildlife Day. It was first declared by the United Nations, and I want to briefly remark that a bipartisan delegation of this Senate recently went to Southern Africa. It was led by Senator Flake of Arizona, and he and Senator Cardin, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Cochran, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and I had an opportunity to meet with leaders from four different countries. They are working tirelessly to try and contain an epidemic of poaching that has reached nearly catastrophic levels. Nearly 100 elephants are killed every day now so their ivory tusks can be sold on the black market at prices higher than heroin or gold. In 2014 alone, more than 1,000 rhinoceroses were illegally killed in South Africa, which is a 9,000-percent increase in the poaching of rhinos since 2007. I think this is of concern to all of us, not just because of the loss of these remarkable and iconic wildlife species but because it is also funding and fueling a multibillion-dollar industry of organized crime that also traffics in drugs, people, and weapons and destabilizes critical parts of the world. We have a chance to make real progress. There is a bipartisan bill, the END Wildlife Trafficking Act, that Senator Flake and I have introduced, and that I am hopeful Senator Corker and Senator Cardin, as the chair and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, will take up, consider, and markup in our next business meeting. I do think this legislation offers us a real opportunity to show that we can come together to support the President's plan for combating wildlife trafficking and can make a modest and responsible investment in helping countries on the other side of the world that are facing the same sort of scourge of lawlessness and violence that marks those places in America where drug trafficking is at its peak, but instead of trafficking illegal drugs, the actions they are carrying out is the slaughter and the export of the pieces of killed animals, whether elephant tusks or rhino horns. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, ``Adopt the pace of nature: Her secret is patience.'' It is my hope that with patience, persistence, and bipartisanship, we can celebrate this World Wildlife Day by doing something together to make progress in combating the scourge of illegal wildlife trafficking. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. COONS

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

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, tomorrow the people of Iran will go to the polls to elect 285 members of the Iranian Parliament, or the Majlis, and 88 members of the so-called Assembly of Experts, which is the body that will eventually choose the successor to the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Last December, Secretary of State John Kerry cautioned that having an election does not of itself make a democracy, and I think his words are equally fitting this week. Iran's elections, in truth, are neither free nor fair. Iran is not a democracy. Power brokers in Iran have already rigged these elections and even the results of a potential runoff in April will not tell us much we don't already know about the Iranian regime or its foreign policy objectives in the Middle East. Some observers do hope that moderate voices will make some progress in Iran, and I agree that is good to hope for, but I remain deeply skeptical. In many ways tomorrow's elections are nothing more than a rubberstamp because an unelected Guardian Council, which vets all candidates for office, has already prevented most moderates from even running. Let me explain. Aspiring candidates for Iran's national Parliament and the Assembly of Experts must be approved by the unelected Guardian Council before they appear on a ballot. Unless they make it through a multiweek vetting process and unless they are deemed sufficiently loyal and conservative, these aspiring candidates will not get a chance to be candidates at all. That is why the candidate list for tomorrow's election has already told us more about Iran's intentions than the election results will. A willingness to allow reform-minded or moderate Iranians to stand for election would have suggested some real hope for genuine reform for real change in the Iranian regime. Sadly, the disqualification of both female and reformist candidates indicates that Iran is instead doubling down on its decision to avoid long-awaited and much needed democratic reforms and instead will continue to isolate itself from broader membership in the international community. Sixteen women applied to run to serve on the Assembly of Experts. They were all prohibited from running. Three thousand reform-minded candidates sought to run for the Iranian Parliament, but only 1 percent of those 3,000 were approved. Even Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic of Iran, was rejected as a candidate for being too modern. These disqualifications reflect the regime's rejection of basic democratic norms and serve as reminder of the urgency with which we have to continue to scrutinize Iran's behavior. Tomorrow's elections will not change Iran's aggressive behavior in the region or transform the political power structure within the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is still dominated by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Despite what some may hope, the Supreme Leader seems unwilling to allow even a modicum of dissent inside Iran. These elections are likely nothing more than a guise to give the international community the impression that Iranians have a real voice in choosing their elected officials. While we should hope for future moderation, we should expect the status quo because at its core Iran remains a revolutionary regime that supports terrorism as a central tool of its national foreign policy. U.S. policymakers have to remain clear-eyed about that reality as we seek to effectively and aggressively enforce the nuclear deal and push back against Iranian aggression in the region. I urge my colleagues, the administration, and the American people to pay close attention not just to tomorrow's Iranian elections but to Iran's actions in the weeks, months, and years to come. I commend the administration for one action it took this week. It indicted four individuals who violated previously existing U.S. sanctions against Iran. This decision sends another important signal that despite the nuclear deal, sanctions that remain on the books and companies that violate them remain a significant barrier and that companies should not rush to do business with Iran. Only by continuing to enforce existing sanctions, only by continuing to hold Iran to its commitments in the nuclear agreement, and only by pushing back against Iran's support for terrorist proxies, its human rights abuses, and its illegal ballistic missile tests will we demonstrate that we are serious about holding the regime accountable for its actions. Only by viewing Iran through the right lens--a lens of weariness and suspicion, not trust--can we continue to protect our national security and the safety of our regional allies, especially Israel. A nuclear deal with a nation like Iran does not make that regime our ally or friend and having an election does not make a democracy, but it does make a statement. Filling the Supreme Court Vacancy Mr. President, on Monday I had the privilege of serving as the first Senator from the State of Delaware--the first State--to ever read George Washington's Farewell Address on the Senate floor on February 22, the appointed day every year when we recognize Washington's contributions to our country and its history by repeating his Farewell Address on this floor. In the more than two centuries since President Washington wrote and delivered those words, I am struck by how relevant they still remain in warning Americans of the dangers of partisanship, factionalism, and division. Today the constitutional order for which President Washington and so many of our Founding Fathers and so many Americans risked and dedicated their lives, and which has sustained our experiment in democracy for generations, is now threatened not by one person or by one political party but rather by the relentless division and dysfunction that has come to define our current political discourse. Just over 2 years ago, this discord led to an unprecedented shutdown of our whole Federal Government for 17 days. At stake today is nothing less than the capability of the Supreme Court of the United States to continue to function meaningfully. If we fail to reverse this increasingly divisive--and, I think, dangerous--trend, we won't just be facing a series of undecided legal policy issues. We will also be looking at a direct threat to our constitutional quarter--a new normal in which Supreme Court vacancies remain just that for months upon months or even years. Sadly, the rhetorical warfare on filling the vacancy on the Court began just an hour after the world first learned of Justice Scalia's passing, when the majority leader issued a statement in which he ruled out any hearing or vote or any consideration whatsoever of a Supreme Court nominee. The back and forth between our parties has grown even more heated in the days since. Much has been made of what Senators of both parties have said and done in response to past Supreme Court vacancies, but the precedent that I think matters most is what this Chamber actually did the last time there was a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year. As many of my colleagues have pointed out, the last time that happened was in 1988, and that year Justice Kennedy was confirmed unanimously and by a Democratic-controlled Senate. Recently, some of my colleagues have also pointed to a speech that Vice President Biden--then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee-- gave back in 1992, as evidence that there is some clear, strong precedent for the level of obstructionism that we are seeing today. But that reading of his remarks both misrepresent his remarks and obscures the real facts. It is easy to take much of what we say and do here on the floor of the Senate out of context. In fact, I am sure it has happened to each Member of this Chamber more than once, but a full reading of then-Chairman Biden's full remarks shows that at the end of his speech, Senator Biden promised to consider not just holding hearings, not just a vote but also supporting a consensus nominee. To quote directly: I believe that so long as the public continues to split its confidence between the branches, compromise is the responsible course for both the White House and for the Senate. Therefore, I stand by my position. Mr. President, if the President-- Then-President Bush-- consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections absent consultation, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justices Kennedy and Souter. So when it comes to setting Senate precedent, I think it is important to get the Vice President's words right, but I also think it is important to pay attention to his actions, which speak more loudly than his words. His record as chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee is unmistakable. In case after case, he convened and held appropriate and timely hearings for judges of all backgrounds and experiences when nominated by President Bush in an election year. Even in a deeply contentious election year, he considered dozens of district and circuit court nominees all the way up until September, just 2 months before the Presidential election. So today I echo then-Chairman Biden's 1992 request. I urge President Obama to nominate a moderate and eminently qualified jurist by whose record should clearly, under normal circumstances, be confirmed and who can become a consensus nominee in this Chamber. You don't have to look very far to find a number of candidates who would easily fit this description. I am not asking my Republican colleagues to commit to support such a nominee, but I am asking for us to be able to fulfill the constitutional obligations of advice and consent that we have sworn to uphold. Here is just another important piece of factual record. Since the formation of the Senate Judiciary Committee a century ago, every single Supreme Court nominee has received a vote, a hearing or both. The only exceptions were candidates whose nominations were withdrawn before they could be considered or that proceeded directly to the floor for a confirmation vote. Even nominees whose confirmations were voted down by the Senate Judiciary Committee ultimately received a vote by the full Senate. That is the precedent that matters. The American people, I think, aren't deeply interested in what this Senator said 2 years ago or that Senator said two decades ago. This back-and-forth, he said/she said rhetoric is exactly what they have sadly come to expect from this Congress, but it is not why they sent us here. It is not just our constituents who are watching. Around the world, believers in a democratic system of government, in a system of separation of powers in our constitutional framework, some of whom have risked life and limb to bring democracy to their countries, are watching. Those who believe democracy can't work and who advance that argument around the world are watching too. At stake in this debate is not just a key vote on the Supreme Court but, more importantly, a key indicator of whether our American experiment can still function. Over the past two-plus centuries, our experiment in democracy has not just survived but even thrived. But in recent years, Members of Congress have been playing a risky game, employing increasingly obstructionist tactics that probe the very boundaries of our system of government. How the Senate conducts itself in the weeks and perhaps even months to come, I think, will set a strong precedent for how future Supreme Court vacancies will be filled and more importantly, about whether our constitutional order can still function. We have an opportunity to show the world that even in the midst of a strikingly divisive Presidential campaign, our democratic system can still work. President Washington's Farewell Address of 220 years ago warned of the many threats to that full and fair experiment that is American democracy. One of the threats he highlighted most pointedly was that of partisanship and division. The issues facing our Senate today represent nothing less than a direct and serious challenge to the vibrancy of that very democratic experiment for which so many suffered, struggled, and died. It is my prayer that we will find a way forward through this together. Thank you.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, many of my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, have taken to the floor today in support of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act. It is a bill that I, too, am pleased to support. This bill was developed in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee through the same spirit of collaboration and collegiality in America's best interests that we have seen in this committee time and again. Senators Gardner and Menendez deserve real praise for their work together drafting this bill, and I thank and commend Chairman Corker and Ranking Member Cardin for leading an open amendment process within the committee that strengthened the bill with truly constructive changes-- among them an amendment from Senator Markey to crack down on transfers of conventional weapons to and from North Korea, and another from Senator Shaheen, which makes sure these new sanctions will not impede our ability to recover the remains of any lost American servicemember in North Korea. I want to thank Senators Corker and Cardin not only for advancing this bill but, just as importantly, for leading the Foreign Relations Committee in a bipartisan spirit that reflects the best of the Senate in an uncertain world. This is a strong bill, and I am confident it will enhance sanctions against North Korea in response to the regime's nuclear test last month and its dangerous nuclear missile launch last weekend. It is a clear, direct response that sends an unmistakable signal to North Korea and the world that we intend to continue to be actively engaged. Frankly, the floor debate this week at some moments has not always reflected that same bipartisan spirit and the same spirit in which the House overwhelmingly passed a similar bill last month. Somehow the debate has at times shifted from questions of how best to punish North Korea for its illegal actions and how we can pull together in that effort to questions about President Obama's broader policy goals and motives. Suggestions that the President somehow enabled North Korea to engage in this provocative behavior by pursuing a separate nuclear agreement with Iran only distract from our shared goal that serves as the foundation and bipartisan purpose of this legislation. I urge a more constructive course. We should apply the same bipartisan spirit in which we developed the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act toward passage of the Iran Policy Oversight Act, which was led by Ranking Member Cardin and which will ensure that Congress can exercise effective oversight of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Just as members of the Foreign Relations Committee worked together to develop a sanctions bill on North Korea, Republicans and Democrats in this body should come together to enforce the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran and to push back on Iran's support for terrorism in the Middle East, its ongoing human rights violations, and its illegal ballistic missile tests. The Iran Policy Oversight Act offers us an incredible way to accomplish all of these goals. When it comes to the recent nuclear agreement with Iran, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the JCPOA, too often we find ourselves distracted from the core question as to whether that deal has made Iran less able to pursue development of a nuclear weapon. We are seeing the same tendency play out today as some of my colleagues have promoted a false comparison between the JCPOA and the 1994 agreed framework, which the United States negotiated with North Korea with the goal of stopping North Korea from developing a nuclear weapon. These comparisons make a false implication that just because the 1994 framework utterly failed to keep North Korea from pursuing an illicit nuclear weapons program, the JCPOA is destined to similarly fail with regard to Iran. I will take a moment to explain why this comparison is inaccurate at best and dangerously misleading at worst. First the 1994 framework with North Korea was just that--a brief framework or outline, its text just three pages long. The nuclear agreement with Iran, on the other hand, is nearly 160 pages--thorough, detailed, and comprehensive, outlining the international community's expectations, specifying deadlines of deliverables, and laying out in clear terms the consequences for violations of the deal. The second difference between the two is just as fundamental. The 1994 agreed framework with North Korea did not seek to block North Korea's plutonium pathway to a nuclear weapon. Not only does it eliminate its ability to produce weapons-grade plutonium, but international inspectors have recently certified Iran actually did so by filling the core of the Arak heavy water reactor with concrete. The importance of including this provision in the JCPOA was made even clearer yesterday when James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, confirmed that North Korea has restarted its plutonium production reactor and may begin recovering spent plutonium fuel in a matter of weeks. If Iran even attempted to do the same, the international community would now know and would be able to take action long before it could achieve its objective. The third key difference is this. The JCPOA allows the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, full access to monitor Iran's entire nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mines to mills, to centrifuge production workshops, to enrichment facilities. Never before--including back in 1994 with North Korea--has a nuclear agreement given international inspectors such comprehensive access to monitor and inspect compliance. In fact, when I recently visited the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, the head of the agency said the access they have gotten to Iran's entire range of nuclear activities goes well beyond the access it had in North Korea in the 1990s. The fourth difference is just as crucial. The JCPOA requires Iran to abide by the so-called Additional Protocol and other additional measures, which guarantee the IAEA can seek access to suspicious undeclared locations. This Additional Protocol, a key deterrent to cheating, didn't even exist in 1994. The nuclear deal with Iran contains defined timelines for access to suspect potential nuclear sites and a dispute resolution mechanism that will resolve differences between Iran and the international community in favor of accessing inspection. The 1994 agreed framework didn't include any of these protections. Fifth, the JCPOA is an agreement between Iran and the international community. While the United States maintains its ability to snap back international sanctions to punish Iran, the strength of the deal is not just from U.S. support but from buy-in from our P5+1 partners--the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China--and we have to continue to work together tirelessly on a bipartisan basis to ensure that those partners remain partners in enforcement of the deal. Sixth, the JCPOA puts incentives in the right place, halting any sanctions relief for Iran until after the international community verified it had complied with the core terms of the deal. The 1994 framework allowed North Korea compensation and sanctions relief simply for signing up before the agreement was even implemented--clearly a fatal flaw. Finally, and in some ways most importantly, although Iran and North Korea are dangerous, radical regimes--revolutionary regimes--and they are both ostensibly led by Supreme Leaders, they exist in different regions, have different goals, and exist in different contexts. I do think that Iran, rightly or wrongly, seeks and needs integration with the world economy, and North Korea continues to be a rogue regime isolated from the rest of the world. The seven differences this Senator has just briefly outlined show the fundamental differences between the 1994 agreed framework with North Korea, which failed, and the JCPOA with Iran, which I hope and pray will still prove to be successful. We must focus on enforcing rigorously the terms of the JCPOA and pushing back on Iran's bad behavior in a bipartisan fashion and in the same spirit in which my colleagues in the Foreign Relations Committee developed this vital and important North Korea bill. One way we could do so is to pass the Iran Policy Oversight Act, a bill led and developed by Senator Cardin and the members of the Foreign Relations Committee who were both supporters and opponents of the JCPOA. The Iran Policy Oversight Act would clarify ambiguous provisions in the JCPOA, establish in statute our commitment to enforcing the deal, engage in comprehensive efforts to counter Iranian activities in the Middle East, and provide increased support to our allies in the region, especially our vital ally, Israel. I commend Senator Cardin for his leadership in drafting a bill strong enough to earn the cosponsorship of both supporters and opponents of that nuclear deal. Even in a dysfunctional Congress, today's debate and passage of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act shows that we can come together to make our country safer in the face of a dangerous world. Congress did the same last May when we came together to enact the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which gave Congress a clear and focused opportunity to review the terms of the JCPOA before it was finalized. We can and must do similar things again. We should work together, Republicans and Democrats, in the spirit of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act and the Iran Nuclear Review Act to introduce, debate, and pass legislation to show Iran and our allies that the United States is serious about continuing to hold them accountable for their bad behavior and to continue to demonstrate our leadership in the Pacific region and our determination to contain North Korea's dangerous nuclear activities. Thank you, Mr. President. With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, today, on behalf of Delaware's congressional delegation of U.S. Senator Tom Carper and U.S. Representative John Carney, I wish to recognize a close friend from Delaware, Fred Sears--a community leader and a passionate advocate for all in our community; a man whose name is synonymous with business leadership and public service in my home State of Delaware, and a man I am proud to call my friend. Fred is known statewide for his generosity, his enthusiasm, and his business acumen. For decades, his impact has been felt by elected officials, nonprofit and community leaders, and countless Delawareans of all backgrounds and careers. He is a true leader, an authentic champion of the community, and the embodiment of what service means in Delaware. Fred Sears is a Delawarean through and through, born just blocks away from his boyhood home at what was then called Wilmington Hospital, he grew up across the river from Brandywine Zoo. This Delaware native attended Mt. Pleasant Elementary, Alfred I. DuPont Junior High, and Wilmington Friends School for high school. Fred went on to earn a business degree from the University of Delaware and had a great deal of fun, including a truly memorable spring break trip to the Bahamas with Joe Biden, his classmate and friend. After graduating from UD in 1964, Fred began a nearly 40-year career in banking. Fresh out of college, Fred was scheduled to interview for a job with the Bank of Delaware, but accidentally walked into Delaware Trust instead. Fortunately, Delaware Trust was also hiring, and after starting as a management trainee, he rose to become the institution's first vice president of business development. From there, Fred went on to later work at Wilmington Trust, Beneficial National Bank, and ultimately Commerce Bank, where he was Delaware market president. While Fred was well and widely known as a leader in our financial services industry, he found many other ways to serve our community as well. Early in his career, Mayor Tom Maloney asked his friend Fred to take a leave of absence from Delaware Trust to serve as the city's director of finance and then later as director of economic development. Fred not only fulfilled those two roles terrifically, but decided afterwards to run for an at-large city council seat in 1976. Fred won and went on to serve two full terms. Many of us in younger generations of politics after Fred's elected service have called on his wisdom, his insight, and his ability to bring people together, as we had important decisions to make. So Fred served on the transition teams of Wilmington Mayor James Sills, Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner, and co-chaired my transition team after I was elected New Castle county executive in 2004. For many of us, decades of success in finance, in business, in politics might be the hallmark of a complete and successful career, but for Fred, these experiences were just a few of the ways he fulfilled a lifelong passion for service in our State of Neighbors. Just over 13 years ago, while Fred was at Commerce Bank, our mutual friend Jim Gilliam, Jr., called Fred one day and said to him, ``I have a job for you.'' After some convincing, Fred accepted the job, and since then, he has served admirably at the helm of one of the most important organizations in Delaware: the Delaware Community Foundation. The DCF plays an integral role in my home State, helping local nonprofits direct philanthropy to Delaware's most worthy causes and encouraging long-term charitable giving to improve our State. Since Fred began as CEO in 2002, the DCF has tripled its long-term charitable funds and built its assets to $285 million. Dozens of nonprofits and community funds have flourished under Fred's leadership, and he and his team and their astute financial guidance continues to generate the funding that enables them to serve. Fred didn't join the DCF though just to raise money and just to be important and recognized; rather, he sought to improve the entire philanthropic community and quality of community life in Delaware, and his success in doing so reflects his values and his vision. Fred is a true leader: honest, insightful, thoughtful; creative, positive and confident. And Fred possesses that rare quality: the ability to inspire others. He has used his passion for service to motivate the next generation of great leaders in our State. Take, for example, one of Fred's many initiatives called the Next Generation. It is one he is most proud of--and justifiably so. Next Gen takes groups of civic-minded young professionals with limited or no experience in philanthropy and, with just the right amount of guidance and encouragement, helps mold them into nonprofit board leaders. Since 2004, Next Gen's chapters up and down the State have helped direct over $300,000 in grants to community needs all over my home State of Delaware. My good friend Tony Allen, who also calls Fred a mentor and a friend and a brother, tells a story of how Fred helped establish the African- American Community Empowerment Fund. The fund is today known as the Council on Urban Empowerment, and it promotes philanthropy that supports educational, social, and economic empowerment of African- American Delawareans. As Tony notes, Fred didn't just help establish the fund, he wasn't just one of its first donors; he attended every meeting of the group. In 2010, Tony introduced Fred when Fred Sears was set to receive an award for nonprofit leadership. As Tony put it then, ``While patience is a virtue, impatience is a weapon. And Fred can be appropriately impatient. Fred doesn't demur to what others would call insurmountable tasks and taboo topics of conversation. He takes every opportunity to constructively push the status quo.'' Tony's absolutely right, and given that legacy of leadership, it is no surprise Fred has been honored by countless organizations for his business and community efforts. He has received a Lifetime Achievement in Philanthropy Award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals. He has been given a distinguished service award from the Wilmington Rotary Club. He has been deemed a Superstar in Business by the Delaware State Chamber and was named Citizen of the Year by the Delmarva Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Those awards and merits are certainly a reflection of Fred's values and his many successes. But those of us who have had the privilege to work closely with Fred and to know him know that his commitment to service shines most brightly in the hundreds of interactions he has with Delawareans every day, whether he is offering ideas and advice or just saying a quick hello. We know that even though Fred's leaving the Delaware Community Foundation, he will undoubtedly continue to serve the community he loves. In fact, Fred just accepted an appointment from Governor Markell to chair Delaware's Expenditure Review Commission, suggesting Fred has no intention of taking ``retirement'' literally. In a testament to Fred's thoughtfulness, leadership, and sense of compassion, just a day after the passing of our beloved friend Beau Biden earlier this year, Fred spoke to the Bidens and offered to help the family establish an organization in Beau's name. That idea became the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children--and 2 days after it was launched, they had already raised over $125,000. If this is all there was to Fred's story, it would be a remarkable one, but there is even more to Fred as a businessman, a philanthropist, and a person. If you speak to those who have been around him the longest, they will tell you his true passion is his family: his wife, JoAnn; his son, Graham; his daughter-in-law, Kathryn; his son, Jason; his daughter-in-law, Jen; and of course his treasured grandchildren, Kylie, Paxton, and Charlie. I have no doubt that Fred's retirement means he will be spending a lot more time as Pop Pop to his three treasures, becoming even more of a fixture at their frequent school functions and their baseball and soccer games. Fred's friends and family will also tell you how much he adored his mother, Marjorie, visiting her daily at Stonegates until her passing, and how much he cares for his father-in-law today. They will tell you that Fred loves dancing, snappy suspenders, and vinyl records. Fred's friend Tom Shopa will tell you about Fred's passion for golf and how, for decades, he has kept track of all of his golf scores, the number of putts he made, the weather that day--recording every single detail just as his father did. Fred's friends and colleagues will tell you they hear Fred say thank you dozens of times every day. Today I pause for a moment on the floor of this great institution to say thank you to Fred. Thank you for giving your time and talents over decades to more than 40 community nonprofit organizations, for serving on countless boards, from Christiana Care to the Rodel Foundation, from the Housing Partnership, to the United Way. Thank you for your decades of service to Wilmington and Delaware and for a lifelong commitment to family, friends, and community. Fred, as our friend Tony Allen puts it, everyone in Delaware is better off because of your efforts. On behalf of Senator Tom Carper and Congressman John Carney, I wholeheartedly thank you, Fred Sears, and congratulations on many jobs well done. I eagerly look forward to seeing where your so-called retirement will take you next.

Mr. COONS

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

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise today to express my thanks to my chief of staff of the last 5 years, Todd Webster. It is a bittersweet day for me because my office says farewell to someone who has been a trusted, loyal, reliable, energetic, patient, faithful leader of the Coons team for my first 5 years here in Washington. He is someone who has been warm and humorous, caring, and always ready with a funny story to tell. He is down to earth, someone who takes interest in whomever he is speaking to; who seems to know everyone here, and who is well liked and well respected. He is a true family man who helped plan a surprise birthday party for his father Peter who recently turned 75; whose delightful and beautiful wife Lisa last fall was named president and CEO of Physicians for Peace and who joins him in their commitment to public service; and whose wonderful children, his daughter Sydney, son Peter, and daughter Catherine have sustained and supported him in his service--his 5 years with me in the Senate and his years before that with other Senators. Even their dog Kili, an Irish doodle, has been a part of the extended Webster family that has helped engage and entertain and support my office these last 5 years. When I first came to Washington, under the most unlikely circumstances in 2010, I was looking for someone who could help me navigate the culture and folkways of this building, and there was no one better suited for that than Todd Webster. He worked on the campaigns of Senators Harkin and Byrd, as the deputy communications director for the Gore-Lieberman campaign, and as the communications director for Senator Patty Murray. After that he was the communications director for Senator Tom Daschle. After those years of service in the Senate, he had gone off on his own to form the WebStrong Group, and he was the owner of Webster Strategies and a regular commentator on MSNBC. So when I had the chance to first meet him in 2010, I was encouraged that he was willing to offer his significant skills and talent to the challenge of helping me shape my team and decide on my trajectory here in the Senate. So this 9-year Senate veteran, this graduate of Bowdoin College and possessor of a master's degree from the GW Graduate School of Political Management set off with me on a fascinating and at times challenging trip. Todd is a great athlete. He is someone who is a dedicated golfer, ``an honorable player,'' as was commented by JJ Singh, one of our great team members in the office. You can tell a lot about a person by how they behave on the golf course, and Todd is a gentleman. He plays fast so as not to hold up others, but will go out of his way to look for your lost ball in the woods. If Todd left the office a few minutes early on Fridays, he would announce that he was ``going to investigate some greenspace.'' Although rare, his outings on golf courses, I know, were a source of encouragement and relief. On the softball field he was also a great contributor. A member of my team commented that ``he was a valuable member'' of our team, known as the Small Wonders, after Delaware's nickname, ``and was known for his ability to turn triples into doubles and sacrificing his body at first base to get much-needed outs.'' ``He was also instrumental,'' JJ wrote, ``to the team's magical 2014 turnaround season and Cinderella run to the playoffs.'' On the management side, Todd would constantly walk around the office unannounced, just to check in and see how folks were doing. Rather than making staff find him, he would proactively seek out staff. His door was always open, whether to chat about something work-related or to vent or to listen about something personal. He always had a funny story to tell and was willing to listen and offer meaningful advice. When Tom sensed that the afternoon was dragging on and our subterranean executive suite was in need of a pick-me-up, he would go on what we call in Delaware a ``WaWa run,'' picking up snacks and caffeinated beverages to keep everybody focused until the end of what are sometimes very long days. I got one interesting comment from a constituent staffer who has worked for me and for several other Senators in her many long years at the Senate. She commented that on one visit to DC, Todd cared enough to make sure our whole constituent relations team had lunch in the Senate dining room. She was astonished that he took time out of his busy day to have lunch and get to know them and get to know what they do on behalf of the people of Delaware every day. Todd also understood and connected with my commitment to my home State and enthusiastically made an annual trek to the Delaware State Fair and devoted himself to learning more about Delaware's all- important poultry business. I will say that in equal part I did my best to learn more about sports, going to Caps events, Wizards events, and on golf outings with Todd. He joined me in going to memorable visits of processing plants where thousands of chickens made the eye-opening transition from being broilers to being dinner. In addition, I want to thank him for his strong constitution and his dedication for advancing the agricultural interests of my home State, which even included trying scrapple on one occasion. At a time when congressional budgets have constantly been under pressure and many in America believe our political system is dysfunctional, Capitol Hill depends on dedicated, loyal, optimistic, and positive public servants like Todd--not only for the kind of policy and political accomplishments that ultimately show up on a resume or a job description but even more for the qualities and characteristics that make this place function--an unquestioningly positive attitude, a management style that makes everyone from interns to seasoned professionals feel welcome and valued, a willingness to speak candidly about himself and the office, about our challenges and prospects, a keen perspective on the absurdity of the many aspects of the modern political process, and the relentless idealism that inspires those around him to keep believing and working hard. These are the hallmarks of Todd's time over the past 5 years. In the 5 years I have had the joy of working with him. He has always been at my side, helping my office get up and running and teaching me the ways of this town and this institution. Walking around Capitol Hill with him was often like walking beside the ``mayor of the Senate.'' Every few steps, every few minutes, someone would stop to say hello, to catch up, to reconnect or talk about what is next. Far too often, people leave the Hill, having forgotten long ago why they ever got into public service in the first place. Todd never has. Throughout his 9 years serving three different Senators, he has remained cheerful, optimistic, tireless, and committed. His car is often the very first one in the Russell garage in the morning, and he often has been the last staffer to leave and go home at the end of a long workday. Whether it is his willingness to call a staff member after the passing of a family member or bounding into the office every morning with a smile, saying, ``top of the morning to you, hello friends, hello Meg, hello T, hello Chels,'' my office will simply not be the same without him--without his cheer, without his loyalty, without his hard work, without his energy, and without his optimism about what we can still do together here in this greatest institution in the American constitutional order. So with that, I would like to offer my thanks and best wishes to my departing chief of Staff, Todd Webster. Thank you.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise today to honor a fellow Delawarean, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Vernon Alston, who passed away unexpectedly last month at the much too young age of 44. Officer Alston was a fixture in the House of Representatives, spending nearly 20 years on the Hill with the Capitol Police. As one of his colleagues, Officer Scott McBane, noted, Vernon was a ``gentle giant.'' His wife Nicole describes him as ``a very genuine man'' who had a deep and genuine love for people. While I didn't have the privilege of knowing Officer Alston personally, we shared at least two commitments: to be in Washington each morning to go to work and to be back home in Delaware to see our kids each night. For years, Vernon's shift started at 5 a.m., meaning he would be beginning his 90-minute commute from Magnolia, DE, at a time when few, if any, of the people he would soon be protecting would even be awake. For those who knew him, Vernon's willingness to drive 3 hours a day just to be home with his family every night wasn't the only reflection of his commitment to service and his family. In fact, Vernon's entire career is a testament to his passion for helping others. While still a student at Howard University, he joined the U.S. Army Reserve and served as an Army reservist until 1994. After graduating from college in 1995, Vernon joined the DC Army National Guard and served as a member of the Guard for another decade. In 1996, Vernon joined the U.S. Capitol Police and spent the next two decades dedicated not just to keeping lawmakers and their families and our offices' visitors safe but doing so with humility, a smile, and with a relentlessly positive attitude. It is not just the job Vernon chose to dedicate his life to that says so much about his character but how he did it. Those who served with him will tell you how he always wore a smile on his face and never had a harsh word to say. Two weeks ago Vernon died as he lived both his professional and personal life--helping people around him. In this case, he was shoveling snow for his next door neighbor in the aftermath of one of the biggest storms to hit our beloved home State of Delaware in years. From the employees of the House and Senate who work around-the-clock to keep the lights on to the Members of Congress ourselves, everyone plays their part in keeping this institution working and in making our country's legislative process functional and accessible. That accessibility, that openness, is a guiding light to which nations around the world aspire, and that is in many ways a direct reflection of the efforts of Officer Alston and fellow Capitol Police officers who serve with bravery and tirelessness, day in and day out. When we talk about public service on this floor, we are often referring to our country or our constituents, but just as important is service to our colleagues, family, and friends. Vernon first met his wife Nicole when they were both students at Howard in 1992, but they didn't truly connect until running into each other near this Capitol 15 years ago. It was just 6 months after that, Nicole remembers, that she married the man of her dreams. Let me leave with you a passage from the Scriptures, Galatians 6:9- 10, which teaches us: Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people. Whether in the Army Reserve, at his post outside the Cannon House Office Building or at his home in Delaware, Vernon sought the opportunity to do good to all people, and in doing so he made a real difference in the lives of those he knew and those he served. While the words and tributes to Officer Alston that have poured forth from his colleagues and his friends may provide little comfort today to his friends and family, it is my hope and prayer that Nicole, Brittany, Yasmeen, Brandon, Israel, and Breyden can take solace in knowing in the years to come that the man they so loved was beloved by so many people. Thank you. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about our relations with Iran and the enforcement of the U.S.-Iran--the international nuclear deal. Let me first start with a few observations to reinforce an important point: that Iran is neither our friend nor our ally. Just last Wednesday, as the international community marked the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz as part of UNESCO's Holocaust Remembrance Day, when countries from around the world came together in solemn remembrance of the Shoah, united in a shared commitment that the atrocities of the Holocaust must never happen again, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued a very different proclamation. It came in the form of a video uploaded to his official Web site in which the narrator condemns the nations of the world for supporting Israel and questions the legitimacy and magnitude of the Holocaust. Just a few days later, the Supreme Leader of Iran awarded medals to the members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps who detained American sailors last month under very dubious circumstances. The Iranian Supreme Leader, eager to use this incident for his own propaganda purposes, called them Medals of Conquest. These two actions are despicable and not the sign of a nation ready to rejoin the international community. These actions by Iran's Supreme Leader are just the most recent in a series of provocations and reminders that the Iranian regime is neither Americas's ally nor friend. A nation such as Iran that continues to suppress dissent, promotes terrorism on its regional neighbors, and blatantly disregards international law and norms, is a destabilizing force, a revolutionary regime not to be trusted. It is precisely for this reason--because we are deeply distrustful of Iran and its intentions--that we have to come together to rigorously, aggressively enforce the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran and push back on its bad behavior, from its support for terrorism, to its human rights abuses, to its illegal ballistic missile tests. Today I wanted to focus on one of the most vital elements of the nuclear deal--the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the nuclear deal with Iran, which is the dramatic increase in access and surveillance that the International Atomic Energy Agency, or the IAEA, has gained through this agreement. After implementation day was reached, one of the significant consequences of that milestone is not just that Iran has taken dramatic action to push back its own nuclear trajectory but that it has granted unprecedented access to the world's nuclear watchdog agency to monitor its compliance with the deal. As Congress, the administration, and the international community now focus on enforcing the terms of the JCPOA, it is worth taking a much deeper look at what exactly makes this IAEA access so unprecedented and so important to maintain. I recently visited the headquarters of the IAEA in Vienna, Austria, with a delegation of eight Senators. This agency has a huge amount riding on its ability to successfully detect any Iranian cheating under this deal. It is no understatement to say that the very credibility of the IAEA is on the line as it monitors, inspects, and verifies the status of Iran's nuclear program--not just for a week, a month, or a year, but for decades into the future. I was pleased and reassured to see that they are using some of the very innovative inspection techniques developed at America's own National Laboratories. These are just a few of the topics I want to touch on in the minutes ahead. The nuclear deal reached with Iran required that they provide the IAEA with around-the-clock, 24/7 access to monitor Iran's entire nuclear fuel cycle. What is a nuclear fuel cycle? It is all the different steps required to go from mining the raw ore to actually producing highly enriched uranium--from uranium mines, uranium mills, centrifuge production workshops, to every known and declared uranium enrichment site connected to Iran's nuclear program. Simply put, before this agreement--before the JCPOA--Iran could have converted its uranium or its plutonium into material useful for a nuclear weapon. On implementation day, Iran disabled its Arak reactor. They filled the core of that reactor with concrete, shutting off the so-called plutonium pathway to a nuclear weapon. Today I will focus on the uranium pathway of the commercial nuclear fuel cycle, which includes the four parts I just mentioned--mills, mines, conversion facilities, and enrichment facilities. These different components of their entire fuel cycle are scattered across the nation of Iran, as you can see in the graphic to my right. The fuel cycle begins at uranium mines where hundreds of tons of dirt, rocks, and ore which contain tiny, trace amounts of uranium-- typically just 0.1 percent--are dug up, blasted into smaller pieces, dumped into huge trucks, and then transported to the next stage, uranium mills. Two mills exist in Iran near Gachin and Saghand. Under the JCPOA, the IAEA will maintain continuous access to these mills. In these uranium mills, the rocks retrieved from mines are then ground into dust from which uranium is extracted. This raw uranium ore concentrate is then transported--again, under the supervision of the IAEA--to a uranium conversion facility at Isfahan, where it is converted into uranium hexafluoride gas, or UF-6. The final and most critical step of the fuel cycle takes place at so- called enrichment facilities where rapidly spinning centrifuges enrich uranium hexafluoride to the point where it can be used for research and development, industrial purposes, or, if enriched to a very high level as fissile material, it can be used for a nuclear weapon. Critically, the nuclear deal gives the IAEA access to inspect and oversee every one of these stages, not just enrichment facilities, as other deals with other countries previously required. If the JCPOA only required the Iranians to give nuclear inspectors access to their enrichment facilities, Tehran could easily continue to mine, meld, convert, and then quite likely enrich uranium undetected elsewhere, such as undeclared secret facilities. That is why it is so important that mills, mines, and the whole rest of the fuel cycle are subject to regular inspections and continuous oversight. Access to the entire fuel cycle means that the IAEA--and thus the world--will know if Iran tries to move any nuclear material to undeclared covert facilities. One of the biggest advances in this new, continuous monitoring approach is a whole new series of inspection techniques and technologies. It is not enough for nuclear inspectors themselves to be able to access every step of the fuel cycle because it is impossible for even the best inspectors to be physically present everywhere all of the time in a nuclear fuel cycle system as complex as Iran's. That is why effective oversight and enforcement demands that the IAEA be able to monitor enrichment efforts remotely and constantly. That level of monitoring is provided by the continuous real-time monitoring of all of Iran's declared nuclear facilities. Here is one of the ways that works. The small device to my right here is an IAEA monitoring device--known as an online enrichment monitor, or an OLEM--which is installed at the Natantz fuel enrichment plant in Iran. The pipe labeled ``A'' is a processing pipe that transports gaseous uranium hexafluoride gas from cascades of spinning centrifuges. These centrifuges are the devices that take the uranium previously mined from the ground and then milled to be transformed or enriched into uranium possibly useful for either civilian or military purposes. Inside the box at the bottom right, this ``B,'' is a gamma ray detector which measures the amount of uranium hexafluoride gas flowing through the centrifuge at key measurement points. These gamma ray detectors send continuous, real-time, 24/7 information to the IAEA so it can make sure that Iran's uranium enrichment levels remain at or below the agreed-upon 3.67 percent--dramatically lower than the 90 percent enrichment threshold required for fissile material useable for a weapon. In addition to these gamma ray detectors, pressure and temperature sensors continuously monitor the present quantities of gaseous uranium hexafluoride gas. Measurements from these sensors, combined with data from the gamma ray detectors, allow the IAEA to effectively monitor all uranium enrichment. This monitoring equipment runs autonomously, has backup battery power to ensure reliability, and is encased, as you can see, in sealed containers that contain tamper-resistant equipment to allow the international community to know if Iran tries to alter or tamper with the monitoring equipment. Before the IAEA developed and implemented these continuous monitoring devices, nuclear inspectors had only two options for verifying compliance: Send inspectors directly, physically into each facility to retrieve physical samples or attempt to measure compliance, even remotely, by taking environmental samples. As a stand-alone method, these two techniques were unreliable and time-intensive, requiring weeks to collect, ship, and analyze samples. Today, instead of waiting weeks or months for results, the IAEA now has real-time, around-the- clock access, so it is aware of exactly what Iran is doing at its enrichment facilities. These nonstop monitoring devices that were recently developed will also be supplemented by traditional sampling and analysis performed in person by IAEA inspectors. Continuous monitoring devices are in place at all of Iran's uranium enrichment facilities, as well as every known site at which Iran mills and converts uranium and manufactures or stores centrifuges. That represents every single location involved in Iran's fuel cycle-- except uranium mines. That is because real-time monitoring of a mine would serve no scientific purpose. Uranium mines consist of thousands of tons of raw dirt, rock, and ore. Only a minuscule amount of uranium is naturally present, and even that raw uranium is typically present in such tiny concentrations--just a fraction of a percent--that they are unusable without further processing and enrichment. IAEA inspectors have regular access, as I have said, to all known uranium mines, and because of the huge amount of activity required to process and mine uranium, regular inspectors are more than sufficient to uncover and monitor Iran's behavior at mines. Throughout Iran's nuclear facilities, the IAEA has also installed both still and video cameras. These cameras provide a 90-percent increase in the number of images generated per day compared to before the nuclear agreement, giving the international community another vital window into Iran's activities. In addition, gamma ray monitors--as well as all nuclear material, centrifuges, and equipment--are all secured with tamper-evident seals to protect the integrity of the equipment. In our Nation's history of dealing with rogue states seeking a nuclear weapons capability--from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to Qadhafi's Libya to North Korea--there has never been an inspection protocol that allowed the IAEA this level of access to monitor and oversee every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle. Under this level of oversight, to produce a nuclear weapon, Iran would need to construct an entirely separate fuel cycle--a whole supply chain, including mining, milling, conversion, and enrichment facilities--completely in secret--an exceptionally difficult undertaking. But access alone is not enough. For us to be ensured that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon, the IAEA must also have the resources to turn that access into effective oversight. Under the terms of the JCPOA, Iran must declare every nuclear and nuclear-related facility that exists within its borders. In response, inspectors have three roles: first, to confirm that Iran's site declarations are accurate and comprehensive; second, to monitor all declared sites to make sure Iran's behavior complies with the terms of the deal; and, third, to track material that leaves each facility to make sure Iran is not pursuing illicit nuclear activity at undeclared sites elsewhere in the country. Inspectors have regular, complete access to every segment of the nuclear supply chain: conversion, enrichment, mines, mills, fuel manufacturing, the reactors themselves, and spent fuel. To reach the level of necessary oversight, the IAEA has increased its number of inspectors by 120 percent. But I will remind my colleagues that for the next 25 years or more, these physical inspections will have to be sustained to provide a critical supplement to the continuous monitoring technology I referenced before. Even so, if the IAEA doesn't have enough capable nuclear scientists to effectively monitor, evaluate, and investigate every aspect of Iran's nuclear fuel cycle, the international community will not, for the decades to come, be able to effectively enforce the terms of the JCPOA. It takes years to train capable nuclear scientists and even longer to develop new and better monitoring technologies. As the name of the IAEA implies, fully supporting the IAEA requires support from each of our international partners. But Congress can and should take a step forward by providing reliable, continuous, long-term funding for the IAEA so they can increase the number of their fully trained and available inspectors. It would send a strong signal to both our allies and to Iran that we are serious about holding Iran to the terms of the deal not just this year but over the decades to come. The IAEA needs the resources to do its job effectively and efficiently. Working effectively means the inspections are not only uncovering violations or potential violations of the deal but also deterring Iran from covert action by knowing with certainty that they will be caught. Working efficiently means the IAEA can devote as many resources as necessary to searching for undeclared sites and monitoring those that are known. To this end, I hope that when the President's budget is released next week, it will include a significant increase in resources for the IAEA. Adequately funding the IAEA is something I will be speaking about in greater detail in the weeks to come, but it is also important to note that there is a direct correlation between our investments in Federal research and development--specifically, in our National Laboratories-- and our effectiveness in keeping Iran's nuclear ambitions and the threat of proliferation throughout the rest of the world in check. For over 35 years--back to 1980--every single IAEA inspector has been trained at least once at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The Idaho, Oak Ridge, and Brookhaven National Labs are also part of the vital training network for IAEA inspectors. On average, our national labs are training 150 IAEA inspectors every year--about one- fifth of the entire inspection staff--every single year, developing key skills to keep us and the world safe, like learning how to make accurate, prompt measurements of nuclear material. Our National Labs also play a key role in improving existing technologies and developing new ones that we can't even imagine today. The online enrichment monitors I described earlier, which will allow for continuous, real-time oversight of Iran's enrichment activities, were originally developed at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. In fact, most of America's 17 National Labs have supported or are currently supporting some element of the IAEA safeguards technology, both as individual labs and as part of a 10-nation, 20-lab network of analytical labs that include Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, Pacific Northwest, and New Brunswick National Labs. In conclusion, congressional oversight is essential to the most stringent implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran and for our national security as a whole. Making investments in our National Labs and in Federal research and development today means better trained, better equipped nuclear inspectors for the years and the decades to come. Adequately funding the IAEA today means the international community takes full advantage of the unprecedented access we negotiated in this deal. Effectively enforcing the JCPOA and pushing back on Iran's bad behavior today makes it clear that we intend to hold Iran accountable and to lay the groundwork for security for generations to come. If we are serious about enforcing the terms of the nuclear deal, we need more than access; we need action. Thank you, Mr. President. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS

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

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania for his clear-eyed assessment of the challenges that lie ahead as we try to move past implementation day and into a positive world where together we might be able to provide the administration with the resources they need to enforce the agreement, counter Iran's bad behavior, and deter Iran from any further illicit or bad behavior. I wish to invite my colleague on the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Kaine of Virginia, to offer any thoughts he might care to share at this point before we bring this colloquy to a close. I know Senator Kaine has followed the importance of the inspections regime under the JCPOA closely. As Senator Shaheen and I both referenced earlier, full and robust funding of the IAEA is the only way to ensure they really have the ability to enforce this agreement and make sure this heavy water reactor does not somehow get redesigned, reengineered, and restarted in the future. I invite my friend and colleague from Virginia to offer his thoughts on how to make sure we are effectively enforcing this deal.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Virginia. We had a terrific experience traveling together to Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Vienna. In Vienna, we met with the leadership of the IAEA. We asked tough questions and learned more about their needs and plans for thoroughly inspecting every aspect of Iran's nuclear program. We heard about the concerns of our close regional allies in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. We need to strengthen our partnership with regional allies who are uncertain about the future with ISIS but who were, frankly, grateful for the increased intelligence partnerships between the United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, but most importantly with our vital ally Israel, as the good Senator from Virginia has recounted. We heard from the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, opposition leadership, and intelligence and defense community leaders that the partnership with the United States is stronger than it has ever been and that they view this path forward with Iran as having challenges and opportunities-- opportunities in terms of intelligence to be gained, opportunities in terms of pushing back on what was a rapidly advancing Iranian nuclear infrastructure and program, and now a challenge--a challenge to work together and provide exactly the sort of oversight and engagement that only a duly-empowered and active Congress can take. Let me close out the colloquy of six Senators by making a few simple observations, if I might. Congress has an essential role to play in ensuring that this nuclear deal with Iran moves forward and moves forward in our best national interest. Congress should not only provide oversight but also take action. The simplest is a point about which Senator Shaheen spoke at length--the importance of securing key national security nominees essential to the enforcement of sanctions. We can also take proactive action here in this Chamber by passing the Iran Policy Oversight Act. Its drafting was led by Senator Cardin of Maryland, but a dozen other colleagues--some who opposed and some who supported the deal--joined in as initial cosponsors. It is a bill that would clarify some ambiguous provisions of the JCPOA, establish in statute America's commitment to enforcing the deal, engage us in more comprehensive efforts to counter Iranian activity in the Middle East, and provide increased support to our allies in the region, especially our valued ally Israel. This is a step this body can and should take, and to do so would be much in the bipartisan spirit we saw in the Foreign Relations Committee between Chairman Corker and Ranking Member Cardin that produced the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. I think passing the Iran Policy Oversight Act would be a strong and important contribution by this Chamber. Speaking for only myself, I will also say that I think we should reauthorize the Iran Sanctions Act, which is set to expire this year. Having that law reauthorized would provide a viable framework through which the United States could snap back sanctions if Iran violated the JCPOA. Each of the ideas we have outlined--confirming vital national security nominees; passing enforcement legislation; and fully funding, reliably and for the long term, the IAEA, the inspections watchdog that is supposed to keep a close and persistent eye on Iran's nuclear facilities represents critical--these represent critical, concrete steps Congress can take. If the United States alone cannot enforce this complex deal, we have to keep building international support for the imposition of new sanctions to punish Iran for its ongoing human rights abuses, its illegal ballistic missile activity, and its support for terrorism in the Middle East. If we are going to be serious about our constitutional role to provide for the common defense and general welfare, I would argue that we here in the Senate have a sacred obligation to provide not only oversight of this deal but to also take action and enforce its terms and push back on Iran's bad behavior and to demonstrate to the world that the United States is serious about securing a peaceful, nuclear- free future, as difficult as that may be, for the Middle East. With that, I thank my colleagues who joined me here on the floor and yield the floor.