Christopher Coons

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a member of my staff, Erica Sensenbrenner, be granted privileges of the floor for the duration of today's session.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleagues from Ohio and Oregon, as we come to the floor today to talk about the 5 years since the passage of the Wall Street reform bill--better known as Dodd-Frank--and what it has meant for our States and for our country. It is no secret that Delaware, my home State, is also home to a very large financial services industry. The whole range of financial institutions--from small community banks and credit unions, to larger regional banks, to literally some of the largest banks in the world-- has a home in my State and employs tens of thousands of my constituents. So I understand it might be surprising to some to see me come to the floor and join my colleagues in defense of the broad and sweeping Wall Street reform bill that was enacted 5 years ago, but as a Democrat representing these workers in a State that benefits from a robust financial services industry, I also know how important strong, stable, secure, predictable capital markets and well-functioning and well- regulated financial services are to a healthy economy from which we can all benefit. If we don't have a bank we can trust, we can't get a loan or buy a home or finance an education--investments that can serve as foundations to a brighter future for our families. If we don't have robust capital markets, companies cannot get money they need to invest in people and products and services, in growth and in jobs. If you think of a world without functioning or reliable financial services, you can picture money sitting useless, unaccessible under a mattress. Without the roadways--the banks and financial services--to connect it, this money cannot move and an economy cannot grow. Quite literally, everything grinds to a halt. We don't have to look far to see an example of this sort of seizing up of a modern economy. Greece has recently experienced a devastating financial crisis where money stopped flowing into and out of their economy, banks limited the amount of cash people could take out, and the government prohibited people from sending money abroad. The result was widespread panic, disruption of day-to-day lives, and a deep distrust of banks and banking that will take a long time to heal. Capital markets and financial services that are well regulated and well run are important to us all. That is why we have to do everything we can to protect them. They make up a critical part of our Nation's economic infrastructure and lay the foundation for economic recovery. But just as streets need traffic lights and sharp turns need speed limits and bridges need guardrails, so, too, financial systems need fair and enforceable regulations. The alternative is what we saw just 5 years ago--the near collapse of our economy. When the 2008 financial crisis unfolded, I was a local elected official in Delaware, not a Senator. As our mortgage system, our banking system, and our markets collapsed, I saw the real wreckage in my own home community. I saw thousands of folks who lost their jobs, who lost their life savings, who lost their homes, and the painful and lasting impact on them and on our whole community. The 2008 crisis proved that a poorly regulated market left everyone exposed to risk, from consumers to financial services workers. Worst of all, it sparked a widespread distrust in our economy and our banks both here at home and abroad that we are still working to recover from today. The devastation caused by the great recession proved our financial system needed stronger regulations to protect consumers, families, businesses, and to make sure our capital markets are liquid, trustworthy, and reliable globally to instill faith back into our economy and system. So I believe it was in our national best interest for there to be adopted fair, predicable rules to make sure we could all drive on the road safely, metaphorically, regardless of what size car we drove or what side of the road we were driving on. That is why, 5 years ago, in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Congress's groundbreaking Wall Street reforms needed to become law. Those reforms took important steps to strengthen the rules of the road and prevent another significant crisis for our economy. Congress created an agency, the CFPB, or Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with a simple important mission: to protect consumers from abusive financial products. By helping to ensure that consumers have accurate financial information about the risks and benefits of financial products, CFPB works to prevent risky lending practices. An essential feature of CFPB is that it is an independent agency with only one responsibility; that is, protecting consumers. Second, Wall Street reform limited risky and unsafe investment practices at the highest levels of finance. It set strong capital standards so banks have a sturdy backstop in times of need and ensured that regulators have the tools to scrutinize banking practices that are far more complicated than ever before--in fact, at the very limits of what is capable of regulatory oversight. Congress required banks to perform risk testing, to improve oversight and make sure they can withstand turbulence in the same way first responders are required to perform regular safety drills to make sure everything works properly in the case of a crisis or a fire. Banks are now required to make sure they have the protocols and the policies and the resources in place to respond effectively to a renewed financial crisis. Last, the financial crisis made it clear that although there is much we can do to limit risk and protect consumers, banks--particularly big banks--can still fail. When they do, it is critical they are wound down, they are resolved, they are closed in a way that is responsible, does not spread contagion and harm the larger economy, and does not require an expensive taxpayer bailout. That is why Wall Street reform gave the government new abilities to responsibly wind down banks so they do not cause a financial earthquake, much in the way the government has done with smaller banks through the FDIC for more than 80 years. While I believe these reforms took much needed steps toward making sure our financial system is strong and healthy, I also believe we can build upon these reforms. One of its key authors, Senator Dodd, said just yesterday--former Senator and Chairman Dodd said just yesterday at a public event: It wasn't the Ten Commandments that was crafted; it was a law, and a law that needs to be improved. I know it might be difficult to believe Democrats and Republicans can find common ground on Wall Street reform, but there are, in fact, changes we can agree on that will make sure these reforms protect consumers and financial services. For example, we ought to lighten the regulatory burden on community banks so smaller banks can provide lending that their neighborhoods really need to grow and thrive. That is why Senator Merkley and I have cosponsored Senator Brown's important bill, the Community Lender Regulatory Relief and Protection Act, which would help smaller banks by streamlining exams, by helping credit unions develop more diverse sources of capital, and by reducing onerous privacy notification rules. Many of the proposals in this bill have bipartisan support. I am eager to work with my colleagues to implement those and other improvements. But unfortunately, rather than looking for ways to strengthen and sustain the broad architecture of Wall Street reform, too many of our Republican colleagues have continued to try to roll back the clock. We have seen how Republicans in the House have continued efforts to dismantle these bills, in particular in recent appropriations legislation. They have supported significant, harmful cuts to the regulatory agencies that are charged with rulemaking and with oversight--the most important entities in the financial services realm. They have also tried to undermine and undercut the CFPB's independence. Just today, Senate Republicans have proposed similarly misguided legislation. I plan to do everything I can to protect those agencies and stop efforts to fundamentally undo important Wall Street reform. It is time for my colleagues to stop proposing spending bills on a wide range of the subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee that have no chance of passing and that continue to push us closer to an inevitable government shutdown that would devastate our economy and I think cause real harm to our working families. I have heard those very same colleagues argue that by doing so, they are on the side of banks and they are on the side of increasing the forward growth of our economy and that is why they want to dismantle regulations. But what I hear from business leaders and bank leaders in my home State is that the biggest threat they face are more manufactured crises here in Congress that chip away at the confidence in the American economy that serves as a bedrock of our prosperity. As the leading Democrat on the committee charged with overseeing the financial services funding bills here in the Senate, I think it is critical that we work together to improve Wall Street reforms where we can rather than reverse what progress we have made. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, a consumer or a banker, a CEO or a small business owner, a family member or a financial services worker, we can all agree that we do not want another financial crisis. Nobody wants another bailout to banks. I strongly believe you can be pro-business, pro-financial services, and still believe in smart, strong, sensible regulation to keep everyone in our financial services system healthy and our overall system and economy safe. I believe a well-regulated financial system is critical to sustaining this sector into the future and ensuring that it is a trusted place for businesses and consumers to invest in from at home or abroad. A strong, secure, stable economy has long been the hallmark of America's global leadership, so I think we must work together to make sure it remains that way for decades to come. Wall Street reform was the result of a lot of hard work and compromise just 5 years ago. I look forward to working with my colleagues to continue strengthening the financial rules of the road as we go further into the future together. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Madam President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. COONS. Madam President, the bipartisan amendment I am offering today with Senator Rubio--and I am grateful to Senator Gillibrand for cosponsoring--this American dream accounts amendment is about one thing: giving every child the chance to go to college if they are willing to work hard for it. Time and again, we have seen in this country what kids can achieve when they know their dreams are possible. That is what this amendment and the American dream accounts help solve, ensuring that every child knows a college education is possible. The American dream accounts encourage partnerships in 10 demonstration sites to develop secure, Web-based student accounts that develop information about each student's literacy and academic preparedness and then ties it to high-impact mentoring and a college savings account. I myself have seen over the years of working with the national ``I Have a Dream'' Foundation how sending the message to our kids that college is a real possibility for them can make a powerful impact, from elementary school, to middle school, to high school, to college, and it has an impact that changes their behavior and their outcomes in school. American dream accounts are a bipartisan idea whose time has come. I urge my colleagues to support it with a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I am honored to join with the Senator from Ohio in cosponsoring this amendment. I, too, have recently visited an early college high school in my home State, which Delaware State College, our historically Black college, has established. It has shown real promise in terms of the possibilities for college access, college affordability, and college completion. I urge an ``aye'' vote from my colleagues.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask my colleague from Arkansas, through the Chair, first, if we cannot receive consent to take up these nominations which were made over 15 months ago as a group. I wish to briefly describe one of the truly exceptional candidates. If I might also, I think it is important for all of us in the Chamber to recognize that the Court of Federal Claims, while the actual number of cases considered may have decreased, faces a steadily increasing number of complex cases which are subject to statutory case management deadlines that drive the workload of the court and have roughly doubled in recent years from 68 back in 2005 to 113 last year and likely double that this year. So the actual number of cases may be declining, but their complexity and their workload, because of the need for them to be resolved in a certain period of time, have steadily increased, and I will simply suggest to my colleague from Arkansas that looking more broadly at the workload would suggest some of these nominees are worthy of consideration and confirmation. I will briefly reference one of the five pending nominees, Jeri Somers, who has spent a decade at the DOJ civil division as a trial attorney but recently retired, having served in the U.S. Air Force Reserves as a lieutenant colonel, having spent two decades as a judge advocate and a military judge in the U.S. Air Force. She is a patriot, a veteran, a highly qualified attorney, and I will simply inquire of my colleague, through the Chair, whether any of the five nominees might be subject for consideration for confirmation today.

Mr. COONS. In conclusion, we have a range of highly qualified nominees. Armando Bonilla would be the first Hispanic judge to hold a seat and has been with the Department of Justice. Thomas Halkowski, a third pending nominee, is a respected partner at Fish & Richardson in Wilmington, one of the preeminent IP law firms in the Nation, and has a wealth of experience at a variety of different Federal courts. I think all three of the nominees I referenced today will make excellent additions. While my colleague and I view the caseload differently, I think the President has nominated able and capable nominees and the court needs and deserves to not have to rely on senior status judges to meet its constitutional and statutory obligations. So, with that, I will yield the floor, although I will not yield on the issue. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, as the Senate this week considers the first major reform bill for our Nation's public schools in over a decade, I rise to talk about how we can ensure that every one of our country's children goes to a great school no matter his or her ZIP Code or background. Our Nation has long struggled to fulfill our fundamental promise of equal opportunity since our Nation's founding. It is a struggle that, despite many efforts, continues today. Fifty years ago, as America fought to break down racial barriers in our Nation's classrooms, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law. This civil rights act recognized that without actively investing Federal resources in educating America's underserved children, their dreams would remain tragically deferred. Since then, our country has continued to struggle with this fundamental civil rights challenge. And five decades after Johnson's landmark law and 14 years after President Bush revamped it with the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act, we still haven't found a way to ensure that as a nation, we hold every school to the high standards our children deserve. This week marks the latest effort in this long struggle. The Senate's reform bill, titled the ``Every Child Achieves Act,'' makes important strides to improve what went wrong in 2001's No Child Left Behind. I would like to start by commending Senator Patty Murray and Senator Lamar Alexander for accomplishing what has eluded the Senate for so many years--a truly bipartisan compromise that deals with some critical but often divisive issues at the heart of America's public schools. They have worked tirelessly on this bill because they understand the urgency of our national education crisis. In the wake of No Child Left Behind's Federal micromanagement of schools, this bill heeds an important lesson: Communities need to have some flexibility and some space to innovate and find their own solutions to their education problems. But I would urge my colleagues that as we work together to fix many of the law's weaknesses, we not lose sight of some of No Child Left Behind's important accomplishments. For all its many problems, it exposed uncomfortable realities in America's classrooms and empowered policymakers with real data that simply did not exist before. Most importantly, it refused to lower our Nation's expectations of any school and demanded that every child in America gets the education he or she deserves. In our drive to decrease the law's rigidity and address its many other challenges, we must maintain those high standards and continue to hold States and school districts accountable. Unfortunately, if it passed today, the Every Child Achieves Act would turn back the clock to a time when local control too often meant national indifference. It would risk letting too many of our children fall through the cracks. I, myself, have seen how this indifference can hurt America's students. For 20 years, I was actively involved with the national ``I Have a Dream'' Foundation, which works to send some of our country's most at-risk students to college. I had the opportunity to visit schools all over the United States, in some of our most stressed and challenged neighborhoods and some of our most struggling and difficult schools. When I met with students during those visits and asked them about their vision for their own future, while many wanted to become teachers, doctors or scientists, too many others did not believe those kinds of careers could ever be within their grasp. This, to me, illustrated the twin tragedies of our public education system; the fact that for many students with big dreams, their schools will not give them the chance to realize them, while for too many others, dreams long dead in their families and communities had taught them that daring to dream at all was futile. These students had fallen victim to what President George W. Bush so accurately described as the ``soft bigotry of low expectations.'' They had internalized the failings of the system around them to mean they were not worth investing in, so they might as well just give up from the beginning. There are two ways I believe we can and should improve the Every Child Achieves Act to change that message, to raise the expectations we communicate to kids from the day they are born to the day they enter the classroom, to the day they graduate. The first way is to pass amendments that strengthen Federal accountability provisions and shine a brighter spotlight on the small fraction of our schools that fail our children. Simply put, we cannot allow ourselves to lower our expectations for any of America's schools. I know for many of my colleagues and for teachers and students around the country, the very word ``accountability'' in the context of education is associated with high-stakes testing and unfunded mandates, but it doesn't have to mean either of those things. Accountability means holding every school and every child to the same high standards because our public schools must work for every student no matter where they are, where they come from or how they learn. Accountability means not allowing schools to maintain the status quo when they fail to graduate large segments of their students. Accountability means refusing to lower our expectation even when the path forward seems hard. We have already seen what accountability can accomplish for our children. Over the past decade, all students, but particularly disadvantaged students, have graduated at higher and higher rates and are performing in math and reading better than ever before. The national high school graduation rate is currently 81 percent, its highest level on record. Since 2003, the reading gap between Black and White fourth graders has closed by 16 percentage points, and over the same period Hispanic eighth graders have closed the gap in math by 24 percentage points. Federal accountability is a critical part of ensuring we invest in all American students as if they were our own children. I urge my colleagues to support Senator Murphy's amendment, which I am proud to join and cosponsor. This amendment would strengthen accountability in this bill by requiring States to identify low-performing schools and tailor interventions to help them improve their performance. It also ensures that schools set high goals for--and pay attention to--all students, including students with disabilities, low-income students, English language learners, Latino and African-American students. The second amendment I wish to address takes on another piece of increasing expectations of urging every one of our children to dream. That amendment is based on my bipartisan bill called the American Dream Accounts Act with Senator Rubio, and it would send the important message to low-income students that a college education can be within their grasp. For too long, college has been out of reach for the vast majority of poor Americans, but unlike in past decades, economic success today is defined by college access. With the new global economy, Americans with just a high school diploma earn literally $1 million less over their working lives compared to those who go to college. Yet too many of our students who need it most are not given the tools, the resources, and the information to complete a college education. As the administration has pointed out, just about 1 out of 10 children from low-income families will complete a college degree by the time they are 24--just 1 out of 10. The American Dream Accounts Act is designed to address and break down many of the barriers to college access that our most at-risk students face in seeking higher education. They encourage partnerships between schools, colleges, nonprofits, and businesses to develop secure, Web-based individual student accounts that contain information about each student's academic preparedness, financial literacy, connects them to high-impact mentoring, and is tied to an individual college savings account. Instead of having each of these different resources available separately through separate silos, an American dream account connects them across existing separated programs and across existing education efforts at the State and Federal level. By connecting across these different silos, it deploys a powerful new tool and resource for students, parents, teachers, and mentors. Many of the kids I worked with over many years at the ``I Have a Dream'' Foundation have grown up in schools, communities, and families where almost no one around them had the opportunity for a college education. These kids took that to mean college just wasn't for them, that it shouldn't be a part of their plan for their future. As part of that organization, it was our job to change that perception, and I saw time and again how sending the message that college was a possibility from elementary school on had a powerful and compounding positive impact on these students' ideas of whom they could be and what they could achieve. It demonstrated that exciting and engaging not just young students but their parents, teachers, and an array of mentors has a cumulative, powerful, positive impact. The American dream accounts would expand on this idea and use modern social networking technology to bring together existing programs and deliver ideas that will work for more and more of our kids. The good news is that by utilizing existing Department of Education funds, this legislation would come at no additional cost to taxpayers. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment with Senator Rubio. It is amendment No. 2127, and it would authorize a pilot program to begin making the American dream accounts a reality. We have an opportunity right now to build on the bill that Senators Murray and Alexander wrote to reform our public schools in a way that communicates to every child in every public school that they deserve a high-quality education, the kind of education that tells them not only that they should have dreams but that those dreams are within their grasp. Mr. President, 55 years after U.S. marshals escorted first grader Ruby Bridges to school, the nature of and need for Federal intervention in public education has surely changed. While schools are no longer closed to certain races by law, too many students are dropping out of school too early or just not receiving an education that prepares them for college and future success. So while educational inequality is no longer a story of deliberate, legalized racism in need of Federal intervention, it is, unfortunately, still a persistent and tragic national reality that afflicts classrooms from coast to coast. We have made significant progress due in part to a bipartisan national commitment to raising the bar for all of America's children. We cannot allow ourselves to lower it once again. I look forward to continuing this important debate and working with my colleagues to make sure this bill strikes the right balance between Federal oversight and local flexibility. We must work together to make sure this bill moves us closer toward the goal President Johnson reached for when he first signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law. Unanimous Consent Request--Executive Calendar Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar No. 27, Calendar No. 28, Calendar No. 29, Calendar No. 30, and Calendar No. 31, and that the Senate proceed to a vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nominations; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative action.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Hatch be recognized following my remarks.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, today I wish to honor someone I have had the privilege of calling a friend for many years and who is retiring after serving the State of Delaware for the past 6 years, Alan Levin. Alan and I both had our first tours of duty in Washington working for the same Republican Senator. I was an intern for Senator William Roth in the early 1980s and Alan was his counsel in the mid-1980s. Alan, a well-known and respected statewide leader in Delaware's Republican Party, has, since 2009, served as the director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, where he has worked every day to attract businesses to Delaware and to help them create good jobs in our communities. Alan took over at a time when communities throughout Delaware were hemorrhaging jobs and feeling the very worst effects of the great recession. Today Delaware's unemployment rate sits a full point below the national average at 4.5 percent, in part thanks to the great effort of Alan Levin's. During his tenure, Alan exemplified what it means to be a public servant. It didn't matter to Alan if someone came to him who was thinking of starting a small business that would employ 4 people or if it was a company thinking of moving to Delaware and bringing 400 jobs. No matter what, if it was going to help Delaware, Alan was ready to meet with anyone and show them why there was no better place than the First State, our home State of Delaware, to run a business. Of course, Alan's service to our State began well before 2009. Long a leader in the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce for more than two decades, Alan ran Happy Harry's Pharmacy, a family business that he grew over decades of discipline and capable leadership, ultimately expanding it to 76 stores in our region. That success is an important part of who Alan is, because to really know him is to know that his job at the Delaware Economic Development Office was not one he needed; it was one he chose. Alan could have continued and built his success in the business world--anyone could tell you that--but he made a decision at that key point in his life to strive for something else, something more to make his home State a better place. He recognized his considerable skills, talents, and knowledge and decided to use them to help families and businesses across our State succeed. That is a profound thing. In a world where there are far too many people who shun public life and public service for good reason, Alan stepped up to the plate when Delaware needed him most. Now, fortunately for all of us, Alan isn't going far. We will still get to see him in southern Delaware, where he will be working with SoDel Concepts in their successful restaurants. It is hopeful that he will get a chance to trade in his business suit for flip-flops and a beach chair from time to time. I just wanted to take this moment on the floor to thank Alan and to thank especially his wife Ellen and his wonderful sons, Andrew, Daniel, Jason, and Jess, for letting us have Alan in public service for so many years where he has made such a difference. It is my hope he will get to enjoy his family, his grandchildren, and the entire Delaware community, which is so grateful to Alan for his public service. I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, today, I want to take a moment to recognize the important relationship between the United States and Jamaica and the role Jamaican Americans play in promoting trade and development between our two nations. The United States has a robust and important relationship with Jamaica. President Obama's trip to Jamaica in April 2015 illustrated that we see Jamaica as a key regional leader and that we have a strong interest in strengthening our bilateral security relationship with Jamaica. The United States is Jamaica's leading partner in trade, chief source of foreign direct investment, FDI, and home to the largest Jamaican diaspora in the world. The more than 1 million Jamaicans in the United States make crucial contributions to the Jamaican economy through remittances and support for friends and family still in Jamaica. Proud Jamaicans like Delaware's Lorraine Badley connect business leaders with opportunities for investment and trade, host ministers and other Jamaican officials, and strengthen community connections in both countries. From Bob Marley, who first emigrated from Jamaica to my home State, to former NBA basketball player Patrick Ewing and former Secretary of State Collin Powell, first- and second-generation Jamaican Americans have made significant and lasting contributions to our economy, sports, art, and political system. The Jamaican Government recognizes the critical role Jamaicans living abroad play in Jamaica's economic advancement, and this week they are hosting the Sixth Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference in Montego Bay. The conference brings together members of the Jamaican diaspora from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries to build connections and boost diaspora investment in the Jamaican economy. I would like to commend the Jamaican Government for their efforts to diversify their economy and become a regional leader in trade and investment. The Diaspora Conference taking place this week will leverage that support into targeted investments to grow Jamaica's infrastructure, ports, and logistics capacity to make it the central hub for the transport of goods between Latin America and the United States. As the Jamaica Diaspora Conference draws to a close, the United States looks forward to seeing new partnerships between the Jamaicans and the Jamaican diaspora emerge to further an economic development agenda that will result in mutual growth and benefit both our countries.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, the hallmark of our Nation's economy has long been the ability of anyone with creativity, ambition, and a good work ethic to realize their dreams and move America forward. From the lightbulb to the iPhone, the legacy of American invention has shone brightly throughout the world. Yet while our culture of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit remain strong, the policy framework that empowers that spirit to flourish is losing its competitive edge. For years, enabling our Nation's innovative drive was an economic system unparalleled around the world--from competitive tax laws to public investments in research, infrastructure, and education. We have long understood something that many other countries haven't: for innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit to thrive, we need a strong, competitive economic ecosystem. There simply is no single silver bullet for economic growth. While other nations catch up, our system is deteriorating in a number of ways. Federal investments in basic research and development are not keeping up with inflation and our tax code remains riddled with complexity, unable to spur growth and provide the certainty our businesses need. We also have to address the tough questions about how to fund our infrastructure, transportation, and education systems. In our dynamic market economy, the natural churn of businesses opening and closing keeps our Nation competitive, as long as we are creating more businesses than we are closing, of course. According to the Census Bureau, however, U.S. businesses are now failing faster than they are being created for the first time in 35 years--since the data began being recorded. Meanwhile, the 2014 Global Innovation Index saw the U.S. innovation ecosystem fall to 6th, while ranking 39th in ease of starting a business. These declines are coupled to a global R&D forecast that projects leading competitors--like China--will surpass the U.S. in total R&D investment by 2022. Yet even with these challenges, we do retain a competitive edge. Americans' entrepreneurial drive still spurs our economy; manufacturing output continues to increase; our colleges and universities remain the envy of the world; innovations in the American energy industry have reduced our trade deficit and improved our energy security; and private sector R&D has rebounded after several years of stagnation. We now find ourselves at a competitive inflection point. We can either do more to nurture and take advantage of our strengths--only some of which we have mentioned--or we can fall behind in the 21st century. In order to support our competitive strengths, Senator Jerry Moran and I are launching the bipartisan Senate Competitiveness Caucus, a forum to bring together Democrats and Republicans to address the most pressing issues facing our economy. Rather than focus on just one issue or one bill, we have built the caucus with the understanding that it will take a whole range of policies working in concert to sustain our innovation ecosystem. We will pursue ways to invest in our roads, bridges, ports, and highways so they meet the needs of a 21st century economy. We will work to make our tax code more competitive so the United States will remain the best country in which to do business and raise a family. We will seek to streamline regulations to protect consumers and make it easier to start and grow a business. We will look at our Federal budget and focus Federal resources on pro-growth policies that will create an environment for job creation now and into the future. We will work together to boost manufacturing because no country can support a strong middle class without a thriving manufacturing sector. That is just a start. If the last century has taught us anything, it is that other countries will not slow down when it comes to chasing America's economic success. That means that even though the United States remains a world leader in innovation and competitiveness, it will only become more difficult to retain that position as the years go by. Members of the Competitiveness Caucus understand that we are now competing with every country, every government, every worker, and every business on the planet. Congress must come together to turn our economic challenges into opportunities for growth.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I have come to the floor today following on the speech just delivered by Senator Boxer, who highlighted her concern about a manufactured crisis--the impending expiration of the highway bill, which must be reauthorized by July 31. I come to speak to another manufactured crisis. We have to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank by June 30 or face the loss of its support for vital jobs in our economy that will happen with its expiration. I am a big advocate for manufacturing here in the Senate and in my home State of Delaware, but I am not a big fan of manufactured crises. Both of these are unneeded, self-inflicted wounds that will create further drag on our economic recovery. I think we can and should find ways to work together across the aisle to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. For more than 80 years, the Export-Import Bank, commonly known as Ex- Im, has served as a vital tool to help American companies sell their goods around the world. By making loan guarantees and providing risk insurance and other financial products to American firms at market prices, the Bank has helped to ensure that American companies and their workers can compete anywhere in the world and at no cost to the American taxpayer. I will say that again: at no cost to the American taxpayer. The Bank not only pays for itself, but it actually often runs a surplus. Last year alone, it returned $700 million to the U.S. Treasury. Today, the Ex-Im Bank helps American businesses sell nearly $30 billion in goods every single year and supports more than 150,000 American jobs. The Bank is a government agency, however, and even though it costs taxpayers nothing and has an undeniably positive impact on our economy and on job creation, it remains unclear if this Congress will be able to come together to reauthorize it by June 30 and keep it running. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues would like to close the Bank, and they are using arguments I think are unfounded and misguided to do so. First, I have heard the Ex-Im Bank is somehow a government giveaway to large politically connected corporations. But the truth is the Bank helps companies of many different sizes, large and small. In my home State of Delaware, for instance, the Ex-Im Bank has helped a company I know well--Voigt and Schweitzer, a hot-dip zinc galvanizing company. It has helped them to sell their products abroad. Voigt & Schweitzer has a few facilities around the United States, in addition to the one in New Castle, DE. At its Delaware location it provides galvanizing services for a range of steel products for export. V&S isn't a huge corporation. It has just a few dozen employees in Delaware. It is because of Ex-Im's support that it has been able to compete with other companies around the globe. In fact, Ex-Im's support helped the firm's Delaware location earn the business to galvanize literally hundreds of bridges that were manufactured in Pennsylvania and being exported and sold to Africa-- business that would have likely gone to competitors overseas without Ex-Im's help. Now, Ex-Im does also help large corporations export their goods to countries around the world, but that support also benefits small and medium- sized businesses. For example, Boeing often receives significant support from the Ex-Im Bank, which helps it compete with international airplane manufacturers such as Airbus. I have heard Senators criticize this support, but the reality is it isn't just Boeing that benefits. This is an important point about how modern manufacturing and the integration of the supply chain work. When Boeing manufactures a finished airplane, it doesn't make all of the plane's parts with its own factories and its own workforce. It, in fact, buys the vast majority of the component parts from much smaller manufacturers spread throughout the United States. From the brakes on the landing gear to the in-flight entertainment system, other companies make those parts and sell them to Boeing for the finished product. So when Ex-Im helps Boeing export a 747, it helps sustain tens of thousands of jobs for American workers at other smaller companies. I have seen this myself in Delaware. Although Boeing directly employs in Delaware just 16 people, the company supports 1,300 jobs with 52 different Delaware companies. Let me give one example. A smallish company, Polymer Technologies, manufactures and sells thermal and acoustic insulation to Boeing for inclusion in their planes, which are then exported through the help of Ex-Im. So when Ex-Im's opponents in this Chamber argue that this is all about a few big companies, that just isn't true. It also is vital to sustaining and supporting smaller manufacturers that are vital to our communities. The next misplaced argument I have heard is that government shouldn't be supporting private companies, period. They should not be, as it were, picking winners and losers. But even to a supporter of the free market, the point of government is to step in where the private market fails to do so, and that is exactly what Ex-Im does. When the Bank makes a loan to a business, it isn't replacing capital that would otherwise have come from a private bank. It supplements private capital or makes a private bank more inclined to put at risk its own capital through provision of political risk insurance. Much of the time Ex-Im serves as a lender of last resort and provides a loan where a private bank can't or won't. So the Export-Import Bank isn't doing something the private sector should be doing. It is picking up where the market leaves off, and in doing so it helps to level the global playing field on which American companies compete. The reality is that every single one of our trading partners provides the same type of support for their exports as the Ex-Im Bank does for ours. So they are picking winners. They are picking American winners on the global playing field. For example, as Ex-Im's chairman, Fred Hochberg, has written, ``Ex-Im has given $590 billion in loans, guarantees, and insurance over its entire history but Chinese institutions''--Chinese export-financing institutions--``have provided an estimated $670 billion in just the past 2 years.'' In other words, China has done more in just 2 years to support the financing of their exporters than our Export-Import Bank has done in its entire 80-year history and at no cost to the taxpayer. The bottom line is that American jobs are at stake in this debate, and if we fail to keep the doors open to the Export-Import Bank, we will fail a lot of American workers. Every year, Ex-Im supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, and shuttering it will put them at risk. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal reported just this morning, American companies worry that global competition is ``so cutthroat,'' that they would ``be forced to move manufacturing overseas'' and to ship American manufacturing jobs out of the United States ``if the Ex- Im Bank isn't open.'' At a time when our economy is continuing to gain steam and Americans are going back to work--at a clip of 280,000 new jobs announced just last month--we need to continue to help American companies compete in markets around the world. The Ex-Im Bank is central to our competitiveness and our continued strength at home and abroad. It is critical that we act together to reauthorize it before the end of June. So I urge my colleagues to join this effort to help support American jobs, American manufacturing, and the American middle class. Mr. President, for more than 20 years, the State Partnership Program--or SPP--has helped the United States to build closer sustained relationships with militaries and nations around the world. Although I will not call it up and make it pending at this moment, I want to take a few minutes to speak on the floor today about my amendment No. 1474 to the NDAA, an amendment that would significantly strengthen the State Partnership Program. First established after the fall of the Soviet Union, the State Partnership Program was created to help countries transition their militaries from the Soviet model and enshrine the idea of civilian control of the military through professional and personal exchanges with our State National Guard units. The SPP facilitates cooperation across all aspects of civil military affairs and, besides military relationships, encourages people-to- people ties at the State level. I have personally seen the benefits of this program through the participation of my home State National Guard in their State partnership with Trinidad and Tobago and the civilian control that it reinforces. I have also seen it in farflung parts of the globe, from Liberia to Senegal to Tunisia on the African continent, where three different State Partnership Programs are actively at work providing training and support and resources for the military of those three nations. The California National Guard, for example, currently has units that are helping Ukraine to push back against Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, leveraging a deep and trusting relationship first established back in 1993. Since its creation, the SPP has grown substantially. Today, it consists of 68 partnerships between U.S. National Guard units and foreign countries, with the 69th, between Kentucky's National Guard and the African nation of Djibouti, having just been signed. Djibouti is a nation that is actually the site of our only substantial military presence on the continent of Africa, and that State Partnership Program will help to strengthen, sustain, and reinforce our ongoing and vital security partnership with Djibouti, a nation that is sandwiched between Somalia and Yemen, countries currently in chaos and facing significant threats from Islamic terrorism. That is just one example of how the State Partnership Program helps leverage the resources of our National Guard. Traditionally, the program has needed to be reauthorized every 2 years, so I am happy this year that both the House and Senate have recognized its value and have decided to work together to permanently reauthorize it in their respective National Defense Authorization Act. However, there are a few changes we can make that would add to making the SPP more transparent, more efficient, and more effective, and that is what my amendment would do. First, it would allow the Secretary of Defense to consolidate the various funding streams for the SPP, which right now come from over a half dozen different accounts scattered across DOD, which makes it more difficult to provide meaningful congressional sight. This amendment would allow the Defense Secretary to combine these funding sources into one National Guard fund to pay for personnel, training, operations, and equipment. Second, my amendment would allow the National Guard to determine its core competencies and to help combatant commanders determine how best to leverage the National Guard to serve the needs of a partner country. Last, my amendment would establish clear and enhanced reporting requirements so we can better track the annual performance of our units and make modifications where needed to enhance the program's effectiveness. Critically, this amendment would not increase the program's costs at all. This amendment, which is based on the State Partnership Program Enhancement Act and currently has 9 Republican and 12 Democratic Senators, including myself, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont, and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, enjoys broad bipartisan support from a wide range of States whose National Guards have participated and benefited from the State Partnership Program. The amendment is enthusiastically supported by the National Guard Association of the United States, the National Guard Bureau, and the Adjutants General. It would take important steps to strengthening a program that is essential to many of our international partnerships, and I urge my colleagues to support it. With that, I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, are we in a quorum call?

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I am wondering whether the Senator from Kentucky would be good enough to confirm for me where I think the issue is that is before the Senate today. So if I might, I will speak for a few minutes about what I think is the core issue before us on the floor and then ask the Senator whether he would confirm that this is his understanding as well. At the outset, I will say it is relatively rare for my colleague from Kentucky and I to come to the floor in agreement on an issue, but it has happened before on exactly this issue. I think it is important that it be clear to folks that there are concerns on both sides of the aisle on the critical underlying issues about how we balance privacy and liberty, security and our civil liberties. For nearly a decade, our government has operated a program that collects massive amounts of information from innocent Americans without any specific suspicion they have done anything wrong. Let me put that another way. For years, any American's communication data could have been tracked and collected by the government, whether or not they were suspected of a crime. That program has been carried out under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act based on flimsy or mistaken interpretations of the original law, all in the name of our national security. Yet the bulk collection program has had disputed and not arguably clear benefit to our national security. There is not one clear publicly confirmed instance of a plot being foiled because of this section 215 program. I have long been concerned about the scope and the reach of our intelligence community's bulk collection program. That is why in 2011 I voted, along with my colleague from Kentucky, against the straight reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. I believed then, as I believe now, it would be irresponsible for Congress to continue reauthorizing the law without taking steps to address concerns about unlawful surveillance it has allowed, particularly given the fact that earlier this month a U.S. Federal circuit court specifically deemed this program illegal. Fortunately, we have an alternative, which I believe the Senator from Kentucky has been expounding on behalf of, the USA FREEDOM Act, a bipartisan bill passed by the House just last week by an overwhelming margin--I think it was 338 to 88. It would end bulk collection by only allowing the Federal Government to seek call records retained by the telecommunications industry once it has established a record is relevant to an ongoing investigation. Records would no longer be stored by the government but would remain in the hands of telecommunications companies, which under FCC rules, in order to ensure that there is customer access to records in the case of a dispute, they are retained for 18 months. This bill strikes an important balance by protecting American's privacy and ensuring our government can still keep our Nation safe. In fact, there are some who might argue that the USA FREEDOM Act would allow a stronger and more robust and more effective series of actions to keep our Nation safe. I urge my colleagues to support it. I know these are difficult decisions for us to make. I know we all have concerns about our Nation's security, but we have to all have concerns about our Nation's freedom. We fought for it from the very beginning of our country. I want to just thank and salute Members here, colleagues, and in particular my colleague from Kentucky for being insistent that we have clarity about time. We were told 4 years ago, when the reauthorization fight was happening, that time had run out and that we needed to reauthorize it, without considering needed reforms that were discussed and debated in the Judiciary Committee. Two years ago, some of the core elements of this were exposed to the world. A lot of my constituents raised legitimate and serious concerns about it. Whether we are being asked to extend it for 2 week or 2 days or 2 hours, I think time has run out for us to even discuss reauthorizing a program that has explicitly been held illegal. We instead need to come together and take up and pass the USA FREEDOM Act. Would my colleague from Kentucky confirm that is the situation on the floor at the moment and on behalf of which he was speaking?

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Isakson of Georgia and express my shared concern that if we are going to proceed to a long-term renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides duty-free, quota-free access to the U.S. markets to all of sub-Saharan Africa--which I support and have worked hard with the Senator from Georgia and many others to make possible--that we also ensure there is effective trade enforcement. This is a basic principle that underlies all the proceedings here today; that those of us who support free trade and global trade also support fair trade and effective enforcement. As the good Senator from Georgia recently commented, we are acting in reliance upon a representation by the U.S. Trade Representative that there will be enforcement action taken, if appropriate, on access to markets in South Africa. With that, I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Madam President, first, I thank Senator Cardin for his gracious remarks and for his strong and capable leadership. I come to the floor today to speak about the Iranian nuclear negotiations and the need for Congress to play a constructive, meaningful role in reviewing any potential deal. This week, the full Senate will consider the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 which would ensure that Congress has the ability to consider any nuclear deal with Iran before any congressionally enacted sanctions on Iran's nuclear program are rolled back. This bill will also ensure that Congress exercises its oversight over the implementation of any agreement through imposing rigorous reporting requirements and certifications on the administration. This bill passed the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate unanimously after Senators Corker and Cardin--the chair and ranking member--worked tirelessly together to ensure that it would receive bipartisan support. They carefully negotiated a deal that defeated amendments that would have prevented the Obama administration from continuing to negotiate in good faith. In my view, it is a great testament to their leadership that we were able to come together on a bipartisan bill that passed the committee unanimously and that the President has now said he would sign. For the last 4 years, I have been hugely frustrated by the failure of Republicans and Democrats to come together in this Senate to pass legislation for the American people. The Republicans are now in the majority and have a chance to move past obstructionism and into leadership and to show that in this Senate, we have an opportunity to pass a bill, that this Senate plays a constructive role in protecting the national interests of the United States. Leader McConnell said that he wants a functioning Senate, that he wants regular order, that he wants the Senate to play its rightful role in foreign affairs. Well, here is the chance. Let's review what has happened with this piece of legislation. The Republican chair of the Foreign Relations Committee--working well with his Democratic counterpart--crafted this bipartisan bill. Today, it has 44 Republican cosponsors. It passed the committee, which fully and thoroughly debated the bill and many potential amendments. A committee with views as broad as Republican Senators Johnson and Rubio and Paul to Democratic Senators Boxer and Murphy--a very broad range of views on our foreign policy--came together to pass this bill unanimously. If that is not regular order, I don't know what is. If Senator McConnell wants a functioning Senate, I believe we should respect the committee process that Chairman Corker and Ranking Member Cardin led to achieve this compromise. This bill gives Leader McConnell exactly the opportunity he wants to ensure that this Senate exercises its role in protecting America's national interest. I particularly like what my Republican colleague from South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham, said recently: Anybody who monkeys with this bill is going to run into a buzz saw. Anybody who offers an amendment that will break this agreement apart . . . the beneficiary will be the Iranians. That is why I stand here today to urge my colleagues to avoid attaching poison-pill amendments that are outside the scope of the current ongoing negotiations and pass this bill as currently passed out of the Foreign Relations Committee and as currently supported by a majority of Senate Republicans. Over the last few years, Iran has responded to congressionally enacted sanctions by finally coming to the negotiating table to discuss and deal with its illicit nuclear weapons program. The Obama administration and the other P5 + 1 countries have been engaged in difficult, demanding negotiations with the Iranian theocratic regime. After a few extensions that have effectively frozen and in some ways rolled back certain parts of Iran's illicit nuclear program, the administration is in the final phases of their negotiations. Earlier their month, the President released the parameters of a potential deal, with the technical details and a few remaining critical gaps to be finalized possibly by the end of June. This bill is not a referendum on the President's decision to pursue a path of diplomacy with Iran. This bill is not a referendum on the parameters announced on April 2. The bill before us this week has a simple, clear goal: It is about creating an orderly process that allows Congress to review any deal. As negotiations come to an end, it would ensure that Congress can play a constructive role after an agreement is reached by considering whether the deal is strong enough to warrant rolling back congressionally enacted sanctions. Yet, some--a few of my colleagues have insisted on making this bill a partisan exercise rather than keeping it the responsible, bipartisan measure that is before us now. This bill is not about debating the merits of an ultimate deal now. We will have that chance when or if a deal is reached over the summer. It is not about, I hope, killing the negotiations before they have a chance to conclude. This bill is not about creating a list of complaints about Iran's destructive behavior in areas outside of its nuclear program. It could and should pass now, in its current form, without amendment. I believe I have been as outspoken as anybody about Iran's destructive behavior, but I am troubled by some of the amendments being offered to make Iran's human rights record, its support for terrorism, and its relationship with Israel a part of these negotiations. Yes, Iran's human rights record is atrocious. Its support for terrorism threatens the stability of its neighbors and has taken countless innocent lives. Its continued threatening of Israel and its unwillingness to recognize the right of the Jewish State of Israel to exist is cowardly, dangerous, and just plain wrong. Iran must release the four Americans it currently holds hostage. I think everyone in this body would agree these are legitimate concerns for our consideration. Yet, the truth remains that they are outside the scope of the current negotiations around Iran's nuclear program. Congress must resist the temptation to make them a sticking point in those negotiations by including them as amendments to this bill. Let's be clear. There are already congressionally enacted sanctions on Iran for its behavior in these areas. The deal's parameters, as published April 2, said that ``U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal.'' No one is talking about removing those sanctions. The negotiations are about Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program and the critical importance of preventing Iran from ever building a nuclear weapon. I have long believed a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a grave threat to the region, to Israel, and to the world. The nuclear arms race it would set off throughout the Middle East would have horrible consequences for global security. That is why throughout the negotiating process I have remained adamant that no deal is better than a bad deal, and I have closely consulted with the administration on that point as well as many others. I have met with senior administration officials to discuss these recently announced parameters and have been clear that I remain concerned about closing the remaining gaps and the need to maintain pressure on the Iranian regime to close any pathway to their development of a nuclear weapon capability. I support this bill as it is. It is responsible and focused on the issue at hand. It ensures that Congress gets to weigh in if a deal is reached, and it strengthens this administration's ability to negotiate the best deal it possibly can. Every Republican in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted for this bill, all 10 of them--from Senator Rand Paul and Senator Rubio to Senator Johnson and Senator Barrasso. All nine Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee supported this bill. All 19 Senators on this Foreign Relations Committee represent as wide a range of foreign policy views as could exist. So I urge my colleagues on both sides to pause and reflect before supporting amendments that would make this a partisan exercise rather than a prudent use of congressional authority. If we want Congress to play a responsible role overseeing any potential deal, this bill gives us that chance. The alternative to this bill is not a better bill; it is a deal without any meaningful congressional input. I have been as critical of Iran and distrusting of its intentions as anyone in this body, but if unrelated amendments become attached to this bill, I will not support its final passage. Because of the great leadership of these two Senators, we have here a rare moment for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate as a whole to demonstrate our ability to move past what have been divisive and partisan fights over the last 4 years and come together and enact into law a measure that demonstrates our ability to give constructive, timely input on one of the most important national security challenges of our day and to restrain our sometimes extreme and divisive instincts in this body and instead demonstrate our ability to overcome those instincts and show our relevance. Let's not miss this opportunity to work together in the best interests of our Nation. I yield the floor.

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I wish to call up amendment No. 966, as modified.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, we need to make sure we pay for our war against ISIS. ISIS is a national security threat. We are just now coming to the end of two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost trillions of dollars, and we didn't pay for them. It is unacceptable. Our country has a long history of paying for our wars, and we need to return to that tradition. As a democracy, we should go to war as a nation and not put the burden on just the troops and their families. I am pleased to have the cosponsorship of Senator Sanders, and I urge my colleagues to support our amendment to raise the revenue necessary to pay for our war.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I am proud to join with Senator Merkley in advancing this amendment. It is important we continue to have a strong and effective CFPB to protect consumers and ensure transparency and fairness in our financial marketplace. I urge an ``aye'' vote by my colleagues.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask that my amendment be modified with the changes that are at the desk.

Mr. COONS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I would simply say that I appreciate the sentiment expressed by the Senator from Tennessee. I agree that all wars need to be paid for. I think we need to recognize that revenue is required to do so. I yield the floor to Senator Sanders.

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. COONS

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and on behalf of Senator Bennet call up amendment No. 715.