Richard Durbin

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) and the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Schatz) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Chirstopher Charles Fonzone to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, OLC. After graduating from Cornell University and Harvard Law School, Mr. Fonzone clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and later Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. Subsequently, Mr. Fonzone held a number of roles in the Obama administration: attorney on the appellate staff in the Civil Division at the Justice Department, special counsel in the Office of the General Counsel at the Department of Defense, attorney-adviser in OLC, special assistant and associate counsel in the White House Counsel's Office and Deputy National Security Council--NSC--Legal Adviser, and deputy assistant and counsel in the White House Counsel's Office and NSC Legal Adviser. After working in private practice at Sidley Austin for several years, Mr. Fonzone returned to public service as the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI. In this role, Mr. Fonzone provides advice and counsel to the Director of National Intelligence and other senior ODNI leaders on a range of legal issues facing the Agency, including intelligence law, employment matters, administrative matters, and budgetary and fiscal issues. Mr. Fonzone's demonstrated track record advising the U.S. Government and clients on a range of complex legal issues will serve him well when he is confirmed to lead OLC. I urge my colleagues to support Mr. Fonzone's nomination.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Sara Hill to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Ms. Hill has deep ties to Oklahoma. Born in Tahlequah, OK, she received her B.A. from Northeastern State University, cum laude, and her J.D. from the University of Tulsa College of Law. She then began working for the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, where she served as an Assistant Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Secretary of Natural Resources, and Attorney General. She also served as a special assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma in Tulsa. Since leaving her role as Attorney General, Ms. Hill has worked as a solo practitioner at Hill Law, PLLC in Tahlequah. She also serves as a voting, at-large member of the Tribal Issues Advisory Group of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Ms. Hill has significant litigation experience in State, Federal, and Tribal court. Over the course of her career, she has tried 43 cases to verdict, and as Attorney General for the Cherokee Nation, she had constitutional responsibility for all litigation of the government and its businesses. Ms. Hill is strongly supported by both of her home State Senators, as well as by the Oklahoma and Native American legal communities. The American Bar Association unanimously rated her as ``qualified'' to serve on the Northern District of Oklahoma. If confirmed, she will be the first Native American woman to serve as a Federal judge in Oklahoma. When Senator Lankford introduced Ms. Hill at her confirmation hearing, he called her ``an exceptionally impressive nominee'' and said that he and his staff ``have found her to be one of the smartest people in the room in just about any room she walks in.'' I agree on both counts. I am proud to support this nominee, and I urge my colleagues to join me.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) and the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Schatz) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Hickenlooper), the Senator fromMaine (Mr. King), the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla), the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Peters), the Senator from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Blumenthal) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on two issues, but, first, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the New York Times article entitled ``We Are No Strangers to Human Suffering, but We've Seen Nothing Like the Siege of Gaza'' be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this article is authored by some remarkable people: Michelle Nunn, president and chief executive of CARE; Tjada McKenna, chief executive of Mercy Corps; Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council; Abby Maxman, president and chief executive of Oxfam; Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International; and Janti Soeripto, president and chief executive of Save the Children U.S. I would like to take a minute to read two paragraphs from this essay, which I have just entered into the Congressional Record. It reads as follows: As leaders of some of the world's largest global humanitarian organizations, we have seen nothing like the siege of Gaza. In the more than two months since the horrifying attack on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and resulted in 240 abductions, about 18,000 Gazans-- including more than 7,500 children--have been killed, according to the Gazan health ministry. More children have been reported killed in this conflict than in all major global conflicts combined last year. The atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 were unconscionable and depraved, and the taking and holding of hostages is abhorrent. The calls for their release are urgent and justified. But the right to self-defense does not and cannot require unleashing this humanitarian nightmare on millions of civilians. It is not a path to accountability, healing, or peace. In no other war we can think of in this century have civilians been so trapped without any avenue or option to escape or save themselves and their children. I think this essay is worthy of all my colleagues and for the public to read it. I hope they saw it initially in the New York Times and will read it now. Now I ask consent to go to a separate, unrelated topic.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague. He is outstanding as a Senator and extraordinary as a public speaker. I thank him very much for really driving the message home. I am sure he would join me in adding our congratulations and thanks to dutiful staff members who worked without any kind of reluctance for months and years to get this project done. I want to name two of them, and there are others--Joe Zogby, who is my chief of staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Dan Swanson, who is no longer serving with me. Those two did an exceptional job on this issue and showed the kind of patience that was absolutely essential for success. So I want to add those to the list of those I have thanked.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, 5 years ago, Congress came together to pass the First Step Act, the most important criminal justice reform legislation in a generation. I am happy to come to the floor today with my colleague and friend Senator Booker of New Jersey and celebrate this momentous anniversary. The First Step Act passed the House and Senate by overwhelming bipartisan majorities and was supported by a broad coalition from across the political spectrum, including former President Donald Trump, who signed it into law. I was proud to champion this landmark legislation with the help of Senators Booker, Grassley, and Lee. It took months of bipartisan negotiation and painful compromise, but the net result was a historic victory that significantly improved our system of justice. I am thankful for the tireless efforts of many dedicated advocates who never gave up hope that this law could be passed. It was a dramatic change to finally acknowledge that just being tough on the so-called war on drugs was not enough. I often think back to my early days in the House of Representatives, during the 1980s, when the crack epidemic was devastating America. I vividly remember, in 1986, when the Nation reeled from the news that a Maryland basketball player named Len Bias had died from a heart attack induced by cocaine. All of the evidence points to it having been powder cocaine. Somehow, his death, nevertheless, became a public symbol of the crack epidemic. Members of Congress were desperate to do something to stop the despair caused by drugs in our communities and to punish the dealers who were trafficking this new, highly addictive product. So we passed legislation, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, that established mandatory minimum sentences for distribution of specific quantities of drugs. We thought we would clearly deter people from selling drugs by imposing tougher--tougher--sentences for larger quantities. The law imposed much tougher sentences for crack cocaine offenses than for powder cocaine offenses. An individual would receive a minimum--minimum--5-year Federal prison sentence for selling just 5 grams of crack, the same sentence provided for selling 500 grams of powder cocaine. At the time, we believed this 100-to-1 hit between sentences for crack and powder cocaine was the right thing to do. We were so frightened by the impact that crack was having in America. But it became clear over the next 30 years that we were terribly, terribly wrong. Instead of the price of crack going up, after the law was passed because of reduced supply, the opposite occurred. The price went down. Even though we were locking up more people than ever for drug offenses, primarily African Americans, the amount of drugs on our streets and the number of addicts was increasing. Years after the law passed, I met a young African American from Alton, IL, who told me the story of his sister Eugenia Jennings, also from Alton. As a child, she was abandoned and seriously abused. At the age of 15, she started using crack to dull the pain of her life. At the age of 23, Eugenia was convicted for trading a small amount of crack cocaine for clothing for her small children. She was sentenced to 22 years in a Federal prison--22 years. She was a model prisoner while serving her sentence. While in prison, she developed leukemia. I went to visit her in Greenville, IL, at the Federal correctional center. I will never forget the moment when I walked into the room and she was seated at the table. Then, she had been in prison for over 10 years. She talked about how nice it was that she was in Greenville, close enough to Alton, IL, and that her children could visit. But she was afraid because her cancer was taking her to a prison hospital in Texas, and she wouldn't be able to see her children. She said to me something I will never forget. She said: ``I don't know how much longer I am going to live, Senator. But I promise you this: If you can find some way to get me out of prison to be with my girls, I'll never do anything wrong again in my life.'' So I wrote a personal note, handwritten, to President Barack Obama, asking him to commute Eugenia's sentence. He did, just in time for her to see her eldest daughter graduate from high school. It was the thrill of her life. Sadly, Eugenia died less than 2 years later. Her story was tragic in so many ways, but it inspired me to keep working to pass legislation to help other individuals who had been unjustly sentenced by our overly punitive laws. It became my personal mission to correct these errors and fix a policy that was doing far more harm than good. We took a big step in that direction in 2010, when President Obama signed into law a bill I authored, the Fair Sentencing Act. We reduced the 100-to-1 crack-to-powder-cocaine disparity to 18 to 1, but the Fair Sentencing Act was not retroactive, meaning that people were still serving long, disparate sentences on crack cases after the law was passed. The First Step Act finally brought them relief, allowing them to be resentenced under the 18-to-1 ratio. The First Step Act also created an entirely new system programming in Federal prisons, designed to prevent incarcerated people from reoffending, with a chance for them to earn extra time in community confinement or supervised release at the end of their sentence, a strong incentive for them to do the right thing while in prison. Last week, Senator Booker and I had the pleasure of meeting with a group of individuals from an organization called Families Against Mandatory Minimums. It was a great meeting. Many of the folks we met had been incarcerated under the harsh 1980s drug law. I spoke with them, including some from my own home State of Illinois. One lady looked me in the eye, and she said: I was sentenced to life without parole, and without your bill, I would still be there. Several of them noted they would still be in prison today, and now they were back with their families. They are back in their communities. They are spending time and contributing to our society. The reforms in the First Step Act have been tremendously successful. I want to put these numbers on the record because they are so important. Of the 29,944 incarcerated people released under the First Step Act reforms through January 2023, only 12.4 percent have been arrested for new crimes. By comparison, the overall recidivism rate in the Bureau of Prisons currently stands at nearly 43 percent--12 percent versus 43 percent. The success of the overwhelming majority of individuals released under the First Step Act demonstrates that reducing the population in our overcrowded prisons can be done safely and effectively, and it is the right thing to do. It is however, as its name, just the first step. To keep making our justice system fairer and our communities safer, we must continue reforming our outdated sentencing laws and provide opportunities for those incarcerated to successfully return. I hope Congress will take many more steps in this direction toward more just criminal sentences. There is a natural impulse--Mr. President, you know it; you have heard it; you have seen it--when we talk about narcotics and drug crime, to say: If we can just get tough, if we get the message out there that we are going to impose tough sentences, then they will stop using. We tried it. It was a disastrous failure when it came to crack cocaine. Let's not just get tough. Let's get smart when it comes to sentencing people. Let's realize an addiction is more than just a curse in the person's life. It is a medical situation that can be resolved many times, and we can do it if we work conscientiously to make America safer. I hope that Congress takes steps in that direction for more just criminal sentences and wiser responses to the crisis of substance abuse in America. And now I am going to turn the floor over to a man who has become a close friend and an ally in this effort. When he first came to Congress, Cory Booker may have been new to the Federal level of this issue, but he certainly had ample experience when it came to State and local enforcement of drug laws because of the fact that he was the mayor of the city of Newark, NJ, of which he reminds us frequently--as he should. He has led on this issue personally in his home and in his community. He has seen the devastation it can cause. He has the same hope that I do--that rather than just say no, these individuals are given a chance to find a new way in life to overcome their addiction and become contributing members across America. I yield the floor to Senator Booker.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Blumenthal) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Jerry Edwards, Jr., to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Born in Shreveport, LA, Mr. Edwards received his B.A. from Georgia State University and his J.D. from Vermont Law and Graduate School before clerking for Judge Scott J. Crichton and Judge Jeanette G. Garrett on the First Judicial District Court of Louisiana. He then entered private practice in Shreveport, where he maintained a diverse litigation practice. In 2019, Mr. Edwards joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana as an assistant U.S. attorney. He defended Federal Agencies in civil cases and also handled affirmative work on behalf of Federal Agencies. In 2022, he was appointed first assistant U.S. attorney. In that role, he oversees civil litigation and the prosecution of various Federal crimes. Mr. Edwards has significant experience in both State and Federal court, and he has tried nine cases to verdict, including two jury trials. Mr. Edwards has also been involved in a variety of legal activities outside of his legal practice. He is a member of the Louisiana Supreme Court Committee on Bar Admissions, and he previously served on the Louisiana Judiciary Commission. Mr. Edwards enjoys the strong support of both of his home State Senators--Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Kennedy--as well as the Louisiana legal community. The American Bar Association unanimously rated Mr. Edwards as ``well qualified'' to serve on the Western District of Louisiana. If confirmed, he will be the first person of color to ever sit on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. During Mr. Edwards's confirmation hearing, Senator Cassidy noted that ``Mr. Edwards's commitment to his community and bar is a personal credit to the character required to be a successful judge.'' I am confident that Mr. Edwards' character, strong ties to the Western District of Louisiana, and extensive legal experience ensure that he will be a successful judge on the Federal bench. I strongly support his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to join me.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to resume consideration of the Long nomination.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Brandon S. Long to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Born in Metairie, LA, Mr. Long received his B.B.A. and B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999 and his J.D. from Duke Law School in 2005. From 2005 to 2010, Mr. Long worked in the Washington, DC, office of King & Spalding, LLP, as an associate in the special matters and government investigations practice group. While in private practice, he focused on Federal criminal matters, internal investigations, corporate compliance, and civil matters involving securities law. Mr. Long then served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia from 2010 to 2014. There, he tried approximately 27 criminal cases to verdict, of which 15 were jury trials and 12 were bench trials. Since 2014, Mr. Long has served as an AUSA in the Eastern District of Louisiana. From 2017 to 2018, he served as deputy chief of the narcotics unit. Mr. Long also served as the office's opioid coordinator from 2017 to 2020. For a brief stint from 2020 to 2021, Mr. Long served on detail as deputy chief of staff and acting chief of staff to FBI Director Christopher Wray. In 2021, he returned to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana, where he serves as a member of the financial crimes unit. The American Bar Association unanimously rated Mr. Long as ``well qualified,'' and his nomination is strongly supported by his home state Senators, Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Cassidy. Mr. Long will serve the Eastern District of Louisiana with distinction. I am proud to support his nomination and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture motion with respect to the Long nomination be withdrawn.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the nomination.

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

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Blumenthal), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I come to the floor again to discuss two U.S. attorney nominations that have been on the calendar for weeks: Rebecca Lutzko, nominated to be U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, and April Perry, nominated to serve as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. On several previous occasions, I have had to come to the floor to request unanimous consent for the Senate to take up these noncontroversial, bipartisan nominations and confirm these law enforcement nominees. Each time I have come to the floor, asking for this, the junior Senator from Ohio has objected. He says that he ran for office to ``[f]ight the criminals--not the cops.'' It turns out to be a hollow promise when he is holding up criminal prosecutors, at a professional level, in two major parts of the United States--one of them in his own State. Our communities desperately need top Federal prosecutors in place. Interested in stopping fentanyl? I am. Thousands of people are dying. Well, who is going to prosecute those cases? The U.S. attorneys will-- 93 of them across the United States--but you can't prosecute the case if you don't have the U.S. attorney there to lead the effort and to coordinate the effort with other branches of government. You can have an interim in there, and I am sure that person will do as good a job as he can, but it isn't like having the permanent person that you need as a U.S. attorney. Here we have two who have been chosen by the junior Senator from Ohio to stop--one from his own State. U.S. attorneys lead the Nation's efforts to prosecute violent criminals and protect our communities from violence, terrorism, and more. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio is no exception. While the entire Nation has been impacted by the opioid epidemic, Ohio has been hit harder than almost any other State. Over the course of 1 year--from April 2022 to April 2023--more than 5,000 Ohioans lost their lives to drug overdoses. That number is shocking-- 5,000 in 1 year. On average, every day, 14 Ohio families lose a loved one to drugs. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio could, as we speak, be tackling this drug crisis with community stakeholders, like the Toledo Metro Drug Task Force. Instead, her nomination has been languishing on the calendar here in the Senate for months because one Senator, the junior Senator from Ohio, has promised, I guess, former President Donald Trump that he would do his best to get even with the Department of Justice for even considering holding Donald Trump responsible for his conduct. It would be laughable if it weren't so damned dangerous. Because Senator Vance is not just harming my State and is not just harming his own State, the precedent he is setting will undermine public safety across the entire Nation for years to come. As I have stated before, the Senate has a long history of confirming U.S. attorneys by unanimous consent. We don't even have rollcall votes. When it came time for the Trump U.S. attorneys, no votes were required. Democrats--in control for most of that period of time--said to the President and his administration: You pick the U.S. attorneys. That is your right as President. The junior Senator from Ohio does not agree with that. Before President Biden took office, the last time the Senate required a rollcall vote on a U.S. attorney was in 1975. At the beginning of a new Presidential administration, it is customary for all the U.S. attorneys to resign en masse and for the new President to select their replacements. That is the ordinary course of business. As we have learned in the Senate, you can change that if you want to and run the risk of not bringing someone new to the position if it is that important. That is why, during the Trump administration, 85 of President Trump's U.S. attorney nominees moved through the Judiciary Committee. Senate Democrats--Democrats--allowed Trump's nominees--every single one of them--to be confirmed by unanimous consent, many of whom we would not have chosen personally, but that was the tradition that we held to. It would not have been realistic to force a floor time debate on every single one of those nominees and still expect 85 U.S. attorneys to be confirmed and be on the job in a timely manner. That tradition and the logic behind it obviously escapes the junior Senator from Ohio. So we respected our colleagues, and we respected the need for Senate-confirmed leadership in U.S. Attorney's Offices. The Democrats put public safety and the needs of law enforcement ahead of the obvious politics of the day. But now the Senator from Ohio is setting an unfortunate standard as he is putting us on a path of requiring cloture and confirmation votes for every U.S. attorney nominee--something everyone here knows is not feasible. Does this sound reminiscent of another Republican strategy from another Republican Senator in the State of Alabama? He held up, I believe, 400 military promotions for months at a time. He was angry about a new policy in the Department of Defense after the Dobbs decision. To protest that, he literally put a brick on 400 nominees for promotion in the U.S. military. Finally--finally--2 weeks ago, he relented. We still have 11 to take care of. To think of the hardship caused to those individuals and the fact that we didn't have leadership when we should have had for our national security is an indication to me of how this strategy of ``just stop the train; I want the world to get off'' is not a sensible one. So what will happen in the future when, inevitably, dozens of U.S. attorneys are left to function without Senate-confirmed leadership? Public safety will suffer, and we are setting a terrible precedent. To get angry with the administration and to try to require a rollcall vote--at least one, maybe two--on each nominee is just unnecessary; it is not logical, and it doesn't follow the precedent of the Senate--all because one Senator has decided that, because Donald Trump is facing indictments and prosecution in various parts of the United States, he wants to protest by hurting the selection of U.S. attorneys in his own home State of Ohio and the State of Illinois. We have before us two highly qualified nominees to lead their respective U.S. Attorney's Offices. Until we confirm them, law enforcement agencies in both Illinois and Ohio will be held back from doing their best to fight crime and to end our drug crisis in this country. When the Senator from Ohio was asked why he was doing this and what his goal was, he was very explicit: I will hold all DOJ nominations. . . . We will grind [the Justice Department] to a halt. June 13, this year. I can tell you, we just had a hearing--as you know, as a member of the committee--with the Director of the FBI. He talked to us about the battles he is fighting, the terrorism threats across America since the October 7 attack in Israel. He sees blinking lights, he says, in every direction of danger to the United States. Are we going to have the Department of Justice on the job, with professionals doing the best they can, or are we going to let it grind to a halt? ``Grind to a halt''--those were his words. I hope we have some common sense in this situation, and I hope we do it right now. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 314 and 315; that there be 2 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form on each nomination; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; 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; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I keep hearing this argument over and over again--weaponizing the Department of Justice. His complaint is that the Department of Justice has decided that Donald Trump, an American citizen, should be held responsible for his own conduct. Why would you argue that any citizen in this country is above the law? I didn't choose to make that strategy or even support it publicly, but I can't argue with the decision by the attorney general, nor the State of New York, nor the State of Atlanta, who believe that Donald Trump did things that he should be held accountable for. He will have his day in court, like every American citizen. He should not be put in some saintly status that he can't be touched. To think that in order to show my protest to any policy, I want to see the Department of Justice of the United States grind to a halt-- does the Senator have any idea what he just said? To think that we would stop the court proceedings, we would stop the prosecutions, we would stop the war against drugs, we would stop the war against terrorism, have them grind to a halt because I am mad that the former President is being, in my mind, harassed by this administration--this is irresponsible conduct, it is dangerous conduct, and it is a terrible precedent to set in the Senate that we would say to any individual: You have the power to stop a nominee who has been found to be acceptable on a bipartisan basis through the Senate Judiciary Committee. You know as well as I do that these nominees come before the committee, and both staffs, Democrat and Republican, tear through them to look for any flaws or any reason to stop the nominations. These two nominees in Ohio--his home State--and in Illinois both passed the test, the bipartisan test, and they were on their way to do a job for America and make it a safer place to live, and he stops them because he doesn't like the way Donald Trump is being treated. Is that a fact? He admits it on the floor of the Senate. It is hard to explain to the Senator--he is new to the Senate, relatively new to the Senate--that some of the traditions in the Senate are worth keeping. The fact that we gave 85 U.S. attorney nominees to Donald Trump as Democrats and did it without a single record vote is an indication we were trying to help his administration do their job. Why won't the Senator from Ohio let the Biden administration do their job and keep his own State safe? I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

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

Mr. DURBIN

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