Richard Durbin

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, you either believe it or you don't believe it. Is there such a thing as climate change? Are we going through some change on our planet today? I think so, and 98 percent of the scientists who report on the subject believe the same thing. The evidence is everywhere, isn't it? The extreme weather events that we are seeing are, I think, an indication that something is happening on this Earth that we call home. The obvious question is this: Do we have anything to do with it? Does the fact that we are alive, functioning, building things, and dealing with traveling by plane and other means have anything to do with what is happening to our planet? I think so. Can we do something about it? Sure, we know we can. If we are dealing with greenhouse gas emissions that somehow in the atmosphere are raising the temperature of planet Earth, what can we do about those greenhouse gases? We know there are a lot of very simple and obvious things. I can remember a debate on this floor when we talked about making cars and trucks more fuel efficient and when the folks in Detroit, who are the smartest people running the automobile companies, said: Impossible. You can't do it. Americans will never buy those cars. It just will not work. Thank goodness we ignored them. We established standards and regulations. Do you know what? Like it or not, we drive more fuel- efficient cars and trucks today, and, frankly, I like it. It was a step in the right direction. It took governmental, congressional prodding to take place, and it made this a cleaner, safer place to live in the United States. There are other things we can do as well, but, first, we need a basic agreement that there is a problem, that human conduct--the way we live, the way we work, and the way we produce things--has something to do with it, and that we are committed to changing it. How many nations in the world have agreed with that conclusion? All of them. Wait. All of them except one--this country, this President, who decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. It is a universal, global decision by every nation on Earth except the United States that we do have a climate problem, that we are the cause of some part of it, at least, and that we should do something to change it. This President says he doesn't buy it and doesn't think the science proves it. He and he alone, on behalf of this country, stepped away from this agreement. I think that was a serious mistake. I am happy to report that Governors across the United States--at least the Democratic Governors--have said they are going to ignore the President when it comes to this, and they are going to set up their own policies. I salute my own Governor, J.B. Pritzker, in Illinois. He is not part of this denial camp that is trying to ignore the problem. He is trying to do in our State, as others are, something to make sure that this planet is more livable, more habitable. Isn't it amazing that this has become such a partisan issue? There was a time on the floor of this Senate when it was not. I remember when the late Senator John McCain, whom I still honor to this day not only for his service in the Senate but for his service to this country, teamed up with Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman and started proposing ideas to deal with climate change--bipartisan proposals, bipartisan votes. Not anymore, no. We have a big wall down the middle of this Chamber--on that side, climate denial and, on this side, a belief that we should be doing something about it. We could do something today, couldn't we? Couldn't we take the latest climate assessment from the Federal Government, which spells out the problem and spells out the challenge, and come up with at least a reasonable, bipartisan approach with which to deal with the clear scientific evidence that has been produced by this government as required by law? Of course, we could, but we are not going to. Instead, the Republican Senate leader has decided he wants to make a political move. He wants to put the Democrats on the spot, not to solve the problem but to have something he can talk about in the next campaign. A group came together and proposed, as they call it, the Green New Deal. I have taken a look at it. I went to Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who is one of the sponsors, and I asked him about it because he is one of the authors. I know Ed Markey. I served with him in the House, and I serve with him in the Senate. He has established credentials when it comes to this issue. He truly cares and has done many, many things to show that caring. So I asked him: What is this Green New Deal? It is not a law. I mean, it is not a bill that will become a law. It is simply a resolution, which is kind of a statement of purpose, a statement of position. He said to me that it was aspirational--in other words, that the Green New Deal sets out aspirations, targets, and values. I said to him: Ed, that is a good idea, but I want something that is not aspirational. I want something that is legislational. That is what we do here, right? I am sure he will come up with those specifics. Yet Senator McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, has decided that we are going to put the Democrats on the spot. Take it or leave it in its entirety--the Green New Deal. Be on the record and vote this afternoon. I will make it clear to you right now that I think there are parts of that Green New Deal that are excellent and some that I disagree with. At this point in time, I am going to be voting present this afternoon because I believe we should be legislational, and I believe we should be bipartisan. I have said this on the floor many times, and I will say it again: The only major political party in the world today that denies climate change is the Republican Party of the United States of America. Now, I have waited for some Republican to come to the floor and say: Oh, no, that is not true, Senator Durbin. There are other major political parties that have the same position as we do. Yet no one has come to the floor. A few months back, one Republican Senator in an elevator quietly said: I think there is a party in Australia that denies climate change. Maybe that is true, but why in the world have we reached a point at which this is such a partisan issue? Don't we all see what is happening with the weather? Can't we see what is happening in terms of the temperature of this Earth that we live on as it is consistently, year after year, continuing to rise? Don't we realize that it has an impact on this Earth that we live on? Don't we realize that if it continues unabated, the Earth that I am leaving to my children and grandchildren will be a much different place and a much more challenging place? Can't we see the flooding in the streets down in Miami in Florida? Can't we see the melting of the glaciers? Isn't that proof positive that something is happening? In my part of the world, the Midwest, I grew up with tornadoes. They are so common where I live, we even named sports teams after the tornadoes. When I was a kid--this happened half a dozen times, and I will never forget it--in the middle of the night, Mom and Dad would wake me up and say: The tornado sirens are blaring. Get in the basement right now. Grab your covers and pillow and get downstairs. We would head down to the basement and wait for the all-clear signal. Tornadoes were part of our lives, but they were usually confined to the spring and summer months. Just this last December, we had a tornado in Taylorville, IL, 30 miles away from where I live. It wasn't supposed to come this time of year. Unusual things just like that are happening all over the place, and they are devastating. Don't take my word for it; talk to the people in the property and casualty insurance industry. They make a living trying to guess what the weather is going to be. If they see some horrible weather condition coming, they know it will not be good for their bottom line. I have talked to them. There are some States in which they are unwilling to write property and casualty insurance because of the vulnerability to hurricanes, tornadoes, and extreme weather events. They are making a conscious profit-and-loss business decision based on the evidence before them that something is happening to weather in the United States. They are not in denial. They embrace the concept every day when they decide whether to write insurance and what premiums to charge. So if the people who do this for a living, who have to show a profit in their company, have come to the conclusion that climate change is for real, why haven't we in the Senate? Why do we instead engage in this political theater we are going to have this afternoon? Why aren't we instead, on a bipartisan basis, sitting down and saying: What can we do? What can we do in terms of conserving energy, in terms of being more fuel efficient, and in terms of being more sensitive to this environment? What can we do? There are a handful of Republican Senators who have stepped up and said ``We should. We can see climate change where we live,'' but I wish they would become a force to lead their leadership forward into taking this up on a serious basis. This afternoon's vote is just part of a political stunt. It is not a serious effort to deal with climate change. We better do that pretty soon. I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Alaska to yield for 10 seconds.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. She was the person I was thinking of when I said there are exceptions when it comes to the partisan divide between us. I stayed for her presentation because I knew what it was going to be, and I wanted it to be part of the Record. I think Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell--whom we recognize on our side of the aisle as one of the real leaders on the subject--can show us the way in the Senate to find a bipartisan approach to deal with this challenge. Thank you.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Udall) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Udall) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last month, I launched a new series of floor speeches to recognize what is going on with prescription drug pricing across America. When you ask the American people about the economic things that are on their minds, it is No. 1--the cost of prescription drugs. No. 2 is, have I saved enough money for my retirement? It really gets to the heart of the concerns families have every day. Each one of us knows that the cost of prescription drugs is going up, and we also realize how vulnerable we may be as individuals if one of those drugs is a matter of life and death. I came to the floor 2 weeks ago to talk about the cost of insulin. Seven and a half million diabetics across America have seen dramatic increases in the cost of insulin--increases that can't be justified because the same American companies selling the same drugs in Canada do it for a fraction of the cost. Americans pay outrageous prices. Humalog, which is one of the most popular forms of insulin, costs $329 a dosage in the United States. Twenty years ago, it was about $29. It has gone up in price 35 times in that 20-year period of time. How much does the exact same drug that costs $329 in the United States cost in Canada? It is made by the same company. Thirty-eight dollars. You look at that and you think there is something wrong here. The pharmaceutical industry is not focusing on giving American consumers a break. What I want to talk about today goes to an issue that is hard to believe but true. A few years ago, the New York Times reported that nearly $3 billion worth of drugs was wasted each year. These are not ordinary drugs; these are cancer drugs used in chemotherapy. Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurers spend billions of dollars on medications. Many of them are literally thrown in the trash. How could that possibly be? You see, for many of the most expensive drugs, like new cancer treatments, the pharmaceutical industry produces them in a one-size- fits-all container, a single-use vial that a physician has to draw from to give a treatment to a patient. The dosage for the patient in the cancer therapy is based on the patient's size and weight. The problem is that the pharmaceutical industry insists on selling these drugs in excessively large vials that contain dramatically more medicine than the average patient would need, so doctors administer the proper dosage and throw away the rest. Here is a graphic to illustrate what I am talking about. Here is why we are wasting billions of dollars each year on cancer drugs. One size does not fit all. This drug, Velcade--the vial size available is 3.5 milligrams. The patient dose is 2.2. The amount that is left over is 1.3. Oh, you are going to recycle that? You can't do it. That is the end of it, and it is thrown away. In 2016, $300 million was wasted in this way. This vial, the first one here that is produced, is a vial that would apply to a person who is 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 250 pounds, which means our linebacker Khalil Mack on the Chicago Bears--God forbid he would ever need it--that would be his dosage size. Most people are not as big as Chicago linebackers. Why is Pharma sending us one vial, take it or leave it? Because they make money. They make money when we buy it and have to throw it away. Takeda Pharmaceutical sells this drug for those who are suffering from multiple myeloma and lymphoma. As I mentioned, it is for a person who is 6 feet 6 inches and weighs 250 pounds. Takeda made $310 million in the year 2016 off of unused Velcade that got thrown in the trash-- $310 million. What makes this even more appalling is that the pharmaceutical industry titans actually sell the same drug in smaller containers in other countries but not in the United States. Here, we are forced to buy the largest container and throw away the difference. This chart shows that the same company--Takeda--that makes Velcade sells this drug not in 3.5-milligram vials, as in the United States, but, in Europe, in 1-milligram vials. It seems like a simple thing, doesn't it, that you would dispense this drug in a manner so that it is not wasted? Sadly, wasting and throwing away the drug is part of their marketing strategy. Another Japanese company, Eisai, sells its chemotherapy drug Halaven only in 1-milligram vials in the United States but sells smaller vials--0.88 milligram--in Europe. Merck's immunotherapy drug KEYTRUDA, which is truly a breakthrough, an amazing drug--research was done by taxpayers at the National Institutes of Health, which led to the development of this drug--they sell this drug, KEYTRUDA, only in 100-milligram vials in the United States but in 50-milligram vials in Europe. In 2016, Merck made $200 million on KEYTRUDA--this lifesaving drug--that was thrown away. In 2016, I asked the inspector general of Health and Human Services about this waste of taxpayers' money. The inspector general uncovered that Medicare spent $195 million in just 1 year on 20 identified drugs for medication that was thrown away. That year, Takeda received $47 million in taxpayer funding for amounts of Velcade thrown in the trash. It wasn't alone. Genentech's Rituxan, one of the most common cancer medications, only comes in vials that are 100 milligrams or 500 milligrams. In 2013, Medicare wasted $10 million on Rituxan that was thrown away. It is for this reason that I am presenting my second Pharma Fleece Award to Takeda, Eisai, Merck, and Genentech. Patients in America should not face higher drug costs because these Pharma fleecers choose to sell their expensive cancer drugs in excessively large drug vials that are necessarily going to be wasted. Two weeks ago, I teamed up with Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio to introduce the REFUND Act--a simple bill that Senator Portman and I have introduced, and I hope others will join us. It says that taxpayers will only pay for the drug that is given to a patient, not for the part that is thrown away. Medicare already tracks how much of this medication is being discarded, so the REFUND Act simply requires Medicare to determine how much was wasted and to recoup the money from the drug companies. We then provide a portion of that money back to seniors for the 20-percent coinsurance they have to pay for the drugs. An important point: When Medicare is paying for these drugs, and a lot are being thrown away, the seniors are still paying their 20 percent, even for the drug portion that is being thrown away. So Rob Portman's bill--the one I have introduced with him--says that the money recouped from the drug companies will go back to the benefit of these seniors. Under our new bill, this pharma fleecing for drug vial waste will soon come to an end so that not just the patients but our government will save money. Remember the bottom line. When you ask the major health insurers today: What is driving the cost of health insurance premiums, they say: Senator, prescription drug pricing is No. 1. Blue Cross Blue Shield, based out of Chicago, when I sit down with them, say: We spend more money on prescription drugs than we do on inpatient hospital care. To give you an idea, it is out of sight. You can't turn on a television set, particularly if you are over the age of 50, without being bombarded with all these drug ads, right? You have heard them over and over again. The No. 1 drug being sold on television today is HUMIRA. What is it for? psoriatic arthritis. It is serious. If you have that arthritis, that may be a lifesaver for you, but it is now being sold for that little red patch on your elbow called psoriasis. Interesting. Do you know how much HUMIRA costs each month? Five thousand dollars. I have legislation that would require these drug companies to advertise the cost of their drugs on television. They tell us everything else; don't they? They tell us, if you are allergic to HUMIRA, don't take HUMIRA. I have never understood that warning. They tell us everything under the Sun, but they never mention the price. So what I want to do is get the price out in front of the public, and let them know what being perfect in a swimsuit is going to cost you per month. From my point of view, there are people who need these drugs desperately, and we ought to try to get the prices within their reach. For those who are overusing and abusing the airwaves of America to advertise drugs--to try to push doctors into writing the scripts even when it is not necessary--we have to come to grips with this. If we don't, we are not going to have a serious effort to reduce the cost of health insurance and the healthcare costs that face our Nation. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the President often claims that he knows how to make deals, but when it comes to the border, he seems uninterested in a good deal, a deal to provide effective border security, and he is hurting our military in the process. This week's vote to repeal the President's national emergency is a vote to restore sanity to our border security debate and restore Congress's constitutional power of the purse. We all remember Donald Trump's idea that we need a 2,000-mile concrete wall from sea to shining sea and his claim that Mexico would pay for it. He said it some 200 times on the campaign trail and in the Oval Office. In December, after asking and failing to receive funding from Congress for this wall, the President said, ``I am proud to shut down the government for border security.'' What followed was the 35-day Trump shutdown, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. It cost our country $11 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. After the President finally agreed to reopen the government, Congress provided funding to the Department of Homeland Security for smart and effective border security measures, including technology and additional Customs personnel. We did this because the President's own administration has stated that the vast majority of lethal narcotics that cross our southern border come through legal ports of entry. But within hours of signing this bill, President Donald Trump announced that it wasn't enough. The President went on television to announce that he was declaring a national emergency over the border, and he announced that he was taking $6.5 billion from our military to build it. Presidents of both parties have declared national emergencies. Each time, it was done in response to a specific crisis, in order to unlock certain statutory authorities. President George W. Bush declared a national emergency after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the 1970s, President Carter declared a national emergency as it pertained to Iran. Presidents of both parties have declared and updated emergencies relating to instability in Syria. What Presidents did in those situations varied--sometimes levying sanctions, sometimes seizing assets--but each time, it was accepted on a bipartisan basis as necessary, legitimate, and in defense of our national interests. What President Trump did was different. For the last 2 years, he has struggled to fulfill a campaign promise, so when he didn't get his way, he created a fake crisis and declared a phony emergency. The good news is that the American people aren't buying it. A poll conducted earlier this month by Quinnipiac University found that 66 percent of voters oppose the President's end-run around Congress and oppose his fake emergency declaration. Newspapers around the country have concluded the same thing. The Tampa Bay Times editorial board said it clearly a few days after the President's announcement, ``Border wall is no emergency.'' In their words, ``It is not a national emergency just because President Donald Trump didn't get his way.'' West Virginia's Herald Dispatch newspaper concludes much the same, urging the President to ``take a realistic look at whether the wall is needed or if it's simply an unnecessary quest to satisfy his ego.'' That is common sense, but then common sense seems to be in short supply in this White House. Not only is the President declaring a fake emergency, but he is using that crisis to take money. The President has told us that he will take $6.5 billion that Congress gave to our troops and spend it instead on a wall on the southern border. He is proposing to delay or cancel $3.6 billion in military construction projects--projects that our military told Congress it needed less than a year ago--and divert it to his wall. Last Friday, Senator Schatz and I sent a letter to Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan demanding to know which projects have been deemed, due to political interference, as less important than the President's wall. There are almost 400 military projects at risk. They cover 43 States, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and more than a dozen foreign countries, including strong U.S. allies like Japan and the United Kingdom. The President will have to cancel or postpone approximately 20 percent of these projects for his wall. What are we talking about?-- $800 million for essential training facilities like National Guard Readiness Centers, simulators, and firing ranges in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, and Montana, to name a few; $1.4 billion worth of maintenance-related projects, such as aircraft hangars, and vehicle maintenance shops in Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and elsewhere; $1 billion worth of projects for medical and dental care facilities, schools for military families, military barracks and dining facilities in Arizona, Missouri, Texas, and beyond. For instance, the Marine Corps needs a new rifle range at Parris Island, SC. This base trains 20,000 new Marine recruits every year. Also on the list is new training center at Fort Bragg, NC, to provide top-notch training and prevent injuries among our special operations forces. They are using old warehouse right now. Are we really going to tell our military that their needs are being put on hold so the President can fulfill his campaign promise to build a wall? I hope those aren't our priorities. In addition, the President also announced that he would take $2.5 billion in other military funds for his wall. The Pentagon tells me that they may take some of this money from excess military pay and pensions. Meanwhile, each of the military services--Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines--have met with me to discuss a long list of urgent, last-minute needs, but with $2.5 billion being diverted for the wall, none of those leaders were able to say whether or not they would get the funding they need. Last year, Hurricane Florence damaged 800 buildings at Camp Lejeune, New River, and Cherry Point, causing $3.6 billion in damage from wind and flood waters. A similar hurricane leveled Tyndall Air Force Base, in Florida. Both of them could use billions right now for repairs. I am also told that the Navy needs hundreds of millions of additional dollars for unexpected ship maintenance. We can't afford not to make sure our sailors are safe on deployment. The National Guard has 2,100 personnel on the border, but it is starting to run low on its pay account. Unless DOD finds $150-300 million this year, the Guard will have to cut short its summer trainings in all 50 States to pay for this. My subcommittee has identified almost $5 billion in military priorities that need attention now, but after the President takes $2.5 billion to pay for his border wall, which priorities will get cut? This week, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate should join the House in rejecting the President's phony emergency declaration, and the Senate should reject any effort by the President to take money from our troops to build the wall.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in 1963, Leonard and Phil Chess, brothers and owners of the legendary Chess Records, bought WHFC-AM 1450 with the goal of promoting their company. They renamed the station WVON--Voice of the Negro. This tiny station with just 1,000 watts of power became a broadcast hit, giving a voice to marginalized communities in the Chicagoland area. Much of their airwaves were filled with music, but politics wasn't far behind. WVON hosted legends like Robert Kennedy, Jackie Robinson, and Reverend Martin Luther King. King used this station as his bully pulpit to organize around housing and job discrimination. It was Reverend Jesse Jackson that called into the station to report of King's assassination. When riots happened on Chicago's West Side, it was the disc jockeys of WVON that went out with loudspeakers on trucks to calm things down. WVON is a station of history and eventually became more than the Voice of the Negro, it became the Voice of the Nation. For the last 25 years, my friend Cliff Kelley has been a true voice of the Nation as host on WVON. He has been the ``Governor of Talk Radio'' and formed a bond with listeners that is rare. At the end of this month, he will be stepping down from his daily show, but he will continue hosting his weekly American Heroes show for veterans. Cliff will serve as a community ambassador and a regular fill-in host. Cliff is a native of Chicago's South Side and a graduate of Englewood High School, Roosevelt University, and John Marshall Law School. Before hosting his show, Cliff served 16 years as a former 20th Ward Chicago alderman. He championed racial equality, was an elected school board member, and a pioneer for LGBTQ rights. He fought for LGBTQ rights long before it was popular. Cliff continued as a voice of conscience and community as well as a radio personality. He covered stories that weren't in the papers. His show helped launch countless people's careers, including Senators, Governors, congressmen, business leaders, and a President. A former colleague you may remember guest hosted his show quite a few times when Cliff went on vacation. He was a State Senator at the time, but Barack Obama always had time for Cliff's show as a guest or a host. Luckily for us, Cliff's voice is still going to be heard today. We honor Cliff's decades of daily radio work, but we know that, as long as there are battles for justice to be waged, Cliff Kelley will lead the fight.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth) and the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) are necessarily absent.

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

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am reading a book called ``These Truths'' by Jill Lepore. It is a history of the United States. She is a really gifted historian and writes quite a few things. She has an article in the New Yorker magazine about Eugene V. Debs, an early Socialist in the 20th century who ran for President. She is a skillful historian, and she tells a story in ``These Truths'' about how this Nation came to be. Of course, we emerged from a colony--a colony of England, Great Britain--and then fought for our independence. One of the reasons we fought for independence was to take the role of Kings out of the lives of the people who lived in what we call America and to say we aren't going to have Kings making decisions for us here. We will make our own decisions. Thank you. We will call it a democracy, and the people will rule. At that point, we sat down and tried to put it in writing. The first time we put it in writing, it didn't work out too well. The Articles of Confederation really didn't unite our country and move it in the direction that most people wanted. So the constitutional convention followed. The constitutional convention in Philadelphia sat down and wrote this document, the Constitution of the United States, and here we are, over 200 years later, still living by those words that were written over 200 years ago. There were efforts to change and amend it to reflect changes in America. The end of slavery, for example, was one of the most significant, but, by and large, the principles of this document have guided us for a long time. Article I, section 8 gives the Congress--the Senate and the House-- the power to declare war. You think to yourself: Well, it is certainly better for the Congress to make that decision than for a President to do it alone. Letting a President do it without the people being involved, or Congress, really would be much like a King deciding whether we would go forward as a nation to be involved in a war. This week, on the floor of the Senate, we will test that provision in the Constitution and see if the current Members of the Senate believe that the Constitution was right and that the Congress should be declaring war. My colleagues, Bernie Sanders, well-known to most across America, Mike Lee, a conservative Republican from Utah, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, have decided that we should have a test vote as to the United States' involvement in Saudi Arabia's bloody war in Yemen. I am glad to be a cosponsor of that legislation. Regardless of who has been in the White House during the time that I have served in the House and the Senate, I have tried to consistently argue that the American people, through their elected Congress, must play a constitutional role in declaring a war--whether it was President Bush on the Iraq war or President Obama on the U.S. military intervention in Syria or Libya. I think the Constitution is very clear and very wise in saying that the American people, before we ask their sons and daughters to give up their lives in a war, should have a say in these decisions through their elected Members of Congress. What we are doing today is deeply important. It occurs in the 18th year of a war in Afghanistan that hardly anyone could have imagined would be the case. Did anyone here who voted, as I did, 18 years ago-- 18 years ago, voting in this Chamber--for the authorization of the use of force in Afghanistan to go after the perpetrators of 9/11 believe that we were authorizing the longest war in the history of the United States, in Afghanistan--I am sure not a one--or that this authorization would be stretched by Presidents of both political parties to approve U.S. military action in other countries around the world? It became a blanket authorization that has been used time and again. This brings me to the question before us in the Senate today--the disastrous, bloody war, led by the Saudi Arabians in Yemen, which the United States is supporting. Has there been a vote in the Senate for that? No. In the House? No. Does anyone here remember authorizing any U.S. military involvement in the war in Yemen? Well, they certainly couldn't find a recorded vote to prove it. Did anyone who voted in 2001, as I did, to go after the terrorists responsible for 9/11, believe that this would somehow include a Saudi- led quagmire in Yemen? This war in Yemen is being led by a reckless young Saudi Crown Prince, whom I believe had direct involvement in the brutal murder of a journalist and resident of the United States, Jamal Khashoggi. It is highly unlikely that anybody would have argued that we gave permission for the U.S. Military and taxpayers' dollars to be spent in support of this Saudi Arabian cause. Not only was this war never authorized by elected representatives or the American people, but it is a humanitarian disaster. An estimated 85,000 children have already died of malnutrition. We have created a famine with this war in Yemen. In a country of 28 million people, nearly half face death through famine. I have a photo here, which I have displayed once on the floor, but I can't bring myself to do it again. It is a photo of a 7-year-old Yemeni girl, Amal Hussain. It is a heartbreaking photo. It appeared in the New York Times last November. This little girl died shortly thereafter. She starved to death. I just can't bring myself to display this photo again. Do you know what her mother said after she died? It is what any mother would say: ``My heart is broken.'' This is a reality of the war that the United States supports in Yemen. We have not debated it. We have not approved it. Yet taxpayers' dollars make certain that it continues day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. Now, let's take a look at Saudi Arabia, which has asked us to join in this effort in Yemen that is causing such a humanitarian disaster. This is the same Saudi Arabia--the nation that conducted the cold-blooded murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a nation that is detaining and torturing women's rights activists, including Loujain al-Hathoul and Samar Badawi. This is a nation that is detaining and torturing U.S. citizen Dr. Walid Fitaihi. It is jailing Saudi blogger Raif Badawi and his lawyer, Waleed Abu al-Khair, on charges that are ridiculous on their face. Saudi Arabia is accused of recruiting and using Sudanese children as soldiers in the war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia continues to turn a blind eye to the export of extremist teachings that have shown up and caused great harm around the world, most recently in Bosnia and Kosovo. There may be some who think this war is justified. I am not one of them. There may be some who think that because Iran is the enemy, we should be engaged in this war. But, ultimately, this war, this debate, and this vote are not about the merits of any of the things that I have raised. It is not about a vindication of the Houthis, whom the Iranians have sided with, and their troubling role in this horrific civil war. It is about whether we in the Senate, who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, believe it. If we don't believe it, we will just ignore it, let our military wage the war, let the President look the other way, and let this administration come up with another excuse for Saudi Arabia killing that journalist, and we will keep sending our tax dollars in, which prolong this terrible war. I think the Constitution requires more of us. If you truly believe in what the President is asking us to do in Yemen, if you truly want to stand with Saudi Arabia at this moment in history, show the courage by voting that way. That is all I am asking for. Our Founding Fathers showed great wisdom. They knew that the decision to send someone's son or daughter into a war was not to be made by a King or a supreme executive but by the people--the people of the United States. So our Constitution wisely rests that responsibility with us-- the Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. Today, there will be a recorded vote--a historic vote--as to whether we go forward with this involvement in the war in Yemen. I will be voting against any more involvement by the United States in this war. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) is necessarily absent.

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