Chuck Grassley

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about a recent tragedy that has deeply impacted my home State of Iowa and I think all of the country because cable television is well aware of this. Yesterday, authorities announced they found the remains of a 24-year- old University of Iowa sophomore, Mollie Tibbets, of Brooklyn, IA. After searching tirelessly for months, State and local law enforcements announced the unthinkable, Mollie was murdered in cold blood. I would like to commend the efforts of all who were involved in searching for this remarkable young woman, including the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the individual members of the community who volunteered tirelessly to find Mollie. Americans watched the news every night, all of us, holding out hope that Mollie would soon be found and returned to her family. I extend my sincerest condolences and sympathies to Rob Tibbetts, Mollie's father, and Laura Calderwood, Mollie's mother. They spent the last month and a half searching the State for their missing daughter. Rob and Laura traveled across the State, raised awareness on TV, and handed out buttons, T-shirts, and missing person fliers at the Iowa State Fair. Both Rob and Laura showed remarkable bravery in the face of tragedy. Know that our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family during this difficult time. For those of us in Washington, we ought to try to learn something from Mollie's character and the example she set. As Mollie's boyfriend Dalton Jack said, ``She's not just a missing person flyer.'' Mollie was an avid reader who enjoyed the choir, theater, and writing. Mollie loved her friends and had a natural ability working with children. Her friends say she had a gift for making everyone feel like the most important person in the room. There is no doubt her nurturing character and her ability to be everyone's counselor--as a friend put it--led her to the University of Iowa to study psychology. While there, Mollie spent her summers taking classes and working at a day camp with the Grinnell Regional Medical Center, where she mentored children. It is no surprise that when Mollie went missing, over 200 people showed up for a vigil in her honor. While we mourn the loss of Mollie Tibbetts, it is the duty of this Senator and every other Senator to act to prevent further tragedies such as this one from devastating a family and an entire community. We now know that Mollie was murdered by a 24-year-old, undocumented immigrant who has been in the United States illegally for 4 to 7 years. That is right. For 4 to 7 years, this man was here undetected and unaccounted for. This raises questions about his immigration, employment, and criminal history, and we must receive answers. So, today, I sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security seeking any immigration history on this man and a briefing to better understand how he was able to get to and stay in Iowa. This isn't too different from what I have done in many cases with some undocumented person, particularly those who had been deported and returned, asking for answers when there was a tragedy such as what happened to Mollie. I think of recent cases, maybe within the last 2 years, of murders in Northern Virginia and in Maryland. The Tibbetts family, the people of Iowa as well, and I hope all of the American public feel they deserve answers. Based on the information I do have, it seems this murder was preventable. Stricter border security measures, including increased personnel, enhanced technology, and modernized infrastructure could have prevented this man from crossing the border--in other words, secure the border. Stronger interior enforcement and addressing weaknesses in E-Verify could have prevented this individual from working and would have allowed immigration enforcement authority to initiate removal proceedings years ago. Earlier this week, President Trump invited officers and agents of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the White House to thank them and the people under them for all they do on a daily basis to protect Americans. Recent events are a stark reminder as to how much we need these hard-working men and women. Amidst cries from the radical far left to abolish law enforcement agencies, such as ICE, I am proud to stand in support of the brave men and women of that agency. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are tasked with protecting the homeland, a duty they willingly accepted on behalf of all Americans and, of course, the No. 1 responsibility, the Federal Government. Every day, men and women of the Border Patrol and ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, put themselves in harm's way because Congress tasked them with this great responsibility. So to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who call for abolishing immigration enforcement, I urge caution. We have heard a lot of that lately about abolishing immigration enforcement. Scapegoating our uniformed officers, who are simply executing the law, to launch future Presidential campaigns only moves us further away from one another and further away from a lasting solution. To put their efforts into perspective, let's take a look at some data. During fiscal year 2017, ICE arrested more than 127,000 aliens with criminal convictions or charges. ICE made 5,225 administrative arrests of suspected gang members. Last year, the criminal aliens arrested by ICE were responsible for more than 76,000 dangerous drug offenses, 48,000 assault offenses, 11,000 weapon offenses, 5,000 sexual offenses, 2,000 kidnapping offenses, and 1,800 homicide offenses. Those statistics are just for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. Last year, ICE Homeland Security Investigations made over 4,800 gang- related arrests. ICE also targets illicit drug flows, human trafficking operations, and transnational criminal and terrorist organizations. ICE is part of our broader national security apparatus and often works hand in hand with their partners at the Department of Justice, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, and hundreds of Federal prosecutors. In 2017, ICE identified or rescued 904 sexually exploited children and 518 victims of human trafficking. ICE seized more than 980,000 pounds of narcotics just last year, including 2,370 pounds of fentanyl and almost 7,000 pounds of heroin. To my colleagues who have spoken strongly about combating the moral stain of human trafficking or about ending the opioid epidemic gripping our country, I ask: How is ICE anything but an indispensable partner in this fight? How can we expect to combat the flow of lethal narcotics without the brave men and women of the Border Patrol and ICE? Just last week, I sent a letter to Secretaries Nielsen and Pompeo about an Iraqi national who lied about his active membership in ISIS and al-Qaida in Iraq so he could claim refugee status and settle safely in Sacramento, CA. ICE played a very vital role in his arrest. This weekend, ICE deported a Nazi prison guard who was living in Queens, NY, and yesterday ICE was immediately there on the scene in Brooklyn, IA, when State and local authorities determined the suspect was a foreign national. Congress has been dancing around the issue of securing our borders and strengthening interior enforcement for far too long. We have told voters we will fix the problem, but we don't seem to get the bills passed. Stories like those of Kate Steinle, Sarah Root, Kayla Cuevas, and now Mollie Tibbetts continue to appear in the news, and we ought to come to the conclusion that enough is enough. Sarah's Law Mr. President, I urge the Senate to put partisanship aside and support Sarah's Law. That is a bill that some of us from the Midwest have introduced, but we also would like to see justice for Kate Steinle's murder because people who have been deported, coming back to the United States to do this killing--just for coming back and violating our law over and over and over by crossing into the country without papers, they should have mandatory sentences. Sarah's Law is a bill I introduced with Senator Ernst in honor of a fellow Iowan, Sarah Root, who was killed by an undocumented immigrant driving drunk and was three times over the legal limit. Sarah's Law is a commonsense bill that requires the Federal Government to take custody of anyone who entered the country illegally, violated the terms of their immigration status, and had their visas revoked and is thereafter charged with killing or seriously harming another person. It also requires ICE to make reasonable efforts to identify and provide relevant information to crime victims and their families. I end thinking about Mollie's death, but you can continue to think about Sarah Root, Kate Steinle, and others. We haven't responded to it very well. We can and we must do better. Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh Mr. President, if I may, I want to continue to speak but on another subject. Over the past day, several of my colleagues issued statements calling for Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing to be delayed. A lot of these colleagues have written me very personal letters calling for Judge Kavanaugh's hearing to be delayed. Some of them have written me very personal letters about coverups or hiding or handling documents in ways they perceive to be different from what other committee chairmen have done. In regard to the delay of the hearing, they claim that it is because President Trump's former lawyer recently pleaded guilty to criminal violations of campaign finance law, allegedly at President Trump's direction. I am not going to delay Judge Kavanaugh's nomination hearing. There is no precedent for delaying a hearing in these circumstances. In fact, it is just the opposite. There is clear precedent pointing in the other direction. I will give my colleagues at least one. In 1994, President Clinton nominated Justice Breyer to the Supreme Court. At that time, President Clinton was under investigation by Independent Counsel Robert Fiske in connection with the Whitewater land deal. Indeed, President Clinton's own records were under grand jury subpoena. Yet the Senate confirmed Justice Breyer by a vote of 87 to 9 during all of that. In fact, President Clinton was under investigation for much of his Presidency and was even impeached for committing perjury. Obviously, he wasn't convicted. But through all of this, the Senate didn't stop confirming his lifetime appointments to the bench. President Trump is not even close to being in the same legal situation as President Clinton, but obviously some people around here think he is. So my colleagues' plea to delay the hearing rings very false considering the precedent I just gave, and maybe historians can give us more precedents. So I want to tell my colleagues why liberal outside groups and Senate Democratic leaders decided to oppose the President's Supreme Court nominee by any means necessary. They even said so. Some even announced their opposition before Judge Kavanaugh was nominated. The minority leader said he would fight Judge Kavanaugh with everything he has. Members of the Judiciary Committee announced their opposition before giving Judge Kavanaugh any consideration whatsoever. One Member said that voting for Judge Kavanaugh is ``complicit in evil.'' Another Member said that Judge Kavanaugh threatens ``destruction of the Constitution of the United States.'' The goal has always been the same: to delay the confirmation process as much as possible and hope that the Democrats take over the U.S. Senate in the midterm elections. The Ranking Member's hometown newspaper reported on this strategy recently, and the headline called it an attempt to stall. The strategies may change, but the goal to obstruct the confirmation process remains unchanged. First, Democratic leaders tried to apply the Biden rule, which bars confirmations in Presidential elections and which many Democrats previously said doesn't even exist. They tried to apply it even to midterm elections. When they used it, it was applied just to Presidential elections. Now, when this strategy failed, because it was completely and flatly false, they changed strategies. They tried pushing for an unprecedented disclosure of Judge Kavanaugh's executive branch documents, even though we have already received more pages of such documents than any previous Supreme Court nominee. This is on top of Judge Kavanaugh's 12-year judicial track record and other more relevant publicly available materials. Now they are trying to latch on to the legal troubles of President Trump's former associates, but, as I just explained, there is no precedent or logical reason for the Senate to decline to proceed on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination in these circumstances. It is just another attempt to block Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation by any means necessary. On a related note, we are working to make available as many of the documents relevant to Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court when we receive them--to make them publicly available as soon as possible. It is common practice--I hope everyone knows--to receive documents with a restriction called ``Committee Confidential'' until we can assure ourselves that we will not disclose sensitive, confidential information to the public in violation of the Presidential Records Act. Chairman Leahy, who is here on the floor with me, did so during Justice Kagan's confirmation process, and I am doing the same. This gives Judiciary Committee members a jump start on reviewing documents because, otherwise, if you had to wait until they were all cleared, you wouldn't even be reading them yet. The goal is to make as many publicly available as possible as soon as possible. I have promised to work with President Bush and President Trump to waive committee confidentiality, when the law requires it, for specific documents that my colleagues would like to use at the confirmation hearings. This is also consistent with how the Judiciary Committee has handled this issue in the past. And, of course, all of my Senate colleagues are welcome to review committee-confidential documents at their convenience. Simply get in touch with my staff. The staff there will make sure that they have full access to the range of committee- confidential documents. One of my colleagues tweeted, and I am not going to name this colleague because there is no point in embarrassing anybody to make a very strong point here about how ridiculous some of this argument has become. This is the tweet: Chairman Grassley unilaterally deemed Kavanaugh records Committee Confidential. Penalty for release could include `expulsion' from the Senate, which hasn't happened since the Civil War, for disloyalty to the Union. GOP is going that far to keep them secret. I hope all of my colleagues see the absurdity of that tweet. Now, that person is kind of acting like the Senate has never received committee-confidential documents before. It is common practice, and it has happened in previous Supreme Court nominations, even under Democratic chairmen. So to sum up, it is so regrettable that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have politicized this process so much, but also, at the same time, they have short memories. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Aakash Singh, immigration counsel with my Judiciary Committee staff, and Robert Shifflett, a detailee from the Department of Homeland Security, be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, as I have now for several weeks spoken to my colleagues about the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, I return to further elaborate on where we are in that process. Two weeks from today, Judge Brett Kavanaugh will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the first day of his confirmation hearing. I am quite excited to finally hear from him in that forum. He is one of the most qualified nominees to have ever been picked for the Supreme Court, and he has contributed a great deal to his community and the legal profession, besides being an outstanding judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Apparently, the other side has found very little in his record that is objectionable. The only thing I keep hearing is their unprecedented demand for millions and millions of pages of irrelevant documents on top of the hundreds of thousands of pages we have already received. Indeed, the Senate Democratic leaders have demanded the search of every email and every scrap of paper from every one of the hundreds of White House aides who came and went for the entire 8 years of the George W. Bush Presidency. The Senate Democratic leaders have even refused to utilize search terms-- and other ways--in order to limit the universe of millions and millions of pages of records that would require a consecutive review by the Archives and both the former and incumbent Presidents' teams of lawyers even before the Senate Judiciary Committee could have begun its own search. These reviews would have taken many months, and some people have said they would have taken beyond this year. We know the true reason for their unprecedented document demand, which is to deny Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation until after the midterm elections, when the Senate Democrats hope to win back the Senate and block Judge Kavanaugh's nomination forever. Democratic leaders announced their opposition to Judge Kavanaugh immediately after he was nominated. Can you believe that? Some Senators announced their opposition to any one of the 25 potential nominees before the President even announced he was picking Judge Kavanaugh. The minority leader said he would oppose Judge Kavanaugh with everything he has. This desire to obstruct the entire process explains their partisan push to bury the Senate Judiciary Committee in a mountain of irrelevant paperwork. They also want to divert attention from the very impressive record Judge Kavanaugh has. Democratic leaders know Judge Kavanaugh is the exact type of Justice the American people want. By the way, when he was a candidate--way before his election--the President named the people whom he was going to appoint and the types of people he was thinking. Judge Kavanaugh has served for 12 years on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. During that time, he has authored more than 300 opinions and has joined in hundreds of others. In 13 separate cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has adopted legal positions that have been advanced by Judge Kavanaugh's opinions on the DC Circuit. That is a very impressive record that few people on the circuit court of appeals can claim. The majority's staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee has already received more than 10,000 pages of judicial opinions Judge Kavanaugh wrote or joined, more than 17,000 pages of materials Judge Kavanaugh provided in response to the most robust questionnaire ever submitted for a Supreme Court nominee, and more than 260,000 pages of emails and other records from Judge Kavanaugh's executive branch legal service. This morning, the committee received close to 170,000 pages of additional records from Judge Kavanaugh's executive branch legal service. We now have more than 430,000 pages from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the executive branch--by far, the most ever received for a Supreme Court nominee. The majority's staff will finish reading every one of these pages before Judge Kavanaugh's hearing, which will start the day after Labor Day. I am following the precedent that was established during Justice Kagan's confirmation, when the Senate asked for many but not all of Justice Kagan's executive branch documents. We received documents from two out of three executive branch positions that Justice Kagan held. We received documents from Justice Kagan's time in the White House Counsel's Office and on the U.S. Domestic Policy Council. Senators from both parties agreed not to request internal documents from her time in the Office of the Solicitor General because of their sensitivity. Likewise, then, we are asking for documents from two of Judge Kavanaugh's positions in the executive branch but not from a third, which follows the practice of Justice Kagan's confirmation. We have asked for documents from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office and the Office of Independent Counsel, but we didn't ask for documents from his time as Staff Secretary because, even more so than Justice Kagan's Solicitor General documents, they are incredibly sensitive to the executive branch. I will add that both positions for which we requested Judge Kavanaugh's documents were legal positions. Those documents could shed some light on his legal thinking. The Staff Secretary, another position that Judge Kavanaugh held at the White House, is a nonlegal position, and it wouldn't reveal anything about Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking. On the other hand, we didn't receive documents from Justice Kagan's time in one of the two legal positions that she held. We didn't receive her Solicitor General documents, despite a heightened need for them to assess Justice Kagan's legal thinking. After all, Justice Kagan had no legal or judicial experience. In other words, she was not a judge prior to going to the Supreme Court, as Judge Kavanaugh is. In contrast to Judge Kavanaugh's 12-year judicial track record, the 307 opinions Kavanaugh wrote, and the hundreds more he joined, Judge Kagan wrote or joined zero opinions. Judge Kavanaugh wrote or joined over 10,000 pages of judicial opinions, compared to Justice Kagan's zero pages. In short, we have received many more pages of more relevant documents for Judge Kavanaugh than we did for Justice Kagan. This more thorough and more transparent production is also on top of the thousands of pages of Judge Kavanaugh's publicly available materials, including his extensive and impressive judicial record. Nevertheless, Democratic leaders accuse me of hiding documents. Consider the hundreds of thousands that are available, and I am being accused of hiding documents. They are doing that because I have agreed to hold some documents as committee confidential. But during Justice Kagan's and Justice Gorsuch's nominations, we agreed to receive as committee confidential documents that contain material that are restricted by the Federal law that we call the Presidential Records Act. As the current chairman, that is exactly what I have agreed to do this time. As I have explained many times over the last month, I agreed to receive documents on a committee-confidential basis as an initial matter to allow the committee to accelerate our review of Judge Kavanaugh's record, while at the same time making sure that restricted material, such as Social Security numbers for individuals, bank information for individuals, or confidential advice given to the President, are not exposed to the public, as everybody would expect us to be that careful. Then-Chairman Leahy also agreed to receive documents on a committee- confidential basis in 2010 ``to permit the Committee prompt access to them.'' I have done exactly the same thing in the case of Judge Kavanaugh. All of those documents don't necessarily remain confidential forever because there is a process. They are reviewed a second time, and if they don't contain any material restricted by law for public access, we quickly release those documents to the public. Thus, we end up in exactly the same place as we did with Justice Kagan and Justice Gorsuch: Material restricted by the statute is held committee confidential, while nonrestricted material is released to the public. I would like to add that all documents we have received, including committee-confidential documents, at this very moment are available to every Member of the Senate. My staff is happy to make these documents available to any Senator interested in reviewing them. Now, my friends on the other side of the aisle complain that a lawyer by the name of Bill Burck, rather than the National Archives, is deciding what is considered restricted, but that is not true at all. The National Archives has been reviewing Judge Kavanaugh's emails, as I requested. These archivists are public employees, and they have informed President Bush and President Trump that, in the opinion of the professional archival staff, nearly two-thirds of the emails that these public servants have reviewed thus far contain restricted material and should not be released to the public. That means that under the same standard applied to Justice Kagan and Justice Gorsuch, the Committee will have to hold two-thirds of the documents reviewed by the National Archives as committee confidential when we receive them. Following historical practice, official records generally are produced to the Senate for our review, and personal records generally are not. The Obama-appointed Archivist of the United States and his team of career archivists are making the ultimate decision on whether Judge Kavanaugh's executive branch records are official-- available to the committee and to the public--or personal. It is simply absurd to suggest that anyone is hiding anything. So I hope I don't hear that complaint anymore. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle put aside politics and reconsider their reckless demands for the immediate release--for the whole world to see--of documents that contain full names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, personal communications with family members, other sensitive matters affecting personal privacy, and, of course, some of the more sensitive issues related to the President's core constitutional duties. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Nathan Williams, a law clerk with my Judiciary Committee staff, be granted floor privileges for the duration of today's session.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill to update and extend the Missing Children's Assistance Act. Senators Feinstein, Hatch, Klobuchar, and Portman have joined as original cosponsors, and I thank these colleagues for their support. I also want to thank Congressman Brett Guthrie and the chairman of the House Education Committee, Virginia Foxx, for championing a related companion measure in the other chamber. The purpose of this bipartisan bill, entitled the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 2018, is to ensure the continued availability of federal resources for the work of missing children's organizations such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Since its inception in 1984, the National Center has served as the official national resource center and clearinghouse on missing and exploited children. The National Center works in partnership with State child protective services agencies to help locate children who go missing from foster care. It also works in partnership with families, schools, corporate and nonprofit entities, the FBI, the Marshals Service, and the Secret Service, as well as other federal state and local entities, to prevent child abductions and facilitate the recovery of children who may become victims of sex trafficking. Each year, thousands of children run away or go missing in the United States, which is why this work is so important. The names Johnny Gosch, Eugene Martin and Jetseta Gage, for example, still bring heartbreak to all Iowans. Johnny Gosch was a 12-year-old paperboy delivering newspapers in West Des Moines, Iowa, when he disappeared in 1982. Two years later, 13-year-old Eugene Martin disappeared in Des Moines, Iowa--also while delivering newspapers. And 10-year-old Jetseta Gage was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a convicted sex offender in rural Johnson County, Iowa in 2005. Theirs are not isolated cases. Too many other children across the country have had to cope with the physical and emotional trauma of being abducted, trafficked or sexually exploited. Under the legislation that I have proposed, the Justice Department will continue to play an important role in implementing the Missing Children's Assistance Act. Through its Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Department will continue to annually award grants to the National Center and other nonprofit organizations to further their important work of preventing and responding to offenses committed against vulnerable children. Extending this authorized funding at $40 million annually for five more years, as proposed in this bill, will ensure that the Office can continue to support these nonprofit organizations in their important efforts in public-private partnerships with families, private entities, and federal, state, local, and international law enforcement agencies. The bipartisan legislation I have sponsored also includes several important updates to the Missing Children's Act, which Congress last reauthorized in 2013. Some of these reforms already are included in another bipartisan bill, known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which I sponsored and the Senate passed last year. Other changes would help increase public awareness of methods to prevent abductions and support the recovery of missing children. The activities authorized by the Missing Children's Assistance Act will expire on September 30th unless Congress acts quickly to adopt a reauthorization measure. As a parent, as a grandparent, I call on my colleagues to join me in supporting the prompt passage of this bill.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill to update and extend the Missing Children's Assistance Act. Senators Feinstein, Hatch, Klobuchar, and Portman have joined as original cosponsors, and I thank these colleagues for their support. I also want to thank Congressman Brett Guthrie and the chairman of the House Education Committee, Virginia Foxx, for championing a related companion measure in the other chamber. The purpose of this bipartisan bill, entitled the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 2018, is to ensure the continued availability of federal resources for the work of missing children's organizations such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Since its inception in 1984, the National Center has served as the official national resource center and clearinghouse on missing and exploited children. The National Center works in partnership with State child protective services agencies to help locate children who go missing from foster care. It also works in partnership with families, schools, corporate and nonprofit entities, the FBI, the Marshals Service, and the Secret Service, as well as other federal state and local entities, to prevent child abductions and facilitate the recovery of children who may become victims of sex trafficking. Each year, thousands of children run away or go missing in the United States, which is why this work is so important. The names Johnny Gosch, Eugene Martin and Jetseta Gage, for example, still bring heartbreak to all Iowans. Johnny Gosch was a 12-year-old paperboy delivering newspapers in West Des Moines, Iowa, when he disappeared in 1982. Two years later, 13-year-old Eugene Martin disappeared in Des Moines, Iowa--also while delivering newspapers. And 10-year-old Jetseta Gage was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a convicted sex offender in rural Johnson County, Iowa in 2005. Theirs are not isolated cases. Too many other children across the country have had to cope with the physical and emotional trauma of being abducted, trafficked or sexually exploited. Under the legislation that I have proposed, the Justice Department will continue to play an important role in implementing the Missing Children's Assistance Act. Through its Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Department will continue to annually award grants to the National Center and other nonprofit organizations to further their important work of preventing and responding to offenses committed against vulnerable children. Extending this authorized funding at $40 million annually for five more years, as proposed in this bill, will ensure that the Office can continue to support these nonprofit organizations in their important efforts in public-private partnerships with families, private entities, and federal, state, local, and international law enforcement agencies. The bipartisan legislation I have sponsored also includes several important updates to the Missing Children's Act, which Congress last reauthorized in 2013. Some of these reforms already are included in another bipartisan bill, known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which I sponsored and the Senate passed last year. Other changes would help increase public awareness of methods to prevent abductions and support the recovery of missing children. The activities authorized by the Missing Children's Assistance Act will expire on September 30th unless Congress acts quickly to adopt a reauthorization measure. As a parent, as a grandparent, I call on my colleagues to join me in supporting the prompt passage of this bill.

Mr. GRASSLEY

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

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last week I announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination for the Supreme Court starting on September 4. The hearing will begin 57 days after the President announced Judge Kavanaugh's nomination, more than a week longer than the period between the announcements and hearings for the last three Justices--Sotomayor, Kagan, and Gorsuch. The Senate has already received more documents from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the executive branch than we did for any previous Supreme Court nominee. We have so far received more than 184,000 pages of documents, of which more than 124,000 are currently publicly available to anybody in this country going to judiciary.senate.gov. The team of lawyers who work for the majority have already reviewed more than 10,000 pages of the 307 judicial opinions that Judge Kavanaugh wrote, along with hundreds more opinions that he joined, in his 12 years of service on the DC Circuit. The team of lawyers who worked for the majority have reviewed 110 pages of written answers and over 17,000 pages of materials Judge Kavanaugh submitted to the committee in response to its bipartisan questionnaire--the most robust questionnaire ever submitted to a Supreme Court nominee. The team of lawyers who work for the majority has already reviewed every page of the more than 184,000 pages of emails and other records that the committee has received so far from Judge Kavanaugh's time as a government lawyer in the White House and also serving with Judge Starr when Starr was independent counsel. I expect that we will receive even more documents this very night or, at the latest, tomorrow and that all remaining documents responsive to our request will be produced next week. We will work to make every unrestricted record publicly available as quickly as possible. As I predicted, this confirmation process is the most transparent ever, particularly as it relates to the number of documents that we are receiving. We have already received more documents from Judge Kavanaugh's executive branch service than any nominee in history, with many more to come. Senators have more time to review Judge Kavanaugh's record than they did for at least three Supreme Court nominees. So I am very confident that the committee and the Senate will have ample information and time to carry out our responsibilities under our Constitution to advise and consent. But some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are attempting to manipulate the American people. I just described to you the largest document production in the history of a Supreme Court nomination. But guess what. The minority leader describes it as ``unprecedented secrecy.'' This argument is very ridiculous on its face, and the American people aren't buying it. I got a lot of questions at my town meetings across Iowa over the last week. In 20 different counties in Iowa, this issue about the Supreme Court always came up--that shouldn't surprise anybody--but there was hardly any mention of this document issue, which was cooked up by the Washington insiders. Let's not forget how this document issue started. First, liberal dark money groups and their Senate allies announced immediate opposition to Judge Kavanaugh. Some of them even announced it before the name Kavanaugh was announced by the President. The minority leader said that he would oppose Judge Kavanaugh with everything he has. So their first tactic was to argue that the Senate shouldn't confirm anyone during a midterm election year. They attempted to invoke the Biden rule, which bars confirmation of Supreme Court Justices during a Presidential election year, to make this argument. Of course, this was a ludicrous position, unsupported by precedent and widely rejected by objective observers and even fact checkers. The minority leader and his allies abandoned that argument, but they didn't abandon their goal, which is to stall Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation until after the midterm elections and hope that the other party will take control of the Senate. That is why the minority leader refocused his tactics and manufactured a very phony controversy regarding Judge Kavanaugh's White House documents. How do we know it is phony? On the one hand, the minority leader has publicly stated that he would oppose Judge Kavanaugh's nomination with everything he has. On the other hand, he is insisting that the Senate needs millions more pages of documents on top of what we already have in order to make an informed decision. Indeed, the Senate Democrats demanded the search of every page of every email and every other record from every one of the hundreds of White House staffers who came and went during every one of the 8 years of the Bush administration just because the name ``Kavanaugh'' could have been in those emails. In other words, the Senate Democrats demanded the search of every scrap of White House paper for the entire Bush Presidency. As I stated repeatedly, I am not going to put the American taxpayers on the hook for the Senate Democrats' fishing expedition. How much more information do the minority leader and his outside dark money allies need if they have already made up their decision to vote no on Judge Kavanaugh? When they are in that position, they don't care about Judge Kavanaugh's record because they know what their vote is going to be. How much more do they need to know to vote no? They simply want to bury us in a mountain of paper so there is no chance that we can hold a confirmation vote on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination any time this year. There is already a mountain of paper for our committee members to go through and their staffs. The Democrats want to make it be Mount Everest. Let's not forget that Judge Kavanaugh has a 12-year judicial track record from his time on the DC Circuit. During that time, he authored more than 300 opinions and joined in hundreds more. These opinions provide the most relevant information for assessing Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking and whether or not he ought to be approved to be on the Supreme Court. I go back to something my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said back in 2009. My Democratic colleagues were making this very same argument with respect to Justice Sotomayor. Of course, they are flip- flopping now. The current minority leader said in 2009 that ``everybody knows'' a judge's record on the bench ``is the best way to evaluate a nominee.'' He said to Justice Sotomayor: ``I want to turn to your record on the bench, which I believe is the very best way to get a sense of what your record will be on the bench in the future.'' Then Chairman Leahy said: We have Judge Sotomayor's record from the Federal bench. That is a public record that we had even before she was designated by the President. Judge Sotomayor's mainstream record of judicial restraint and modesty is the best indication of her judicial philosophy. We do not have to imagine what kind of a judge she will be because we see what kind of a judge she has been. Well, Senator Schumer, the same logic applies to Judge Kavanaugh's long judicial track record of 12 years. Despite this record being more than sufficient to assess how Judge Kavanaugh approaches legal issues, I requested hundreds of thousands of additional pages from his time as a government lawyer, in the interest of full transparency. But even the most transparent confirmation process in history is not enough for those who decided to oppose Judge Kavanaugh before they even saw his record. The document requests for Justice Kagan's confirmation provide strong support for how the Judiciary Committee is proceeding now. Then, the Senate requested Justice Kagan's White House records, but not internal documents from the Solicitor General's Office. We refrained out of respect for the sensitivity of internal deliberations in the Solicitor General's Office. We did so even though these documents would have been extremely helpful to our assessment of Justice Kagan's views on the law given that she lacked any judicial experience or record. Justice Kagan herself testified that Senators should look at her time as Solicitor General in order to evaluate her, but we didn't ask for those records. This precedent supports my decision not to ask for documents from Judge Kavanaugh's time as White House Staff Secretary. If internal Solicitor General documents were too sensitive to produce, then, of course, documents from Judge Kavanaugh's time as Staff Secretary at the White House are as sensitive as well. The Staff Secretary serves as the in-box and out-box for the President of the United States. These documents include some of the most sensitive documents in all of our government, implicating our national security and the President's other core duties. These documents are at the heart of what the Constitution recognizes as executive privilege. In addition to being the most sensitive documents, they are the least probative of Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking. The Staff Secretary's primary role is to make sure that the President sees advice from a range of policy advisers across the entire executive branch and that he not provide his own policy or legal advice as Staff Secretary. To recap, Judge Kavanaugh wrote more than 300 judicial opinions and joined in hundreds more in his 12 years on the bench. Justice Kagan, by contrast, had written or had joined zero judicial opinions before her nomination. Despite having less of a need for Judge Kavanaugh's executive branch records--in light of his substantial judicial record-- the Senate has already received more such documents than it had for Justice Kagan or for any other nominee, and we will still receive many more. In fact, for Judge Kavanaugh, we could receive up to 1 million pages, which is more than for the five prior Supreme Court nominees combined. Democratic leaders have also tried to argue that Judge Kavanaugh's White House records are being cherry-picked by a lawyer by the name of Bill Burck, whom they label as a partisan lawyer. I guess they have forgotten how the Senate received documents for the last three Supreme Court nominees. Otherwise, they wouldn't have made this silly argument. The Senate received documents for Justice Sotomayor's confirmation after they were reviewed by Leslie Kiernan. She represented Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and former Representative Charlie Rangel, and she eventually became Deputy White House Counsel in the Obama administration. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an editorial yesterday, the Senate received documents for Justice Kagan after they were reviewed by Bruce Lindsey. Mr. Lindsey overlapped with Justice Kagan in the White House, which was a Democratic White House. He also served as President Clinton's national campaign director in 1992, as President Clinton's hyperpartisan senior lawyer and a really big fixer in the White House, and as the CEO of the Clinton Foundation for 10 years, including when Justice Kagan was nominated. Now, I would think anybody who raises questions about a lawyer by the name of Burck ought to be really embarrassed by bringing up that issue when you look at how it was handled with previous nominees to the Supreme Court by people who were partisan. How much more partisan can you get than the people I just mentioned who handled issues of Presidential privilege for Democratic nominees Sotomayor and Kagan? It happens that Bill Burck is President Bush's Presidential Records Act representative, as Mr. Lindsey was for President Clinton. Mr. Burck has held this position not just recently because of this nomination-- no--but since the year 2009. He is a partner, it happens, at one of the most liberal law firms in America. Mr. Burck also served as President Bush's Presidential Records Act representative during the Gorsuch nomination, but I didn't hear any Democrat objecting to Mr. Burck's involvement in that nomination. They also didn't object to Ms. Kiernan's or Mr. Lindsey's involvement during the Sotomayor and Kagan nominations. Their objection to Mr. Burck's role now is another opportunistic attempt to discredit the process and to avoid talking about Judge Kavanaugh's qualifications. I would like to correct one additional misconception before I yield the floor. As has been claimed by some people, the National Archives is not being cut out of this process. Under the Presidential Records Act, President Bush has the right to request his own administration's documents. He can choose to make a document public or claim that it is protected under executive privilege. This is precisely what he is doing now. President Bush is providing a very valuable public service to the American people at what is a very considerable cost but happens to be a nonpublic expense. He is expediting the review process and making sure that the Senate has all of the documents it needs to conduct a timely and efficient confirmation process. President Bush and his legal team should be thanked, not scorned, for providing this tremendous service to the American people. I want to tell you how much on top of this former President Bush was. On the day after Kavanaugh's nomination, he called me and said: I want to do everything I can to cooperate so you get all of the records you need to make sure that you give a fair and thorough hearing to Kavanaugh. Thanks to these people, we have Judge Kavanaugh's papers in time to hold a confirmation hearing and to vote this very year just as the American people expect us to do. Democratic leaders have played up this phony document controversy to deflect attention from Judge Kavanaugh's extraordinary qualifications and sterling reputation as a judge of 12 years on the second most important court in this land. In his 12 years on the bench, the Supreme Court has on 13 occasions adopted legal opinions from Judge Kavanaugh's opinions. This is an exemplary track record in the Supreme Court--to have one's opinions backed up by the Supreme Court not once but 13 times. Judge Kavanaugh is dedicated to judicial independence. He is not afraid to tell another branch of government when that branch has exceeded its lawful authority. At the same time, he has great respect for the separation of powers, and he will interpret the law as it is written by the people's representatives in Congress, instead of trying to be a superlegislator. As I am, I hope all of my colleagues are looking forward to hearing from Judge Kavanaugh when he will appear before the Judiciary Committee on September 4. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, over the last several days, the minority leader has again continued his unprecedented partisan interference with the business of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In addition to these partisan interventions being unwelcomed, many of the minority leader's assertions are just plain false, and other assertions omit significant context. So, as I have done several times in recent days, I am here to correct the record. Let me start by reiterating that the confirmation process for Judge Kavanaugh will be the most transparent in history. That is from the availability of all the documents that are out there for our colleagues to study about this nominee. Senators already have access to the most important part of Judge Kavanaugh's record--his more than 300 opinions written during his 12 years on the DC Circuit, in addition to the hundreds more opinions he joined, and the more than 6,000 pages that were submitted in connection with his Senate Judiciary questionnaire. Moreover, the Senate will receive more pages of executive branch documents than the Senate will have received for any Supreme Court nominee ever--I anticipate up to 1 million pages of documents from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office and his service in the Office of the Independent Counsel, along with records related to his 2006 confirmation to be a judge on the DC Circuit. The production could be larger than those of the last five Supreme Court nominees combined. Hence, one understands why I am saying this will be the most transparent confirmation process of any Federal Supreme Court Justice. The other side is pretending like the most expansive and transparent confirmation process in history is not good enough. Despite this expansive and transparent confirmation process and that Senators already have Judge Kavanaugh's entire judicial record in front of them already, Democratic leaders continue to make unreasonable demands for more and more documents. In fact, they demand access to every email and every other document ever written or received by every staffer who ever worked in the Bush White House. They want these records in order to fish for documents that merely mention Brett Kavanaugh's name. In other words, they, essentially, want access to every document that ever went through the Bush White House. Now, this is really beyond unreasonable, and it is not a very serious proposal. During Judge Kagan's confirmation, then-Chairman Leahy was adamant that documents merely mentioning Justice Kagan's name shouldn't be produced. This is just one example of Democratic leaders' not following the Kagan standard. The motive behind the unreasonable demands for documents is obvious: Democratic leaders want to stall Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation in any way possible. They hope to bury the Senate in mountains of irrelevant documents to delay his confirmation hearing and to perhaps deny him a vote during this current Congress. The ranking member's hometown newspaper reported this scheme over the weekend. The headline used the word ``stall.'' The San Francisco Chronicle called it ``a tactic that could postpone a decision until after the midterm elections.'' The article explained: ``The Democrats' strategy . . . is to demand to see every document that crossed Kavanaugh's desk while he served as President George W. Bush's staff secretary from 2003 to 2006.'' In other words, the Democratic leaders are demanding these documents in order to needlessly delay the process rather than for legitimate purposes. Yet these tactics aren't going to work. Let me address some of the minority leader's specific points. He says, traditionally, the Senate Judiciary Committee sends a bipartisan letter that requests documents, and he said we should have sent out this letter 2 weeks ago. What the minority leader fails to point out is, my staff worked extensively with the ranking member's staff to attempt to identify specific Staff Secretary records that might be of some interest to the Democrats, but the Democratic staff was not interested in a reasonable compromise, including my attempts to get them even more documents than the up to 1 million pages of documents we were already in the process of receiving. After multiple rounds of negotiation, the ranking member's staff still had not budged from its position that it was entitled to access any of the millions and millions of pages of documents that ever went through the Bush White House. These demands were unprecedented, were unreasonable, and were obviously intended to delay the confirmation process. I couldn't allow this tactic to further delay this important business of the committee. So, as chairman, I sent a records request for the White House Counsel's documents because we needed to keep this process moving. We couldn't be stalling. It is unfortunate the ranking member didn't agree to sign it because the letter requested documents that both sides agreed we should have. Both sides agreed with the documents that were in my letter, but there was no signature from the minority. The minority leader, Senator Schumer, also says we should have followed the precedent established during Justice Kagan's nomination. In suggesting this point, he is rewriting history. He may not know that, but he is. He conveniently forgets that both Democrats and Republicans agreed we shouldn't have requested documents from Justice Kagan's time as Solicitor General. Everyone agreed that the Kagan Solicitor General documents were too sensitive for disclosure and, in fact, could chill the candidness of internal deliberations for future Presidents and their counsel--their Solicitor General. This same respect for confidentiality should apply with greater force, then, to Staff Secretary documents, which include some of the most sensitive policy advice going directly to a President. In this case, it was President George W. Bush. Indeed, the White House Staff Secretary is essentially the inbox and outbox for the President of the United States. Now, that is not to say that it is not a very important position, but it doesn't get involved in much policy. The Senate's current task is to evaluate the qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh, not to relitigate every political and policy disagreement from President George W. Bush's 8 years in the White House. As my Democratic colleagues keep pointing out, Judge Kavanaugh has described how his time as Staff Secretary was a formative experience for him. Well, Justice Kagan said the same thing about her time as Solicitor General, but in the case of Kagan, the Democrats refused to request her records. On top of the undisputed relevance of Solicitor General material, Judge Kagan, however, lacked a judicial record. In other words, unlike the more than 300 opinions that Judge Kavanaugh authored and the hundreds more opinions that he joined in during his 12 years of service on the DC Circuit, Justice Kagan had zero judicial opinions that she offered, zero judicial opinions that she joined, and zero years of judicial service. Her Solicitor General documents were, therefore, even more relevant. Democratic leaders, then, are rewriting the Kagan standard to further their stalling tactics. The minority leader also tried to draw a parallel--or parallels--with the request for documents from Justice Sotomayor's time as a board member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. This, however, was a narrow request, closely tailored to a specific need for information. It resulted in the production of approximately 100 documents, not millions of documents, as are involved with the White House Staff Secretary. In contrast, Democratic leaders demand access to every single one of the millions and millions of pages of emails and other records from every one of the 100 staffers who served in the White House with Judge Kavanaugh. As I have said repeatedly, I will not put the American taxpayers on the hook for the Senate Democrats' fishing expedition. Clearly, losing on the substantive arguments, the minority leader has even resorted to personally attacking Mr. Bill Burck, President George W. Bush's attorney. Mr. Burck has been one of President Bush's designated representatives for the Presidential Records Act, going way back to 2009. He is a leading partner in one of America's most respected and, I think, most liberal law firms. I am told that he has insisted that no lawyer be selected to participate in the review of President Bush's White House papers on the basis of his or her party affiliation or political ideology. Moreover, Mr. Burck has taken the time to personally meet with the ranking member's staff and answer all of their questions about the document review process that I am describing to you here. The minority leader said at a press conference today that the review by President Bush's lawyers ``wouldn't be so bad if he also got a full set of documents from the Archives.'' Well, that is exactly what I expect to happen--in other words, a full set of documents from the Archives. President Bush has offered to give us access to copies of documents that we requested from the Archives so that we on the committee can quickly begin our review of Judge Kavanaugh's record while the Archives works through our document request. The minority leader could have learned this by simply having a conversation with me instead of putting on a political show in front of TV cameras earlier today. I must also address the minority leader's unprecedented intervention into the business of the Judiciary Committee. The minority leader is not a member of that committee. We are not going to let him run the committee. I am the chairman of that committee. He has no business inserting himself into the committee's business, including the manner in which the committee will obtain the documents needed to review Judge Kavanaugh's record. But last week he sent a letter to President George W. Bush, asking him to release all records from Judge Kavanaugh's service in the White House, while at the same time criticizing the way that President Bush has chosen to review those records. This letter was an inappropriate attempt to meddle in the committee's business, and I am disappointed that my Democratic colleagues on the committee are tolerating that sort of intervention. I have also learned that the minority leader called the Archivist on Monday and asked him to ``do the right thing'' with regard to the documents. I was disappointed to hear that the minority leader was attempting to pressure a government official--one appointed by President Obama, can you believe--with regard to the committee's business. I also want to address one argument that my colleague on the Judiciary Committee, the senior Senator from Illinois, has made. My colleague believes Judge Kavanaugh misled the committee during his 2006 confirmation hearing when he said he was not involved in developing the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. The senior Senator pointed to a media report that described a 2002 meeting in the White House in which Judge Kavanaugh advised whether his former boss, Justice Kennedy, would accept a legal argument about American citizens' access to counsel. These allegations have no merit, and here is why. Offering advice on the potential success of a legal position suggested by others--meaning others in the White House Staff Secretary's Office--does not show involvement in developing detention and interrogation policies. Multiple sources have confirmed that Judge Kavanaugh wasn't involved in developing detention and interrogation policies. Moreover, these allegations were already referred to the Department of Justice, which concluded that they didn't even warrant opening an investigation. I will further point out that this 2002 meeting occurred while Judge Kavanaugh was in the White House Counsel's Office and, as I have explained, the entire Senate--or at least the entire Judiciary Committee--is going to have access to Judge Kavanaugh's White House Counsel records. In short, I am proud to preside over what will be the most transparent confirmation process in history. As they have said publicly, Democratic leaders are firmly opposed to Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation, and they have also said that they will do whatever it takes to defeat Judge Kavanaugh. They would like to bury the Senate in a mountain of irrelevant documents to delay the confirmation process as long as possible. As you can tell from my remarks today--and my remarks three or four times since Judge Kavanaugh was appointed--I am not going to allow the minority to abuse the process. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I want to visit with my colleagues for the same reason Senator Durbin, about 15 minutes ago, spoke to my colleagues about the high price of pharmaceutical drugs and maybe at least one little thing we can do to help moderate that price or at least inform the public, accordingly, in a better way than we have so far. Every American within earshot of a television has heard ads for prescription drugs. Almost every night, as I watch television, I see something along that line. These ads promise patient relief from nearly every medical problem, and informing the public is important for us to do in many areas. The pharmaceutical companies want you to know that their drug is on the market to help you. They want you to talk to your doctor about the newest drugs. As many of my colleagues know, I am an outspoken supporter for transparency. I hope it is one of my attributes I bring to the U.S. Senate. From the Physician Payments Sunshine Act to whistleblower protections, I am a strong believer that transparency keeps citizens informed, and, for sure, transparency in government brings accountability from those of us in government. Senator Durbin and I have amendments to the current funding bill which would shine transparency light on prescription drug prices. These amendments would allow patients and their doctors to make informed decisions. Drug advertisers want to tell consumers all the benefits of the drugs. At the same time, drug advertisers are required to tell you about the side effects. In fact, half of an ad has something about side effects. That is usually in the small print and when somebody is babbling something very rapidly about the side effects, but they aren't as gung-ho to show how much that particular drug would cost. I believe it is something the public would like to be well-informed on when they are considering the advertisement and the purposes of the drug. Six billion dollars is what pharmaceutical companies spent on direct- to-consumer advertising last year. Why would they spend that amount of money on TV commercials? Because it works. By bypassing the trusted physician and the ability of patients to decide for themselves, TV ads increase prescription drug utilization and, with it, drug spending. This increases drug costs to patients and taxpayers. In one case, a single drug in Medicaid costs the taxpayers an additional $207 million just because of ads. The President's blueprint to lower drug costs includes a provision for FDA to require the inclusion of the list price in these drugs. Senator Durbin and I agree on that. I hope, since it is in the President's blueprint as one step to bring the high cost of drugs, it would be easy to get bipartisan support for the Grassley-Durbin amendment. This is a very simple, commonsense step to get drug prices down for consumers. I have to confess to you, it is not the only answer, but it is a concrete first step. If you want to know other steps to get drug prices down, I would point out enacting the CREATES legislation, introduced by Senators Leahy, Lee, Klobuchar, and this Senator; or we could enact Pay for Delay, introduced by Senator Klobuchar and this Senator; or Commissioner Gottlieb of FDA could come up with a plan for the importation of safe prescription drugs from Canada and other trusted countries. Consumers today are promised the Sun, the Moon, and the stars if they will simply get a prescription filled. Senator Durbin and I want to improve transparency and prescription drug advertising so consumers can decide for themselves. Our amendments would simply clarify that the Secretary of HHS has the authority to require drug companies to report the list price on advertisements. I had a telephone conversation this morning with that Secretary of HHS, at his instigation, and he suggested that this would be very helpful, not only for him to accomplish the goals he wants to but to carry out the President's blueprint. One of several steps in that blueprint is to get the price of pharmaceuticals down for the consumer. Consumers know the price of every other item they purchase before they make their decision. Just think what a benefit it was to the consumers of this country when, maybe four decades ago, the Congress decided that we ought to have on the windows of a car what the cost of that car was so everybody had to play by the same rules of the game. This is a very simple free-market principle. I urge all of my colleagues to support this effort that will lower drug prices for all Americans. Thank you.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, this morning I listened to the remarks by Senator Schumer, the minority leader, and for a minute, while listening to him, I was worried that Senator Harry Reid was back disguised as Senator Schumer. After all, I used to hear a lot of false comments about the Judiciary Committee's work from the misinformed former minority leader. This year, the minority leader first fretted that this Senator, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, would be ``twisted by leadership'' in the course of reviewing Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. Of course, that is false, but it was strange to hear a complaint about leadership intervening in committee business from a Democratic leader who appears to be doing just that. As far as his other comments on the Supreme Court confirmation process, I would like to reiterate a few points I made over the last couple of weeks. The Senate Judiciary Committee will have a thorough, modern, and efficient process for reviewing Judge Kavanaugh's qualifications. As I explained yesterday, Senators already have access to Judge Kavanaugh's 307 opinions that he offered over a 12-year period of time when he was a DC Circuit Court judge, the hundreds more opinions he joined, and of course the 6,168 pages of materials he submitted as part of his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire. For the benefit of the public, if you want to get into the weeds on this stuff, you can go to the Judiciary Committee's website and get all of this information that I just mentioned. These materials are the most relevant to assessing Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking. We expect to receive more than 1 million pages of documents from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office and the Office of Independent Counsel. This will be the largest document production in connection with a Supreme Court nominee ever. By comparison, we received only about 170,000 pages of White House records for Justice Kagan. Democratic leaders want gratuitous and unnecessary paper from Judge Kavanaugh's time as White House Staff Secretary. This is an unreasonable request, and I think they know it. Democratic leaders are already committed to opposing Judge Kavanaugh. We have minority Leader Schumer himself saying he would fight Judge Kavanaugh ``with everything he's got.'' Yesterday one colleague said that supporting Judge Kavanaugh is ``complicit'' and ``evil.'' That is quite an offensive statement. It doesn't sound like they are interested in assessing Judge Kavanaugh's qualifications in the way everybody ought to approach this--with an open mind. Their bloated demands are an obvious attempt to obstruct this confirmation process. It gets worse. The Democratic leaders are even demanding to search each and every email from other White House staffers that even mentions Judge Kavanaugh while he served in the White House. That is beyond unreasonable. Such a request would not help us understand this nominee's legal thinking. And shouldn't that be what we are concentrating on? If you want to know what kind of a Justice a person is going to be on the Supreme Court, that involves his approach to all of the legal matters that he has to confront now and if he gets on the Supreme Court. The Obama administration, with Senate Democrats' strong backing, refused to approve such records for Justice Kagan's confirmation. And this stunning demand is clear evidence that the Democratic leaders aren't interested in anything but obstruction. Democratic leaders insist on all of these extra documents because the Senate received Justice Kagan's relevant White House records in 2010. But let me point out to my colleagues that there is a significant difference between this nominee, who has served 12 years already on the court and Justice Kagan, who was not a judge. Of course, with Justice Kagan not being a judge, there was no judicial track record for us to follow. She was an esteemed dean of the law school at Harvard University. That is very prestigious and shows a lot of high qualifications, but it is not the record of a judge for us to look to. There was a higher need for additional information that might shed light on her legal thinking then. Judge Kavanaugh, by contrast, has offered more than 300 opinions and joined in hundreds more. The Staff Secretary is undoubtedly an important and demanding position, as Judge Kavanaugh himself and many others have said. But Staff Secretary documents are not very useful in showing Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking. His primary job as Staff Secretary at the White House was not to provide his own advice. Instead, he was primarily responsible for making sure that documents prepared by other executive branch offices were presented to the President. In addition to being the least relevant to assessing Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking, the Staff Secretary documents contain among the most sensitive White House documents. They contain information and advice sent directly to the President from a wide range of policy advisers. Democratic leaders now say they want to follow the so-called ``Kagan standard,'' but they seem to forget how we approached that nomination. Republicans and Democrats alike agreed to forgo a request for her Solicitor General documents because of their sensitivity. Senators Leahy and Sessions, because they were the ranking Republican and chairman at the time, came to that agreement, even though Justice Kagan had no judicial record to review. And they agreed to these terms despite Justice Kagan's own statement that her tenure in the Solicitor General's office would provide insight into the kind of Justice she would be. Obviously, with his long record on the DC Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh doesn't have this problem. There is plenty of paper for people to observe the kind of person we could expect him to be on the Supreme Court. The need for confidentiality is substantially higher for documents passing through the Staff Secretary's office than the Solicitor General's office. Under the precedent set by Justice Kagan, we shouldn't expect access to Staff Secretary records. We already have access to a voluminous judicial record, and we will have access to the largest document production for a Supreme Court nominee ever. The Democrats' demands for even more documents are unreasonable and clearly intended to obstruct this confirmation process. I yield the floor I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I want to bring my fellow Senators up to date on a subject that was sparked by the remarks made this morning by the minority leader. I also want to add some additional context that the minority leader left out. He spoke on the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, he didn't come to the floor to talk about the judge's excellent qualifications, the judge's well-regarded temperament, or the judge's judicial philosophy. He didn't come to the floor to announce that he would finally extend to the judge the courtesy of a meeting, which is customary in this body. He came to speak about what he thinks will satisfy leftwing outside groups. He demanded that I sign a letter that will put the American taxpayers on the hook for a Democratic fishing expedition, and I am not going to do that. I agree that we should have a thorough vetting process for the nominee--and we will--and that we should review materials that will reveal Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking. That is our job. We are not going to be a rubberstamp. Fortunately for us, we have immediate access to the most valuable documents that are out there that will reveal Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking. We have access to the more than 300 opinions Judge Kavanaugh authored in his 12 years on the DC Circuit, as well as to the hundreds more opinions he joined. In these opinions, he addressed some of the most significant legal issues of the past decade from the second most powerful court in the land. This morning, the minority leader brought up a statement that I had made in 2010 in connection with Justice Kagan's Supreme Court nomination. At that time, this Senator was interested in reviewing documents from her time in the Clinton administration. What the minority leader neglected to mention was that, unlike Judge Kavanaugh, Justice Kagan had not served as a judge before being nominated to the Supreme Court. Besides the Federal Government service she had had at the time she was nominated, she had been the dean of a law school. Other than Kagan's materials that she had submitted as part of the Senate Judiciary questionnaire for her nomination, her White House Counsel's Office and Domestic Policy Council documents had been some of the few categories of documents that could have shed light on her legal thinking since she hadn't had any judicial writings, meaning as a judge. Justice Kagan had written or joined a grand total of zero judicial opinions before her nomination. For those of us on the Senate Judiciary Committee to have carried out our constitutional advice and consent responsibilities as Senators, we had needed to better understand her legal thinking and potential jurisprudence. Judge Kavanaugh, by contrast, has authored over 300 judicial opinions in his 12 years on the bench. That is over 300. That doesn't include the hundreds of other decisions in which he has joined an opinion or some sort of order. When you add those to the mix, those are thousands of pages of judicial writings that the American people have access to at this exact moment. You don't have to wait to get this information about Judge Kavanaugh. To the contrary, Justice Kagan, of course, had zero pages of judicial opinions. This is in addition to the 6,168 pages of records Judge Kavanaugh just included in his response to the Senate Judiciary questionnaire, which we put on the website last weekend for the whole public to view if it wants to know everything about Judge Kavanaugh as a judge and about the things of which he spoke and wrote documents about other than just his judicial opinions. Despite the fact that Judge Kavanaugh's judicial record is much more substantial than Justice Kagan's was, I agree that we should still ask the White House for documents pertaining to Judge Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office. My Democratic colleagues say they want the White House's records. I am pleased to let them know that in the coming weeks, the Senate will receive what will likely be the largest document production in history for a Supreme Court nomination. I expect that the Senate could receive up to a million pages of documents that will be related to Judge Kavanaugh's time in the White House Counsel's Office. We will also see the White House's nomination file for Judge Kavanaugh's 2006 nomination to the DC Circuit--where, as I have told you, he now sits--along with records from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the U.S. Office of the Independent Counsel. By comparison, we received fewer than 180,000 pages for Justice Kagan's time in two White House offices. Let's recap. We have more than 300 of Judge Kavanaugh's actual judicial opinions to Justice Kagan's zero. We could have up to five times as many pages from his time in the White House as we received from Justice Kagan's time, and we will have those documents despite the fact that they are less necessary now than they were for Justice Kagan. In short, there will be much more transparency in this Supreme Court confirmation process than ever before. I am ready now to send a letter to the National Archives to request relevant White House Counsel documents. I would like to do this with the ranking member, but unfortunately she has declined this request. This is unfortunate. Both sides agree that the White House Counsel documents are relevant. I would like to get them over here as quickly as possible so we can begin reviewing them. Yet, as I noted, the Democratic leadership has already decided to oppose Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation. They would like to slow down the process as much as possible. I think that explains why the ranking member will not sign a letter that requests documents both sides want. I have heard that some of my Democratic colleagues would like to request all of Judge Kavanaugh's records from his time as White House Staff Secretary, but these documents are both the least relevant to Judge Kavanaugh's legal thinking and the most sensitive to the executive branch. The Staff Secretary is the in-box and out-box of the Oval Office. Passing through the Staff Secretary's office is a wide range of communications that request things like flying the flag at half-mast to somehow including daily lunch menus, to draft speeches, to sensitive national security papers. The Staff Secretary's primary charge is not to provide his own substantive work product; the Staff Secretary makes sure that the President sees memos and policy papers that have been produced by other offices in the White House. It is a very important job. It requires someone who is smart, someone who is hard-working, and someone who is talented. The documents that passed through Judge Kavanaugh's office while he was Staff Secretary are not particularly relevant to his legal thinking or for the consideration of whether he should be on the Supreme Court. It is like saying, in a sense, that the Senate Secretary--someone who has a very difficult and demanding job--is responsible for all of the positions taken by each of the Senate offices. It is absurd. The Senate should focus its efforts on reviewing his tens of thousands of pages of judicial opinions and other legal writings. Not only would a broad review of Staff Secretary documents be a waste of time, but it would also be a waste of taxpayers' money. Moreover, Staff Secretary documents contain some of the most sensitive information and advice that went directly to President Bush from a range of policy advisers. Back in 2010, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Justice Kagan, because of the sensitivity of the documents, shouldn't produce internal communications while she was Solicitor General. If we are going to talk about a Kagan standard, then we need to talk about taking sensitive communications off the table. That is what all sides had agreed to in 2010 and what I will insist on now. I appreciate the minority leader's efforts to ensure some transparency and thoroughness, but let's get right down to brass tacks: I don't think the minority leader actually wants to read the millions of pages that crossed Judge Kavanaugh's desk way back in 2004 and for probably the 3 years he held the position of Staff Secretary. The minority leader said he will fight this nomination with everything he has, which proves what I have been talking about, and his request proves that he is willing to do that because this bloated document request is part of that fight. This is not about anything other than obstruction--to bury us under millions and millions of pages of paper so we cannot have a confirmation vote on Judge Kavanaugh this year. Liberal, dark money outside groups want to drag this confirmation out just as far as they can--till the end of time. I will not let them. This confirmation process should focus on Judge Kavanaugh's qualifications, not become a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to pay tribute to an outstanding businessman and citizen John G. Deery, Sr., of Cedar Falls, IA. Mr. Deery passed away recently at the age of 88. He leaves behind a close-knit and loving family--his beloved wife, Marlene; his two sons, John and Dan, both of Cedar Falls, IA; and a host of children and great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, John was an active parishioner of St. Patrick Catholic Church and a respected civic and business leader who left his mark throughout Cedar Valley. Following his military service--1948/ 1951--and startup ventures in the Quad Cities and Wisconsin, John purchased a Buick dealership in the late 1960s in Cedar Falls. This Wisconsin native became an Iowa transplant and never looked back. From then on, he and his family business paved a road to prosperity by winning the business of generations of satisfied customers. A look back through the rearview mirror shows a life well lived. He was a member of the Cedar Falls AMVETS Post 49, Iowa Auto Dealers Association, Knights of Columbus, and a founding father of Community National Bank. The patriarch of the family, John carved out his slice of the American dream. After opening the Buick dealership, the business eventually grew into a series of enterprises, eventually employing a workforce of more than 200 people. For six decades, he owned the Deery Automotive Group, encompassing John Deery Motors, Dan Deery Motors, and Deery Brothers Collision Center that provided livelihoods for generations of local families and a trusted place to buy and repair the family car. After turning the reins of the automobile business over to the next generation, John launched yet another successful enterprise in real estate development. An active octogenarian, John didn't let any grass grow underneath his feet and continued looking for ways to make his community a better place to live. A decade ago, he was nominated for the Waterloo Courier's inaugural Eight Over Eighty Award. The residents of Cedar Valley have benefited from John and Marlene's generous commitment to giving back their time, talent, and treasure. A number of nonprofit agencies and community organizations have benefited from their philanthropic pursuits, including my alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa, the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office, the Cedar Falls and Waterloo police departments, St. Patrick Catholic Church and School, and El Kahir Shrine. Today I pay my respects to this American veteran, successful Iowan, and civic leader. John Deery, Sr., steered a steady and honorable journey on the road of life and he will be greatly missed by those who loved him the most.

Mr. GRASSLEY

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

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, we will vote today on the confirmation of Ryan Bounds to the Ninth Circuit. He has been nominated to fill the vacancy left by Judge O'Scannlain. Mr. Bounds once served as a law clerk to Ninth Circuit Judge O'Scannlain. Mr. Bounds is highly qualified to serve on the Ninth Circuit. A native of Oregon, he attended Stanford University and Yale Law School. He has dedicated his career to public service and has served in government for the past 14 years. The last 8 years were as an assistant U.S. attorney in Oregon. I have listened to my colleagues on the other side voice their opposition to Mr. Bounds. Interestingly, none of them cite anything Mr. Bounds has done in his legal career as a reason for opposing his nomination. Instead, they focus on two things. First, they say we shouldn't confirm Mr. Bounds because his home State Senators didn't return their blue slips. Second, they say some of Mr. Bounds' college writings were insensitive. So I am going to start with point No. 1 on which they base their opposition to him. As I have explained so many times on the floor of the U.S. Senate and in the Senate Judiciary Committee--and I don't know how many times to the multitudes of journalists who are on the Hill--my blue-slip policy is the same as all but 2 of my 18 predecessors who were chairmen of the Judiciary Committee over the 100-year history of blue slips. Like Chairmen Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and Orrin Hatch, I will hold hearings for circuit court nominees who have negative or unreported blue slips if the White House has consulted with the home State Senators, and I will not allow Senators to abuse the blue-slip courtesy for political or ideological reasons. In the case of Mr. Bounds, the White House sought the Oregon Senators' input, seriously considered the one candidate suggested by the Oregon Senators, and waited several months for the Senators from Oregon to establish their judicial selection committee, which is quite a tradition in that State. The selection committee itself even recommended Mr. Bounds. Yet the Oregon Senators still didn't return their blue slips. They say it was because Mr. Bounds didn't disclose some of his college writings to the selection committee. There is a very good reason he didn't--the selection committee never asked for his college writings. In fact, Senator Wyden's staff instructed Mr. Bounds not to disclose them. Moreover, the Oregon Senators refused to ever meet with Mr. Bounds during this whole process. It has been misleadingly said this will be the first time in modern history we will have confirmed a judge without there having been at least one positive blue slip from the two State Senators. My Democratic colleagues have only themselves to blame. The way the blue slip used to be enforced was through the 60-vote filibuster, and that was done away with in November 2013, led by the then-Democratic majority and Senator Reid. For example, Chairman Hatch held hearings for five nominees in 2003 and 2004, despite there being the lack of a positive blue slip from either home State Senator. These nominees were voted out of committee. Then Senate Democrats blocked these nominees on the floor by using the 60-vote filibuster. But my Democratic colleagues abolished that filibuster, as I said, in 2013 for the reason that they needed the votes and the freedom to pack the DC Circuit with liberal judges who would uphold Obama's regulatory schemes. Leading this effort was none other than Senator Merkley of Oregon, who argued that 41 Senators shouldn't be able to block a Senate majority from confirming judges. Now they have a different point of view. Now he argues that he alone should have the right to block Mr. Bounds from even getting a hearing in the Judiciary Committee. In November of 2013, I told my Democratic colleagues that they would regret abolishing the filibuster just to stack the DC Circuit Court of Appeals with their friends. Now, obviously, today, as they consider the Bounds nomination, they know they made a mistake. Turning to the only other criticism my colleagues have made about Mr. Bounds, which is in regard to his college writings, I don't believe that misguided statements made in a college newspaper 25 years ago should disqualify Mr. Bounds. I hope we don't live in a world where controversial things that we write in college end our careers forever. This is especially true with our kids and grandkids now in the era of social media. For example, a few years ago, just when the same thing came up on Justice Wright going to the Minnesota District Court, I voted and supported her despite very controversial writings she had in law school. We shouldn't assume that views expressed years ago during college and law school represent the nominee today. Mr. Bounds testified that he regretted much of what he wrote in those op-eds. We received numerous letters in support of Mr. Bounds' nomination from people who have known him personally throughout his life. We received a letter from some of his classmates at Stanford. And before I quote, it is kind of like--these sound like they were his friends in the dormitories. I never was a dormitory student, but I imagine you really get acquainted with people there. This is what they had to say about Mr. Bounds: We have become aware of a handful of controversial op-eds and articles Ryan wrote for The Stanford Review during that time. None of us believes that these writings reflect Ryan's character, either then or now. All of us remember our dorm- mate fondly. We are a diverse bunch. Yet Ryan never failed to treat all of us with courtesy, respect, and civility, regardless of our respective genders, sexual orientations, skin colors, religions, ethnicity, or any other characteristics. There is not, and never has been, a racist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted bone in Ryan Bounds's body. Mr. Bounds has also been a community leader, promoting diversity and equality. As a member of the Multnomah Bar Association's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, Mr. Bounds spearheaded programs to expose underprivileged young people to the legal profession. He mentored young scholarship recipients and helped those same people navigate law school admissions and law school. He expanded low-cost CLE offerings and organized anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training. Mr. Bounds is imminently qualified to serve on the Ninth Circuit. His college writings do not represent who he is today. His professional accomplishments and exemplary public service speak much more loudly to his character and integrity. I strongly urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support Mr. Bounds' confirmation today.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I wish to recognize a friend, an agricultural innovator, an inventor with I think about 80 patents. His name is Eugene Sukup. If you travel around the Midwest, you will see there are grain operations on a lot of family farms. If you go to Haiti, as a result of the catastrophe down there a few years ago, you will see how smaller buildings that we would call grain storage facilities in Iowa serve as homes for homeless people. That resulted from that catastrophe. Eugene Sukup is a quintessential bootstrap American success story. After settling in Iowa during the Dust Bowl and serving his Nation as a sergeant in the National Guard, Eugene made his living as a farmer, earning the title of ``Franklin County Outstanding Farmer'' in his younger years, in 1962. While working on his farm, like a lot of farmers, he tried to think of easier ways to do things. He observed that pockets of grain-- particularly corn--housed in storage bins could overheat and, as a result, spoil. Understanding the depth and breadth of the problem for farmers across the country, he was determined to find a solution, and he did. Through trial and error, along with gritty determination and ingenuity, Eugene came up with something he entitled the ``Stirway Stirring Machine.'' The innovative technology automated the process of stirring stored grain and corn and became an instant success among his fellow farmers. Eugene patented his invention and founded the Sukup Manufacturing Company in 1963. Through my years holding annual meetings in each of Iowa's 99 counties, Sukup Manufacturing from time to time has hosted the meetings I have in Franklin County. After a tour of the factory, I always enjoyed Eugene's allowing his employees to have an open Q&A session with me so that I could hear what is on the minds of my constituents, because these constituents can't afford to leave their jobs and come to the courthouse to ask me questions. I try to go to people like them to make the process of a representative government work, and the best way to do that is face-to-face with your constituents. Getting back to Sukup Manufacturing, by words and deeds, it is very clear that Sukup Manufacturing is a great place to work and a devoted contributor to the local community and global philanthropy. Fifty-five years later, the Sukup Manufacturing Company--which was the idea of a small family farmer--holds over 80 patents and sells its products in more than 85 countries. It remains the largest family-owned, full-line grain system manufacturer, employing more than 700 employees in the community of Sheffield, IA, and if I had to guess its population, I would say it is around 1,500. Eugene's pioneering invention contributed to the success of tens of thousands of farming operations, allowing farmers to safely store their grain on their farms to capture the best market price. We have Sukup grain bins on my own family farm near Waterloo, IA; more specifically, the little village in New Hartford, IA. His ingenuity is a perfect example of the opportunity America's economic system gives people with ideas and drive. Eugene's legacy spans Iowa's landscape from the Mississippi River to the Missouri River and reaches beyond the borders of our State and the borders of the United States. Sukup Manufacturing stepped up to reconfigure grain bins into housing units, as I previously said, for hurricane-ravaged Haiti. The units withstand 140-mile-per-hour winds, providing a safe habitat for residents. In 2006, Eugene was inducted into Iowa's Inventors Hall of Fame and received the Outstanding Innovation Award by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. He was inducted into Iowa's Business Hall of Fame in 2011 and was named a Legend in Manufacturing by Elevate Advanced Manufacturing in 2015. Through Eugene and its leaders, the Sukup family business has been a constant voice for job creation and opportunity. His contribution to manufacturing, agriculture, and the entire rural community and our economy will be an asset to farmers and the agriculture community for generations to come. It is amazing to think of what can happen in rural and small towns throughout our country thanks to the successful enterprise that Eugene Sukup represents. Throughout our decades-long friendship, I have admired his relentless work ethic and unwavering commitment to community and family. His civil, political, and community leadership sets a very high bar for the rest of us in America. Eugene was an American inventor, innovator, and a great friend. He will be greatly missed. May God bless him and his beloved family. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee marked up and passed by voice vote S. 2946, the Anti- Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018. I was proud to introduce this bipartisan bill and to lead it through the Judiciary Committee. I am proud to have Senators Nelson, Rubio, Whitehouse, Cruz, Blumenthal, Tillis, Coons, Cornyn, Hatch, and Kennedy as cosponsors. It is not always easy to find common ground here in the Senate, but there is one issue where there is no doubt we can all agree: Those who aid or carry out terrorist attacks that kill or injure Americans should be held fully accountable. Those who have been impacted should have a meaningful avenue to seek justice. For over 25 years, the Anti-Terrorism Act has empowered American victims of international terrorism to bring civil lawsuits in Federal courts to vindicate their rights and obtain compensation for their injuries. Just as important, these lawsuits disrupt and discourage the financing and material support of terrorist organizations. By cutting terrorists' financial lifelines, the ATA helps to reduce global terrorism, protecting Americans both here and abroad. In short, the ATA puts terrorists on notice to keep their hands off Americans. I was proud to be the lead sponsor of the ATA back in 1992, which removed the jurisdictional hurdles that, for too long, had frustrated or outright prevented American victims' ability to seek redress. Since then, terrorists and those who financially support them have tried to blow holes in the law and stretch its exceptions beyond what Congress ever intended. The Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018--and its additional improvements adopted in the Judiciary Committee last week--strengthens the ATA and reiterates Congress's original intent that terrorist groups and their supporters be brought to justice in U.S. Courts, regardless of where the attacks occurred. It is a carefully considered and deliberately crafted response to efforts to undermine the ATA. It represents Congress's considered judgment in responding to acts of international terrorism that kill or injure Americans overseas. The bill clarifies the ATA's so-called ``act of war'' exception. Congress never intended that designated terrorist organizations could dodge liability for attacks that kill or injure Americans by simply claiming this exception. Some, however, have twisted the exception to get away scot-free. The ``act of war'' exception should not be a liability shield for designated terrorist organizations or their supporters. This bill makes clear that the exception doesn't apply to those designated by the U.S. Government as foreign terrorist organizations or specially designated global terrorists. This is common sense. As one Federal judge put it, ``To find that a terrorist organization can be a military force under the ATA would defeat the purpose of the Act, 'which was enacted to deter terrorist activity and hold liable those who engage in it.' '' Outside of that, the bill keeps in place the current analysis that courts conduct when determining who is and is not a military force. Second, the bill permits victims of narco-terrorism to satisfy court- awarded ATA judgments with the assets of foreign drug kingpins. Assets blocked by the Federal Government under the Kingpin Designation Act are not currently available to victims to satisfy their judgments. This bill fixes that. Finally, the bill responds to recent Federal court decisions that severely undermined the ability of American victims to bring terrorists to justice. The ATA was specifically designed to provide extraterritorial jurisdiction over terrorists who attack Americans overseas. Last year, I led an amicus brief, with 22 bipartisan Senators, to the Supreme Court in Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization, reiterating the purpose and scope of the 1992 law. I was stunned when the Justice Department failed to stand up in that case for American victims of terrorism. Despite broad bipartisan support in Congress for the ATA and the victims it protects, the Justice Department, in fact, actively opposed those victims and their right to seek redress against terrorists. Inconceivably, instead of standing up for American victims of terrorism, the administration urged the Court to not even consider the Sokolow decision. Congress can act where the administration chose not to. Accordingly, this bill makes crystal clear that defendants who take advantage of certain benefits from the U.S. Government following 120 days after the bill's enactment--such as foreign assistance--will be deemed to have consented to personal jurisdiction in ATA cases. Based on further improvements in a substitute amendment adopted by unanimous consent in the Judiciary Committee, the bill also restores jurisdiction in cases pending at the time of the bill's enactment. No defendant, after all, should be able to enjoy privileges under U.S. law, while simultaneously dodging responsibility for supporting terrorists that injure or kill Americans. The Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act is supported by thousands of veterans and Gold Star families It is supported by groups like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Christians United for Israel, the Endowment for Middle East Truth, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, the National Council of Young Israel, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the Rabbinical Council of America, and the Zionist Organization of America. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have joined me on this bill and whose staffs are working tirelessly to help us move it forward. I also want to thank Senators Nelson and Blumenthal for their support. Finally, I want to thank House Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte and Ranking Member Nadler for introducing and moving the companion bill in the House of Representatives. Now that the bill has been reported to the floor, I ask for all of my Senate colleagues' support and look forward to Congress sending this bill to the President's desk very soon.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, as I have done two or three times before in the last week, I would take some of my colleagues' time to discuss the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. I think the debate surrounding his confirmation has highlighted the deep divide between how conservatives view the role of the judiciary versus how liberals view it. The reason liberal outside groups oppose Judge Kavanaugh's nomination is quite simple: They don't think he will promote their preferred policies and the outcomes of those policies while on the Bench. I can't think of a better example that demonstrates how differently liberals and conservatives view the role of the judiciary, so let me tell you how I and most Americans view the role of the judiciary. There are pretty simple things we learned from high school government courses about the checks and balances of government--pretty simple, pretty common sense, because it is all about the purpose of the Constitution of the United States. Under the Constitution, we have three branches of government. Congress makes the law, the President enforces the law, and the judiciary interprets and applies the law and the Constitution. The judiciary's role as a coequal and independent branch of government is significant. It is confined. In the words from the Constitution, they can only deal with cases and controversies. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist Paper No. 78, the judiciary ``may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.'' In other words, the judiciary must stay in its lane--a very slow lane--calling balls and strikes as the courts see them, without trying to encroach on Congress's authority to make policy through the legislative process. When the Supreme Court goes beyond its mandate and enters the policymaking arena, it threatens the structure of our Constitution. To preserve the judiciary's independence, Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed for life. They are not directly accountable to the voters for their decisions. The American people can toss out those of us in Congress if we make bad policy decisions, but if a judge ends up legislating, we are stuck with a judge who made those bad decisions for life. The benefit of this arrangement is that judges can make decisions according to the laws, not based on the whims of political opinion because they are immune from that political opinion. But the downside is that some judges can see their independence as a green light to override the policy choices of Congress or the States and substitute their own policy preferences. The threat this poses to self-government should be very self-evident: Instead of the people's representatives making policy choices, unelected judges who aren't answerable to the American people make them. Conservatives believe that judges must rule according to the law as written. In any case, the law might lead to a liberal political result or, it might require a conservative political result, but the judge can't take that into consideration. The law must be interpreted regardless of whether the judge agrees with the political results of the decision. A good judge will oftentimes personally disagree with the result he or she reaches. Many liberals view the role of the judiciary very differently. Liberals believe that an independent judiciary, unaccountable to the American people, is a very convenient way to achieve policy outcomes that can't be achieved through the democratic and representative process. That is why, in nearly every case before the Supreme Court, it is very predictable how the four Democrat-appointed Justices will rule. In most cases, they will reach the result that achieves liberal political goals. How else can you explain the fact that the Democrat- appointed Justices have voted to strike down every restriction on abortion--a right that appears nowhere in the Constitution--but would uphold restrictions on political speech or gun rights? After all, these rights are expressly covered by the First and Second Amendments. The unfortunate reality is that liberal jurisprudence is thinly veiled liberal policymaking, and I am very generous when I say ``thinly veiled.'' This explains many of the leftwing attacks on Judge Kavanaugh that are now going on. Judge Kavanaugh has a track record of putting aside any policy preferences that he has and ruling according to the law as it is written. I think this is a virtue. Indeed, it is necessary for judges to do that--to show their impartiality, to show their judicial temperaments. But liberal outside groups and their Senate allies see this as a threat. They want judges who will impose their policy preferences--only have those policy preferences disguised as law, of course. They want politicians hiding under their judicial robes. That is why many of the attacks on Judge Kavanaugh are based on policy outcomes. Leftwing groups are spending millions of dollars to convince the American people that Judge Kavanaugh is hostile to their preferred policies. I believe this effort will be unsuccessful. What the American people see in Judge Kavanaugh is a judge who will rule according to the law, not for or against various policies. Nine Ivy League Justices and their cadre of mostly Ivy League law clerks aren't equipped to replace Congress's exclusive lawmaking function. One attack I have seen on Judge Kavanaugh is that he represents a threat to the Affordable Care Act's protection of people with preexisting conditions. I want to tell you why numerically that just doesn't work out--because the same five Justices who twice upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act are still on the Court. Justice Kennedy, whom Judge Kavanaugh would replace, voted to strike down the Affordable Care Act. In other words, even assuming you could predict Judge Kavanaugh's vote 1 year or 10 years from now on the Affordable Care Act, his vote would not change the outcome. Moreover, Judge Kavanaugh had two opportunities to strike down the Affordable Care Act on the DC Circuit, where he now serves. He did not do it. So where do they get the idea that he is a predictable vote to undo the ACA? For those of us for repeal, maybe we ought to vote against him because he hasn't voted that way on the DC Circuit--those of us who thought the Affordable Care Act should be repealed--and because he may not be a sure vote to do that. And even if he were, there are still five votes to preserve it. The leftwing groups might want to put away their crystal ball. Even the New York Times fact checker threw cold water on the argument that Kavanaugh was a sure vote against the Affordable Care Act. The New York Times labeled the leftwing attacks ``exaggerated.'' Another attack on Judge Kavanaugh is that he is hostile to abortion rights. This attack misrepresents his record on the DC Circuit. There, Judge Kavanaugh acknowledged that the court must decide the case based on Roe v. Wade and subsequent abortion decisions. He applied the precedent, as precedent requires judges to so do. We hear the same fearmongering over abortion every time there is a Supreme Court vacancy. I remember that 38 years ago when Sandra Day O'Connor was going to be the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, there was real worry then that Roe v. Wade was in jeopardy. She is one of those who preserved it in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood case 12 years later, as she got on the Court. Yet Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land. Justices have a way of surprising us. I think Justice Kennedy, now leaving the Court, was one of those because even though we didn't pursue this in depth with him at his hearing, those of us who are pro-life--and I am one of them--were pretty assured that Kennedy might be one of those votes to override Roe v. Wade. Yet, in 1992, in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood case, Kennedy was one of the majority who voted not to do any harm whatsoever to Roe v. Wade. There is no way to predict how a Justice will rule in a particular case. Many times, this Senator has been disappointed by what he thought a Justice might do if approved. Who could have predicted that Judge Scalia, for example, would strike down a ban on flag-burning? Just this term, we saw how Justices appointed by Republican Presidents can reach decisions with liberal political results because that is what the law requires. In Sessions v. Dimaya, Justice Gorsuch sided with an immigrant who challenged a statute under which he could have been deported as unconstitutionally vague. In Carpenter v. the United States, our Chief Justice Roberts, who most of the time is considered a conservative or strict constructionist, held that police were required to obtain a warrant before searching cell phone location data. If you are a law enforcement person, you consider that a bad decision. If you are a privacy rights person, you consider Chief Justice Roberts to be right. It is sad--very sad--but not surprising that leftwing groups and their Senate allies oppose Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation based on policy concerns rather than on legal concerns. Luckily, a majority of Americans and a majority of Senators believe that the mark of a really good judge is someone who does what the Constitution assigns them to do--interpret the law as written, regardless of whether the result is liberal or conservative or even anything in between. As Justice Gorsuch said, judges wear robes, not capes. In his 12 years on the DC Circuit, Judge Kavanaugh has a clear track record of setting aside any policy preferences and ruling according to law as Congress wrote it. Criticizing the results of certain decisions says more about his critics than about the judge himself. We are already seeing an attempt at Borking Judge Kavanaugh. I was in the Senate when liberal groups and some of my colleagues smeared the highly respected Judge Bork after he was nominated for the Supreme Court. Judge Bork was very candid with the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was unfairly attacked for being so candid. We are seeing liberal groups and their Senate allies try to replicate this shameful episode. But since the nomination of Justice Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, the tradition has been for nominees to, in her words, give ``no hints, no forecasts, no previews'' of how they would vote, and that applies to how they would address certain cases. In a press conference last year, the minority leader affirmed that ``there is a grand tradition that I support that you can't ask'' a judicial nominee ``about a specific case that might come before them.'' That is exactly the Ginsburg rule. I expect, if Judge Kavanaugh wants to be on the Supreme Court not only for the sake of being on the Supreme Court, getting there, but also to serve the role he ought to serve as an impartial Justice, that he is going to follow the Ginsburg rule when he comes before my Judiciary Committee. I implore my colleagues not to try to extract assurances about how he will rule in specific cases in exchange for a confirmation vote, because they ought to get the answer from Kavanaugh that Ginsburg would give and, as far as I know, every one of the nominees since then. The only question that matters is this: Does Judge Kavanaugh strive to apply the law as written by Congress, regardless of his personal views? From what I know about Judge Kavanaugh--and I haven't gone through all of his 300 opinions yet that he has written as a circuit judge, but the answer appears to be yes. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, as we all know, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a component of the Department of Justice. It is frequently described as the premier law enforcement agency in the country. The FBI's investigative authority has only grown--and grown tremendously--since its creation almost 100 years ago. The Bureau now covers everything from kidnapping to counterintelligence, public corruption to bank robbery, and maybe a lot of things in between. Its power is very substantial, and its jurisdiction is far-reaching. It is a very important agency. Because of that, the FBI is subject to a lot of scrutiny. Lately, we have had a lot of folks around here who seem to be mistaking the word ``scrutiny'' of the Bureau with the word ``attacks'' on the Bureau. Oversight of the FBI is not new, and it is a constitutional responsibility of the Congress at least to do oversight of every agency, and the FBI can't be an exception. Far from being out of bounds, it is essential for the people's elected representatives in the Congress to put the FBI under a microscope. That is doubly true when the FBI gets involved in election controversies. The more power and the more secrecy the FBI claims in order to carry out its responsibilities, the more closely it ought to be watched. Under our government, where the public's business ought to be public, that statement I just made ought to be common sense to everybody. In its criminal work, the FBI is held accountable primarily by the court system. When the FBI secretly gathers information for intelligence purposes, the risk of impropriety skyrockets. If the information is never going to be presented in the courts, as in a criminal matter, who is going to be watching to make sure that the power to gather and use it is not being abused? That is why we need vigorous congressional oversight and strong inspector general scrutiny. Lots of people say that the FBI should be independent. I disagree. The FBI needs to be objective and nonpartisan. It should be insulated from undue political pressure. If you want to call that independence, then I will use that word. It cannot be independent of accountability to the people's elected leaders. Civilian control of the military has always been a key safeguard to liberty for the same reason. Freedom is at risk if the FBI can become a domestic intelligence service with free rein to weaponize information in secret. We have seen the risks of that in the text messages of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Their contempt for both the people of this country and, particularly, their elected leaders should disturb everyone. Abuses of power at the FBI are why we have a term limit for the Director of the FBI. That term limit is not there to protect the FBI's independence; it is there to protect the people from the abuses that J. Edgar Hoover committed because he became too independent. He was accountable to no one. J. Edgar Hoover was feared by Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen. While the Director originally was selected by the Attorney General, in 1968, Congress made the position subject to Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. In 1976, the Congress established a nonrenewable 10-year term limit for the Director. The Senate Judiciary Committee published a committee report on that bill that limited the 10-year term in 1974. It took a couple of years for the bill to pass the House. In quoting from that report: The purpose of the bill is to achieve two complementary objectives. The first is to insulate the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from undue pressure being exerted upon him from superiors in the Executive Branch. The second is to protect against an FBI Director becoming too independent and unresponsive. At the time, Congress was grappling with the fallout of Watergate and the decades of corruption and civil liberties abuses by that first Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover--hence, the legislation. Congress knew the FBI had to be able to operate free of partisan interference but still be accountable to the duly elected leadership of the country, including all Members of Congress in their constitutional roles of oversight. Certainly, the FBI Director can't be a politician's stooge, but history tells us that the bigger risk is in the other direction. Hoover abused his power to intimidate politicians and other political leaders. In a democracy, all of our leaders are ultimately accountable to the people. Access to information about what agencies like the FBI are doing is essential to holding them accountable. Transparency brings accountability. Abuses multiply in secret. That is why congressional oversight--Congress's responsibility under the Constitution--is key. The recent report by the Department of Justice's inspector general is a very good example. It describes behavior having taken place in secret at the FBI that simply cannot be defended when having been brought to light. First, the inspector general's report identified unacceptable messages that were sent on FBI mobile devices and computer systems by 5 of the 15 FBI employees on the Clinton email investigation. Those messages reeked with political bias. The report found that through such messages, these employees ``brought discredit to themselves, sowed doubt about the FBI's handling of the Midyear investigation, and impacted the reputation of the FBI.'' One message explicitly suggested a willingness to take official investigative steps for partisan reasons where there should be no partisanship. That message vowed to stop the election of Donald Trump. Can you imagine an FBI employee in an official capacity, on official devices, taking that approach and then claiming not to be biased? Because of that message, the IG was unable to conclude that the FBI's inaction on the Clinton email matter, for nearly a month prior to the election, was free from partisan bias. The IG referred to the Bureau all five employees who had expressed partisan bias in order for the FBI to consider potential disciplinary action. Those messages showed a bureau plagued by arrogance, disrespect for policy and norms, and disgust of democratic accountability. The report found that Director Comey's actions usurped the Department's authority. It called his decision of publicly announcing that Secretary Clinton would not be prosecuted as ``extraordinary'' and ``insubordinate.'' Director Comey acted as if he were accountable to no one except himself. His subordinates also appeared content to ignore Bureau and Department policy and guidance--some, apparently, for their own personal interests. The inspector general also recently concluded that the FBI's former Deputy, Andrew McCabe, authorized the disclosure of information to a reporter. That information confirmed the existence of an ongoing investigation. The IG report faulted McCabe for violating longstanding Department and Bureau policy. There is a public interest exception to that policy, but the inspector general found that McCabe authorized the disclosure of the information to make himself, McCabe, look good. Now McCabe claims Comey knew about it, but the FBI will not release information that supposedly supports that claim. The FBI did little to nothing to address what now appears to be a culture of unauthorized contact with the media. Yet, somehow, every day, you read in the newspapers of the FBI's stiff-arming congressional oversight at every turn. Going to the newspapers is OK. When Congress wants the same information, no. On the one hand, for example, the FBI stonewalls legitimate requests from the people's elected representatives, whom they ``hate,'' in the words of Agent Strzok. On the other hand, FBI employees are accepting meals, sports tickets, and golf outings from reporters. Now the Department and the FBI are refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas while lecturing Congress about the need to control access to sensitive information. While FBI agents are breaking the rules by talking to reporters left and right, the Bureau goes after legitimate whistleblowers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse, according to law. The level of hypocrisy is staggering. The Bureau was investigating Secretary Clinton for her use of private communications to transact public business, but the employees in the Bureau who were handling that very investigation, including the Director, did exactly the same thing. Of course, these employees were not exclusively using a private server that was highly vulnerable to outside attacks. There truly is a difference in the order of magnitude, but the FBI's employees' behavior could help explain their apparent lack of enthusiasm for investigating Clinton's clear alienation of the Federal records. After all, how could they accuse her of violating the Federal Records Act when it appears they may also have been violating the very same law? These are only some of the examples in the inspector general's latest report that we had a hearing on before my Judiciary Committee a couple of weeks ago. Former Director Comey said his people ``didn't give a rip about politics.'' We can see clearly now that that is just not true, at least not for five top individuals involved in this very high-profile, very important investigation. They now need to be held accountable for their actions. There is no place in the FBI for the kind of arrogance displayed in those text messages. There is no place in the FBI for the kind of political timing and calculations made by the former Director. His subordinates openly discussed the enormous pressure they were under to close the Clinton email investigation before the political conventions. That was completely improper. Decisions at the FBI need to be made on merit, not on a political calendar. The FBI needs to stay out of politics. It needs to submit to oversight. It needs to focus on doing its job to regain its reputation for objectivity. No one in this country is above the law. No one should be independent of accountability, especially not the FBI. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRASSLEY

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

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back the remainder of the time.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I have 5 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 12, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``An overview of the credit bureaus and the fair credit reporting act.'' Committee on Energy and Natural Resources The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 12, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 12, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy and the International Economy.'' Committee on the Judiciary The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 12, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on pending legislation and the following nominations: Britt Cagle Grant, of Georgia, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit, David James Porter, of Pennsylvania, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit, A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr., of South Carolina, and Julius Ness Richardson, of South Carolina, both to be a United States Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit, Roy Kalman Altman, and Rodolfo Armando Ruiz II, both to be a United States District Judge for the Southern District of Florida, Raul M. Arias- Marxuach, to be United States District Judge for the District of Puerto Rico, and Maria Chapa Lopez, to be United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida, and Richard E. Taylor, Jr., to be United States Marshal for the Northern District of Texas, both of the Department of Justice. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 12, 2018, at 2 p.m., to conduct a closed hearing.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am pleased the Senate is considering Brian Benczkowski to serve as the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. This is a critical position at the Department of Justice and its extended vacancy has hindered the agency's effectiveness. Mr. Benczkowski has the experience and qualifications to lead the Criminal Division. I am proud to support his nomination on the floor today. Mr. Benczkowski was nominated 400 days ago. The Judiciary Committee held his confirmation hearing nearly a year ago. A fully staffed and well-functioning Criminal Division is vitally important to the Department of Justice's mission. Over a dozen former U.S. Attorneys, from both the Bush and Obama administrations, support his nomination. They wrote that the head of the criminal division is ``the nerve center of federal prosecution, and the absence of a confirmed occupant can diminish the effectiveness of our law enforcement program throughout the country.'' The former prosecutors went on to state: ``Those of us who know Brian recognize that he is the right person to provide that leadership and to be a strong and effective partner with the United States Attorneys' Offices.'' Mr. Benczkowski already has an impressive legal career. He previously served as the Republican staff director on the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2009-2010. He also served as a counsel on the House Judiciary Committee. Before that time, he worked on the Senate Budget Committee and served as a counsel to Senator Domenici for 4 years. Mr. Benczkowski excelled as a leader during his time on the Judiciary Committee. During his time as staff director, he was instrumental in passing the Fair Sentencing Act. This law reduced the disparity in federal criminal sentencing between crack and powder cocaine. His leadership was instrumental in several pieces of bipartisan legislation, including the Crime Victims Fund Preservation Act of 2009, the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act of 2009, the Judicial Survivors Protection Act of 2009, and the Combat Meth Enhancement Act of 2009. Mr. Benczkowski also served in several different roles at the Department of Justice. In 2008, he became the chief of staff to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General. He also served as the chief of staff to the ATF. In total, he held five senior leadership positions in different divisions in the Department of Justice, working with components and law enforcement agencies across the Department. During Mr. Benczkowski's decade in the private sector, he gained extensive litigation management experience that will serve him well as he oversees the Criminal Division. Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have said they will not support his nomination because he allegedly lacks experience. They say this because Mr. Benczkowski was never a prosecutor. But the head of the Criminal Division is not a prosecutor. The position oversees criminal matters and formulates and implements criminal enforcement policy. It requires a deep knowledge of Federal criminal law, experience in government investigations, and strong management skills. Mr. Benczkowski, with his years of experience in relevant fields, is clearly qualified for this position. But don't just take my word for it. Five former heads of the Criminal Division appointed under the Bush and Obama administrations said this about Mr. Benczkowski's nomination: ``Mr. Benczkowski has the necessary leadership, management and substantive experience to lead the Division.'' They noted that, ``by virtue of our service in the position to which Mr. Benczkowski has been nominated, we are familiar with the qualifications and experience necessary for success in the job.'' They went on to say ``throughout his career, on the criminal defense side in private practice and in the Department, he has worked on complex criminal investigations on a range of issues; significant criminal legislation matters; important criminal policy matters; and domestic and international law enforcement matters.'' These former heads of the Criminal Division know better than anyone the background and qualifications required to do the job, and they think that Mr. Benczkowski is a good fit for this role. Some of my colleagues have raised a different concern, related to Mr. Benczkowski's legal representation of Alfa Bank while he was working at the law firm of Kirkland and Ellis. The Senate learned of this matter when reviewing his FBI background investigation. Normally the committee doesn't publicly discuss any matters contained in the background investigation but because this matter raised some concerns for some senators, Mr. Benczkowski voluntarily waived his privacy rights, so we could freely and publicly question him on this matter. At his hearing, the committee members extensively questioned him about his representation of Alfa Bank. He answered all our questions. He was not evasive. His testimony was public. It was very credible and uncontroverted. Mr. Benczkowski also then responded in writing to several rounds of written questions submitted to him. After this hearing, I helped Senator Durbin arrange an intelligence briefing with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence related to Alfa Bank. I also helped arrange for the Deputy Attorney General to call Senator Durbin to explain the Department's long-standing tradition that it does not confirm nor deny investigations, particularly when it comes to a nominee's client. When clients are under investigation, they need lawyers to represent them. Are we now going to have a political litmus test for nominees based upon the clients they stepped forward to represent in private practice? There is no credible allegation that Mr. Benczkowski did anything wrong or unethical related to his limited representation of Alfa Bank or otherwise. He has promised to recuse himself from handling any matters involving Alfa Bank, and he has promised to consult with ethics officials regarding any other times he may need to recuse. I believe Mr. Benczkowski will be an outstanding head of the Criminal Division. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting his nomination.

Mr. GRASSLEY

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss the continuing need for addressing hard-hitting oversight of the Department of Defense. That need for oversight is as great today as it ever was. Waste is alive and very well at the Pentagon. I have a poster, a blowup of a cartoon published in the Washington Post in 1985, during my early years in the U.S. Senate. It shows Ernie Fitzgerald, a famous whistleblower, confronting what are quite obviously his chief adversaries, the big spenders at the Pentagon. As a senior Air Force official, Ernie Fitzgerald committed a crime. He says he ``committed truth.'' Ernie Fitzgerald is famous for, in 1968, exposing a $2.3 billion cost overrun on the C-5 aircraft program. In those days, having a senior Pentagon official like Ernie Fitzgerald speak the truth about a cost overrun on a high visibility program was unheard of. In fact, it was dangerous. It was so dangerous that it cost Ernie Fitzgerald his job. That is why I like to call Ernie Fitzgerald the father of whistleblowers. The cartoon also depicts the infamous $640 toilet seat that made history back in those days as one example of the terrible waste at the Defense Department. That happened in 1985, when I, as a first-term Senator, began watchdogging the Pentagon. After a report uncovered a $640 toilet seat and a $400 hammer, I began asking very tough questions, such as: How could the bureaucrats possibly justify paying such exorbitant prices? I am still waiting for a straight answer. A lot has changed since the 1980s. The internet, which was in its infancy in the 1980s, is now a part of everyday life. Mobile phones back then were once the size of bricks. Now those mobile phones can fit in the palm of your hand and do a lot more work than just making telephone calls. But one thing hasn't changed in all those decades-- wasteful Department of Defense procurement practices. Since I began my work on this issue, there have been 6 Presidents and 12 Secretaries of Defense, yet the problem of wasteful spending at the Defense Department keeps going on. Since those earliest revelations, there has been a steady flow of new reports on spare part rip-offs. No political party is immune from these horror stories. During the administration of George H.W. Bush, oversight efforts uncovered soap dishes that cost $117 and pliers that cost nearly $1,000. In some cases the Department of Defense admitted that some high prices didn't pass the smell test. True, better deals were negotiated. People tried to make some changes, but to offset losses on lower prices, the contractors jacked up overhead and management charges, making the overall contract price the same. Exercising oversight on these contracts is like working with a balloon. You know the famous balloon--when you squeeze it in one place, the problem pops out someplace else. Under President Bill Clinton, a report by the Government Accountability Office--we know it here as the GAO--revealed that one defense contractor paid its top executives more than $33 million a year, an amount that was reimbursed by the Federal Government as part of a contract. I happen to agree that a company has a right to pay its executives whatever it wants; however, when the government enters into cost- reimbursement contracts, those contracts in which the government directly repays the company for costs incurred instead of paying a fixed price, the contractor loses incentive to control costs, and top executives draw sky-high salaries at the taxpayers' expense. I introduced an amendment in the 1997 Defense authorization bill to curb executive compensation billed directly to the taxpayers, but as you might expect, with the respect the Defense Department has in this body, that amendment was voted down. During the Bush administration in the early 2000s, I worked with the GAO to expose abuse of government charge cards by Defense Department employees. We found some truly egregious expenditures--for examples, over $20,000 at a jewelry store, over $34,000 on gambling, and over $70,000 on tickets to sporting events and Broadway shows. In some cases, employees who spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on personal expenses--way beyond anything that was an ordinary business expense-- were not only not asked to repay the money to the taxpayers but oddly were promoted and even issued new charge cards. Instead of being held accountable, it is quite obvious they were rewarded for their illegal activity. During the Presidency of President Obama, I pressed the Pentagon to answer for a $43 million gas station built in Afghanistan. This project was revealed as part of an audit conducted by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. When I pressed for answers, the Defense Department responded by saying that the direct cost was actually only $5 million, but the number didn't include the massive overhead costs charged to the project, which pushed the overall price tag up to that $43 million. Anybody anywhere else--outside the beltway--knows that doesn't meet the smell test, and that is not even a commonsense answer to my overall question. How did we waste $43 million there? Even more alarming is what happened to the rest of the $800 million provided for other business development projects in our efforts to help Afghanistan recover. Auditors could only find documentation to support about half of the money spent, leaving about $400 million unaccounted for. This kind of sloppy bookkeeping means we may never know how the rest of the money was spent. Was it used for unauthorized purposes or pocketed by crooked people? We will probably never know. Now, under the Presidency of Donald Trump, over 30 years since all this started with me, the overpriced airborne toilet seat has really gained altitude. Instead of the $640 that this cost, the new pricetag was reported by the Air Force to be $10,000, and that happens to be only for the lid of the toilet stool. Any American can tell you that $10,000 for a toilet seat cover is ridiculous. Americans work too hard to see their precious tax dollars flushed down the toilet. I asked the Department of Defense for confirmation that the seats cost $10,000. They still haven't answered my letter, but after my inquiry, the Department of Defense has changed their story. They clarified to the media that they are now 3D printing the toilet seat lids for much less, but they never answered my questions. We don't know how many seat covers were purchased at the $10,000 pricetag; we don't know when they moved to 3D printing instead of purchasing; and we still don't have documentation or official confirmation on the true price of toilet seat lids. Even if the issue of the toilet seat has been sorted out, it is clear the Department of Defense still does not have a grip on spending. OIG reports have revealed that the Pentagon frequently overpays for simple parts and does not perform adequate cost analysis. One of the primary culprits for continuing waste and misuse of tax dollars is the Department of Defense's noncompliance with the congressional mandate to pass an audit. The Department of Defense has a very bad record. It is impossible to know how much things cost or what is being bought when nobody is keeping good track of the money being shoveled out the door. For nearly 30 years, we have been pushing the Pentagon to earn a clean opinion on any of their audits. Way back in 1990, Congress passed the Chief Financial Officers Act, which required all departments of the government to present a financial statement to an inspector general for audit by March 1992. All departments have complied and earned clean opinions except one and that is the Department of Defense. Instead of clean opinions, the Department of Defense has earned a long string of failing opinions called disclaimers. It boils down to the fact that the books at the Department of Defense are unauditable. In 2010, 20 years after that 1990 congressional action, Congress finally got fed up and passed a new law requiring the Pentagon to be ready for audit by September 2017. The Department was given 7 long years to get its act together and to meet the same requirements as every other Federal agency entrusted with public money. Obviously, that deadline has come and gone like other deadlines have come and gone. According to the Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. David Norquist, a clean audit is still at least 10 years away. That is 10 years of not being able to follow the money. If you can't follow the money, you don't know whether it is spent legally. There is a longstanding, underlying problem preventing the Pentagon from reaching the goal of a clean audit. This is the so-called feeder system. I will not describe a feeder system, but feeder systems are supposed to capture transaction data, but those feeder systems are broken. Auditors cannot connect the dots between contracts and payments. You can't follow the money because there is no reliable transaction data and little or no supporting documentation. You tend to spend money without knowing what you even bought. The Pentagon will never earn a clean opinion until those accounting systems are able to produce reliable financial data that meet accepted standards. Over the last 25 years, the Department of Defense has spent billions trying to fix these outdated accounting systems but with no success. How is it that the very mighty Pentagon can develop the most advanced weapons in the world but can't seem to acquire something as simple as an accounting system? We need to get to the bottom of this problem and fix it. I am working with my colleagues on the Budget Committee to get the Government Accountability Office to conduct an independent review of the Pentagon's effort to acquire modern accounting systems. What is the problem? That is what we are trying to find out. Should the Defense Department keep trying to fix the antiquated feeder systems or is it time to develop new, fully integrated systems that can deliver reliable financial information? We need and we want some answers. The Department of Defense is currently attempting to conduct a full financial audit. Secretary Mattis has directed all employees to support the audit, and the results are expected in November. Although the new Chief Financial Officer appears to be making a good-faith effort to get a handle on the problem, he also happens to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year for audits with a zero probability of success. It could be very wasteful spending that kind of money if they don't have a feeder system in place. The first priority of our Federal Government remains and ought to be national security. We must ensure that our military forces remain strong enough to deter any potential aggressor and, as a result, preserve the peace. The men and women on the frontlines deserve fair compensation and the best weapons and equipment money can buy. We want to field the most capable military force in the world. Because national defense is so very important, congressional watchdogging of defense spending is very essential. We don't want one single dollar to be wasted--not even a penny. Until the Defense Department is able to earn a clean opinion on a very regular basis, we have no assurance that Defense dollars are being spent wisely and, most importantly, according to law. Report after report shows that precious Defense dollars are being wasted, misused, and unaccounted for. Reforms have been made, but very clearly the war on waste has not been won. Much more work needs to be done. From my oversight post in the Senate, I will continue to apply pressure on the Pentagon to step up the war on waste. I don't expect much help from the inspector general. Mr. Fine seems to be AWOL on waste. I raised the issue of the $10,000 toilet seat cover with him over a month ago and still haven't received an answer. His office found the time to update the media about the toilet seat cover. Yet my letter has gone unanswered. However, after revelations about the $43 million gas station, Secretary Mattis's reaction was sweet music to my ears. He issued an all-hands memo. In that memo, he stated flatout: I will not tolerate that kind of waste. Known for being a man of your word, Secretary Mattis, I am counting on you for your help. Maybe together we can wipe out the culture of indifference toward the American people's money by the Pentagon. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.