Bill Foster

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairwoman for yielding, and I thank my friend from New York, Chairwoman Maloney, for her leadership on this issue. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 2513, which would help to end the abuse of anonymous shell companies. These entities have a well- documented history of being used to hide money in a wide variety of crimes, including sanctions evasion, terrorist financing, human trafficking, drug trafficking, illegal arms dealing, tax evasion, and corruption. Anonymous shell corporations are also being subverted by criminals in ever-evolving schemes involving emerging digital technologies. One of the many hats that I wear is being a co-chair of the Blockchain Caucus. Just in the past week, I have had disquieting updates from officials from the FBI and FinCEN about trends in the abuse of cryptocurrencies for nefarious purposes. What was clear from these briefings is that the use of anonymous shell companies has greatly inhibited the ability of law enforcement to go after criminals who use cryptocurrency to engage in illicit financing. The use of anonymous shell companies also makes it extremely difficult to uncover abusive trading practices in unregulated crypto exchanges. In short, criminals and law enforcement officers are engaged in a very sophisticated cat-and-mouse game in which law enforcement is always playing catch-up. Passing the Corporate Transparency Act will give law enforcement officers a significant new tool that could potentially lead them to taking down more of the bad guys. Let us not forget, the use of the beneficial ownership registries is not some wild-eyed, crazy concept where the U.S. would be going out on a limb. This is an area where the U.S. is significantly behind other developed nations. The Financial Action Task Force, a respected intergovernmental policymaking body established by the G7 countries in 2016, gave the U.S. a failing grade for its efforts to prevent the laundering of criminal proceeds by shell companies. According to FATF's report, the U.S. has not done enough to rein in corporate secrecy, which presents serious gaps in law enforcement efforts, leaving our financial system vulnerable to dirty money. They were blunt. We were scored as noncompliant--the lowest possible score--on our ability to determine the true owners of shell companies. That is simply unacceptable. I would like to think that the U.S. should be a standard setter amongst nations when it comes to things like anti-money laundering enforcement. The current status quo, however, woefully fails to measure up to our lofty goals. We need to do better, and that is why I support the commonsense measures put forth in H.R. 2513. Mr. Chairman, I thank Congresswoman Maloney for her determined and dogged leadership on this issue for many years, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on H.R. 2513.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the chairwoman, for yielding. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of H.R. 1815, which would simply require the SEC to conduct investor testing when developing rules and regulations about disclosures to retail investors. Creating effective disclosures is often a difficult task and requires developmental testing with consumers. It is a complex and technical task in its nature. These disclosures are meant to be clear and concise so that retail investors understand the scope of their relationships with brokers and investment advisers and important decisions regarding their investments. The SEC has had evidence since at least 2012, when it conducted a financial literacy study, that many of the disclosure documents that we currently rely on are not well understood by those investors. This includes cost disclosures that don't clearly convey costs, risk disclosures that don't clearly convey risks, and conflict disclosures that do not clearly convey the nature and the impact of these conflicts. Effective disclosure testing is imperative for facilitating informed decisionmaking on the part of consumers who are trying to save and invest their hard-earned money, and that is why the AARP and many other groups have endorsed H.R. 1815. By requiring qualitative testing in the form of one-on-one cognitive interviews of investors, it provides a deeper look into how typical retail investors synthesize information. If investors understand key differences in firms' conflicts, obligations, and revenue streams, then more retail investors will receive and interpret correctly the professional guidance that is right for them. The framework laid out here will increase transparency and access to critical and understandable information, as well as facilitate informed decisionmaking for Americans making investment decisions and saving for their retirement. This should be accomplished without delay. Mr. Chair, I urge a ``yes'' vote on H.R. 1815.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Women in Engineering AI Leadership Summit. This summit is a valuable forum for women students, teachers, researchers, and engineers to share their experiences and knowledge in the AI field. As chair of the House Financial Services Committee Artificial Intelligence Task Force, I know that developments in this field are at the forefront of American technological innovation. AI has the potential to fundamentally change how we interact with the world, and the work of groups like IEEE Women in Engineering is shaping the future of entrepreneurship, financial decisionmaking, and technological development. Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me today in recognizing the IEEE Women in Engineering AI Leadership Summit and the many great contributions that women engineers and scientists have made to this country and its communities.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chair, I rise today as the only Ph.D. physicist in the U.S. Congress. During my career, I have designed and led the construction of giant particle accelerators and other nuclear equipment, led high-risk and successful R&D programs, and designed equipment using classified neutron transport codes. Because of its importance to national security and nuclear nonproliferation, I have studied at length the question of minimizing the use of highly enriched uranium in naval propulsion reactors. I received numerous individual and highly technical classified briefings, examined reactor core specifications, and visited the naval nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Virginia. I believe that continuing the research supported by this amendment is worth pursuing for the reasons given by my colleague. Several factors must be dealt with in determining the practicality of utilizing LEU in naval propulsion reactors, including the total energy and power deliverable by the core, the volume of the reactor, the enrichment level of the fuel, reactivity limits, and the heat transfer area required for a given power level. It is complicated, but a 2016 report by the JASON scientific advisory board concluded that using an optimized LEU design instead of the existing HEU design could result in a significantly more compact core. This would be a true operational advantage and one that we should not give up by abandoning this R&D program that has been going on for years. I close by pointing out that I am not alone in this. This is not only about optimizing submarine performance. As pointed out by 35 Nobel Prize-winning scientists, it is crucial for nonproliferation that we set a good example for the rest of the world and not use weapons-grade uranium for applications where it is not required. Countries like France and others do not use weapons-grade uranium in their submarines and in carriers. We should set an example and do likewise. This R&D program will enable that possibility by continuing it for the next decade. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. Chair, I rise today as the only PhD Physicist in Congress. During my career I have design and led the construction of giant particle accelerators and other nuclear equipment, led high-risk and successful R and D programs, and designed equipment using classified neutron transport codes. Because of its importance to National Security and Nuclear NonProliferation, I have studied at length the question of minimizing the use of HEU in our naval propulsion reactors. I received numerous individual and highly technical classified briefings, examined reactor core specifications, and visited the naval nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Virginia. I believe that the research supported by this amendment is worth pursuing, for the reasons given by my colleague. The reason is simple, that HEU is one of the most dangerous substances known to man, because it can be used to make a simple, gun- type design nuclear bomb with a multi-kiloton yield. This is not true of LEU--low-enriched, non-weapons grade uranium. This distinction is important for the enforcement of Nuclear Nonproliferation. Since the detection of even minute amounts of HEU can and has been used as clear evidence of a weapons program in a nation that has allegedly committed to only peaceful uses of atomic energy based on LEU. Which is why the elimination of globally held stockpiles has been a U.S. policy objective for over 40 years, and recently supported by a letter from 35 Nobel Prize winners. But let's talk about the physics and reactor systems engineering. Several factors must be dealt with in determining the practicality of utilizing LEU in naval propulsion reactors, including total energy and power deliverable by the core, volume of the reactor, and enrichment level of the fuel, reactivity limits, and the heat transfer area required for a given power level. A 2016 report by the JASON Scientific Advisory Board concluded that, that using the existing HEU design, in order achieve the same total deliverable energy using LEU, the core would have to be approximately 4.5 times larger. This does not mean, however, that you would need a reactor system with 4.5 times the volume, since most propulsion components scale with the power of the reactor, which would be unchanged in the conversion from HEU to LEU. The purpose of the R and D funding in this amendment is to develop and qualify a fuel element and reactor design the will result in a much more compact overall design. Although the exact improvement factor is classified and has been redacted in the public version of the JASON report. If the R and D program succeeds, it will verify the feasibility of using LEU in Naval reactors with smaller or no performance compromise. The independent JASON scientific review committee gave this R and D program a positive outlook. In a July 2016 report to Congress, the Office of Naval Reactors stated that, ``The advanced LEU fuel system concept has the potential to satisfy the energy requirements of an aircraft carrier without affecting the number of refuelings.'' This would massively reduce U.S. consumption of Weapons Grade Uranium. The situation is more nuanced for submarines. The Virginia-class replacement propulsion plant is being targeted by this R and D program, with a decision time for transition to LEU of about 10 years from now. But such progress over the next two decades can only happen if we continue aggressively pursuing the R and D now. As the JASON report stated, ``If a decision is made soon to proceed with ELE-LEU development, then by the time the design of the Virginia- replacement propulsion plant is being solidified in the 2030 time frame, NNPP will have a good idea of whether ELE-LEU will succeed. . . . [T]hen the Navy's final HEU core might be built as early as 2040.'' If any of my colleagues would like to continue this conversation in a classified setting, I would be more than happy to answer any questions. I urge my colleagues to join me and vote yes on this critical amendment.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chair, FinCEN's mission is critical to our national and economic security. It is charged with safeguarding the financial system from illicit use and combating money laundering. Our amendment included in this en bloc directs FinCEN and its agency partners to make proactive efforts to identify and oversee one particular space, and that is cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets, and so-called cryptomixers that try to hide the source of cryptocurrency that is getting transmitted. FinCEN regulates exchanges and money-services businesses that deal with ordinary fiat currency. As FinCEN recognized early on, money transmitters that deal in cryptocurrency are functionally no different, and it only makes sense that they should also have to comply with anti- money-laundering regulations. That is why, since 2011, FinCEN regulations have made it clear that these kinds of entities are subject to the Bank Secrecy Act. More needs to be done, however. As of October 2018, only 13 out of the top 100 crypto exchanges had reportedly registered with FinCEN, even though most crypto funds from illicit entities flow through these exchanges. We need to send a message to these agencies that they cannot hide in plain sight, that they should live up to their obligation or FinCEN and its law enforcement partners will find them and hold them accountable. I am a big proponent of innovation, including in the fintech space, but no one wants to see innovative products and services being used to support terrorism, facilitate human trafficking, or enable criminals to carry out fraud, identity theft, ransomware, or extortion. That is why I hope my colleagues join me in supporting this en bloc amendment, so we can encourage FinCEN to continue its important work in the virtual currency space. The integrity and safety of our financial system depend on these efforts. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this en bloc amendment so that we can encourage responsible innovation in financial services while ensuring that such innovation is not undermined by criminals who engage in money laundering, illicit financing, and a whole host of other cyber-enabled crimes.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chair, I thank the chair for yielding. My amendment provides direction to do everything possible to fix the indefensible disparity between States in the per capita allocation of transportation funding through the Highway Trust Fund. Under the current process, known as apportionment, many States receive far more in Federal funding for surface transportation than they contribute through the gas tax. Apportionment in no way is a scientific or mathematical formula but is simply grandfathering in a table of numbers that were used to buy votes in the Senate generations ago. Unsurprisingly, this table of numbers greatly favors the low-population States that are overrepresented in the Senate. This problem is compounded by the fact that high-wage States like Illinois pay more in taxes but get no credit for this when income tax funds are transferred into the Highway Trust Fund. As a result, some States receive sometimes five times more per person than Illinois and other large States. My amendment represents a clear statement by the House of Representatives that we should move toward a per capita allotment that is fair to people no matter what State they live in. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this en bloc package.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chair, I thank my colleagues for supporting en bloc No. 2, which included two of my amendments. The first amendment directs NASA to work toward the development of a low-enriched uranium space power reactor. NASA has been developing a low-enriched uranium propulsion system, but some of the funding for this has been used on other projects, including a power reactor using weapons-grade uranium. The problem is that if all the spacefaring nations of the world start using large amounts of weapons-grade material in their space reactors, then it will be difficult to ensure that this material would not be diverted to weapons programs in space and on Earth. If the U.S. develops a low-enriched uranium space power reactor design, it is likely that this type of reactor design will be adopted as a de facto standard by other spacefaring nations, making Earth and space a safer place. The second amendment directs $6.5 million of the space technology account, which is currently funded at $1.29 billion, to be used by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, or NIAC, program. That will put the total budget for NIAC at $15.2 million. The NIAC program nurtures visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions with the creation of breakthroughs that could dramatically lower the cost of space travel while simultaneously engaging America's innovators and entrepreneurs as partners in the journey. The nation that first demonstrates such technologies will own the future of space travel. At $15.2 million, NIAC is still less than a tenth of a percent of NASA's overall $22 billion budget, but this is a small step in the right direction. Mr. Chair, I thank my colleagues for their support of these amendments.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Gun Violence Awareness Month and call upon the Senate to protect the lives of innocent Americans by passing commonsense gun reform measures that have already passed the House. This past February, in my district in Aurora, Illinois, five innocent people were killed and six police officers injured when a person who shouldn't legally have had a gun opened fire in a workplace, trying to kill as many people as he could. And earlier this month, we witnessed another horrific shooting in Virginia Beach where 12 more innocent lives were taken. These tragedies have become too common in America. The victims are our family members, our friends, and our neighbors. The House has already passed legislation that would, in fact, cure a fraction of this epidemic of gun violence, but the Senate refuses to act. Commonsense gun reform is supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans, and Congress has a responsibility to protect innocent lives. Every American deserves the right to live their lives free from the fear of violence and without worry that their next trip to work, to school, or their place of worship may be their last. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We cannot wait for the next tragedy. The Senate must act now.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, first, I am a proud cosponsor of Representative Lipinski's amendment, which would direct an increase of $15 million to Argonne National Laboratory's Leadership Computing Facility. The ALCF is a national scientific user facility that provides supercomputing resources and expertise to the scientific and engineering community to accelerate the pace of discovery and innovation in a broad range of disciplines. This money will be well spent. A second amendment, offered by myself, instructs the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to include accelerator-driven systems in its evaluation of future nuclear technology and fuel. There is a bipartisan and bicameral interest in accelerating investment in advanced nuclear reactors, which are walkaway safe and proliferation-resistant and have the potential to burn or minimize nuclear waste. One proposed system uses a proton accelerator, a neutron spallation target, and molten salt fuel, but it remains subcritical, thereby greatly reducing the safety and security risks. It can, without redesign, burn spent nuclear fuel, natural uranium, thorium, or surplus weapons material, such as surplus plutonium. It operates without the need for enrichment or reprocessing and may be used to produce the tritium needed to maintain our stockpile. Madam Chair, I thank my colleagues for their support.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Chair, I thank the chairwoman for yielding. My amendment will direct the State Department to use $10 million from the NADR account to take advantage of the opportunity to advance U.S. diplomatic goals in the Middle East through scientific engagement with a contribution to the SESAME Project. SESAME, the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Application in the Middle East, is a major science facility in Jordan. About an hour drive from Amman and an hour drive from Jerusalem, it is a cooperative venture by scientists and governments throughout the region, including Israel, Iran, and everyone in between. Science is a universal language that can cross barriers and build bridges, if we let it. As a high-energy particle physicist who spent my career working with international teams of scientists, I saw firsthand that even when a country's politicians cannot get along, often its scientists can. This U.S. support will strengthen the SESAME Project and encourage scientific collaboration among all of the countries in the Mideast. I urge my colleagues to join me and vote ``yes'' on this en bloc package.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, this bipartisan amendment, offered by myself and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly), would strike section 510, which bans HHS from adopting standards for a unique patient identifier that would allow patients to be uniquely identified across electronic health record systems. In the last 21 years that this misguided policy has been in place, thousands of Americans have died due to giving the wrong drug to the wrong patient or due to incorrect or incomplete electronic medical records, all arising from the inability to simply and correctly merge health records from different systems. Countless man-hours have been lost trying to figure out whether one patient's information is the same as another whose name might be spelled differently, or who has recently moved to a new city or State, or who might be under a maiden name, for example. Matching records properly requires a unique identifier for each patient. A Federal ban on doing this properly makes our healthcare system more expensive and less safe for patients. According to a 2016 study of healthcare executives, 86 percent of respondents have witnessed or knew of a medical error that was the result of patient misidentification. A Johns Hopkins study recently calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to preventable medical errors. While our data collection on medical errors is not as detailed as it should be, it is reasonable to assume that a unique patient identifier would help save a nontrivial fraction of these lives. Amidst the wave of digitization of the healthcare industry, most providers have adopted electronic health records, spurred on by the 2009 HITECH Act. But if we cannot ensure that we have the right patient with their full information at the point of care, then we cannot properly utilize the enormous promise of the portability and interoperability of health records. This ban is also handcuffing us in the fight against opioids. A 2018 roundtable on the opioid crisis cohosted by HHS and the nonprofit Center for Open Data Enterprise recommended the generation of a unique identifier for each patient. This would not only guard against doctor shopping by those struggling with substance abuse disorder, but it could also prevent those in recovery from accidentally being given prescription opioids after an injury, surgery, or childbirth, triggering a relapse. Repealing this ban tackles a known problem in our healthcare system, and I urge support for this bipartisan amendment. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the chairwoman of the Appropriations Labor, HHS, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. I would like to again thank my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly), for cosponsoring this bipartisan amendment so that we can move our healthcare system into the 21st century to save money and, most importantly, to save lives. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, I would like to thank Congressman Andy Kim for cosponsoring this amendment. This simple amendment would add and remove $1 from the substance abuse treatment fund, which we intend as a signal that HHS should prioritize opioid treatment money where the science shows that it actually works, on medication-assisted treatment. Unfortunately, addiction is an issue that we have become all too familiar with in our communities and across the country. It has claimed too many loved ones, shattered too many lives, and broken too many families. It is a devastating reality that drug overdoses have surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the United States. In fact, more people die in a single year from overdoses than were killed during the entire Vietnam war. This is a public crisis that affects people of every race, every income group, and every education level. These are mothers and fathers. They are friends and neighbors. Honestly, when I was first elected to Congress, I was not prepared for the numbers and the types of stories that I heard from family members who have lost loved ones to substance abuse. The urgency of this deadly epidemic requires us to work together and work smart as a community and a Nation to fight back. It requires that we use the best available science and spend our money where we know it does the most good. We should implement evidence-based treatment options, and research has backed medication-assisted treatment. Studies have shown that medication-assisted treatment decreases opioid use, opioid overdose deaths, criminal activity, and infectious disease transmission. These studies also show that medication-assisted treatment increases social functioning and retention in treatment. Patients treated with medication are more likely to remain in therapy compared to patients receiving treatment that did not include medication. It is also important in the tragic case of pregnant women who are addicted to opioids. A 2012 study by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that the treatment of opioid- dependent pregnant women with buprenorphine improved outcomes for their babies and that medication-assisted treatment reduced withdrawal systems in newborns and decreased the length of hospital stays. Medication-assisted treatment works, and it is what we should be funding. Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, the opioid epidemic has claimed too many lives and torn apart too many families for us to be using anything but the most effective treatments. It is past time that we stop treating opioid addiction as a moral failing and start treating it like the treatable medical condition that it is. Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment to make sure that HHS prioritizes funding for medically assisted treatment. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, my amendment highlights the need to think about our future workforce and how it will change because of technology, and to encourage the Bureau of Labor Statistics to accept a wider and more forward-looking range of inputs into its range of projections for the workforce of the future and that BLS should conduct the Contingent Worker and Alternative Work Arrangement Supplement to the Current Population Survey more frequently. I co-chair the New Democrat Coalition's Future of Work Task Force with my colleagues Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, Congressman Chris Pappas, and Congresswoman Haley Stevens, all of whom have cosponsored this amendment. The Future of Work Task Force has held a series of forums to hear from experts on various areas that will require this body's attention in the coming years and decades. Last Congress, we heard from historians, economists, and policy experts about how technological revolutions of the past have impacted social and political institutions, and the lessons from those experiences and from our current conditions that can help us prepare for the future. We have also heard from labor and business leaders who are pioneering new ways to attract talent, to retain the services of skilled employees, and to develop skills for the increasingly rapidly changing economy. It is nearly unanimous among our experts that the economy will change significantly and change faster, but it is less clear just how quickly the workforce will need to adapt. For decades, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been doing excellent and invaluable work to track our labor trends, and its projections have proven very reliable and useful to businesses and to our educators in times of slower and relatively predictable technological development. However, they are based on backward-looking historical data and historical trends, and some of the anticipated changes in technology, such as robotics, self-driving vehicles, and artificial intelligence could fundamentally change our economies in ways that we haven't seen before and are not preparing for. So in its current form, the way that the Bureau calculates and estimates future development of the workforce may not be able to capture the dramatic changes that our future holds. One panel convened by the task force suggested that it would be difficult or impossible to do projections in any single way to predict the future of the workforce, but with additional resources, the Bureau of Labor Statistics could model for a variety of scenarios of different rates of technological change in different sectors. My amendment increases the BLS amount by a dollar and decreases it by a dollar, which we intend to signal that the BLS should submit to Congress an estimate of the resources it would need to make a range of forward-looking estimates, including consultation with those industries that are driving the rapid technological change and those industries that will be affected by that change to account for the increasing rate of technological job displacement. Technological changes to the workforce are not new. The industrial revolution and the automation of agriculture transformed the way work was performed in our country, and significantly improved, on the whole, our standard of living over time, but the benefits have not been uniform and all communities and all job sectors have not benefited equally. Past transformations have typically played out over generations so that our social and political institutions had ample time to respond, but today, the development and deployment of our technology is far more rapid, and Congress, business, and our educational system need the best possible data to evaluate policy proposals and to produce the workforce training needed for future employees, to develop educational curricula, and ensure that our economy works for everyone. Like the industrial revolution, technological development presents the opportunity for greatly improved standards of living, but it will also bring challenges to our workforce. Businesses, communities, and government must work together. Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``yes'' on my amendment, to begin to establish a range of planning scenarios from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the future world that we will all inhabit. Madam Chair, I thank my Future Work Task Force co-chairs, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, Congressman Chris Pappas and Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, for cosponsoring this amendment, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the amendment. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, my amendment would increase the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority account by $1 million to support increased R&D for biosecurity. As the only Ph.D. physicist in Congress, I feel a special responsibility to speak out on issues of national security, especially when they concern emerging technological threats that Congress may not be sufficiently aware of. For more than 70 years, nuclear weapons have held center stage among the threats to our national security and global safety because of their capabilities to threaten the existence of all mankind. However, the dangers posed by advanced biological threats are catching up fast. For example, the ability of genome editing tools, such as CRISPR/ Cas9, to delete, suppress, and amplify specific genes has been a long sought-after capability for treating monogenic disorders and other disorders. However, this ability could also be abused for nefarious purposes, such as disrupting the normal function of particular biological systems or weaponizing synthetic versions of a virus. This is a global issue that will require global solutions. Unfortunately, the advances in this field are outpacing our ability to develop policies that will set international ethical and regulatory frameworks. Diagnostic platforms that can rapidly detect and characterize bioagents will become increasingly critical to safeguarding human health. If we are going to stay ahead of these technological threats, we need to be strategic about our investments. As a leader in technology and innovation, the United States must act now to mitigate any dangers that these technologies might pose. Madam Chair, the $1 million allocated by this amendment represents truly only a fraction of what will ultimately be needed, but I urge my colleagues to join me and vote ``yes'' on my amendment. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Julie Rothenfluh for 23 years of service at the Naperville Public Library. Julie's contributions to the Naperville Public Library are truly noteworthy. As Executive Director, Julie has guided the library through a period of profound change. While technology has substantially changed the way we receive information, the Naperville Public Library has adapted to meet the needs of an evolving community. Julie's strategic plan for the library has placed a special emphasis on accessibility and innovation. Her hard work and determination have helped the library achieve a five-star rating from the Library Journal for ten consecutive years. This puts the Naperville Public Library among the top libraries in the country. Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Julie Rothenfluh and her outstanding contributions to the City of Naperville, the Naperville Public Library, and the many lives she has touched.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Spanish Community Center's 50th anniversary. The Spanish Community Center in Joliet, Illinois has long been a valued part of our community. Over 50 years ago, amid the Civil Rights movement, the Hernandez, Adler, and Maher families began providing valuable services to the growing local migrant communities. This local organization became the Spanish Community Center in 1969. Since then, this cherished institution has offered valuable social services to residents of Joliet and the surrounding area. While the Spanish Community Center began as a response to the needs of Joliet's Latino communities, it now proudly offers assistance to all who need it. I would like to thank the Spanish Community Center for its commitment to the citizens of Illinois and for its contribution to the Joliet community.

Mr. FOSTER

Mr. FOSTER. Madam Speaker, today I rise to recognize 50 years of outstanding work by Comerstone Services in Will County, Illinois. On March 20, 1969 a group of community members, parents and civic leaders launched the Will County Sheltered Workshop to create employment opportunities for adults with disabilities. Later renamed Comerstone Services, the organization greatly expanded their services as the demand for assistance grew. Since the 1990s, Comerstone has extended its reach across Will and Kankakee Counties as they focus on moving individuals in need of special assistance out of larger facilities and into smaller neighborhood group homes. In 2018, the program provided a record 187 new jobs for individuals with disabilities, delivering over $1.5 million in wages. Today, Comerstone provides services to over 1,200 people per day. I would like to thank Comerstone Services for its commitment to the citizens of Illinois and for its contribution to the communities of Will and Kankakee Counties.